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And I might lose that. Lose her. To England and an ex-boyfriend and an ex-best friend who sounds like a piece of shit, to be frank.
“Let’s go inside,” I say out loud. Instead of, don’t go, come back home with me, come to bed with me. Put your hands on me and in me and let me show you what I cannot say.
That I want you here.
You are wanted here.
“It’s not open yet,” she says, pointing to the windows that are still dark.
I shrug, my car door opening with a loud screech. My phone buzzes in my pocket, another confirmation text from Trey. Lulu looks surprised when she’s able to pull the front door open, like she was expecting it to be locked. She peers into the darkness inside, then back at me. “I’m not going in there,” she says. “I watchDateline, too. Are you trying to have me murdered, Jesse Logan?” she asks but with a smirk.
“I don’t have the stomach for murder,” I say and finally she walks in. The door shuts behind us, the only light from the fading sunset outside.
“It doesn’t smell as much like puke when it’s not filled with a bunch of drunk teenagers,” Lulu says, so that when the lights flash on a moment later, study participants and friends jumping out from behind tables, the bar, the DJ booth, yelling surprise, I am laughing.
She turns to me. “Happy birthday?”
“This is for you,” I say, pulling her into a hug.
“For me?” she says, muffled against my neck.
“Early birthday party. You said you’d never had a surprise party before.”
She looks back at the group with new eyes. “You planned all this?”
“Brooke and Trey, too,” I say, before she’s whisked off by Brooke to the bar. The staff open the doors for the rest of the paying public soon after and slowly people stream in, filling up the tables and dance floor. The bass pumps in my chest, beating my heart to a new rhythm. Strobe lights flash and a fog machine pumps lethargic white smoke onto the dance floor. With each step, I have to peel my shoe off the floor. The DJ performs as if this is a Vegas nightclub, bobbing his head and throwing his arms up to our small crowd. I’m sure if I were a newly minted twenty-one-year-old, I’d think Little T’s was an exciting stop on the Wilvale night scene. But since I was about twenty-five, I’ve thought this place was too loud, too dark.
Or maybe I’m just getting old.
Lulu finds her way back to me, looking around at it all; her blond hair flashes green then purple as lasers strobe around the room. She turns to me, shouting. The music and the growing crowd drown her out but I watch her lips move. “Thank you.”
I scratch the back of my neck, nod.
“Shots?” Trey yells, popping up between us like the friendliest whack-a-mole. He holds four shot glasses of amber liquid in his hands.
I shake my head. “I’m driving.”
He nods, handing one off to Lulu and to Brooke, beside him. They clink their glasses. “To Lulu,” Trey announces.
They throw back their shots and George appears, kisses Lulu’s cheeks, shakes Trey’s and Brooke’s hands. He takes the leftover shot glass from Trey, tipping it back and wincing. A cheer goes up from the crowd as a song that I’ve never heard before beats deep in my bones.
“Let’s dance,” Brooke shouts in Lulu’s direction. Lulu nods and sets her shot glass on the bar behind me. Her arm brushes mine, her fingers trail over my elbow. She smiles, small. Pauses like she might say something, maybe ask me to dance. I don’t want to dance at all but I want her to ask me more than I want to take my next breath. I want the excuse of the dance floor to feel her against me. I watch her as she bounces all the way to the center of the crowd. My stomach pulls itself apart.
I learned to break wooden boards in the dojo across the street from this bar. In the moments before my test, my stomach was in knots. My fear was so paralyzing I almost couldn’t move when it was my turn. Pop asked me on the drive home, my parka wrapped tight around my dobok, sweat freezing in my hair, if I was afraid of getting hurt.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that it could hurt. It was just the fear; of trying something new, of failing. I joined this study to change myself but it’s hard to be a new me when the old me is always right here.
The music beats in my head, my chest, my internal organs. Trey lifts one arm, one leg, jumping up and down in a dance move I’ve only ever seen on the internet. “This is my fucking song, Jesse.”
He bounces over to Brooke and Lulu. Brooke’s high-pitched giggle rises above the deep bass of the music. I repress my smile as he reaches them, spinning Brooke. Lulu and Brooke bounce too, off beat and uncaring. At the bar, a kid who most likely has a moderately passable fake ID jostles me for space. My instinct is to plant my feet, not let him push me out, and stay as far away from the dance floor as possible. But Lulu faces me, bouncing on her toes, swaying her hips. Her smile is a cliff’s edge, telling me to jump.
I catch George’s eye where he stands watching me. Smile and nod.
I let myself be pushed.
I’m swallowed up into the sea of people. Lulu’s fingers around my wrist, the smell of her shampoo and sweat, are my life raft. One song bleeds into another. Lulu’s face is pink from exertion, dancing, the silent shouts she lobs at Brooke. She’s green, blue, red, purple, a multicolor of music. Our fingers intertwine on the dance floor.
Trey moves behind Brooke, his arms linked loosely around her hips. They both glow, sweaty, their teeth flashing in the strobe light. The room moves as one mass to one beat but with limitless arms, twisting, spinning, curving around each other. My shoes stick more than ever on fresh spills. Lulu’s hair sticks to my arm.
