“Finals are over. Let’s partaaaay!” Duncan shows up to my door at exactly five o’clock of our last night on campus. “If classy grown-ups don’t have to wait past that why do we?”
I laugh but stick to straight lemonade, while he mixes his Minute Maid with Smirnoff.
“Want me to play the good stuff?” I ask, syncing my speakers to my phone’s Bluetooth.
“What else?” Duncan smiles.
So we blast boy band music, a mix of ’90s throwbacks and modern. Sebastian keeps emerging from his room to glare at us, clearly frustrated by the suspension of punishment shots Peter established during finals week.
Every few minutes Duncan yells out something like, “Fuck school!” or “I wanna black out so hard tonight I forget everything I just crammed!”
I just nod along and match him at a one-to-five ratio.
He passes out in the hallway outside my room before the rest of the house starts drinking. It takes four of us to get him into his bed.
He snores away, and the party downstairs rages on without him.
By eleven the house is packed for “The End of the World,” a huge open party DTC always throws to mark the end of a semester.
They’ve—I mean we’ve—gone all out this time, bringing in a DJ from San Francisco and everything.
Alex shows up pretty early, and I have the most fun I’ve had in a long time, dancing with her and my “brothers.”
I don’t see Jordan anywhere, even though he did mention he’d be going when I talked to him earlier. Not that I’m not having fun with everyone else. I just have a feeling my night would be even better if he was here beside me, as well.
I shake the thought away and refocus on the beat and the lights and the pulse of the room.
And I smile.
Alex and I are both quite drunk and quite sweaty when we stumble into the bathroom, the bright light a shock that makes us giggle even though there’s nothing actually funny about it.
The door swings closed so the music is muffled.
“Dude, aren’t your feet killing you?” she asks.
“Yeah, kind of a lot,” I say, balancing on one foot.
The black stiletto-heeled boots had seemed so perfect earlier with my dark jeans and paired with a sheer black tank.
Adding the winged eyeliner, I’d felt badass and sexy. Like Catwoman, and, granted, my first thought being “like Catwoman” probably takes away from the badass-ness, but I digress.
Anyway, I feel cool. Well, I did five hours ago.
Now I just feel very sore.
“Why don’t you go change?”
Oh my God, what a good idea. “Oh my God, what a good idea!”
She shrugs. “I try.”
“Why didn’t I think of that? You know, sometimes it’s like I forget I live here.” I shake my head and start to unzip the boots.
Alex fixes her melting makeup in the grimy mirror.
“Do you want to come up with me, or are you chillin’?”
“I’m chillin’.” She turns back to me. “I’ll meet you out there.” She pats my shoulder as she heads past me out the bathroom door.
I walk across the tile floor shoeless, a decision I may regret when I’m sober, and head upstairs.
I stand in the doorway of my room and quickly pull on sneakers. I toss my heels in the vague direction of my already packed suitcase.
Remember to set an alarm! Wake up at seven! You cannot miss your flight! I try to push through the vodka and hope I’ll remember...
As I’m closing the door behind me, I realize I’m not alone in the hallway.
Leaning against the wall, bourbon on his breath and in his eyes, is Sebastian. He looks me up and down before pushing himself off the wall and stumbling a few steps forward.
“Sorry I missed the end of your little presentation the other day.” He smiles a smile that would be charming if I didn’t know him. “Maybe I can get a private lesson.”
I laugh, forced but polite, and eye the stairs behind him.
“Might earn you some extra pledge points...” If the word sleazy could anthropomorphize it would become Bass in this moment.
“No thanks,” I say through a poisonous smile. “I plan to make top pledge my own way.”
“C’mon...” He lurches forward. “Why do you think you’re here, Cassie?” He grabs my hips, slipping a hand under the waistband of my jeans.
I stumble backward, fire burning in my chest. I want to punch him, but I just extract his hand and push it away.
I’m looking into his eyes fiercely, but in the back of my mind I’m trying to figure out if anyone will hear me over the music if I scream.
He doesn’t fight me, though. Just shrugs and watches me.
I don’t feel much better.
Stepping around him, I walk quickly down the hall.
“It’s too bad you don’t have sex!” he yells after me. I spin around. “You’re missing out. It’s the best drug there is.”
I stare at him silently for a second. As much as I’ve disliked him since I arrived here, there’s something haunting about that statement, which he makes so flippantly.
With no one to love, no one to care about or to care about you, what is there to do but drown yourself in excess?
Here is this broken boy who fucks to feel high for a second. Who I thought didn’t feel but now know must carry around the kind of loneliness that carves out your insides.
I don’t feel bad for him, and I never will. But standing here, he’s just a person in pain.
And because of that, I can’t hate him.
Then he opens his mouth to speak again, and it becomes so easy for my old antipathy to come rushing back. “No one likes a prude, Nine.”
Unbelievable.
He’s like a Disney villain. I almost expect him to twist the end of his imaginary mustache.
“You’re drunk, Bass. You should go back in your room and sleep it off before you say something you’ll really regret.”
I turn away and shiver, a creepy feeling running down my spine. Because I’ve seen drunk frat boys. They break things and throw up on your shoes and laugh too loud and sometimes they lay it on too heavy with the cheesy pickup lines.
But they don’t look at you like a lion looks at a gazelle. I don’t think it was the whiskey that made him say that.
“Cassie!” Jordan yells my name as soon as I hit the bottom stair. He runs up to me, bright and loose with life and booze. “I’ve been looking for you. C’mon, I have an idea.”
He grabs my hand and pulls me down the hall toward the main room. “The DJ just went on a smoke break.” He turns around to look at me, mischief in his eyes. “And all his equipment is unguarded.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Are you suggesting...?”
He smiles. “C’mon, before the actives can stop us.”
In the main room the music is lower now as a premade playlist runs, and the crowd is reacting accordingly. Some people are chatting and leaning against the walls, sipping drinks. No one is dancing.
“Excuse me, excuse me, talent coming through.” Jordan pushes through the bored students practically at a run, pulling me along, laughing, behind him.
He hops onto the stage effortlessly and then reaches down to pull me up.
The DJ has a ton of speakers and lights, and a set of fancy turntables. There is also a Mac with Spotify open that seems to be the real brains of the operation.
Jordan grabs the studio-style headphones and wraps them around his neck. He turns to me. “Gotta look the part.”
I nod. “Of course.”
He turns to the screen for a second, his fingers poised over the keyboard. He glances back at me. “What do I play?”
“I don’t know. Why didn’t you think of that before?”
“I only had this much of the plan.”
I shake my head. “Move.” I push him out of the way with my hips.
I quickly search some EDM Alex likes, the pop-friendly, dance-y kind. I crank the dial to the right and click on the flashing lights.
“This is good!” Jordan yells over the bass. “What are you playing next?”
“I have no idea!”
I search frantically and settle on a throwback I’m sure everyone will know the words to.
At the sound of the opening bars, people cheer. It’s such a rush, this kind of power. It’s like I have control over this mass of people, of their mood and how they move.
I feel like I’m on top of the world.
The lights flash through the dark and illuminate some of their faces, starry eyes gazing up at us.
We dance, and they do, too, screaming the words back at us.
“I’ve never felt like this before!” I yell to Jordan.
“What?” His voice barely carries over the music.
“I said—”
I didn’t know I could feel more alive, but I turn and there he is just inches from me, and we’re sweaty and the light is flashing, and his lips look so soft and his eyes so bright, and I swear I can feel his heart beating in sync with the music and mine.
When they say something takes your breath away, I thought they meant it figuratively. But there seems to be no air to breathe in the space between us. Strangely, I’m okay with that; in fact, all I want to do is dive deeper into this feeling.
But the song is heading into the last chorus, and I snap out of my trance and back to the computer.
Not having time to think, I quickly cue up the cheesy but amazing “I Love College.” Attempting to use an app I barely understand, I speed it up and crank the bass.
“This is great.” I turn to Jordan. But he’s not smiling back. “What?”
“Fuck, do you see that?” He slowly removes his headphones, not taking his eyes off something in the crowd.
I turn. Three actives are at the other end of the room. And they’re pissed.
Shit. Well, we knew our minutes up here were numbered.
The dancing people make it hard for them to move through the crowd, but they’re making impressive progress.
“Run, run, run, run, run.” Jordan guides me forward, his hand on the small of my back sending electric shocks through my body.
He jumps off the stage and then helps me down, grabbing my waist.
With both arms he shoves through the crowd, garnering a few nasty looks. I keep my head down and slip through in his wake. Out of breath, we burst into the kitchen.
The bright lights are unsettling. Through the little window in the door, I see two actives arriving on the stage, along with the disgruntled DJ.
I laugh, and it turns into a kind of giddy squeal.
“That was amazing!” he says.
“I know!” I spin around, and my mind is singing.
He’s inches from me, and we’re both breathing heavily, almost in sync.
Our eyes lock, a question flickering between us.
I don’t blush or giggle or turn away. I bite my lip and stare back, breathing in the heaviness, the heat between us.
When he leans in, I don’t back away. His lips brush mine, and he kisses me, tentatively at first. And then his lips are crushing mine and his hands are in my hair. And I want to wrap my legs around him, for him to press me against a wall, or pick me up and carry me upstairs so we can sprawl out on his bed.
But the kitchen door opens, slamming against the wall.
We burst apart.
A drunk girl I’ve never seen before stares at us. “Oh, sorry... I was just looking for cups.”
“You’re fine.” I smile at her.
Jordan looks at me like a deer in headlights.
She opens a bunch of cabinets, none of which are where we keep the cups, but I’m too distracted to help her.
I turn back to Jordan, waiting for him to say something. Anything.
“I—I gotta—” He turns and runs back into the party.
“Hey, were you guys the ones on the stage?”
“Uh-huh.” I nod.
“That was soooo cool. I love that one song you played.”
“Um, thank you.”
“Ugh, I hate frats. There are never cups.” She storms out, and just like that, I’m alone with the pots and pans, stunned.