Chapter 32 #2
We go back to Levi and Aaron. They’re waiting for us at a bar table with four beer glasses on it.
Gwen grabs one and downs half of it. The foam sticks to her upper lip.
She licks it off. That’s Gwen. She drinks milk out of the carton.
She burps after eating a fatty meal. She parks in the spots reserved for trainers at iSkate.
She laughs, she lives, she’s sassy and wild and abnormal. I love her.
“What did we miss?” she asks.
Levi points to a guy sitting on a stool with his head hanging down. He doesn’t look all that comfortable.
“You see him? He sat himself down cross-legged on the dance floor and busted out in some breakdancing moves. In so doing, he caught that woman there in the red dress in the knee. She fell over and took her friend with her, who landed on homeboy’s face with her ass.”
“No way,” I say.
“For real. I took a video. Here.” Aaron holds his phone out under my nose. I look at the whole thing, frowning, before asking, “How can you record so quickly?”
“I just wanted to turn it into an Instastory.”
“And Jason Hawk hooked up with Francine George,” Levi adds.
“The skier. On the dance floor. At first, he danced up to her, totally creepy, wait, like this.” He rubs his bottom against Aaron’s hips, up and down his leg, Aaron says, “Oh yeah, baby, clean my shoes, that’s how I like it,” and we double up in laughter.
Levi wobbles back upright. “Then he slobbered all over her, like this.” He sticks out his tongue and pretends to lick Aaron’s face, but Aaron moves away laughing. Clever.
“Come on,” Levi says, but we can hardly understand him thanks to his slabbering tongue. It sounds like humm-ahn. “Don’t be like that.”
I can’t stop laughing, I even spill my beer until I suddenly realize what Levi’s actually said. My laughter dies. “Jason Hawk is here?” I look around. If he’s not still at the Athlete Lounge, then Knox might already be here at the Inn.
Gwen groans. “You’ve already got a snowboarder. Leave one for me.”
“I don’t want a thing from Jason Hawk.”
“Yes, she does.” Hands on my shoulders. Big hands.
Warm. Warmer than the sticky air. They stroke the lace.
I lean back my head and see Knox’s lips from below.
Curved and lovely. A bit sad, but not right now, right now they’re simply lovely.
He looks into my eyes and the corners of his mouth twitch when he says, “She’s got a thing for him. ”
“Yeah, well, Knox,” Gwen downs the rest of her beer. “Then you’ve been dealt a bad hand.”
He raises an eyebrow. “I never get a bad hand.” Then he pulls me into his arms, bends down, and kisses me. No doubt smearing my lipstick. But whatever, because: Knox, oh-my-God-Knox, what are you doing?
The kiss lasts all of two heartbeats. BOOM.
BOOM. Just two, but it feels like two hundred, I have to gasp for air when I turn my head to interrupt it.
I look left then right, right then left.
Did anyone see us? No. I don’t think so.
But then I see it. Knox’s expression. Like a beaten dog.
Levi and Aaron are staring into their glasses, but Gwen casts me a you-see-that’s-what-you-get look.
She’s right. Knox doesn’t know that I want to keep our situation a secret.
He doesn’t know that my future at iSkate will be over if the fact that I am here becomes public knowledge.
And I am not ready to share the reason why with anyone but myself at this moment.
I’m not ready yet. I’m too afraid. The pure desire to live, you might say.
“Knox,” I say, running my fingernail along the inscription—treat yourself—on the beer glass. “Can we go somewhere else?”
I can see that he thinks I want to end things between us and that just about tears me up more than his beaten-dog look.
I rub my lace-trimmed sleeves, wait until he nods, and then I follow him outside.
I don’t have my jacket, Levi gave it to the coat check, and it’s really goddamn cold.
Knox leads me over to the fire pit. People are staring at him. Staring at us.
“So,” he says, sitting down on the bench next to the fire and putting his arms behind him on the backrest. His legs spread a bit. Not manspreading but spread in that way guys often do. My glance lands in his crotch and it’s almost too much. My body responds to him. “What’s up?”
He’s Knox, but at the same time he’s not.
It doesn’t sound like him. His voice has taken on the it’s-all-the-same-to-me tone it always had when we were getting to know each other and that, in the meantime, I’ve learned is a defense mechanism.
Some guy or other walks past—“What’s up, Winterbottom?
Rad big air at training today, man!” and they give each other a high five.
Knox laughs, and it occurs to me that he just may be the best actor in the world.
I sigh, sit down next to him, and run my hand across the fabric covering my thighs. “I’m not ready for us to go public, Knox.”
He looks at me for a long time before opening his mouth then closing it again. Eventually he says, “Okay.”
I blink. “Don’t you want to know why?”
He shrugs. “You’ve got your reasons. And if you want to tell me, you will. I accept that.” He leans back, runs a hand through his hair, and grins. “Even if I take the fact that you find me embarrassing personally.”
“That’s not true.”
“Just kidding. Who on earth could find me embarrassing?”
“You are so narcissistic.”
“I prefer self-assured.”
I have to grin. “It’s amazing that you even know a word like prefer.”
“You always say that.”
“What?”
“It’s amazing that you even know that word.
It’s amazing that you’re not dumb. It’s amazing that you can even speak.
” He laughs, stands up, and moves in front of me.
He bends down toward me, his arms to the left and right of my face, his hands on the back of the wooden bench.
His face is close. He nods and grins lightly.
“Is it really so incredible that I’m handsome and smart and athletic? ”
“Careful, or else you’ll really become embarrassing.”
His lips graze mine, a gossamer-thin touch and over so quickly that I want to capture the moment and not let it go, but I have to, because I’m panicking that someone is watching us. I discreetly cast a glance around, but no one is looking.
“We both know that’s not true.” Then he stands back up. “Should we go in?”
“Okay.”
We walk in side by side. His finger stroking the back of my hand. Inadvertently, I think, but everything within me is tingling. Knox looks at me.
“What’s up?”
He sighs. “I’m mourning my shattered dream.”
“What do you mean?”
He pulls open the door. The doormen don’t say a word as we pass. The big one doesn’t even cast my hair a quick glance.
Knox twists his mouth. “Falling all over you in front of Jason Hawk.”
“I don’t think Jason would notice at all.” I nod toward Knox’s competitor, who is lingering over the face of a woman out on the dance floor. He looks like he’s ready to eat her. “My God, his mouth is so big.”
Knox nods. “He’s a carnivorous plant.”
I watch him for a second, but then notice Gwen, Levi, and Aaron not too far away.
I look at Knox questioningly. “Wanna go dance?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Doesn’t matter. You can just bob around if you want.”
“Is that even a word?”
“Bob around? Yeah.”
“Okay. Well, then no. I can’t bob around either.”
“You cool with me going alone then?”
Knox looks at me as if I’d asked him if I could have sex with Jason Hawk out on the dance floor. “Why on earth wouldn’t that be okay?”
I shrug, bite my lower lip, look away, and watch all the dancing people.
They’re laughing. It all looks so joyful, so real that all I can think is: How is laughing like that even possible on a winter evening like this one in this world that never hesitates to show you how ugly it can be?
Because it’s good at that. Really. And when you forget, it’s right there to remind you. Over and over.
Like now.
Next to me Knox lets out a breath. “I still want to kill that guy, you know that?”
Yeah, I know. My fingers are holding his hand, pressing it lightly. I smile at him, then hurry over to the others out on the dance floor. Gwen throws her arms into the air when she sees me.
Levi and Aaron are actually dancing samba, they twirl about the others as if the room belonged to them, as if they thought they were alone on the ice.
I often feel the same way when I dance. My movements are similar, fluid.
I want to let go and to perform my program, just let myself go and dare to do so, and I think: It’s too bad that you’re not so hardcore, Paisley. Too bad.
All of a sudden I understand why everyone is laughing here, it’s impossible not to laugh.
This dance floor exists inside a bubble, a big, pulsing red bubble of serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins, and when you enter, it takes you into its circle of happiness, pumps you full of these messenger substances and doesn’t let you drift off. I like this bubble.
Gwen takes my hand, and we spin around, I don’t know how many times but at least the whole BTS song and half of the one by Jason Derulo because I’m dizzy, sweaty, and make a sign to Gwen that I’m going to get us some drinks.
The bar is sticky but cool when I rest my forearms against it. I order a beer for Gwen and some kind of prosecco-strawberry-lime drink with a straw for me. It’s out of paper, the straw, and seeing that I can’t help but think: this party is the absolute shit.
Suddenly a mass of red hair appears next to me, exuding a glamorous, eccentric perfume. Orchids and honey. Very feminine. Very extravagant. Very Harper.
“Hi,” I say, sip from my straw, and cast her a smile that she doesn’t return.
Instead she raises her hand, snaps her fingers, and then rolls her eyes when the bartender takes someone else’s order first. She ignores me completely.
Although it’s incredibly loud, I can hear the silence between us.
It bothers me but I refuse to be the one to break it.
Not after she ignored me completely. I’m too tired for her walls today.
I grab Gwen’s beer and my strawberry drink and am just about to go to the others when Harper says, “He’s going to toss you to the side, you know that, right?”
For a second I consider being the one to ignore her, but then I’d be like her, and I don’t want that. I stay put. Drops of water pearl off the beer bottle into my palm. Cool. It feels good.
“Harper,” I say, slowly and softly, “he hurt you, huh?” When she doesn’t respond and just stares into her glass, I add, “’Someday someone will see your shine, will recognize how you hold the whole universe in your hands although you haven’t done anything but look into the sky.
But until then, you need to stop giving your heart to someone who thinks you’re just a maybe. ”
Only now does she look at me. In her eyes there’s something like fury, even rage, but, looking more closely, I recognize sadness. That’s not good; I know that expression from my own eyes and know how terrible she must be feeling.
Harper covers it up. Of course she does.
I would, too. She snarls, “You think that Knox wants you, and I won’t judge you for that.
He’s got a talent for making people feel like they mean everything to him.
But can I tell you something? Knox cannot feel.
He puts on an act for you, takes you right to the edge, all the while holding your hand and showing you how beautiful the water is from up above, how beautifully the sun dances across the surface.
He does that, and you laugh, he laughs right along, and everything feels right.
” The bartender shows up with her beer. She takes a sip, her face is hard, a solid mask.
There’s a pop as she pulls the bottle away from her lips and puts it down.
“You both laugh, Paisley, and then he pushes you over the cliff. That’s what loving Knox feels like.
Too deep a fall into black water. A fall that’s impossible to survive. ”
Oh, shit, Knox, shit, what did you do to this girl?
I look at her, openly, no mask, so she can see who I am, so she can see that she’s not alone, but she doesn’t go along. She remains hard.
“Knox is going to take you down,” she says.
I smile. “He’s going to hold me, Harper. He’s going to hold me while I work on loving myself.”
Her lids flutter. It gives the impression of distress, as if she desperately wanted it to be untrue, even though she already realizes that I’m right. “How can you be so sure?”
“You can feel when something is right.”
Harper looks at me, and I think she’s just about to let her mask fall and say something, but I’ll never find out because at that very moment, Knox walks up and she falls off the edge of the cliff, incapable of holding herself. I hope one day she’ll manage.
Knox looks at me, with his birthmark and his blue-checked Ralph Lauren shirt and says, “You want to take off?”
I press Harper’s hand for a second—it’s cold, slender, lonely. Then I walk off with Knox, who’s holding onto me without holding me.