1102 PM Mia
They had run out of mixers.
Standing in someone else’s crowded kitchen, Mia picked up one bottle after another.
Club soda: gone. Tonic water: gone. Red Bull: gone.
Cokes—original, diet, caffeine-free, cherry: gone.
Everything: gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.
A man passed behind her, a towering guy in a striped button-down shirt that shone with a synthetic brilliance beneath the light.
He yelled, “Yo, Chris!” and Mia’s ears rang; she pressed herself flatter against the counter to make room for him and felt his elbow brush against her spine.
Next to a half-eaten bag of pretzels she spotted a can of lime-flavored seltzer water, traces of red lipstick on its opening.
She picked it up, gave it a shake, and poured the few drops that remained into a cup of lukewarm vodka.
There were fifty-eight minutes left in the year.
And from the looks of it, she was going to spend them without a decent drink.
“Rachel Goldfarb?”
“Yes.”
“Rachel Goldfarb is a whore.”
“Okay, well, I was there with Chris when Connor Cunningham walked in. I hooked up with him, you know. Then Robert Narducci walked in. I hooked up with him too. They both know about each other, and they both came over to talk to us and when they walked away Chris asked why things seemed weird. Sometimes I swear he was dropped on his head.”
“Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Are you hooking up with Chris Villanueva? He’s an asshole. He said he was going to pay me two hundred dollars for an essay I wrote him for Texts and Ideas sophomore year and I never saw a cent of it.”
“I think he’s really grown up since then. And also? He’s a pretty good writer now. The sex is great.”
The friend shoved her hand into the bag. “I feel like I just need you to, like, line up all the guys you know and tell me which ones you think are hot.”
“What about Nick Cavanaugh?”
“He got fat.”
“He didn’t get fat-fat. He got dad-bod fat.”
“Dad-bod fat is fat-fat. Also, he’s a loser. He barely graduated, he’s living back in Massapequa, and he doesn’t own a car. I’m not sleeping with a guy who puts away grocery carts at Stop and Shop.”
“What about Joe Rizzi?”
“Joe Rizzi? Are you kidding me?”
“What about him?”
“I saw that kid at Marquee. Kristen and I saw him. He came over to talk to us, and asked about all that crap Jacob told me. I got so mad. Like, I was ready to switch the rings from my fighting hand.”
“Okay, so not Joe Rizzi.”
“What about JJ?”
“You don’t want to sleep with JJ.”
“Why not?”
“Because he got a giant tattoo that says household in Mandarin across his back.”
“No he did not.”
“I swear to God. The week after Thanksgiving Ali Huang and I saw him at The Box and he took off his shirt to show it to us.”
“How did you get into The Box?”
“Ali’s sleeping with the door guy.”
“I feel like everyone is having sex but me.”
“Can I keep going?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”
“Okay, so JJ—who, by the way, is fat-fat—takes off his shirt and is like, ‘Look at what I got over break.’ Then Ali is all, ‘Uh, that says household.’ JJ is like, ‘Uh, no, it says family.’ Ali goes, ‘I speak Mandarin, you idiot, and it says household.’ JJ gets all white and puts his shirt back on and calls Ali a bitch. And this is all in the bathroom line. He keeps yelling and I tell him to go to hell. We go back to the bar and he follows us, and I say that I would eat his skin off his face if he came near us again.” She whipped her head around to stare at Mia. “Sorry, do you need something?”
The tips of Mia’s ears began to burn. She felt her mouth fill with saliva. “Sorry?”
“You’ve been staring at us for five minutes—do you need something?”
The friend ate another handful of potato chips, working her jaw in slow, deliberate circles.
Mia smiled as brightly as she could.
“You two haven’t found any mixers, have you?” she asked.
Their eyes rolling, the girls turned away.
Mia searched the faces in the kitchen for someone else she knew.
Bottles of liquor lined the counter alongside the empty mixers.
Scattered among them were bowls with crumbs of what had once been in them.
Corn chips, potato chips, pita chips, pretzels.
A gash of salsa was splattered across the refrigerator door.
From the handles of cupboards hung bits of tinsel and gold streamers that swayed when people walked by; two unfurled party horns lay crushed and limp on the floor.
Mia sneezed. One of the two girls glared at her with a scrunched-up face.
“Excuse me,” Mia said, and choked down another sip of lukewarm vodka.
She hadn’t been planning on leaving her apartment that night.
She was fighting off a cold, and besides, she had never liked New Year’s.
But earlier that afternoon Sasha had knocked on her bedroom door and opened it before Mia could say “Come in.” Leaning against the doorframe, she unpeeled the top from a carton of yogurt, plunged a spoon into it, and told Mia to stop being such a loser.
“I’m serious,” Sasha said. “The only thing lamer than making a big deal about New Year’s is making a big deal about not making a big deal about New Year’s.”
Mia looked up from where she was sitting on the floor amid a scatter of seventeen samples of various men’s colognes in small amber-colored vials.
She was wearing the pair of old lacrosse shorts that she had slept in, along with a T-shirt that said “Not Penn State,” and her laptop was warm against the insides of her thighs.
Open on the screen were three separate Internet Explorer windows: the first contained a black Theory peacoat she had found on Gilt Groupe and was psyching herself up to buy; the second an article on the best home remedies for ingrown hairs; the third a Gawker story about the Spice Girls reunion tour.
She was eating from a block of cheddar cheese.
“I’m not making a big deal out of it, and I’m not not making a big deal out of it. I just don’t want to go out.” She took a bite of cheese. “I thought you were doing something with Theo.”
“Theo’s coming with us.”
“Where are you going?”
“Richie Fournier is having a party at his apartment.”
“That sounds illegal.”
Sasha licked the back of her spoon. “Adam wants to go.”
“Where is Adam?”
“Watching Under the Tuscan Sun on his computer.”
Mia repositioned herself on the red Ikea rug that she had bought sophomore year of college, which was now losing its shag in thick, hairy clumps. Her left leg had fallen asleep.
“Adam’s in love with Richie Fournier. That’s why he wants to go.”
“That’s not my problem.” Sitting on the edge of Mia’s bed, Sasha crossed one long leg over the other. “Please just come?”
She picked up a few strands of Mia’s hair and gently twirled them around her finger.
They had met the second week of freshman year, in microeconomics.
Their professor, who was Czech, had a problem saying r’s, l’s, and w’s, and after the fourth day of class, Sasha leaned over to Mia and said, “I’m sorry, but what is an ewasticity?
” At that point Mia’s only friend was Adam.
They had done a pre-orientation camping trip together, where for five days Adam had set up her tent, and purified her water with iodine tablets, and packed her sleeping bag into a small red sack, all while Mia sat on a rock eating handful after handful of gorp.
Now Mia looked up at Sasha again. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and her cheeks were sun-kissed from a Christmas trip to Aruba she had gone on with Theo and his family; a bit of yogurt clung to the corner of her lips.
They both knew that Sasha would convince her, and that all of this begging was a charade.
Still, Mia appreciated the extent to which Sasha was willing to go along with it, how she was game to make Mia feel important and wanted, so long as the night played out how she envisioned.
Mia coughed lightly into her fist. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sick.”
With her toe Sasha tapped a cup on the floor, where three cigarette butts floated in a shallow pool of brown water.
“I’m sure that helps,” she said.
“Light smoking can actually help you get over a cold. The nicotine shocks your immune system into overdrive.”
“Where did you read that?”
“The internet. Sasha, I’m serious, I can’t go. I’m so stuffed up I can barely smell anything.” She picked up one of the vials of cologne. “Like, what does this even smell like?”
Sasha took the vial and sniffed it. “High school.”
“Okay.” Mia gave her another one. “And this?”
“My grandfather.” Sasha frowned. “Actually, no. My grandmother.” She handed the vial back to Mia. “What are all those for?”