She hates this. Always has. Always will, though she tries not to think in future-crushing edicts like that. A hangover from when she worked harder at being happy.
Hangovers on her mind, she looks at the party hubbub rolling round her. And wonders if anyone will slip on the blue and gold confetti they threw at her when she opened the door.
After a lifetime in the company of her own quirks, she’s ready when it comes: the queasy dread of small social disasters. It’s their immortality, she knows. The way they pad after her years later, when she rolls out of midnight’s bed for a bleary pee. A bad-joke hyena laugh; the loudest sound in the world. The red gore of lipstick on ivory teeth. Spilled red wine on a stranger’s white shirt. Red and white together are bad luck, her mother taught her that. It means blood and bandages.
She doesn’t drink red wine anymore.
She looks at her watch. She’d be winding up to slip away now, if she weren’t trapped. But slinking unnoticed out of a party thrown for you is rude however you slice it. And this is her flat.
She has nowhere else to go.
‘Having a good time?’ he asks, and she jumps, not having noticed him come up behind her. Party-thrower she thinks, and it sounds like something Jules from Pulp Fiction might call you. Before he shot you in the head.
‘Absolutely!’ she says, shouting over the banter filling up their flat. ‘No one’s ever thrown me a surprise bash before.’
‘How better to celebrate the best girlfriend in the world?’ he says, crushing her to his side and kissing her cheek. All without taking his eyes off the little kingdom of his party.
So, so many ways, she thinks, before noticing her bitterness slipping its leash. She smiles; remembering an article she read that said if you do it long enough, it translates into a real feeling.
Someone spots them together and raises a toast, hollering their names and demanding a kiss. So he presses his mouth over hers and sucks the breath out of her for a long second. Then turns to the crowd and lifts his free arm to the cheering as if charging his body with it. The other arm he keeps clamped around her.
She licks the ferrous taste of his dark beer off her lips. Laughing. But she doesn’t find it funny, and keeps her eyes down in case anyone sees. She squirms in his grip and waves toward the kitchen: a universal semaphore. But he resists, his fingers taking small bites out of her flesh. She rises to her toes and puts her mouth against his ear.
‘Grab a drink,’ she says, magic words that unlock his hold. She heads for the fridge and the soothing tonic of a white wine. Opening the door, she lets the cold air blast away the colour in her cheeks before easing the bottle from the rack. Even though she’s careful, the scrape of glass on plastic snatches at her raw nerves.
She drinks the wine from a mug, after eyeing the sink-side Jenga that encases all the glasses. And cradles it between her hands, one thumb through the handle, peeping at the party over its patterned rim.
‘How’re you doing in there?’ asks a voice, with a tap on the top of her head. She doesn’t look round, already knowing it’s her best friend.
‘I’m fine,’ she says. The lie is smooth with use on her tongue.
‘I wish someone loved me enough to do this, you’re so lucky!’
‘Guilty as charged.’
‘You look fabulous, even without any warning.’
And now she has to look.
‘Thanks, babe. You too. I love that skirt,’ she hears herself say.
‘Urban Outfitters. 20% off in the sale.’
‘Nice one,’ she says. I care, she thinks. I mean it and I care.
‘Well, back into the fray.’ They scooch bums goodbye, and her friend sashays into the rabble she came from. Carrying with her a lost, crystalline chance at telling the truth.
Later, much later, after small talk she couldn’t hear over the music. After dancing. And jokes that may or may not have been funny. After watching two people skid to their butts in the confetti and laugh until tears squeeze from the scrunched up corners of their eyes, she lies in their bed and fails to sleep. She’s had more to drink than she meant to, but unknotting herself from his limbs doesn’t wake him.
In the living room she picks her way over bodies that seem like corpses under the blue billboard light breaking through the window. Except for the gargling, whuffing noises they make.
In the kitchen she massages her cheeks, working out the kinks of the smile that never made it to a feeling, and pours herself a teacup of water. She holds it to her forehead before drinking, enjoying its cold kiss.
Back in their room she faces the open circle of his arms, knowing the reflex of his love will close it around her when she lies down. Knowing it will take all the air with it. She reminds herself this is what people do. She climbs into their bed, into his embrace, and closes her sleepless eyes. She hates this. She always has.
And she doesn’t know why.
A graduate of Oxford and Columbia (NY) Universities, Lauren Everdell was born in London, grew up in Gloucestershire, lived in New York for a while, then found her way back to Gloucestershire after being diagnosed with M.E. She works toward her great big writing dreams under the watchful eye of her chocolate Labrador, Fable. Find Lauren at @rosetinted90.
