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“Did you seriously never go to an awkward middle school dance and watch a bunch of teenagers dry hump to this song?”
Henry is holding on to his champagne for dear life. “You absolutely must know I did not.”
Alex flails one arm out and snatches Nora from a nearby huddle, where she’s been flirting with Spider-Man girl. “Nora!Nora!Henry has never watched a bunch of teenagers dry hump to this song!”
“What?”
“Please tell me nobody is going todry humpme,” Henry says.
“Oh my God, Henry,” Alex yells, seizing Henry by one lapel as the music pounds on, “you have to dance. Youhave todance. You need to understand this formative American coming-of-age experience.”
Nora grabs Alex, pulling him away from Henry and spinning him around, her hands on his waist, and starts grinding with abandon. Alex whoops and Nora cackles and the crowd jumps around and Henry just gawks at them.
“Did that man just say ‘sweat drop down my balls’?”
It’sfun—Nora against his back, sweat on his brow, bodies pushing in around him. To one side, a podcast producer and that guy fromStranger Thingsare hitting the Kid ’n Play, and to the other, Pez is literally bending over to the front and touching his toes as instructed. Henry’s face is shocked and confused, and it’s hilarious. Alex accepts a shot off a passing tray and drinks to the strange spark in his gut at the way Henry watches them. Alex pouts his lips and shakes his ass, and with extreme trepidation, Henry starts bopping his head a little.
“Fuck it up, vato!” Alex yells, and Henry laughs despite himself. He even gives his hips a little shake.
“I thought you weren’t going to babysit him all night,” June stage-whispers in his ear as she twirls by.
“I thoughtyouwere too busy for guys,” Alex replies, nodding significantly at Pez in the periphery. She winks at him and disappears.
From there, it’s a series of crowd-pleasers until midnight, the lights and music blasting at full capacity. Confetti, somehow blasting into the air. Did they arrange for confetti cannons? More drinks—Henry starts drinking directly from a bottle of Moët & Chandon. Alex likes the look on Henry’s face, the sure curl of his hand around the neck of the bottle, the wayhis lips wrap around the mouth of it. Henry’s willingness to dance is directly proportionate to his proximity to Alex’s hands, and the amount of giddy warmth bubbling under Alex’s skin is directly proportionate to the cut of Henry’s mouth when he watches him with Nora. It’s an equation he is not nearly sober enough to parse.
They all huddle up at 11:59 for the countdown, eyes blurry and arms around one another. Nora screams “three, two, one” right in his ear and slings her arm around his neck as he yells his approval and kisses her sloppily, laughing through it. They’ve done this every year, both of them perpetually single and affectionately drunk and happy to make everyone else intrigued and jealous. Nora’s mouth is warm and tastes horrifying, like peach schnapps, and she bites his lip and messes up his hair for good measure.
When he opens his eyes, Henry’s looking back at him, expression unreadable.
He feels his own smile grow wider, and Henry turns away and toward the bottle of champagne clutched in his fist, from which he takes a hearty swig before disappearing into the crowd.
Alex loses track of things after that, because he’s very, very drunk and the music is very, very loud and there are very, very many hands on him, carrying him through the tangle of dancing bodies and passing him more drinks. Nora bobs by on the back of some hot rookie NFL running back.
It’s loud and messy and wonderful. Alex has always loved these parties, the sparkling joy of it all, the way champagne bubbles on his tongue and confetti sticks to his shoes. It’s a reminder that even though he stresses and stews in private rooms, there will always be a sea of people he can disappearinto, that the world can be warm and welcoming and fill up the walls of this big old house he lives in with something bright and infectiously alive.
But somewhere, beneath the liquor and the music, he can’t stop noticing that Henry has disappeared.
He checks the bathrooms, the buffet, the quiet corners of the ballroom, but he’s nowhere. He tries asking Pez, shouting Henry’s name at him over the noise, but Pez just smiles and shrugs and steals a snapback off a passing yacht kid.
He’s… worried isn’t exactly the word. Bothered. Curious. He was having fun watching everything he did play out on Henry’s face. He keeps looking, until he trips over his own feet by one of the big windows in the hallway. He’s pulling himself up when he glances outside, down into the garden.
There, under a tree in the snow, exhaling little puffs of steam, is a tall, lean, broad-shouldered figure that can only be Henry.
He slips out onto the portico without really thinking about it, and the instant the door closes behind him, the music snuffs out into silence, and it’s just him and Henry and the garden. He’s got the hazy tunnel vision of a drunk person when they lock eyes on a goal. He follows it down the stairs and onto the snowy lawn.
Henry stands quietly, hands in his pockets, contemplating the sky, and he’d almost look sober if not for the wobbly lean to the left he’s doing. Stupid English dignity, even in the face of champagne. Alex wants to push his royal face into a shrub.
Alex trips over a bench, and the sound catches Henry’s attention. When he turns, the moonlight catches on him, and his face looks softened in half shadows, inviting in a way Alex can’t quite work out.
“What’re you doing out here?” Alex says, trudging up to stand next to him under the tree.
Henry squints. Up close, his eyes go a little crossed, focused somewhere between himself and Alex’s nose. Not so dignified after all.
“Looking for Orion,” Henry says.
Alex huffs a laugh, looking up to the sky. Nothing but fat winter clouds. “You must be really bored with the commoners to come out here and stare at the clouds.”
“’m not bored,” Henry mumbles. “What areyoudoing out here? Doesn’t America’s golden boy have some swooning crowds to beguile?”
