“She can’t hold her liquor,” the other Measure said to me, knowingly.
“Hush, freshman,” Victoria said.
I gave her my guy-chuckle, the bourbon’s sting still chewing over my tongue. The room already looked brighter, the laser lights wilder. Threads of neon blue and green spun through the dark, drawing bright spots on the distant walls. Outside, night had fully settled over Kensington.
I spotted Jon Cox and Mama in my periphery and flagged them down. They forged past shining dresses and pressed button-ups.
“Hey, um, hi,” Jon Cox said over the music, leaning in to hug Victoria. It lasted longer than it needed to. As they pulled back, the DJ transitioned into another song, and to my right, Mama broke it down. I watched for a second, trying to hold back my dancing impulse—but watching him only made it worse, because shit, but Mama was a pretty good dancer. The vocal line soared. The beat pulsed. I felt it in my hips, my shoulders, my ribs.
When the others started dancing, too, I caved. One song, I told myself. One song, then I’ll go.
We formed a circle, the five of us, and I looked down at myself, trying to blend. Guys at school dances always did that awkward knee-bobbing move, nodding their heads, obviously hoping to grind on someone. I tried to strike a balance between that and my need to swivel my hips until my waist ached.
The lights dimmed, turning the crowd into a thousand frantic silhouettes. After the song ended, I tried to leave, but Jon Cox slung an arm around my shoulders. The song after that? “Love You Forever,” so obviously, I couldn’t leave then, either.
Soon, I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t want to, and besides, did it really matter? Nobody was looking at faces in here. You could hardly see facial features in the blinking strobe, in the whirling flood of purple and green.
Our circle gravitated toward the deafening speakers, getting closer and closer to each other with every song. Soon, we weren’t so much a circle as a clot, a tangle of arms and legs and moving hips. To my right, I could tell Jon Cox was trying to get up on Victoria, but either he couldn’t work up the guts to ask her, or he assumed it was too loud to try verbal communication.
A couple of teachers kept having to break up kids who were grinding too obscenely. Worst job ever.
Victoria’s flask rotated between us. By the time it reached me, what I’d had earlier had sunk in. My head felt light and frothy and open, like someone had skimmed off the top of my skull, and I thought, What’s the harm? I took another secret swig. And a second. And a third.
Time disappeared. All around us, the crowd screamed the lyrics to “Lightning,” to “Club Love True Love,” to “Haley’s Eyes.” Sometime during “Haley’s Eyes,” the crowd shifted, and suddenly Victoria was pushed into me, her back against my chest. I expected her to pull away, but a beat later, she was moving against me. The bright mint smell of her hair intoxicated me more than the alcohol. My hands found her hips instinctively, the slick satiny fabric of her dress folding under my fingers, and we locked together. She pressed back into me, and the feeling of her curves made my stomach twist. My mind had gone blank.
Then she looked up over her shoulder at me. Bright, daring eyes, and thick black eyeliner. Smirking coral lips. She moved—twisted—and leaned up.
Her mouth pressed to mine. Something ignited in my stomach. I melted down into her.
The sensation lit up patterns of memory, sparks that set each other off in a chain reaction. I remembered how I’d used to kiss a year ago, when kissing had been a commodity: eager and greedy and reaching, all action, all fire. Right now, I was sinking down inside myself, where everything felt like the ocean, the slow but unavoidable sway of want. I wanted to wait, and savor, and watch. It was all different, but the same fundamental fascination.
So it hadn’t been a fluke with Jenna that summer. The way I’d felt something stirring.
Hang on, I thought vaguely. Isn’t this girl way out of my league? Another thought: I shouldn’t do this.
But I couldn’t remember why not. Victoria tasted citrusy and whiskey bitter, she kissed with total authority, her hands were hard knots on the back of my blazer. My eyes fluttered shut and I floated upward. I imagined, for a second, silence or stillness, the two of us at a quiet movie or a windy hillside or a mountain view that went on for miles. Walking with my arm around her waist, or her hand in mine. I imagined her powerful soprano voice kept to an absentminded hum as we worked side by side, tucked away in a corner of the library, maybe. And through it all, she felt, against me, like a line of electricity. My hands didn’t know where best to be. All of her was the perfect place, every inch the most intriguing inch.
Then she touched the front of my blazer, the heel of her hand brushed against my breast, and my mind snapped back into place. My eyes shot open. I stumbled out of her arms.
What the hell was I doing? She thought I was a boy. Maybe she wasn’t even into girls. And to my right, Jon Cox was dancing with zero rhythm, no heart in it at all, determinedly avoiding my eyes. Mama gave me a look: What the hell?
Julian was an asshole. I was an asshole.
This was a mistake. I needed to get out. I had to stay alone.
“I—I’m sorry,” I said. Victoria’s smile faltered. I turned from her. “I gotta—I have to go.”
I forced my way through the crowd, the wash of bodies and heat and humidity, and my tongue felt like a strip of tanned leather sitting at the bottom of my mouth, and I was blinking and sweating with every hit of the bass. As the song surged into the chorus, confusion swam over me, dulling the panic. Everyone was jostling everyone else, causing stumbling chain reactions, and only half the crowd even looked like they were having a good time, and what did I just do, what did I do, what did I do?
You’re drunk, said a voice in my head. That explained it. Definitely drunk. Was I into girls, or just drunk? Or was I both drunk and into girls? Why hadn’t I stayed sober, so I could make a controlled experiment out of this?
Near the door, someone’s hand landed on my back, and I turned. I tilted my head up. Isaac. Relief flooded me, cold. The face of someone who didn’t hate me yet.
“Hey, are you leaving?” he said.
“Isaac,” I said. Was I talking too loud? The music wasn’t so deafening back here. “Hey, Isaac.”
He tilted his head. “Are you drunk?”
“Ha. What? Me? No. Yes.”
Isaac sighed.
“I think I’m going to head out, too,” he said, scanning the room. “Not sure how much more of this I can do.”
“You don’t dance?”