Page 80 of Bad Words

“What?” I asked.

He held my eyes for a split second, then looked down into his drink. “I’m going to get another. Do you want something?”

“Sure. I’ll try the wine you brought.”

“Okay, but you have to promise not to pan it.”

“You know I can’t make that kind of promise.”

“Worth a shot.”

But I did like it, the red he’d brought. It was tight and acidic and I could feel it staining my lips. Parker asked what I was reading lately and I told him I was catching up with Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, and he exclaimed in outrage when I called the book a second-tier version of Never Let Me Go, but then we got into Never Let Me Go itself, its frankness and tender naivete and endless gentle feeling of suffocation, and time began to whip by like whitewater. The conversation turned from clones to lab-grown meats to my least favorite college class—biology lab; I had a squeamish streak—to Parker’s, a philosophy seminar whose professor, he said, would routinely spend fifteen minutes adding qualifiers to a single uncontroversial sentence. Then college. The ego games. The paralyzing freedom. As our glasses emptied, I felt as though entire universes of conversation were cracking open, colorful and enormous, as though we could chase any thread of any sentence and wind up in a place I’d never been. Then, suddenly, heads were turning toward the far wall at a surge of sound.

Parker and I glanced over, too. Cassie was turning up the volume on the TV so we could hear Times Square. I glanced at my phone, disoriented, and realized that it was 11:58. Somehow two and a half hours had evaporated. Onscreen, a red-cheeked man and a woman in a parka were swaying to an acoustic rendition of “What a Wonderful World,” wearing bulbous blue New Year’s–themed hats emblazoned with the Planet Fitness logo.

“Wow,” said Parker. “The passage of time, sponsored by Planet Fitness.”

“So beautiful,” I said. “So poignant.”

“So hard to cancel my membership.”

I laughed. Parker looked at me strangely, an almost confused smile on his face.

“What a Wonderful World” ended, and the presentation cut between shots of the crowd. The glittering silver podium appeared with its glittering silver sphere, the mayor and several people in black coats gathered around. They pressed.

As the countdown began, Jacob and Cassie’s apartment began to rev up like an engine. I scanned the groups rising from their seats, facing the screen, dashing to refill their glasses for a toast. Couples were gravitating together, beginning to melt into each other. I experienced a feeling of risk, as though I were holding my hand too close to an open flame.

When the countdown clock reached twenty, voices around us started to join in. Parker and I started chanting, too. I wasn’t looking at him, but I could hear the smile in his voice, and the ring on his pinky glinted in my peripheral vision as he lifted his wineglass.

The ball dropped, glowing in the dark, fifty voices settling into a rhythm. I raised my voice too—“Five … four … three … two … one!”

The room exploded into a racket of celebratory yells. Everywhere around us, hands were joining, lips meeting.

I glanced over at Parker and found him looking at me. The noise of the room seemed dull somehow, clouding up in my ears.

He let his gaze slip to my mouth. Startled, before I could stop myself, I did the same, my eyes falling to the not-quite-smile still on his lips. Neither of us moved. Abruptly I felt hyperconscious of my motionless body, the angles of my shoulders and arms, the strange position of my wrist as my glass kissed my bicep. The itch of my dress near my shoulder, one slipped strap. The bluish shadow dipping over the corner of Parker’s mouth, cast off by the party lights.

Then someone restarted the music. A dance beat cut through the air, and in a corner, someone threw open a window and whooped out onto the noisy street. Down the road, cheering burst, far-off and echoing, like a firework.

Parker lifted his glass. I clinked without thinking, drank down the last of my wine without thinking. I felt the urge to move, to say anything. I looked away and said, “I should get home.”

“Yeah.” Red was brushed on his cheeks. “Me too, don’t want to impose on your friends. Um—let me walk you to the train.”

“Right. Okay. I’m guessing you want to watch me slip on the ice?”

“Guilty.”

We navigated through the crowd in uncertain silence. I hugged Jacob and Cassie goodbye, ignoring their inquiring looks, and then Parker and I were out in the cold darkness, heat sloughing off my body, breath curling from between his lips like smoke. We started southward down Newel Street. Sharp wind cut the space between us.

“You must live close,” I said. “I’d barely hit Send on that email when you showed up.”

“Very close. I’m ten minutes that way.”

“By McGolrick Park?”

“Just across from it, yeah. I’m next door to that coffee shop, Little T.”

I couldn’t help a laugh. “Jacob and Cassie and I are there all the time.”