Perfect Teeth by Sylvia Wrath

monosylabic persuasion.

"You have textbooks with you?" Nick eyes widened as he guffawed, his entire face lighting up with hilarity as I reached down and grabbed my tote bag from where it was resting at my feet, struggling to pull the bulging bag between the gap in the table and my body. My arm struggled under the weight of not one, but two textbooks, my notebook, my laptop, a variety of writing utensils, and a stack of flashcards four inches thick. I flashed the bulging bag to Nick with a dry look, raising my eyebrows exasperatedly before dropping the thirty-pound satchel back down on my floor.

"Textbooks and a laptop and flashcards and highlighters. I'm tempted to spread out my supplies on this table and start studying as they karaoke, but I figure that might be a bit rude, so I'm probably just going to go." I didn't want to be rude to Evie and just leave her (though she probably deserved it) but I also didn't want to be the weird person who crashed Pixie Geldof's birthday party, so it was probably about time that I extracted myself from the situation.

"No!" Nick exclaimed quickly, shaking his head. "You can't go! You've just arrived! Sit, stay, sing! I'll buy you a drink!"

I tried not to let my face convey my surprise that he wanted me to stay, but continued to shake my head and stand up from the table. "I have a final tomorrow." I explained. "And footage to edit and a warm bed to occupy."

Nick was persistent. "You can't go." He insisted. "I simply won't allow it, for purely selfish reasons. Harry says you're funny. I'm funny. Therefore, by default, we should be friends, and now is the perfect opportunity, so—,"

"I—," was there an adequate response to that?

"Nonsense!" Just as he spoke, Pixie Geldof herself sided up to the table, drink in hand, and Nick turned his attention to her. I was relieved for a moment, before he opened his mouth.

"Pixie, this is Ezra. Tell her to stay." Nick demanded, eyes flickering between his shorthaired friend and me.

"Ezra—?" Something like recognition flashed across her face, before her smile spread and she nodded. "Yes, stay!" She insisted. "Have a drink, pick a song, make a fool out of yourself."

Nick sent me a proud glance before patting the seat next to him, smug smirk still in place. I shot another look between Pixie and Nick, searching for something, before I dropped my bag back down on the ground and plopped back into the seat. Peer pressure, it strikes again. Pixie turned to chat with someone else and Nick angled his body towards me.

"So, Ezra," he started, dragging out my name slowly. "Tell me about yourself."

"You trying to pick me up, Grimshaw?" I raised an eyebrow and reached for the water I'd been sipping on previously.

"If only you had a dick, honey." He shot right back. "Then we'd be a right match."

Nick ("Just call me Grimmy. Nick feels too professional when I'm this drunk.") Grimshaw spent the next hour extracting as many facts from me as possible (I told him to just read my Wiki page, he told me to fuck off and I probably made it myself), while introducing me to every single person that walked by the table. It wasn't so much the introductions - I like people, I am used to being introduced to people, I understand the ritual of exchanging names and pleasantries that society follows, but it was the way Grimmy introduced me to people that was weird.

"This is Ezra," He would say, gesturing to me with a smile, putting so much emphasis on the beginning and end of the sentence that I was confused as to what he was trying to say. Some people looked almost as confused as I did, before nodding politely and reaching over to shake my hand, but there were a few people who reacted differently.

"Oh," Alexa Chung had said with a smile, doe-eyes widening by a fraction. "Ezra! Lovely to finally meet you."

There was something in the way she said 'finally' that made me believe that perhaps I'd been a topic of discussion once or twice, the inflection of the word just enough to have my brain overworking and my muscles slightly tense. Were people talking about me? What exactly were they discussing? And who?