Jon was just a little concerned about Sarah's outburst, and although he couldn't see his own face at the moment, he knew it had changed. But with Sarah in another room, he felt that he could catch his breath. And Susan felt that she could catch up with her apparent friend.
Jon and Susan quickly became the center of attention for the party in Sarah's absence. The older woman beckoned him to sit down on a white leather loveseat with her, and to see the surrounding girls' reactions was like watching someone toss food into the middle of a koi pond.
"So how was your last shoot?" Susan put a hand on Jon's bare knee.
And, as if because of the contact, Jon could suddenly remember it. "We went over time, and everyone was exhausted by the end," Jon recalled memories that were not his own. "Gigi left the minute the shoot was scheduled to end, and the rest of us were there another three hours. But it was a real blast."
"Oh, she can be such a diva sometimes," Susan sighed, then gave Jon a conspiratorial wink. "But who in our field isn't?"
"Wait," Tiffany Sanders butted in. "You did a shoot with Gigi Hadid?"
"It's not that big a deal, is it?" In an odd meeting of minds, the original Jon had no idea who Gigi Hadid was, and this new version of Jon that was filling in blanks for him didn't see anything special about working with one of the most famous models in the world. He was always working with famous models. Gigi wasn't any more or less special than Chrissy or Gisele or Cara.
Nonetheless, every single girl in the room squealed, and demanded to hear more. And Jon and Susan held court for a good twenty minutes before a recuperated Sarah emerged from a side room, Amber in tow.
The first thing Sarah had realized, once she had calmed herself down, was that tonight was not the time to get back at Jon. There were too many people who might say too many things. Sarah wouldn't have control. So she would have to dismiss everyone, and come back to this problem in the morning, at school, where she could more easily curate the people who were around her.
So when she returned to her party, she once again repressed the anger that flared up as she saw Jon and her mom giggling with one another at the center of a ring of all the most important girls in school, and simply said "I'm sorry for my outburst, everyone, but I think I'm going to have to call the party a bit early tonight. I know that makes me a bad hostess, but--"
"Don't say that!" Amber came to Sarah's defense, "You're a wonderful hostess!"
And before Sarah could even consider the words she'd use to reply to that statement, before even Jon knew what he was doing, before anyone could react in any way, Jon stood up ramrod straight, his supermodel body displayed brilliantly, hair shining like it was the source of light for the entire room, face bright and smooth and dewey, manicured finger pointed straight into the air, and his sharp, rich, soprano voice ringing in every single ear in the room:
"After-party at my house!"
Because, of course, Jon now had to be an even better hostess than Sarah.
