Chapter 17 #2
“I don’t know.” I played coy with him, reaching up to absentmindedly mess with the top button of his shirt, undone and exposing a glint of silver from the chain I knew he always wore. “I’m not a good dancer.”
“You don’t have to be. I am.”
Without another word, he took my hands in his and whisked me away.
The music had shifted from poppy and familiar ’90s into something bassy and unidentifiable, shaking the floor underneath us to the beat.
At first it was innocent fun. We danced and laughed like we were in our own little universe.
Strobe light supernovas and music that exploded like stars.
After a little while, everything started to muddle together.
Colors. Hands. Sounds. Bodies. When Brooklyn spun me around, I fit a little too perfectly into him, like our bodies were two pieces at the edge of the puzzle, made only for each other.
He put his hands on my hips, and I arched my back so that my head sat in the crook of his neck.
We were holding each other’s hands, breathing each other’s air, swaying to a beat neither of us knew, and it was everything.
Then he spun me around again, looking down at me while the lights flashed in his deep-blue eyes like fireworks.
I read once that when you looked at something you really loved, your pupils dilated, and that was how he looked at me, eyes wide and cheeks red, chest heaving to catch his breath.
I brought my hands to his chest, where his heart pounded through the thin fabric of his shirt, as if it wanted to jump out of his chest and into my hands.
I grabbed his hand and pressed it to my sternum so he could feel my same runaway heartbeat, and no matter how in shape I thought I was, nothing could help my lungs from the sight of him.
This time when we moved, we really were the only two people in the room, pressed so intently together as we swayed to the beat that I wondered if our bodies were trying to become one.
“See, you can dance.” He brought his head down to mumble against my ear, and the feeling of his breath on my skin chilled every burning nerve in me.
“You’re a good teacher,” I told him, relishing the feeling of his hands so eager to touch me. “But I’ve filled my dancing quota tonight.”
He held me at arm’s length and clutched his chest. “Break my heart, why don’t you?”
“All right, I confess.” I surrendered. “It’s because my feet hurt!”
He smirked. “That makes me feel better.”
Brooklyn led me back to the bar, gesturing for me to sit at an open bar stool as he ordered a refill for me and a water for himself.
The rest of the night went by with ease as we all talked and drank, and I fell into a good conversation with two of Stella’s sorority sisters about the recent season of The White Lotus.
Brooklyn had retreated to the far end of the bar with Alec, and was deep in conversation about who knew what.
He seemed distressed at first as he spoke animatedly with his hands, but when he saw me looking over, he waved and gave me a smile so glowing that put the sun to shame.
“I have to use the bathroom.” Nikki had to shout to get my attention.
“I’ll come with you.”
It was instinctive for me at this point, but thankfully she didn’t fight me this time, nodding and sliding off the bar stool.
Nikki took my hand and we wove in and out between people to get to the back hallway where the bathrooms were, which were two individual unisex rooms. There was handwritten graffiti all over it like the rest of the bar, and the lights above the sink flickered and buzzed.
I leaned forward against the sink to clean the smudge of lip gloss at the corners of my lips.
On the wall beside the mirror, someone had written where is her head? in what looked like red lipstick.
“What’s going on with you and Alec?” I asked Nikki as she came to the sink to wash her hands.
“What do you mean?” She kept her gaze down to furiously scrub at her hands.
“I don’t know.” I leaned back against the wall beside the sink. “You’ve been avoiding him all night. I thought you two were talking.”
“We’re not anymore. It’s no big deal.” She shut the sink off and brushed past me to dry her hands.
“You can talk to me, you know,” I told her as we walked out of the bathroom.
She abruptly stopped and spun on her heel. “Can I?”
I took a cautious step closer to her, furrowing my brows at her. “Of course you can. Why do you think you can’t?”
She scoffed, her mouth gaping open. “You’ve become, like, so obsessed with Brooklyn, you don’t even realize this is something you could have asked me a week ago.”
Obviously things were nowhere near as normal as I thought they were. I took a step back, suddenly very off-balance in shoes I wished I hadn’t worn.
“That’s not true” came out softer than I wanted it to.
“Okay.” Nikki pressed her lips together and nodded. “If you say so.”
As we got closer to our designated spot at the back of the bar, I wished I didn’t recognize the raised voices. Sure enough, we came upon Brooklyn and Alec, inches away from literally being at each other’s throats.
“Dude, what the hell is your problem tonight?” Alec groaned, raking his hair back off of his forehead.
“Right now, you’re my fucking problem,” Brooklyn spat back.
“Brooklyn, don’t be like this,” Stella, who approached him the way you’d approach a lion in a cage, pleaded.
“Stay out of it, Stella,” Brooklyn snapped, and she recoiled with a scowl.
“What the hell is going on?” Nikki muttered in my ear.
“I feel like we should do something.” My voice sounded so detached from the rest of me that I had to second-guess if I’d even spoken. But when I stepped forward, Nikki grabbed my arm.
“Don’t.” There was pleading in her voice, as if the conversation we’d had hadn’t happened at all. “This doesn’t involve us.”
While it was loud enough that most of the bar outside of our group had carried on with their night without noticing, some of the direct outlying people started to key in to the scene.
“I’m getting tired of trying to understand you.” Alec’s voice became weary, and even though I hadn’t known him that long, there was more affliction to him now than I’d ever heard.
“I’m not asking you to.”
Alec paused and pursed his lips. “She really doesn’t know, does she?”
“I mean it,” Brooklyn hissed through clenched teeth. “Don’t go there. Leave her out of it.”
Nikki squeezed my arm again, now silently willing me to intervene, since it seemed it actually did involve me. I gulped down my heart before speaking.
“Alec, what are you talking about?” It took everything in me to keep my voice steady, since the rest of my body was rattling.
“Ask him.” Alec jerked his head in Brooklyn’s direction.
“Don’t drag her into this,” Brooklyn warned, putting his hand on Alec’s chest and gripping his T-shirt.
Someone else stepped in beside me, pulling Alec away from Brooklyn and standing between them.
“Why are you doing this right now?” Stella hissed at her brother, squaring up to him as if he wasn’t a whole foot taller than her. “It’s my fucking birthday and you can’t even keep it together for one night out.”
I felt like someone had glued me to the spot I was standing in with tar. I glared hard at him, willing him to feel my eyes on him so he’d at least look at me, but he didn’t. It was like I was watching from behind a two-way mirror; I could see them, but they couldn’t see me.
“Forget it,” he grumbled, shouldering himself away from our circle, not even so much as glancing in my direction.
My heart slammed against my chest, and through some force of sheer willpower or divine intervention, my body moved on its own, following him to the back.
“Brooklyn?” I called into the back hallway. A group of girls brushed past me, and two of them consoled a third one, who had streaks of tears and mascara running down her cheeks.
I stopped next to one of the bathroom doors, hearing the water run behind it.
I knocked on the door softly. “Brooklyn?”
A few moments went by before he answered. “What do you want?”
“To see if you’re okay,” I called through the door.
The water kept running, and another few moments passed without a response.
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, as if I was waiting for lightning to strike me in an open field.
Or maybe a deep, recessed part of my body knew that something bad was on the other side of the door, like in a horror movie—the kind you have to go through to get out.
So I turned the handle and pushed the door open.
I had never actually seen anyone in the act of doing drugs before.
Even in college some of my more adventurous roommates who did cocaine occasionally would do it in the bathroom with the door closed.
But here it was, like something out of one of those cautionary films they showed us in health class in middle school.
There was a dusting of white powder like freshly fallen snow on an old water-stained copy of Sports Illustrated.
I studied Brooklyn carefully, his throat rippling as he swallowed down all of his shame and anger.
Anything I could have thought to say was swallowed by the sick, greasy knot that balled up in my throat.
I tasted pennies, like you do when you’re about to vomit.
I wanted to stick my face in the sink under the running water to shock my senses awake.
Every time I blinked, I hoped that when I opened my eyes I would be dreaming, but I wasn’t.
“I don’t understand,” I managed to croak.
“I’m not asking you to.” He kept his head down when he spoke, echoing what he’d said to Alec before.
I slid into the bathroom and shut the door behind me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He stood upright, his hands pressed into the sides of the sink. “Forget it.”
I felt my heart cracking the way his voice did.
I reached for his arm but he jerked away. “Brooklyn, I would have helped you if you needed it.”
“I’m not going to do that to you, Natalie,” he said in a low voice, and the way he threw my full name at me hurt more than it should have.
I shook my head, desperate to keep the tears stinging the corners of my eyes at bay. “Brooklyn, please.” I could hear myself begging. “Let me help you. Let any of us help you.”
“You want to help me?” There was venom in his words now, and it stung as it seeped under my skin. “You can help me by leaving me the fuck alone.”
“Brooklyn, it doesn’t need to be like this,” I pleaded. “I can help you.”
“No, you can’t.” He sighed, and an all-too-eerie calmness came over his voice. “So just go . . . before you make this any worse.”
I wasn’t sure of the feeling coursing through me now, but it burned through me like my nerves were being set on fire.
“Fine,” I hissed. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I can’t help you.”
I stumbled out of the bathroom and into the hallway, feeling my knees shake with every step I took as I went back to the bar.
I gritted my teeth as I shouldered my way through the crowd of people, desperate to escape what suddenly felt like crushing.
Music thumped through the air, vibrating my entire aching body, and strobe lights flashed too brightly.
I had to keep going because if I stopped, I might have turned around and given in.
By the time I made it outside, I was gasping for air.
Night had completely taken over and fireworks boomed in the distance in time with my throbbing heart.
I hugged my torso with my arms and started walking, nearly busting my ankle on the uneven cobblestone street, but I willed myself forward, sniffling and swallowing down tears.
I trembled and shook, and my chest felt heavy, like I was being suffocated.
After I’d made it a few blocks I slowed down to catch my breath.
The initial shock passed over me like a cloud, and suddenly I could identify what was coursing through me.
It was anger, but not at him—at myself, because I should have known better.
I thought I’d been doing everything right, and that was what hurt the most. Instead, I did myself wrong. I let what I was feeling for him consume me, and it made me forget the one thing I’d learned this summer—you cannot save people. But damned if I’d tried anyway.
Fireworks burst above me, staining the night sky in rivers of smoke and lights. I walked and I walked and I walked until somehow I made it home with aching feet, letting the hot summer air dry the tears that streaked my face.