Chapter 3 Mardi Gras #3
“Sorry,” Hannah laughs. “I’m good. I promise.”
They sit still for long minutes, simply breathing. Baker pulls absentmindedly on the hem of her dress until Hannah grabs her hand and stills her fingers.
“Thanks,” Baker says. “Hey, Han?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think Clay likes me? As in … likes me?”
Hannah stops breathing. “I don’t know.” She hesitates. “Why?”
Baker’s eyes narrow on the dead grass. “It’s just a vibe I’m getting.” She says the next part like she can’t bear to look at Hannah. “But … I don’t think I like him. Is that bad?”
“Why would that be bad?” Hannah asks in what she hopes sounds like a measured tone.
“I don’t know.” Baker bites her lip. “He’s our friend. He’s a good guy, even if he pretends to be an asshole. He’s objectively good-looking.”
Hannah blinks. It becomes very important to her to focus on the torches in the distance. “You think he’s good-looking?”
Baker hesitates. “I mean, yeah.” A heavy pause. “Don’t you?”
Hannah swallows. Her voice comes out harder than she intends. “If you don’t like him, don’t force yourself to.”
Baker doesn’t reply. They sit in silence in the cold air. Hannah counts backward from one hundred until her heart rate evens out.
“Sometimes I can’t wait to graduate,” Baker says after a long minute.
Hannah lets the words wash over her. “I never want to graduate,” she says.
Time passes over them. They walk back inside and the party absorbs them again, and Hannah marks the minutes by the songs that play through the speakers.
She loves every song that comes on, even the ones she usually skips when she hears them on the radio, and as she looks around the room, she feels elated to see Joanie and Luke belting out lyrics until their faces turn red; to see Clay raising his cup into the air in the middle of the crowd; to see Wally, who rarely sings, throwing his arms around his track teammates and letting them pull him into the song; and to see Baker, who stands next to her, laughing hard as she mixes up lyrics, her skin flushed and her eyes bright.
Hannah’s not sure how it happens. One moment her friends are all walking toward them, and then the six of them are singing in a circle, their arms laced around each other’s waists and their drinks spilling onto each other’s clothes, and the next moment Clay’s trying to kiss at Baker’s cheek.
Hannah watches, in a drunken daze, as Clay’s lips graze Baker’s face once, twice, and as Baker jerks back and gives him a look that’s entirely sober, and entirely unlike any look Hannah has ever seen on her face before.
And then Baker’s gone, and Clay’s looking in confusion at Wally and Luke, and Hannah finds herself suspended in time, until all of a sudden she blinks herself back into awareness and moves into the crowd, following Baker’s path out of the room.
It’s like she’s in a trance. She sees Baker pushing ahead of her—the dark hair, the sharp movements—and she vaguely registers the people all around them trying to ask what’s going on.
Hannah keeps moving, moving, moving, her legs and her heart carrying her, until she’s face-to-face with a tall door and the whip of Baker’s hair disappearing behind it.
“Hold on!” Hannah says, throwing her hands against the door to keep it from shutting. “Bake—you okay?”
Baker allows her into the bathroom. Hannah shuts the door and locks it without thinking about it.
“What’s wrong?” Hannah asks, ignoring her own pounding heart.
“Nothing.”
“Something.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I’m fine.”
Baker sits on the edge of the bathtub, dropping her face into her hands. Hannah steps forward until she’s standing above her, waiting for Baker to look up. When she doesn’t, Hannah crouches down and gently shakes her knee.
“Hey,” she says softly. “Talk to me.”
Baker takes a deep breath, drags her hands away from her face. She isn’t crying, but the distant, shrouded expression on her face is somehow worse.
“Is it Clay?” Hannah asks.
Baker gives her a sharp, impatient look.
“Okay, we both know it’s Clay,” Hannah concedes. “He shouldn’t have made a move on you.”
“That was like—out of nowhere,” Baker says, her voice almost shrill.
“Yeah, it was.” She shifts her weight but continues to crouch, one hand on Baker’s knee. “He’s a butthead. We’ll yell at him tomorrow. I’ll even castrate him if you want me to. There’s a pair of gardening shears out back.”
Baker snorts, meets Hannah’s eyes appreciatively. Then her expression turns serious again. “I just—do you ever feel not right about something, but you don’t know why?”
“Sure. I think it just happens at our age, you know? Angsty adolescence and all that.”
“Maybe.”
They sit in silence for a long minute. Outside of the bathroom, on the other side of the door, Hannah knows the party is carrying on, the music is pulsing, the people are laughing and singing and drinking and waiting to welcome her back.
But she has no desire to leave this bathroom.
She looks down at her dark-washed jeans, at her black ballet flats, at the fancy porcelain floor, and she waits.
“Maybe I’m just drunk,” Baker ventures after a few minutes.
Hannah rises to her feet, takes a seat next to Baker on the edge of the tub. “Maybe,” she agrees. “I did notice your tell.”
“I don’t have a tell,” Baker says.
Hannah snorts sarcastically.
“What? I don’t!”
Hannah promised herself a long time ago that she would never reveal this, but she can’t help it. She holds her breath, then says it all in a rush, almost in spite of herself. “You’re doing the tongue thing.”
Baker’s dark eyebrows knit together. “The tongue thing?”
Hannah tries to laugh it off. “Yeah, you know. Every time you’re drunk, you start poking your tongue against your teeth like a second grader waiting for the tooth fairy. Or sometimes you’ll just, like, stick your tongue out of your mouth a little bit.”
Baker sputters into a laugh, but her eyes are glued to Hannah’s. “And you know that because…?”
Hannah tries very, very hard to maintain casual eye contact. “I don’t know, I just notice things.”
“Things,” Baker repeats. And then suddenly, almost like a trick of the light, her eyes drop to Hannah’s mouth for the quickest moment.
Hannah’s heart hammers away, treacherous and insistent. She is balanced on a precipice, barely holding on for dear life. She clears her throat and knocks her knee against Baker’s, searching for normalcy.
“Han?” Baker asks shakily.
“Yeah?” Hannah replies, equally shaky.
And then they’re looking fully into each other’s faces, and it’s startling, because all Hannah can see are deep, dark eyes, the eyes she has trusted for years, but tonight there is something blazingly different in them, something ancient and yearning, something that calls to a feeling deep inside of Hannah.
Baker leans forward just the tiniest, tiniest bit, almost like a jerk of the hips, and then Hannah leans forward, too, and there is one long, interminable moment where they are balanced on a single yes—
And then Baker leans forward, presses her lips to Hannah’s cheek, kisses her slowly and gently like she is something precious—and Hannah’s body explodes into shards of light.
When Baker draws back, Hannah sees that same mystery in her eyes again—that blazing, wondrous hunger that threatens to undo Hannah from the inside out.
It prompts her to lean forward and kiss Baker’s cheek in turn, hesitating for only a second in case Baker wants to say no.
But she doesn’t, and then Hannah’s lips are pressing against her soft, warm skin, and then Baker’s fingers are at Hannah’s jaw, delicate but commanding, lining them up so they can kiss each other’s cheeks again, except this time they’re facing each other directly.
They kiss each other’s lips, and Hannah feels the spring of creation in her body and blood.
It’s a bursting, searing, awakening feeling, so potent that it almost hurts, the way it feels to eat a morsel of food after a long period of starvation.
Every nerve beneath Hannah’s skin—every deep, hidden crevice in her body—every tiny atom that makes her who she is—everything jazzes to life like it had long ago been buried and was simply waiting to be unearthed again.
Hannah opens her eyes and finds Baker looking at her with a kind of breathless, frightened desire, like a child who just got caught with her hand in a cookie jar, so Hannah leans forward again before either one of them can think about it.
She kisses Baker’s mouth, and once again all her nerves spring to life, and her heartbeat races in her chest, and the drunken part of her sings Oh yes even while the sober part of her warns Oh no.
Baker’s mouth moves against hers, and now they’re full-on kissing, their lips sliding against each other’s while Hannah’s heart rises up to fill the room around them.
And it’s magic, it’s sacred ritual, it’s God.
And now Baker’s making small noises, and her hands are running up and down Hannah’s arms, and her breathing is as erratic as her kisses.
Her lips are wet and Hannah wants to kiss them, kiss them, kiss them, and in some distant, forgotten part of her mind, she finally understands what the big deal is, why people want to kiss, why this action communicates so much more than words ever could.
“Han,” Baker says into her mouth, and never before has Hannah heard her name pronounced with such fear and such reverence. She answers with another kiss, and Baker receives her with a desperate eagerness Hannah never knew she possessed, almost like she has pried the lid off a jar Baker kept hidden.
And then their tongues are involved, moving into each other’s mouths with exploratory fervor, and deep inside of Hannah there’s a voice that says, This is your best friend, this is your best friend, over and over, and it seems to intensify the physical feelings even more.
They kiss and kiss and kiss, and Hannah hears soft whimpers escaping from Baker’s body, or maybe from her own, and she can’t think of anything except how much she loves this.
But then—
“Hannah,” Baker says, her voice more fearful than reverent. She draws away and wipes her fingers across her mouth, and Hannah sees that her hand is shaking.
“Baker—”
“Let’s go back to the party,” Baker says suddenly, standing up and bolting toward the door, her voice high and panicked like it is when she thinks she said the wrong thing to someone.
Hannah is reeling. Her lips are wet and swollen, her adrenaline still pumping with fight-or-flight. “Wait. Hold on.”
Baker starts pacing, almost feverishly, still brushing her fingers against her mouth. “We’ve been gone awhile—people might be worried—they’ll be wondering where we went—I think I’m really drunk—I think you’re pretty drunk, too—I think we’re both really wasted—”
“Wait—no—we’re okay—” Hannah says, dazed.
Baker looks into the mirror, then jerks her head away like she can’t stand to see the reflection. “I need some water,” she says, still ranting and raving. “I think I’m pretty drunk. What’s in that Elixir shit? I think maybe I’m blacked out—”
Then she leaves the bathroom, and Hannah’s left sitting on the tub with her heart in her throat.
Joanie drives them home. “I’m fine,” she assures Hannah. “I only drank two beers and Luke made me drink, like, six cups of water before we left. What’s up with you, Baker? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Baker says, her voice high and breathless from the back seat. “Just drank too much.”
Joanie snorts. “That’s a first.”
Hannah’s mom calls down to them when they walk into the house.
Hannah tries hard to sound sober and is grateful to Joanie for doing most of the talking.
“Yes, Mama, we’re all heading to bed,” Joanie says, sounding exasperated as she kicks off her shoes.
Under her breath, she says, “You’re driving next time, Hannah. ”
Baker doesn’t speak to Hannah as they get ready for bed.
They change in silence, turning away into opposite corners of the room, and brush their teeth without looking at each other’s reflections.
When Baker gets into bed and turns on her side away from Hannah, Hannah steps toward the door and says, “I’ll get us some water. ”
Baker takes a shuddering breath. “Thanks.”
“Are you crying?”
“I’m fine.”
“Baker—can we—”
“I’m fine, Han, I just need some water. Please.”
Hannah hesitates long enough to notice Baker wipe her face on the pillow. Then she tiptoes down to the kitchen and fills two plastic tumblers full of ice water, her body still on high alert, buzzing and reeling and raw.
When she goes back to her bedroom, Baker is fast asleep, or at least pretending to be.