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She continues. “Don’t try to make me feel bad for the way that I live my life just because you don’t like the way that you live yours.”
Her words cut me deeper than I expected them to.
I react before thinking. “You know what, screw this. I don’t need a ride,” I say to her. Then I do what I do best.
I run.
* * *
I’m sopissed at Blair that I decide I’m going to go to an ugly sweater party. Without her. We had mentioned going together, but I didn’t talk to her the rest of the day, and she didn’t try to reach out to me, either. So, solo it is.
I’m not really the kind of guy who owns an ugly sweater, so I dig through Andy’s closet to see what I can find. Go figure—he has one covered with cats playing with yarn balls.
I put it on, but then I put on a plain black sweater over it to see if maybe I can get away with it.
The large parties in Quincy are usually thrown at The Warehouse. It’s this abandoned place out in a grassy field, where people have hung out so often that it actually doesn’t seem too abandoned anymore. There’s even a good chance that somebody bought it and converted it into a place just to throw parties, but I don’t know. I don’t throw the parties; I just show up at them.
I also make sure I am nicely intoxicated before I go inside. I had to run back to my truck after the fight with Blair, and I drove it straight to the grocery store and grabbed myself a bottle of Jack Daniels. Now I am sitting in the front seat of my truck, sipping it straight from the bottle.
Part of me hopes that Blair is inside with her friends, but a bigger part of me has a feeling she won’t be. Not a lot of college-goers know about this place; it seems to be specifically reserved for the locals.
I eventually get out of my truck and head to the entrance, where I am greeted by a bouncer. I’m pretty sure he works at the gas station down the street usually.
“Can’t come in without a sweater,” he says to me. Then he points to the sign next to him hanging on the wall. It does indeed say that an ugly sweater is required for entry. So, I groan and rip off my black sweater to reveal the cat one underneath.
He grunts in a half-laugh at me, then lets me inside. Everything is red and green. String lights are hung everywhere, as well as disco balls and strobe lights. The Warehouse is two stories, all the dancing happening on the bottom floor, where the DJ is set up, while the people upstairs hang out and talk with each other.
And fine, since this is alocalparty, maybe thereissomebody else I’m hoping will be here.
I don’t know what it is, but ever since I saw Jennifer yesterday, I can’t get her out of my head.
But the drunker I get, the more I feel like maybe it’s for the best that I find Jennifer. I feel like Blair is going to dump me anyway. Why would she want to be with a guy like me? I might as well try to get Jennifer back now.
I walk around the entire party, saying hi to some people whom I hang out with sometimes, and stopping at the bar frequently for red and green Jell-O shots and more whiskey. I even walk onto the dance floor, though I don’t do any dancing. I’m just checking out everyone who’s here.
Go figure, the dance floor is where somebody taps me on the shoulder, and I turn around to see Jennifer. She loves to dance. Maybe that’s why I came onto the dancefloor in the first place.
“I like your sweater,” she says to me.Hersweater is more the Freddy Krueger type. It has green and red stripes with a couple holes poked into it. It’s so completely Jennifer.
“What are you doing here?” I slur.
She raises her eyebrows. “Someone’sdrunk,” she notices.
“What gave you that idea?”
“You’re on a dance floor, for one.”
“Are you asking me to dance?” I joke. “Cuz I’m not really into that kind of thing, but we can go somewhere and talk if you want.”
She rolls her eyes at me, but then she takes my hand and pulls me along. It feels weird having my hand in hers again. It’s literally been months. And I had just gotten used to having Blair’s hand in mine, instead. Blair’s hand is a little smaller, and she holds mine much tighter than Jennifer does, like she doesn’t want to let me go.
Jennifer leads me up the stairs so we can have a quieter place to talk. God only knows what she is going to say to me right now.
“So, I will just get right to it,” she starts. We sit down on some cold folding chairs, our knees touching each other. “I was really surprised to see you with another girl yesterday.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you expect me to be crying over you much longer than this?”
She looks embarrassed. “You barely even tried to talk to me after we ended things.”
