Chapter 1 #2
The last time we spoke, he told me he never loved me and sent me into a brief but violent spiral.
I don’t particularly want him to make that up to me; I don’t want to be around him at all.
I also don’t really want to spend another twenty-five dollars on a cosmo, though, and I’d like to be drunker than I am, so after a moment of tearing skin off my lower lip with my teeth, I sigh. “Fine. It’s your money.”
Jordan smiles again, and it’s nicer this time, less grating and aggrandizing.
He orders me my cocktail and himself a vodka on the rocks, and it sort of feels familiar, sitting with him like we used to do at ManRay about a million years ago, getting drunk before hitting the dance floor.
It’s not a comfortable sort of familiar, though.
It feels strange and off, the vibes all wrong.
And the longer he sits beside me, the more uneasy I feel.
Once upon a time I would’ve thrown myself off a balcony to be in his arms again, but that’s long past.
“Listen,” he says, putting a hand on my leg and ignoring my attempts to shake it off. “I get it. I was a real shit to you. I shouldn’t have cheated. I mean, you did kind of make my life crazy hard, but you didn’t deserve that.”
I pick up his hand by the index finger and deposit it back into his lap. “That’s nice,” I say.
He is undeterred. “For what it’s worth, Kris wasn’t shit. He wound up cheating on me. I got my comeuppance, you might say. And now I’m like, cursed. I’m in this long-ass dry spell I can’t shake.” His sigh is tortured and long-suffering. “I’m starting to forget what sex even feels like.”
I almost say good but manage to just catch it before it slips off my tongue. I look into his vacuous blue eyes and shrug one shoulder. “Okay,” I say instead.
Jordan waits a beat. “Um, I thought maybe I could make it up to you.” And once again his fingers are crawling along the outside of my thigh like a giant, clammy spider as his voice shifts down an octave. “You look wicked good tonight. I forgot how fucking pretty you are.”
I’m staring at him with an expression I know can only be described as disgust, nose scrunched and lips wrinkled. The absolute fucking audacity has rendered me speechless. Of course he isn’t being sincere; he just wants to fuck. He thinks I am easy still.
“And,” he adds in that same low voice I guess is supposed to be sexy, or indicate his desire, or some mix of the two, “I’ve brought something with me you might like.
” He pats his bulging jeans pocket. “It’s the shit my mom takes for her narcolepsy.
It’s basically GHB.” He grins at me. “We could have a really good time tonight.”
And now I’ve gone from disgust to horror, my mouth hanging agape. “Are you serious? I’m not doing that shit. Fuck off.”
The bartender chooses this moment to reappear with our drinks to make things even more awkward, and after he’s gone, Jordan’s smile has disappeared, and he’s reverted to his usual snide self. “Since when have you gotten standards? Last I heard, you got dumped by a married guy twice your age.”
Hearing him refer to Luca in any way, shape or form, even erroneously, is like a stab in the heart and no. He does not get to put his fingerprints all over this. Fuck him. “I hope you never get laid again and your dick rots off,” I hiss at him. “Go bother someone else.”
He doesn’t. He lifts his drink and slops it across half the bar. “Jesus fuck,” he snaps. “Grab me a napkin, will you?”
I roll my eyes and turn to my right for the nearest napkin holder. Jamil has gone conspicuously missing, but when I cast a quick eye over the dance floor, I find him soon enough. He’s sandwiched between the two men he’d been chatting up moments before. Not in the mood to dance, my ass.
I pass a wad of napkins back to my ex. “Here.”
Jordan takes them without thanking me and half-heartedly swipes it across the puddle he’s left on the bar top. He shoves my drink towards me. “Don’t let it go to waste.” He’s sulking, staring at me with those piercing pale eyes over his glass. There are beads of sweat standing out on his forehead.
“If I drink this, will you go away?”
“Sure.”
I take a big gulp of my cosmo, and it tastes even worse than Anathema’s standard, watered-down fare. It’s not quite as sweet as I’d like it. I make a face and set my glass down with a clatter. “Even the drinks you buy me taste like shit. Maybe you are cursed.”
Jordan doesn’t say anything. He continues watching me, nursing his stupid drink. I turn again and look down the bar, trying to catch someone’s gaze to let them know I don’t want to be in this conversation anymore and that I need rescuing, so feel free to interrupt at any time, but no such luck.
So I slide off my stool and start for the dance floor instead.
Jordan says my name, I think, but I’m done, over it.
I’m looking for Jamil in the throng of hot bodies that close around me like a sweaty hand.
I need to get him and whoever he’s with between me and Jordan. I need out, and I want to go home.
“Jamil!” Calling his name is a pointless effort, my voice lost in the music and noise, but I do it anyway.
The room seems to be expanding and contracting, like it’s breathing, as my own breath comes more and more shallow.
I don’t know what they put in the drinks tonight, but my head’s already spinning a little and I’m feeling woozy.
Against my ear, Jordan says, “Noel.”
I gasp, spin, and nearly collide with the person beside me when I do. Jordan grasps my shoulders in his hands, and once again I jerk away, which only makes the sudden vertigo that much worse. The club is tilting violently on its axis. My equilibrium’s all off. “Let go of me.”
“You wandered off.”
“I’m looking for my friend.”
He studies my face in the flickering-flash bang of lights. His eyes are shark’s eyes, pupils swallowing their blue ring. There’s sweat on his upper lip. “Are you okay? You’re walking crazy.”
“I’m drunk.”
“Just drunk?”
“I was drinking.”
“But you seem a little…you know. Off.”
“Can you fuck off already, please?” My words come out strange, all slow and slurred. More than they should, considering I’m only a couple drinks deep. My tongue has grown strange and thick, alien in my mouth, and I roll it experimentally. This drink was not that strong. The fuck?
He’s smiling again. “You okay?” His fingers toy with the edge of my sleeve. “Maybe you drank too much, huh?”
It is an effort to lift my head, heavy as it’s become.
It’s so, so hot in here. There’s sweat literally dripping from my forehead, running rivulets down my neck and soaking into the collar of my shirt.
My tongue seems to have turned entirely to cotton now, and it can’t seem to form the right words, the ones that would adequately tell him once again to fuck off.
Or any words at all. He has pushed himself so far into my space it’s fucking oppressive, and I feel like I’m going to be sick.
I try to turn away from him. I’m looking for Jamil.
I need him. Did he really leave without telling me, or is he just lost in the crowd?
I try to call out his name once more, and it comes out jumbled and guttural and incoherent.
I take a step and nearly collapse. Jordan’s hands seizing me around the waist keep me from crashing to the floor.
“Oh, shit,” he mutters, a thread of panic in his voice. “What the fuck?”
What the fuck indeed. I had a couple shots at home and one-point-five shitty cocktails here. Even on meds I shouldn’t get fucked up this fast. I’m sort of cognizant of all of this, but I can’t express it in any way because my mouth has ceased to function entirely.
“Are you okay?” someone says, and I can’t answer them.
“He drank too much,” Jordan replies for me. “I’ll get him home. He’s my friend.”
My arms and legs weigh at least a thousand pounds each, far too heavy for me to do anything with, and so I sort of just dangle as Jordan half-carries me out of the club. I can’t turn my head to look for Jamil or call out for him. I can’t cry out for any help at all. My eyes won’t even stay open.
The music is fading, and the air’s thicker and harder to breathe. Flickers of conversation, someone again asking if I’m okay, and Jordan repeats the same refrain—he drank too much—and then everything falls away at once when I black out entirely.
By the time I’ve come back to, we’re in a dingy, dead-end alleyway I don’t recognize, that doesn’t even look real.
It is something out of a movie. It is a soundstage where fictional pretend crimes takes place.
Somehow I’ve fallen asleep at the club, at the bar, and I’m dreaming this fucked up dream where I’ve been dragged to an alley.
This is not something that happens to real people.
Jordan’s muttering fuck, shit, goddammit. He drops me, and my face smashes against the wall before I go down on the brick, a leaden heap of limbs. I make a feeble attempt to right myself and give up just as quickly because the world is spinning and swimming before my eyes and I might just vomit.
“I can’t believe this,” he’s saying. His voice sounds like it’s coming up from the bottom of a well, warbling and distant.
“I only gave you a little tiny bit. It was supposed to be fun. Shit, I hope no one saw that.” A sigh.
“I should’ve just gotten an Uber home and left you there.
It’s not like I can take you home. If my mom finds out—” He moans piteously. “Fuck, she’d kill me.”
A single articulate thought solidifies in the haze: his mom’s medicine.
“I didn’t want to do it like this. You passed out in a gross-ass alley.” He nudges me with the toe of his sneaker. “It was supposed to just horn you up a little, you know. I swear. Fuck, I’m so fucked.”
I don’t say anything. I’m still trying to figure out how to make my mouth shape words again when my tongue feels like a foreign object.
“And why the hell did you just pass out anyway?” he goes on complaining.
“I don’t get it. I’ve taken that same amount a bunch of times and it just made me feel good and horny, that’s it.
You’re fucking dramatic, as always. Christ.” I hear shuffling.
His hands land on my arm, shaking me and making my brain ricochet like crazy inside my skull.
“I don’t want to be responsible for you all night. Can you just wake up already?”
Negative. I’m already slipping away again.