Chapter 45: The Party
Amy George materialized from the direction of the cheerleading sideline before Regina had finished extending the invitation, moving through the post-game crowd with the specific energy of a woman who had been waiting for the celebration to start and was ready to contribute to it.
She was dressed for an occasion — fitted pink blazer over a sundress, oversized sunglasses pushed up on her head, a designer bag that she carried with the easy comfort of someone who'd stopped thinking about what things cost a long time ago. She looked, in the specific way Amy always looked, like she was arriving somewhere rather than just standing there.
She spotted Mike first.
"There he is." She pulled her sunglasses down to get a proper look, the gesture theatrical and completely sincere. "Number twenty. Amy George — I'm Regina's mom, and that was something out there today."
She shook his hand with both of hers, the enthusiastic double-grip of someone who genuinely meant the compliment.
Then she turned to Regina with the specific brightness she deployed when she was about to say something her daughter would find mortifying. "Is this the one you've been—"
"Mom."
"I'm asking a simple question."
"It's not a simple question."
Amy smiled at Mike with the conspiratorial warmth of a woman who had been embarrassing her daughter for seventeen years and had made peace with it as a lifestyle. Then she turned back to Regina. "A party. We should throw a party. The team won, the house is sitting there — let's do something with it."
Regina looked at her.
"I was already planning one," Regina said.
"Then I'll help," Amy said, with the unstoppable forward momentum of someone who had interpreted I was already planning one as please get involved.
Regina's expression had the specific quality of someone who had wanted this party to be their idea and was now watching it become a collaboration.
"Fine," she said. "But I'm handling the music."
"I have opinions about the music," Amy said, already reaching for her phone.
"Mom."
"They're good opinions."
The cheerleaders and nearby football players who had been listening to this exchange reacted the way teenagers always reacted to watching someone else's parent be their fullest self in public — with a mixture of sympathy and entertainment that they were trying not to show.
Aaron, standing nearby, looked at Georgie.
Georgie looked at Aaron.
"We're going to a party," Georgie said, with the specific energy of someone who had been waiting for exactly this kind of Saturday for approximately two years.
On the sideline, Mike caught Coach George before he headed to the equipment room and explained the situation briefly — party at the George house, team celebration, he'd be back at a reasonable hour.
George Sr. listened to this with the expression of a man who was technically the authority figure in this situation and had decided to exercise that authority by being reasonable.
"Be smart," he said. "And don't let Georgie do anything I'd have to hear about on Monday."
"I'll do my best," Mike said.
George Sr. looked at him with the expression that suggested your best and Georgie were not always compatible variables, but he let it go.
Mike went to say goodbye to the rest of the family.
Connie was waiting with the particular expression she wore when she'd been thinking about something and had decided to say it.
She pulled him slightly aside, produced three items from her jacket pocket with the matter-of-fact efficiency of a woman who had lived a full life and had strong opinions about preparation, and pressed them into his palm.
"Safety first," she said, looking him in the eye with the clear, direct warmth of someone who respected him enough not to be coy about it. "Whatever happens, whatever doesn't happen — be smart about it. That's all I'm saying."
Mike looked at what was in his hand.
He felt the specific heat of being fifteen years old and having a seventy-two-year-old woman be more prepared for his evening than he was.
"Connie—"
"Pocket," she said.
He put them in his pocket.
"Good," she said, and patted his arm once.
Behind her, Sheldon had been watching this exchange with the focused attention he gave things he didn't yet have a category for.
"Grandma Connie," he said, "what did you give Mike? And why did you say he might not come home tonight?"
Connie turned to him with the warm, mysterious smile of someone who had no intention of answering the question directly. "Oh, shug — you're still a little young for that conversation. Give it a few years and I'll explain everything."
She winked.
Mary, who had been listening with the focused peripheral awareness of a mother who monitored all conversations within twenty feet of her children, stepped in with the practiced efficiency of someone closing a topic before it developed further.
"Sheldon," she said. "Say goodbye to Mike."
Sheldon looked at Mike with the expression of someone filing an unresolved question for future investigation. "Goodbye, Mike. I expect a full accounting of this evening's events at a later date."
"I'll see what I can do," Mike said.
Missy had appeared at his elbow. She held up her GO MIKE sign one more time, for the record.
He gave her a thumbs up.
She beamed.
He changed quickly in the locker room — a clean white t-shirt, dark jeans, sneakers. He ran a hand through his hair. He moved the items Connie had given him to his back pocket without thinking about it too hard.
Georgie was waiting outside the locker room in his team jersey, which he had clearly decided was the correct strategic choice for the evening.
He looked at Mike's white t-shirt and jeans. Looked at his own jersey. Looked back at Mike.
"You're not even trying," he said.
"I'm very comfortable," Mike said.
Georgie absorbed this. "Can you just — walk slightly behind me when we get there? Not the whole time. Just the first ten minutes."
"Georgie."
"I just need a head start."
"I'll stay out of your way," Mike said. "I mean that."
Georgie considered this. "Okay. That's fair." He straightened his jersey. "Let's go."
They came out through the main entrance and found the pink convertible at the curb, top down, Regina in the driver's seat, Karen and Cady in the back.
"Mike." Regina leaned slightly toward the passenger side. "Get in."
Cady caught his eye briefly and gave him a small, specific look — the one she used when she was in the middle of something complicated and was managing it. He nodded back.
Karen waved with the warm, uncomplicated friendliness she had when Regina's attention was directed elsewhere.
Georgie stood on the sidewalk.
All four girls in the convertible were, by any objective standard, very good-looking. None of them appeared to have processed that Georgie was standing there.
"Go ahead," Georgie said to Mike, with the composed dignity of a man who had accepted his circumstances. "I'll see you there."
"I'll save you a spot," Mike said.
"You don't have to do that."
"I know. I will anyway."
Georgie waved him off. "Go."
Mike got in.
The convertible pulled away from the curb with the smooth ease of a car that had been specifically chosen to pull away from curbs smoothly.
Georgie watched it go.
Thirty seconds later, Aaron's pickup truck pulled up. Aaron leaned out the window and looked at Georgie standing alone on the sidewalk with his team jersey and his considerable dignity.
"Need a ride?" Aaron said.
"Yeah," Georgie said. "Thanks."
He got in.
The George house had been transformed in the hour between the end of the game and the arrival of the first guests.
Amy had clearly been busy. The back patio was strung with lights, a Bluetooth speaker setup that was significantly more sophisticated than a high school party required was running a playlist that Amy had curated with genuine enthusiasm, and a table along the fence held drinks and snacks arranged with the specific aesthetic of a woman who had opinions about presentation even in casual settings.
The second floor had been declared off-limits, which was the kind of rule that Amy had announced cheerfully and which everyone understood was flexible depending on circumstances.
The team and the cheerleading squad arrived in overlapping waves over the next forty minutes, and the backyard found its level — the comfortable noise of a group of people who had won something together and were enjoying the warmth of it.
Georgie, to his credit, had done the thing he'd been planning to do, which was find a corner with a direct sightline to the main social current and position himself there with a drink and the practiced ease of someone who was definitely not strategizing.
He was absolutely strategizing.
Mike circulated — not working the room exactly, just present, the way he was in most social situations. He talked to Aaron for a while about the fourth quarter. He talked to two of the linemen who'd cleared the way for his touchdown and said the specific things that were true and that they needed to hear. He found the drink table and stuck to the non-alcoholic options, which Amy had stocked in equal proportion to the other kind, apparently in acknowledgment that some of her guests were fifteen.
At some point in the second hour, Regina appeared at his elbow.
She'd changed — the cheerleading uniform traded for something more fitted, her hair down, the full-performance-mode version of herself dialed back to something that felt closer to actual Regina rather than public Regina. It was, Mike had noticed over the past two weeks, a distinct register. She didn't show it often.
"Walk with me," she said.
It was, as always with Regina, something between an invitation and an assumption. He fell into step beside her and they moved away from the main crowd toward the quieter end of the patio.
She looked at him.
"You were right today," she said. "When you said I was good at taking things that were supposed to embarrass me and making them mine." She said it simply, without the performance layer she usually put on compliments and criticisms alike. "I've been thinking about that."
"It's a real skill," Mike said.
"It's armor," she said. "There's a difference."
He looked at her. This was the honest Regina — the one that showed up occasionally and briefly, the version that had observed the world clearly enough to say something true about it.
"Yeah," he said. "There is."
She looked at the party behind her — the lights, the noise, the carefully constructed atmosphere.
"You're not going to make this easy, are you," she said. Not a complaint. An observation.
"I'm not doing anything deliberately," Mike said.
"I know," she said. "That's what I mean."
They stood there for a moment in the quieter end of the patio, close enough that the noise of the party was ambient rather than immediate.
Then Regina straightened slightly — the small physical shift that preceded her returning to the public version of herself.
"I'm glad you came," she said.
"Thanks for the invite," Mike said.
She almost smiled — the real one.
Then she turned and walked back into the party.
Mike stood at the edge of the patio for a moment, looking at the backyard full of his teammates celebrating a win they'd been waiting for, thinking about the conversation he'd just had.
Regina George, he thought, was considerably more interesting than her reputation suggested. She was also, he was becoming increasingly aware, someone who had built a very specific life around never having to be vulnerable in public, and the thing that frustrated her about him was that he hadn't tried to get through that yet — and didn't particularly need to.
That dynamic was going to produce something eventually. He wasn't sure what.
He filed it for later.
Inside, through the sliding glass door, he could see the kitchen — Amy moving around it with a plate of something she'd decided the party needed, talking to two of the cheerleaders with the warm, undirected enthusiasm she brought to every room she entered.
He went inside to help her carry it out.
Amy looked at him when he appeared in the kitchen doorway.
"Oh good," she said. "You have arms. Take that tray."
He took the tray.
"You're a good kid, Mike Quinn," she said, picking up the other one.
"Thank you, Mrs. George."
"Amy."
"Thank you, Amy."
She pushed through the sliding door with her shoulder and he followed her out into the party.
Later, in the notebook on Regina's desk, a new entry appeared.
It was about Mike Quinn. It was two pages long. It was not entirely flattering, and it was not entirely accurate, and somewhere underneath both of those things it was more honest than she would have liked.
She stared at the last line she'd written for a moment.
Then she closed the notebook and put it back in the drawer.
(End of Chapter 45)
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