“So who’s this?” he asks, coming over.
“Don’t worry, Justin,” I say. “He’s gay.”
“Yeah, I can tell from the way he’s dressed. What are you doing here?”
“Nathan, this is Justin, my boyfriend. Justin, this is Nathan.”
“Hi,” Nathan says.
Justin lets it hang for a second, then asks, “You seen Stephanie? Steve’s looking for her. I think they’re at it again.”
There’s an I told you so embedded in his voice. And he did tell me so.
I give him back an I told you so what.
“Maybe she went to the basement,” I say.
“Nah. They’re dancing in the basement.”
Dancing. The last time the two of us danced was probably a very tipsy night at Preston’s house a few months ago.
I miss it.
“Want to go down there and dance?” I ask.
“Hell no! I didn’t come here to dance. I came here to drink.”
“Charming,” I say. What was I even thinking, asking him? Then I figure I have another opportunity. “Do you mind if I go dance with Nathan?”
He takes another look at Nathan’s tie, jacket. “You sure he’s gay?”
“I’ll sing you show tunes if you want me to prove it,” Nathan volunteers.
Justin slaps him on the back. “No, dude, don’t do that, okay? Go dance.”
Then, with a Corona salute, he heads back to the kitchen.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I tell Nathan. I know I wouldn’t be crazy about the idea of dancing with someone I didn’t know, so I can’t really expect him to be into it.
But he says, “I want to. I really want to.”
I don’t know why this makes sense, but it does. So I lead the way to the basement. There’s a different kind of noise down there—dance noise. In a total Stephanie touch, all the regular lights have been replaced with red bulbs. It feels like we’re at the center of a beating heart.
It’s hard to see who’s here, but I spot Steve making his own pre-hangover moves in the corner.
I call out to him, “Hey, Steve! I like your cousin!”
He nods, so I guess the feelings Nathan expressed aren’t entirely mutual.
“Have you seen Stephanie?” he yells.
“No!” I yell back, figuring it’s probably best if they stay separate until they come to their more sober senses.
Maybe because he’s gay, I think Nathan will leap into the dancing. But instead he looks vaguely terrified. I remind myself that he’s surrounded by strangers. Then I also remind myself that I am one of those strangers, even if it doesn’t feel that way. I pulled him down here, so it’s on me to make him feel at home. I find myself thinking that dancing is just another form of singing along, and all I have to do is get him to sing along, the same way he was singing along to the song that wasn’t playing upstairs.
He’s swaying now, blocked in by all the people around us and the space they’re taking up. I try to ignore that, and focus only on him and the music. I create a space to draw him into. And it works. I can feel it working. His eyes matching my eyes. His smile matching my smile. The song. The song is taking the lead. The song is telling us how to move. The song is guiding his hands to my back, to my waist. The song is generating the heat and giving it to our bodies. The song is pulling me closer. The song, and his eyes.
Then a new song. He starts to sing along, and that makes me happy. It’s all making me happy, to be so loose in a place that’s so crowded. To not feel Justin tugging me in any direction. To give up on everything.
“You’re not bad!” I yell to Nathan.
“You’re amazing!” he yells back.
More songs swimming through the red. Bodies coming and going. Nobody shouting my name. Nobody needing me, or asking for anything.
I lose track. Of time. Of what I’m thinking. Of where I am and who I am. I even lose track of the song. I lose track of everything but the boy in the tie across from me, who is releasing himself as well. I can tell, as one who knows.
Then it all ends. A song is cut short. I feel like a cartoon character, holding for a minute in the air, then looking down and falling to earth. The regular lights go on—they’ve been there all along, beside the red. I hear Stephanie’s voice yelling that the party’s over, that the neighbors have called the cops.
Even though it’s not my fault, I want to apologize to Nathan. Because it’s over. It has to be over.
“I have to find Justin,” I tell him. “Are you going to be okay?”
He nods. “Look,” he says. His hand is still on my wrist. “Would it be weird for me to ask you for your email?”
I wouldn’t have thought it was weird, except for him asking if it was weird.
“Don’t worry,” he adds. “I am still one hundred percent homosexual.”
“That’s too bad,” I say. Then, before my inner flirt can make more of a fool of herself, I give him my email address, take his pen, and write his email address down on a receipt.
The basement is nearly empty, and there’s the sound of sirens in the distance. Stephanie isn’t making it up—we really need to leave.
“Time to go,” I say. We’re both staying in the space we created, not wanting to leave it even though the lights are on.
“You’re not going to let your boyfriend drive, are you?” Nathan asks.