Chapter 28 #2
no, that’s not how we do it. I whisk him up the side stairs, shove our coats in the usual spot between the radiator and the
wall. “You’re doing it the EJ way tonight,” I say when Chris looks hesitant. He comes around.
Back downstairs, we pass the mirrors to the main room, giant chunks of glass reflecting what’s been washed up and washed down,
the sediment still swooshing, no place to go. It’s strobe lights and black lights, stage dancers and trapeze artists, balloons
and burlesque headdresses.
The dance floor is crowded and cramped, reminding me why I don’t like New Year’s Eve. All the posers coming in from Manhattan,
cluttering up the space. But I can’t even scrounge up a bad mood tonight. It’s too good seeing it all through Chris’s eyes.
In sensory overload, he swivels his head every which way like he’s stepped through the Narnia wardrobe, which I guess he has.
Tara ditches us pretty quickly. I don’t like how it feels like she’s trying to give us privacy, but I get a rush from it all
the same. Chris and I do some laps around the place, up to the roof and down again. I want to show him everything.
“I can’t believe I’ve never been here,” he keeps saying.
“I can,” I mutter because guys like Chris don’t go to the House of Yes. But tonight I’m starting to see that Chris is Chris,
not a guy like Chris.
I hook the bartender’s attention, reeling him in until our fireball shots appear. “My treat tonight,” I say, when Chris takes
out his wallet. “Next time I’m in Manhattan, you can buy me a thirty-dollar margarita, and we’ll call it even.”
There’s a thrill to it, making such reckless plans for a future that will never materialize. I try to get him onto the stage
to dance with me, away from the crowd. He doesn’t like the idea—no surprise given he can’t even rotate his hips half an inch
when no one’s watching. Taking his hand, I lead him off to the side where he won’t get stepped on. “Watch and learn,” I tell
him, lips twisting into their favorite shape of fluidity.
Floating up onstage, I join the dancers. They welcome me in, receive and celebrate the mass that is me, the mess that is me.
We feel more than we know that right where we are is exactly where we’re supposed to be and there’s no such thing as a mistake
here. It’s all just love, fractals in a thousand forms cascading from the same burning core. We share all that we are, all
that we have—the pride, the pellets, the sequins, the secrets.
I throw kisses at the crowd, then pieces of my costume. My necklaces first, bead by bead, then my gloves. I unstrap my bralette
too, fling that away so my nipples are free like they were always meant to be. Chris’s reaction doesn’t disappoint. Dazed
and enthralled, like he’s sure something so good has to be a dream that he’s been conditioned to interpret as a nightmare.
Like he’s bracing himself for the alarm clock that is bound to go off soon but hasn’t yet.
Others in the crowd are hitting on Chris, trying to get him to dance.
He doesn’t pair up with any of them, but I’m still jealous and I let myself acknowledge the jealousy, swoop into its caves and its cavities, sniff its musty odor, swallow the metallic tap water.
No judgment tonight. It’s only the truth, ever the truth.
Chris has this hold on me, and it’s climbing by the second.
The lights drench him in the color he’s been lacking, or maybe they just reveal some inner color that’s been covered up by too many years of black-and-white suits.
Either way it’s a dazzling sight. He’s a dazzling sight.
I’m a race car, outpacing all the others, accelerating on a dirt road, no turns to curb my speed. I’m a witch, flying by broomstick
above the cars, filling flasks with the dusty clouds, consummating her potion with spells that got her ancestors burned at
the stake. I’m a winged creature way across the world, flying from a snow-capped summit to join back up with Chris. Landing
on my legs, I’m human once again.
Chris’s eyes slide down me and I let them slide, beg them to slide.
More drinks, more pellets—they’re all kicking in, kicking out. “See how free it is?” I ask Chris. “To be so anonymous in a
crowd like this?”
“Free,” he echoes back, marveling over all that a single syllable can hold. Only the volume of a thimble yet the vibration
of thunder. Now that he’s finally stopped to smell the invasive wildflowers, he wants to taste them too, suck on the prickers
until he has the wounds to prove it.
I take his hand in mine, step close so I can feel him against me, hard. Something unleashes, some kind of confidence that
we’d end up here, pressed against each other.
A whisper says not to go through with this, that I’ll ruin and regret it. I don’t capitulate to that voice, just move Chris’s
hands onto my hips so he can feel the textures for himself.
“Happy New Year,” I murmur, egging him on, egging him up.
He hesitates, sifting through the cons on his list until he gets to the pros, pausing there. When he leans in to kiss me, I’m already there. The balloon has popped, his pent-up energy bursting, no space left to worry about the consequences. Whatever the fallout may be, it’s worth the falling in.
Chris is gone by the time I wake up, which isn’t until the next afternoon. I’m not sad that he showed himself out. It’s better
than having to eject him, and it’s not like we were going to go out for bagels and coffee and confess our love for each other.
This isn’t some gross romantic comedy.
Tara asks me about it, says she saw his shoes when she got back last night.
“Yeah, it wasn’t a big deal,” I say. “I just had to bring him back here because his ex-girlfriend was at their apartment.”
“Ex?” she says. “So they broke up?”
My conscience prickles. “I mean, she gave him an ultimatum that expired at midnight, so by definition that means they’re over.”
Tara looks like she might say more on that but moves on. “Well, I knew something was finally going to happen between you two.
Wait till I tell Hal and Jenni. They’ve been shipping you both since day one.”
“There is no shipping going on,” I refute. “It was a onetime thing to help Chris through a weird night. We’re not going to
become a thing or anything.”
“Because you don’t want to or because he doesn’t want to?” Tara asks, bringing me a steaming mug of coffee with a huge dumping
of cocoa powder on top, just how I like it.
“Because we both don’t want to. Enough with the twenty questions.”
“I just want to make sure you’re feeling okay about it all.”
“I’m feeling great,” I say, gulping down the coffee, coughing on the cocoa powder. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
It’s not true, though. I’m feeling very off, very irritable. I expected that once I got with Chris, I’d have scratched the
itch, moved on like I do best. But if anything, it’s made the itch worse. I want to scratch it again, now that I know how
satisfying it is.
“We’re different that way, I guess,” Tara says. “I can’t help but get attached to people I sleep with.”
“Hmm, I wouldn’t know what that’s like.” I try to laugh at myself but am not quite able to. “No one’s ever gotten a hold on
me that way. It doesn’t sound fun.”
“No,” she agrees. “But the primary point of love isn’t to have fun, is it?”
“Of course it is,” I snap. “What else would it be for?”
I don’t wait for an answer, just make my escape out the door, leaving my footprints in the thin layer of snow resting delicately
on the pavement before the exhaust from the cars wrecks it with soot, turns it to slush.