Clair smiling and laughing and saying "Nothing," to me over a mug of coffee. That's what my life has become. Stifling memory and crippling present. When did things stop being simple?
Because it had to have started before she died, right? Did it start when you met? Or when you fell asleep on her futon? Or when Lacy bursts into the room on a blustery Friday, dumping her backpack and coat onto the futon?
"C'mon, we're going out tonight. Nick got into Carlson!"
You blink, looking up from your computer screen. "What happened to CSE?"
"Where have you been, M.? He hates all of his engineering classes. He's been complaining about them all semester." Lacy tugs open the closet, thumbing through hangers of sparkly tops. "You like?"
Except for the cheetah print bandeau she's holding underneath, the shirt is completely sheer. "Yeah, but—"
Lacy rolls her eyes. "Clair's coming, so no moping."
"I wasn't moping. I was going to go either way."
Lacy's pause is just a beat too long. "Oh-kay." She draws out the word.
Your cheeks heat up, and you bite back a retort. (It'll be fine, you think. Still, irritation licks at your ribs, sloshes in your stomach. Burns hot and bright.)
"Why Carlson?" No one outside the business school likes the business school. It's known for spectacularly easy classes that are populated by, as Sam puts it, "douchebags and assholes."
Lacy shrugs. "Likes finance, apparently. Or marketing. Is financial marketing a thing?"
You join her at the closet, searching for the right dress. "I don't think so."
"Ah, well." She shrugs again, and pries a pair of jeans from pile of unwashed laundry, and that is how the night begins. Music and makeup and waiting. Always, always waiting.
But the waiting is a pleasure. It's full and sharpens everything. It brings a kind of animal awareness, a focus on your hands drawing a thin line across your eyelid, on the clink of your earrings. On your hummingbird heartbeat.
And then you are not waiting, and there is pleasure in that too.
You and Lacy race down the hallway, skidding in front of Sam and Jay's room, lungs heaving. They grin at the pair of you and together your group strolls over to Pio. (You still don't like that dorm and never will. There are no direct staircases anywhere, and there are rumors that it used to be an insane asylum, back when those were in vogue.)
But Nick has the biggest dorm room between the lot of you, so it's the best for pre-gaming. Besides, this is his celebration. A knock on the door (from childhood: Skunk in the barnyard. P.U.), the click of the lock, and you are given entrance.
The door locks behind you with a snick. Bottles of cheap liquor and cheap shot glasses and beer cans litter Nick's coffee table. Everyone lounges around it, and you imagine it as some perverse altar for just a second. The thought makes your lips quirk into a smile, which broadens as all of you are greeted with shouts (followed quickly by shushing, as though that could keep the CAs at bay.)
"Welcome to my humble abode!" Nick's eyes wander, unfocused enough that you can tell he's already drunk. "Hey." He points at a guy on the couch. "Get my buddies a shot, wouldya?"
Rising to the occasion, Sam lifts his voice and glass and toasts the room, "To the Dark Side." Nick grins and Lacy mutters under her breath ("Tell us how you really feel." She's too excited for Nick to be amused by jests at his expense), and the liquor burns deliciously.
There are too many people for such a small space, but you keep hoping for just one more. Your nerves fizzle, and you and Lacy do another shot. The lights swell and the room seems suspended in time, waiting.
(You get the feeling that you're the only one moving. Everyone else is frozen in laughter and you wade towards the door and there
she is.)
Lacy elbows you in the ribs. "Now you can talk to Nick."
She doesn't mean it cruelly, but she doesn't mean what she said, either. Now you can talk. Now you can talk to anyone. Now you can talk to Nick.
You nudge her back, a little too hard. "Thanks, Lace."
(No one else is in the room, or so it seems. Clair's eyes devour everything until they light on you. You are there. She is there.
Together alone.)
But neither of you says this. Clair flits over to you and Lacy, and you all congratulate Nick, and take a couple shots with a group of Lacy's friends.
Your world feels as though it's softened, made of blurred edges and warmth. The tautness of waiting is over. It is drowned in alcohol, in the night, in Clair's presence.
Nick is the one to call it quits on this suspended moment. "Party!" he yells before staggering down the hall, down the twists of stairs, and out out out into the night. A group clusters at the door, and they crowd the halls in a rush after him. You and Clair (and Sam and Jay) straggle behind.
That's how all walks to parties go. (The coolness staved off by alcohol. Tripping, jostling, joking. Brash laughter turning away the silence, until music spills out of a shitty house or a shitty apartment. That's what the walk will always be.)
The moment you walk into a party is like being reborn. Light and noise assault you, welcome you.
Bodies are everywhere, twined with light, and Sam shoulders his way through the crowd and to the keg. (It's in the corner of the basement. Parties always seem to happen downstairs. The music throbs louder, people dance closer, light and shadow chase each other. Everything is contained, so it feels as though it's turned up a notch there.)
The music thrums around you, the bass-line rattling through your chest. Light pulses around the room, shading everything in thick strokes of color.
This is why you've always liked parties. They have a life to them, something bigger than the cluster of bodies, the pin-wheeling lights, the plastic cups. It fills the room to the brim, heats it up, runs through your veins. Bigger and bigger and bigger.
They all meld together, parties. (There was the party you got locked in a bathroom. And the one where you met Clair. The final party with your high school friends.) That's how you define them: by the solid events, by the concrete things you can recall.
They are all washed in the same softness, the same flash of strobe lights. And it tugs you back, each memory seeping into the next. Back and back and back.
(There are nights when you dance and drink and grow dozy from brushing up against too much life. You like it, though, and are always hoping this time. This time. This time it'll bleed into the next day. This time something will happen, bigger and bigger and bigger than the last time.
If you're completely honest, you know what you're looking for. And sometimes you kiss a few boys, hoping it'll be there. You never have that moment though. Where sparks glow between the two of you and your heart jumps in your chest, so you think maybe boys are the problem. And on another tipsy night, you gather up the courage to kiss a girl.
Her lips are so soft and full, but there's nothing there.
Nothing.
You can't understand it.
Her eyes are beautiful. You hadn't noticed because of the party lights washing over everything. You are so close to this girl, to her kaleidoscope eyes (although that might be the liquor or the lighting to blame), and you hadn't even realized how pretty they are. Or how uncomfortable you are.
The kiss, and then your faces so close you can see gold flecks in her eyes, and smell her perfume, and her boozy breath of your cheek and neck. It isn't hot and passionate. She's too, too close and her breath and smell and eyes are smothering.
"I'm..." your words stutter to a stop.
She blinks, doe-eyes dazed. Does she understand your confusion? You'd hoped... Well, it doesn't matter. No sparks jumped under your skin, and a hot sweep of confusion and frustration rolls through you.
You could tell there'd be nothing, even before you broke away from her. You'd been too busy thinking (Why are my eyes open? My hands...? She's taller— no, heels. I'll ask where she got them.)
You are passionless. A high school boyfriend couldn't inspire lust, and there was no desire in that kiss just now. You might as well have kissed a statue for all the pleasure you got from it. Tears prick at the corners of your eyes. Will you always be alone?)
Clair's eyes are like that, bright and beautiful.
You don't want to kiss her either, which still feels strange. Aren't you supposed to want to? There's something blooming in your chest that you've never had before, but still nothing.
Clair grabs you by the hand, dragging you out of your worries. "Dance with me."
You do. Your hips and arms and hair and eyes. Everything dances with her. Her freckles and grin and yellow hair. It's gorgeous, and it's the two of you, and that's all it will ever need to be. Clair can sense it, you think, because there's a moment between songs when she takes your hand again. She leads you back up the stairs and through the crush of bodies, and you sit on the front steps, shoulder to shoulder.
There's a moment where she squeezes your hand, and you know it's okay. You don't need the answers now, and everything shines from the beer and tequila shots and you're warm and you and Clair glitter like lightning bugs in the night.
(It happened. It was concrete; it was solid.)
It was real.