A Story of Now

This is not what Claire had pictured, not at all.

This party, in this apartment, with these people? Nope, this is not what she expected. Robbie invited her via text message halfway through her shift to demand her attendance. She stands in the open doorway. All she can think is these people don’t look like the kind of people Robbie would hang out with. And they look nothing like the kind of people who were at his exhibition party either. The effort gone into this night, with the decorations, food, and even a DJ, makes it look more like a party that her old, moneyed, school friends might have held—albeit in a much cooler inner city apartment.

As she takes in this scene, she wonders what the hell she’s doing here with the kind of people she’s been avoiding lately. As she pulls off her jacket, she searches the room for a familiar face, feeling completely and utterly adrift. She’s nervous to walk right in without the security of a destination and really wishes everything hadn’t gone to hell with Nina. At least then she’d have her here.

But there’s no point wishing that. Claire only came to this party because she knows Nina won’t be here. It’s the week of Nina’s big trip home, and that’s what gave Claire the freedom to finish work, change her top, reapply makeup, and head for the address Robbie sent. If Nina had been in town, unspoken social rules dictate that this party falls into Nina’s friendship territory. Claire would have to back off.

She takes a few steps in and pauses by a generously laden food table and scans the crowd. She feels an almost embarrassing surge of relief when she spots Mia on the other side of the room. Relieved, Claire makes an instant beeline for her.

She’s leaning against the kitchen counter, chatting with Pete, holding a beer, and laughing. She’s wearing what Claire has come to think of as Mia’s uniform. The look never changes. A top or a tank or maybe a shirt if it’s cooler. Always simple but in colour or with a small, interesting detail. Jeans. Always jeans. Always blue. Boots. Her hair down, tangled loose around her shoulders, unless she’s studying, and then it’s always tied back. She never wears earrings or bracelets, but there is often a pendant hanging from the long silver chain. Like her personality, her sense of fashion has only one setting—effortlessly casual as if she doesn’t have time to care about how she looks. It doesn’t even matter. Guys still notice her. It’s not just that she’s attractive but because she’s also approachable and fun. There’s a vitality about her. She seems as though she’ll give a minute of her day to anyone, unless the other person proves not worth it.

Claire wishes she had that kind of ease, but even when she’s at her most confident, she doesn’t. She never will. She doesn’t have it in her personality or in her style. She doesn’t know how to leave the house without looking as if she’s made an effort, without at least the protective barrier of eyeliner and a carefully chosen outfit. Even tonight, she spent a good twenty minutes touching up her makeup and hair before she felt she could go out among people without the distance of the bar between herself and the world. She envies Mia’s ability to easily exist without all the trimmings. And it’s just plain unfair that she’s still so lovely without them.

As Claire fights her way through the crowd, she exchanges dirty looks with underfed girls swaying on the fringes of the dance floor. Mia spots her and waves when she emerges on the kitchen side of the room. She looks a hell of a lot happier than she did a week ago at the café.

Claire raises her hands and gives her a frowning why-the-hell-are-we-here look as she closes the distance between them.

“I know, right?”

“Where’s Robbie?” Claire leans on the counter next to her. “I demand answers.”

“He’s not here yet. He just messaged me to say he’s not far. Thanks goodness for these guys.” Mia nods at Pete and his friend, a short guy in a cap. “They promised to wait until he got here.”

“This is really not my scene.” Pete shakes his head. “In fact, this might be what my personal hell looks like.” His friend nods in ardent agreement. “Now that Claire’s here, can we go?” He smiles at Claire. “No offence, you understand?”

Claire laughs. “None taken at all.”

He then turns back to Mia, broadening the grin. It seems he’s taking their split pretty well. Well enough to hang out with her at least.

“You can go.” Mia grabs his arm and laughs. “Thank you for waiting with me.”

“No problem. Thanks for the party. The, uh, the walking here part was fun.” He grins at Mia and gives Claire a wave. “See you.”

“Bye.”

They make their rapid exit through the crowd.

Mia faces Claire and smiles. “I didn’t know you were coming. It’s good to see you.”

“The jury’s out on whether I’m glad to be here.”

Mia laughs. “How’s life? Aside from the fact we’re here.”

“It’s pretty sucky right now.” Claire folds her arms over her chest and leans back against the counter. “Yours?”

“Fair to middling.” Mia swigs her beer.

“Pete seems okay.”

“Yeah, he does, actually. He’s been pretty cool about it. Hey, are Nina and Josh coming?”

“Most definitely not.”

“Why not?”

“Because Nina’s away. And because she hates me right now.”

“What?” Mia turns to look at her. “Why?”

Claire sighs and fills Mia in on the whole sad, sorry saga that is Nina and Josh and, by no choice of her own, Claire.

Mia listens, eyebrows raised.

Claire frowns. “The worst part is, not only did she automatically blame me, but I can’t get her to talk to me. He’s gross. I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole because he’s her boyfriend, and he’s a freaking douche bag. Seriously, such a douche bag.” She turns to Mia to beg for support on this one. “You’ve met him, right?”

Mia nods. “He didn’t seem like the most charming person I’ve ever met. Or the brainiest, either.”

“Crap.” Claire sighs. “Maybe I should have told her. Maybe I’m a shitty friend for not telling her she’s going out with an idiot.”

“I think she’s bound to figure that out for herself eventually, so don’t feel too bad.”

“I’m great, aside from the fact that the person I’d call my closest friend thinks I’m a boyfriend-stealing slut who’d betray her in a second—which I would never do, Mia.” Claire jabs a finger in the air to emphasise her point. “I don’t betray my friends.”

“Okay.” Mia holds up her hands as if to defend herself. “I promise I won’t ever accuse you of trying to steal my boyfriend, okay?”

“Good. Thanks,” Claire grumbles. “Anyway, besides being tried and found a boy-thieving ho who’s only allowed at this party because Nina is away, I no longer have anyone to stay with in the city. That means I have to spend every single night at home in the company of my mother, who is driving me nuts. Oh yeah, and did I mention I hate my job? But then that’s always a thing.”

“So, you’re not really in the party mood then?”

“No, sorry.” Claire frowns. “I bet you want your friends to come back now.”

“No, that’s okay.” Mia chuckles. “I get it. That all sounds bad. I’d feel pretty crappy about being the accused too.”

“I may not be in a party mood, but I am in a drinking one. Seriously, where is Robbie? He said he was bringing the booze.”

Mia passes her a beer. “That’s all I’ve got, but what’s mine is yours.”

“Thanks.” Claire takes a swig and hands it back. They stand in a comfortable silence for a while and pass the beer back and forth as they watch the party gather steam around them. The volume rises and the dance floor swells into the kitchen area.

“These are really, really not my people,” Mia muses as a bunch of girls in barely there dresses drop their handbags into a pile and begin to dance around them. They shuffle from side to side in their heels and look around the room as they gossip.

“That speaks very highly of you, Mia.”

“Do you ever wonder what everybody is talking about all the time?” Mia passes her the last of the beer.

“I know exactly what they are talking about.” Claire slugs the final mouthful and puts the bottle behind her on the counter. “I’ve been to this party a gazillion times. They’re all talking about each other or they’re talking about themselves. Not necessarily in that order.”

“These are your friends?” Mia scrunches up her face, confused.

“Not these people exactly.” Claire looks around at the people dancing near them and then at the people making drinks in the messy kitchen. It could have been any of the parties she went to in high school, with everyone just fast-forwarded a year or two. “But people a lot like this, and I kept hanging out with them because I’m an idiot.”

“I could have told you that.”

“Thanks, Mia.”

“No problem.”

They exchange smiles.

“Well,” Claire says. She’s had enough of feeling maudlin. “You know what I always found was the best remedy for sucky company—present company excluded, of course?”

“What?”

“Dancing.”

Mia nods as if to say she could see how that might be a good idea.

“Just drinking, dancing, and ignoring them. And we have nothing left to drink, so, do you like to dance, Mia?”

“Oh, I like to dance, Claire.”

Claire grabs Mia’s wrist and drags them into the sweaty, teeming interior of the dance floor.

And that’s where they stay forever. They dance without stopping. They dance through the good, the bad, and the cheesy, and they dance with abandon because they don’t give a crap about the people around them. Nothing is too cheesy for Claire anyway. She unashamedly likes mainstream pop when she’s on a dance floor. And Mia dances as if she doesn’t care either, making her Claire’s favourite partner in crime. She doesn’t judge—she doesn’t even look at anyone else around them to investigate what they’re doing in that self-conscious, side-eyed way insecure girls do. When the music is good, they move as if they like it. And when the music is bad, they move like it’s hilarious. Together it turns out they are a match made in dance-floor heaven. It’s all ridiculous fun and, for a while, Claire manages to forget how craptastic everything has been lately.

She forgot how much she loves to dance. It used to sustain her, to carry her through the vapid empty clubbing nights and the parties when she couldn’t be bothered with the talk, with getting caught up in all the gossip, the idle chat, the crap. This—the beat and the mindless task of simply moving. This used to be her escape.

And so she keeps dancing. Every now and then she accidentally knocks some girl and gets a filthy look for her troubles, or some guy comes edging in, playing the sleaze game. But Claire smiles and turns toward Mia. Tonight, nothing is going to touch her.

She has no idea how long they have been caught up in the epicentre of the steaming, milling mass of bodies when Claire feels an arm wind around her neck and a stubbly face press a kiss to her cheek. She’s just about to shove the arm off her shoulder when she realises it’s Robbie, grinning from ear to ear with one arm slung around each of their necks.

“Both of you!” he yells. “It’s Christmas!” He lets go of them, reaches into his bag, and pulls out a bottle of tequila and a handful of shot glasses. Claire throws her head back and laughs. Only Robbie would be classy and unclassy enough to carry shot glasses around in his feral, little denim bag.

He somehow manages to wrestle some of the clear liquid into one glass without getting bumped or spilling any. He passes it to Mia. He pours two more and hands one to Claire.

“Whose party is this, anyway?” Claire shouts in his ear as she wipes the sweat from her neck with her free hand.

“My friend Megan’s. We were in photography together. But then she quit to model. She’s doing really well.”

“I bet she is,” Claire mutters, then downs her shot. Only a model could afford this apartment at her age. She looks at Mia, one eyebrow raised.

Mia laughs, drinks hers, and winces.

“Stop it, you snob!” Robbie wags a finger at Claire and then pours another shot into her glass. “She’s a sweetheart, and she’s smart too. Kind of.” He laughs, tips back another slug, and shakes his head violently. “I’m going to find her and say hi.” He eyes the room as he thrusts the bottle at Mia. “You take care of that. By that I mean drink it. I’ve had way too much already.” He grabs them both by the neck again, kisses their cheeks with relish, and disappears into the crowd.

Mia holds up the bottle and makes a face as if to say “What am I supposed to do with this?”

Claire snatches it from her. She knows she can dance just as well with or without a bottle in her hands. She perfected the art through the years. And they keep moving, Claire with one hand firmly around the neck of the bottle.

At some point, Claire has been dancing so long she’s worried she’s never going to find her land legs again. It’s not long after that they completely run out of steam and depart the dance floor in search of air and somewhere to sit.

Mia finds a vacant armchair, a decadent, beige monstrosity lodged between the front door area and the edge of the dance floor. It’s covered in discarded jackets and coats. Mia squashes up to one side, with her knees pulled to her chest, and pats the cushion next to her. Claire backs in, flops down, tucks the bottle in between them, and puts the glasses on the arm. They are so close to the dance floor that Claire could nearly reach out and touch the wall of moving bodies if she wanted. Instead, she turns inward a little, toward Mia, and leans her head against the back of the chair, spent and sweaty.

She stares across the room while she catches her breath. She spots Robbie near the wall on the other side of the door talking to a redheaded girl, his hand on her arm. It must be Megan, the model. She’s super tall and skinny, but she doesn’t look that pretty. The best models never seem to. Claire’s learned that from the embarrassing amount of Next Top Model she’s consumed over the years. The weird looking ones always win. They are all gawky and awkward and then turn beautiful in front of a camera.

Mia pours them another shot each. They throw it back in unison and tuck the bottle back into the sofa cushions between them. Too exhausted and now too drunk to get up, they stay put, snuggled around the bottle.

“So, what would you be doing if you were here with those old friends you used to party with?” Mia asks, playing with her shot glass.

Claire looks out at the swell of bodies around them and shrugs. She tries to recall all those parties through the fog of distance and drunkenness. She doesn’t remember much, just a sameness shaped by routine rounds of drinking and dancing and gossip—gossip about things that seemed so vital at the time and are so forgettable now.

“Same as everyone else, I guess.” She notices a girl on the dance floor looking at them. She turns and says something to the one next to her. The other girl glances at them briefly and nods. “I’d probably be wondering why those two weirdos are perched on top of a pile of coats on that chair in the corner.”

Mia laughs and leans back against the seat. “I think I prefer to be the weirdo.”

“What would you be doing tonight?” Claire asks, curious. “If you weren’t here?”

“Maybe watching movies with Pete and his housemate like they were planning before I dragged them here. Or studying for exams.”

She tips her empty glass against Mia’s. “Well, I, for one, am glad you’re here suffering with me instead of toiling over your books or watching sci-fi movies.”

“You’re not suffering. I saw you on the dance floor.”

Claire laughs. She hasn’t really been suffering at all.

Mia pokes her in the leg. “And sci-fi movies? What makes you think that? Just putting us firmly in your science-geek box and shutting the lid?”

“Maybe. What would you be watching?”

Mia rolls her eyes. “Probably some really niche indie film or an undiscovered gem of a famous director. Pete’s housemate is a total film freak.”

“So, still geeky then?”

Mia ignores her jibe. “I’m glad you’re here. I probably would have left pretty soon if you weren’t.” She corrects herself. “Actually, I know I would have. No fun following Robbie around at these things.”

“Thanks for staying on my behalf, Mia.” But it’s only a part joke because it does, sadly, warm her that she’s deemed worthy of sticking around for.

“I couldn’t leave you on your lonesome with these people.” Mia gives her a smart-ass grin. “You might have been re-infected.”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I kind of needed this—weird as this party is.”

“Me too.”

They smile at each other, slow smiles of recognition and something else, something like mutual sympathy. With that, Mia pours them another shot, and they drink it down with sober ceremony.

They debate dancing again, but the music has taken a turn for the worse. Instead, they share random memories and fill the huge gaps in their knowledge of each other. Then, as they dissolve into tequila drunkenness, they play a game. Taking it in turns, one of them picks someone from around the room, and the other one has to make up a story about him, to invent dramas, or concoct secret fears and habits. It’s dumb and pointless, and they are just drunk enough to get a complete stupid kick out of it.

After Mia finishes telling her all about the random middle-aged man who just walked in, and his penchant for the feet of young girls, it’s Claire’s turn to make something up.

“Pick someone!” She slaps Mia leg.

“Ow, okay. No need to brutalise!” Mia winces and rubs her thigh. She scans the room. Finally, she finds what she’s looking for. “Them.” Mia leans her head sideways on the back of the chair. Her hair tickles the side of Claire’s face as she points through the dance floor to a couple standing by the food table, inspecting the contents.

For a fleeting moment, Claire wishes she hadn’t drunk so much and felt like taking advantage of the free food, because it looks really good from here. The couple have their backs to her, and there are twenty people dancing between their chair and them, so it’s difficult to get an idea of what they’re like, except they look basically the same as everyone in the room—brand-named, moneyed, and boring. Eventually, the girl plucks a carrot stick from the array of food and turns slowly to look over the room. Claire is about to tell Mia how she will be off to the bathroom in minutes to purge the carrot stick, when she gets a look at her face.

It’s Kate.

“Oh shit,” Claire moans. She turns her head quickly toward Mia and buries her face into the back of the chair.

“What’s wrong?”

“Girl I went to high school with,” Claire mumbles. She swings her head back and forth, veering wildly between wanting to hide her face and wanting to see where Kate is, in case she comes anywhere near their private armchair kingdom. “I have never, ever seen her alone, without the other two.” Claire catches another glimpse as Kate closes in on the snack table again. “It’s like seeing a guinea pig in the wild. I mean, you only ever see them in cages. I’ve never seen one in the wild.”

Mia laughs and pokes her clumsily in the arm. “I’m not sure that it’s completely owing to my state of drunkenness that I have no idea what you are talking about right now.”

Claire watches Kate accept a glass of champagne from the guy she came in with, a wide, tall guy with curly hair. She gives him a simpering smile of thanks. Claire just stares. She cannot believe Kate has turned up here, a completely unexpected and irritating intruder in what has turned out to be the most random of fun nights.

“See, I knew it was that kind of party,” she moans and presses her face against the sofa as Kate eyes the room again.

“That kind of party?” Mia laughs. “You make it sound totally sinister. Like we’re going to be injected with drugs against our will in darkened rooms and induced to perform bizarre sexual acts.” Still, she’s clearly sympathetic because she pours them each another shot, which they slug quickly. Then she picks up a jacket and holds it in front of Claire’s face.

Claire giggles. “Thanks.” She positions her head right in front of the jacket. “No, I just mean full of boring vapid idiots like her.”

“That’s okay then.” Mia looks over at the couple and then turns back to Claire, her brown eyes shining. “You want me to make up a story about her? Will that make you feel better?”

“Sure.” Claire settles into the chair behind her protective shield.

And Mia, with a surprisingly evil glint in her eye, goes off in a long-winded tale of debauchery and punishment, where nothing good has ever happened to Kate and her date. Sadly, it actually does make Claire feel a little better. Well, at least it makes her laugh.

And the game continues, accompanied by more shots of tequila and even more hysterical, face-numbing laughter. Claire shakes her head at her mental image of them in their corner. Who knew the highlight of her night would be stuck behind a jacket in a corner on top of a pile of coats? The game escalates and the stories grow stupider, with more laughing than actual storytelling. It’s as if the whole night is this deeply funny joke, and they are the only ones in the room who get it.

Then it happens. She has no idea how it happens or who started it. In fact, if she were questioned in a court of law, she’s not sure she could answer truthfully. And when she looks back at it the next day, via the lens of her mind-blowing hangover, it looks like a series of grainy jump shots from one moment to the next. There is no necessary cause and effect, no incident and consequence. One minute they are downing another shot and laughing hysterically, Mia’s elbow resting on Claire’s knee as she continues to hold up the jacket to hide her. Then, for a split second, they just look at each other. And then, mere seconds later, in a clash of hot breath, lips, tequila and tongue, they are kissing.

It’s not a long kiss, but long enough for the jacket to be dropped and hands to start grabbing for leverage. And it ends when Mia accidentally pulls at her hair, and Claire is yanked back to reality. She snaps her head back, eyes wide. And staring straight back at her is Mia, her eyes equally wide.

Then suddenly Mia begins to laugh as she pulls herself up to sit on the arm of the chair. “Umm…” Mia folds her arms over her chest and pulls an eek face. And before Claire can say anything, Mia grins. She leans down close and points at her. “So, inappropriate, drunken make outs are generally a solid cue for me that it’s well over time to go home. Which means I am out.” She sighs and hands Claire her glass. “See you.”

Claire takes the glass and nods, still too speechless to respond.

Mia swings her long legs over the side of the chair, picks out her coat from the pile, and disappears into the crowd by the door.

Stunned by both the impromptu kiss and the rapid departure, Claire stays nailed to her seat, both the glasses clutched in her hands. She has many, many questions.

Her most pressing being, what the hell just happened?

But she knows no one can tell her because she was right here, and she has no idea.

The second question is does that mean she should leave too? Claire’s done plenty of inappropriate kissing in her time. It’s part of the fun of parties like these, being messy. Never with a girl, though. That part’s definitely new. Maybe it is time to go home. Claire nods to herself. She must be very, very drunk.

Third, how did that even happen? Who the hell started it? She shakes her head, rests her cheek on her hand, and frowns.

And fourth, did it really mean that Mia had to bolt like that? Did she have to leave her stranded on a chair, a Claire-shaped pile of stunned and drunk? That’s no fun. Surely they could have just gotten over the awkwardness and gone back to the dance floor and forgotten about it? She sighs. How the hell did a night that started out so lame and then turned so freaking fun, catapult itself somehow to outright bizarre?

But before she can get any further along in her stunned and somewhat circular self-interrogation, a body flies over the arm of the chair and lands in her lap. It’s Robbie.

“Where have you been? I need tequila.”

Claire blinks at him for a second. He clearly didn’t see what happened. “I’ve been right here,” she grumbles as she reaches under his legs for the bottle. “And you’re sitting on it.”

He snatches the bottle and the proffered glasses. “Shall we drink?”

Claire shrugs. She might as well, right?

“Where’s Mia?” Robbie asks, unsteadily pouring tequila into the glasses. He hands one to her.

“Gone home.”

“Boo. Want to dance?”

“Why not?” Claire snatches the glass and throws back the shot. Might as well carry the night all the way to ruin.