“So you have no excuse not to go to the Alliance party with me.”
“What? No.”
I sit up. Bridget is smiling her worst, most evil smile. “Yes.”
“I really don’t want to.”
“You really have no choice. You don’t need to study, it’s time for you to get back out there, and this is the easiest, best party, because at least half the people there will be gay. Possibly two-thirds, if you count the bis and the people who are ‘experimenting.’” She does the air quotes with her fingers. “Plus, we had so much fun last year. Please.”
Two hours later, I’ve got a beer in one hand and Bridget tugging at the elbow of my other arm, pulling me toward the dance floor.
The Queer Alliance party is in the Minnehan Center, which is the campus building designated for large-scale fun. It’s got the movie theater and this room, which is a huge, high-ceilinged hall with a stage, a disco ball, and a little cubby on one wall where the party’s hosts push an endless parade of Solo cups across the counter to the crowd of students.
You can’t get in to parties at the Minnehan Center without a student ID, but once you’re in, there’s no such thing as getting carded. The student worker who hands out wristbands performs a cursory ID check that miraculously results in everyone at the party being legal.
The beer is always free. The music is always loud.
The Alliance party has a soundtrack that brings out the inner ABBA in everybody—and also a lot of exhibitionist streaks. As far as I can tell, I’m the only person in the room in jeans and a T-shirt. Bridget’s got on a gold sequined tube top and tight black pants that flare out over platform shoes. She’s a disco queen.
She picks a spot at the edge of the dance floor just as “It’s Raining Men” comes on. Arms raised, jumping up and down, she hoots along with a hundred other people. “Dance with me!” she shouts.
I shake my head.
Then I drink the beer, downing it quickly so I can get away from her disappointment and grab another.
By the time we’ve cycled through half the soundtrack to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and all the good Gaga, the dance floor is roiling, and I’m relaxed enough to join in, bumping hips and slapping hands with Bridget. I smile to see Krishna come up behind her. He grinds on her, and she rolls her eyes, but she likes it. He pulls us into the group he’s dancing with—some people I don’t know, although I’m pretty sure one of the girls is named Quinn.
I recognize her because she hung out in Krishna and West’s room last year. She’s blond and big—a good four or five inches taller than me, with broad hips and a generous chest and a smile that seems to include a lot more teeth than it ought to. She keeps grabbing my hand to spin me, and I get sweaty and a little dizzy. Krishna fetches us another round of beers, and we drink them quick, licking the foam off our lips. He pulls out his phone. The screen lights up his face in the dark room, making him look mischievous and almost enchanted. He glances at me, grins, and types something.
“What are you doing?”
“Texting West.” He lifts the phone, and before I can stop him, he takes my picture.
I grab his arm, blinded by the flash and by my panic. “Don’t send that.” The sudden brightness sent me reeling back to my memory of that night with Nate. The surprise of the flash. His hand on my head, dick in my mouth, choking me so I had to concentrate to keep from gagging. “Krish, don’t.”
But he’s not listening. He’s grinning, jabbing at the screen, and I’m trying to wrest the phone out of his hand when I hear a little whoosh that means it’s sent.
“Damn it!” I punch him in the shoulder, frustrated and upset, frustrated with myself for being upset. It’s just a picture. It doesn’t matter.
Except that I’m crying.
“What’d I do?”
Quinn reaches out for me, but I’m already gone. I rush toward the door, pushing through bodies, the music and the lights pounding too loud. I had more to drink than I should have. I let my guard down, feeling safe, feeling okay, but there’s nothing okay about me.
Frozen on the screen of Krishna’s phone with my hair falling all around my face, my T-shirt scooped too low, askew, sweat shining on all that exposed skin—I look like a mistake waiting to happen.
Then I see Nate, and I remember I’m a mistake that’s already happened.
He’s between me and the door. By the time I realize it, he’s looking at me, and there’s nowhere to escape to. I can’t dance now. I have to get out. So I keep going, chin up, hoping my mascara isn’t streaky and pretending the men in my head aren’t shouting at full volume.
Let’s see that dirty pussy, baby. I want to eat it out. I’m going to rail the living fuck out of you.
“Caroline!” Nate props his hand in the doorway so I can’t get past. He smiles his drunk smile. “Didn’t think I’d see you here.”
I think of West, leaning in the doorway at the bakery as he walked me out. Telling me to text him when I was home safe.
I look at Nate, blocking my exit. His eyes crawling down my shirt.
Was he always this way?
He’s got a beer in his other hand, and his sandy-brown hair is a little long, curling around his ears. He wears a polo that brings out the blue of his eyes over these horrible navy pants with tiny green whales on them that he loves to put on for parties. He insists he wears them ironically, but I always used to tell him it’s not possible to wear pants with irony. You put on whale pants, you’re wearing whale pants.
Douche, West says in my head.
“Why shouldn’t I be here?”
“You haven’t been around much.”
“I’ve been busy.” I try to look like West when he’s gone blank. Like I could give a fuck about Nate.
“Josh said he saw you with that sketchy guy from across the hall last year. The dealer.”
“So?”
“So I’m worried about you, Caroline. First those pictures, and now you’re hanging out with him. … What’s going on with you?”
I’m speechless. I mean, literally, I can’t make words. There are so many, they jam up at the back of my tongue, and I don’t know which ones I’d say even if I could shake them loose.
The nerve of him. The nerve.
He hitches his arm up higher and takes a sip of his beer, as though we’re going to be here awhile, shooting the breeze. “We’re still friends,” he says. “We’ll always be friends, you know that. I just don’t want to see you getting hurt.”
That’s the thing that unlocks my throat. We’re still friends.
He betrayed me. He broke my life, then pretended I was the one who did it. He lied, because he’s a douchebag, and douchebags lie. And now he’s standing here, blocking my exit, telling me we’re still friends.
“You know what, Nate? Fuck you.”
I duck underneath his arm, half expecting him to hip-check me and pin me in place. Half certain that he really hates me enough, wants to hurt me enough, that he’d do that.
He doesn’t, though. I get past him, run down the hall to the bathroom, lock myself in a stall, and climb up on the lid of one of the toilets, feet on the seat so I can drop my head down between my knees.
I keep it there until I can breathe.
I keep it there until I figure out that the low humming sound I hear isn’t inside my head. It’s my phone. In my pocket.
When I pull it out, there’s a message from West. Are you ok?
I’m not okay. Not at all. But seeing West’s name on my phone—seeing that he’s asking, when he’s never texted me before except to type out one- or two-word replies to my home-safe messages—it helps.
I’m fine, I type.
Well, actually I type, im gun3. But somehow the miracle of autocorrect sorts it out.
Where are you?
Minnehan party.
I know. K sent me your pic. Where at M’han?
Bathroom.
There’s a pause. Then, K’s a fucking idiot.
I overreacted.
It’s ok. Everybody has an off night.
Why is it that when other people tell you things you already know, it’s soothing?
Why is it that when West tells me I’m okay, I believe him? Not that he can make me okay, but just to have that touchstone.
I want to tell him about Nate, but I want forget it happened even more.
Are you still at work?
No. Just got off. A pause. That sounded dirty.
I smile at the phone.
You should go back in there. K said you’re helping him pull chicks. Another pause. But they’re all dykes.
Homophobe!
Not me. Quinn will tell you—all those girls call themselves that.
They call themselves women, I type, but that’s not what I meant to say.
Womyn, I try a second time, but it autocorrects to Women.
I give it a third shot. W-o-m-y-n. Fucking autocrochet.
There’s a pause, and then West writes, Autocrochet? I’m dying.
I blink at the screen. Oh. Yeah, it seems I typed that. Glad I can amuse you.
I take a deep breath. It takes my fingers three tries to make the words Come dance?
A longer pause.
Need to sleep.
I’m sure it’s true. He only sleeps about four hours a night during the week. He told me he uses the weekends to catch up.
OK. Sleep tight.
Another pause, and I’m starting to think we’re done, that I should leave the bathroom, go home, and go to bed, when another bubble pops up. Caroline?
Yeah?
Tuesday is cookie day.
Tuesday, back at the bakery. I don’t want to wait that long to see him, but that’s the way it is. Right. See you then.
By the way.
Nothing for several seconds.
You look fucking hot.
No tooth gap in sight.
Those words—what they do to me. My heart is so light, I think it might be made of air. It might float up and escape through the gap between my front teeth.
I take a screenshot and put the phone away.
Still smiling, I climb down and wash my hands, listening to the thumping bass beat from down the hall. My toes move back and forth on the floor, one foot’s tiny acknowledgment of the rhythm.
My eyes are like that, too. Sparkling with their own tiny acknowledgment.
It’s the second time he’s told me that.
When I come out of the bathroom, Bridget is making her way toward me with Quinn.
Or, more specifically, Bridget is weaving down the hall, and Quinn is watching her like a hawk, moving in to steady her every time it looks like Bridget might hit the deck.
The sad thing is, Bridget only had two beers. She has no alcohol tolerance whatsoever.
“Caroline!” she shouts.
“Bridget!” I shout back.
“I saw Nate.”
“So did I.”
“And I kicked Krish in the nuts for taking your picture. I mean, not really, but metaphorically I did.”
“She chewed him out like you wouldn’t believe,” Quinn says.
“Did Nate make you cry?”
“No. I’m okay.”
“Do you want to go home? Or we could get you some more ice cream.”
I consider it. But I recognize the song that’s on, and I don’t want to go back to the room and hide. “No, I want to dance.”
“Really?” Bridget peers at me, blinking blearily.
“Kind of. I mean, mostly I want to kick Nate in the nuts. Or smash his perfect nose in.”
“Your boy already did that,” Bridget says. I widen my eyes at her in the universal signal for oh my God, shut up, you idiot. I am hoping against all hope that Quinn didn’t hear or won’t understand.
“Your boy?” Quinn asks.
She’s got one eyebrow up. That eyebrow knows everything.
“Bridget is a little drunk,” I say apologetically. “And we have this kind of running joke about West—”