“FORGET IT AND DANCE, GRETCH!” Carroll shouts.
So I do. I close my eyes and go with it.
And it’s the best I’ve felt since break.
We’re all three fantastic dancers, or else I’m still just really, really drunk. We stay in a tight pack for song after song, grinding our hips and then our entire bodies.
At some point, there is also kissing involved.
That wasn’t part of the plan, but there’s nothing stopping me now from doing whatever the hell I want. If what I want to do is to kiss some random girl, and to watch some random girl kiss Carroll (wait, is that really what’s happening? That’s what it looks like, but that can’t be right, can it?), then that’s what I’ll do.
Maybe I’ll do it even if it isn’t what I want to do. Who the hell is going to stop me?
This goes on for a long time. So long I almost start to feel sober. That’s bad, because when I’m sober I’ll just freak out again.
The girl’s friends tell her it’s time to leave, and she’s gone with a wave. I still don’t know who she was. I don’t want to know. Somewhere in the back of my brain a little voice buzzes, telling me it’s the first time in two years I’ve kissed someone who wasn’t Toni. That little voice makes me want to throw up again.
Carroll pulls me toward the exit, but I make him stop at the bar first so I can have another shot. Then I have one more. I buy shots for Carroll, too, so I don’t have to do them alone.
Now that the little voice in my head is quiet again, the buzzing alcohol is much more pleasant. All I want is for it to get louder and louder until it erases everything else.
I give Carroll my wallet to deal with the cabdriver since he never has any money. I check my phone to see if any calls came in. Nothing.
The next thing I know we’re stumbling into my room. Samantha is still out. Carroll and I collapse onto my bed, and I am suddenly aware that I cannot fall asleep. If I fall asleep I will have awful, torturous dreams, the kind you can’t really wake up from.
Carroll is lamenting the lack of cute boys at the club tonight. I make sympathetic noises and pet his hair. It has almost as much gel in it as Toni used to put in. That makes me sad.
I tell him I miss Toni. I tell him I think this isn’t just a break. I think this is for real. I think I’m never, ever getting Toni back.
I’m crying. Carroll hugs me, and I cry all over his new shirt, which always makes him mad. He must be incredibly drunk, too, because he doesn’t make me turn my face away.
While I cry, he talks. He tells me that his dad said he was ashamed of him. That he said he wished Carroll was just a criminal instead of being gay, because then when his dad’s friends heard about it, they’d feel sorry for him. He said no one felt sorry for the guy whose son was a fag. Carroll says he wishes he hadn’t told him, that it was a terrible mistake, that his dad made him feel weak and useless and like he was nothing, nothing, no one.
I’m still crying. Carroll is, too. I hug him harder. Then we’re kissing.
The music from the club pounds in my ears. I close my eyes and remember the girl in the black dress. The girl I kissed who wasn’t Toni.
The kisses are getting deeper now, and then our clothes are coming off.
I think, Whatever.
I think, I can do whatever the hell I want.
I think, Toni’s trying new things. I can, too.
I think, Toni doesn’t care. Toni doesn’t need me anymore. I’ve served my purpose and now Toni can get on with her real life with people who are better and smarter and cooler than me.
I open my eyes, and this is actually happening. I am actually doing this. It isn’t all in my head.
I think, This is fine, this is fine, this is fine.
I close my eyes again, and I keep them closed. All I want is to feel good, and I do, sort of.
It’s like the hair, and the dancing, and the drinks, and the girl in the black dress. It’s what I need.
I need to be feeling something.
*
I wake up alone with a massive headache. I stretch, groan, look up at the ceiling.
Then I notice the smell.
It takes me a second to place it. Then I lean over, and I see.
Someone has puked over the side of my bed. Multiple times.
It wasn’t me. I never puke. And Samantha’s bed is empty. It looks like she never came home last night.
I get out of bed groggily, stepping around the puke. The room is spinning. Normally I don’t get hungover, but normally I don’t drink my body weight in vodka shots.
I make it halfway to the bathroom before I remember what happened.
Oh. Oh.
I sit down on top of a stack of papers on the floor. Then I close my eyes and count to a hundred.
When I open my eyes again, the room is still spinning and the memory hasn’t gone away.
I look at the clock. It’s six-thirty in the morning. At eight I’m supposed to be in my Writing the Essay class for a discussion on the ethics of citing internet sources.