Deeper

“I’m going to get a drink.”

“You have to work tomorrow!” He pretended to be scandalized, but his easy grin gave him away.

Bess laughed, shaking her head. “So do you. See you later, Brian.”

Before he could protest, she kissed him quickly on the cheek and disengaged from his octopus hands so she could finish her quest for something to drink. She pushed away and through the crowd, toward the kitchen. She didn’t want to talk about Andy to Brian. Or to Missy. She didn’t really want to talk or think about Andy at all, because once she started, she might very well have to admit that things were going suddenly, desperately sour.

The sodas had all disappeared from the fridge, and she wasn’t about to trust the open two-liter bottles littered all over the counter and table. The pizza had been completely devoured, with nothing but a few strings of cheese and some splotches of sauce left on the boxes to prove it had ever been there at all. Bess gathered up the empty cardboard and shoved it beneath the table, then searched for a plastic cup that didn’t look as if it had been used. She filled it with tap water and the last couple of ice cubes, then refilled the ice-cube trays and put them back in the freezer.

“It wouldn’t be a party without you, Mommy.” Missy draped herself over Bess’s shoulder and kissed her loudly on the cheek. “There. Now you can’t say you didn’t get any action tonight.”

“Too late. Brian beat you to it.” Bess wiped off Missy’s kiss and looked out over the room. She wouldn’t have been surprised if they rocked the trailer right off its blocks. Or set the place on fire from spontaneous combustion.

Missy babbled something, slurring, but Bess wasn’t listening. Across the room, standing along the back wall next to the hall, stood a boy. She recognized the faded T-shirt after a second. Ryan’s friend. He’d taken off his ball cap.

He wasn’t doing anything notable, just tipping a bottle of beer to his lips, but he turned to look toward her just as she noticed him. Their eyes met, or she thought they did, though it was impossible to tell if he was looking at her.

That moment stamped itself into her mind forever. The smell of weed and beer, the lingering taste of pizza, the warmth of Missy’s hand on her arm. The splash of cold on her calf as someone spilled a drink at that moment.

The first moment she really looked at him.

“Missy. Who is that?”

Missy, busy making fun of the guy who’d lost his cup, didn’t look up at first. In the half minute it took for her to answer, Bess had already imagined herself walking across the room and taking the beer out of his hands. Putting it to her mouth. Putting him to her mouth.

“Who?”

Bess pointed, not caring if he saw.

“Oh, that’s Nick the Prick. Dude! Wipe it the fuck up!”

Missy, no longer amused by her guest’s fumbling fingers, punched him in the arm. “This isn’t a fucking bar!”

Bess ignored them both, just moved out of the way to let the guy get on the floor to wipe up the spill. Nick was no longer looking at her, and she was glad, because that meant she could stare all she wanted. She imprinted his profile on her mind. From this distance she had to imagine the length of his lashes, the depth of his dimple. The way he’d smell…

“Bess!” Missy shook her arm.

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

Missy gaped. She looked at Bess, then toward Nick and back again. “You’re shitting me. Nick?”

Bess nodded. She’d forgotten her ice water and grabbed it up now, needing to quench the sudden dryness in her throat. She’s going to say he has a girlfriend, she thought. She’s going to tell me he’s in love with some girl with big tits and bigger hair. Or worse, she fucked him. Missy fucked him…

Missy blew upward to move her bangs off her forehead. She shook her head. “Why do you want to know?”

Blaming the booze and weed for the stupid question, Bess shot her a look Missy couldn’t possibly misunderstand. She gaped again, then laughed. “Nick? You have a boyfriend, remember, sugar-tits?”

Bess hadn’t forgotten. Then again, it was sort of up in the air whether or not she still had one. She looked at Missy. “If I didn’t have a boyfriend, I would be on him like butter on a cob of corn.”

Missy guffawed and slapped her thigh. “Are you serious?”

Bess had never been more serious about anything in her life. “Does he?”

“Have a girlfriend?” Missy’s thickly lined eyes turned calculating, and she looked over Bess’s shoulder, presumably at the topic of their conversation. “No. He’s into guys.”

“What? No!” Bess clenched her fists, turning to stare. Nick’s head bobbed to the beat, up and down, and he tipped his beer again. “He’s gay?”

“Sorry,” Missy said.

She gritted her teeth and tucked her fists beneath her opposite arms. “Goddamn it.”

Missy’s brows flew up to her hairline. “Dude!”

“I’m not a dude,” Bess snapped, so disappointed she couldn’t think straight.

Missy patted her arm. “Have a drink. It won’t seem so bad then.”

“It’s not bad.” Bess shook her head and gulped ice water. “Forget I said anything.”

Missy ho-ho-hoed. “Have a drink anyways.”

Bess lifted her glass of ice water and gulped down the rest before tossing the empty cup into the sink. “I have to get home.”

Her head hurt, suddenly, and her stomach, too. All from a stupid boy she’d never even talked to. She was the stupid one. Bess shoved off her disappointment, angry at herself. Angry at Missy.

“Aww, don’t leave.” Missy grabbed Bess’s hand. “Party’s just getting started.”

“Missy, I really have to go. It’s late.”

It wasn’t, really, and she worked the late shift tomorrow. But suddenly Bess didn’t want to watch everyone else drinking and smoking and making out. She didn’t want to watch everyone else hooking up and having fun. Worst of all, while she’d been talking with Missy, Nick had vanished.

“Call me tomorrow!” Missy yelled after her, but Bess didn’t answer.

She burst from the trailer into the welcome freshness of the cool early June air. Not much of the party had moved outside. A shadowy couple kissed leaning against the wall, their hands groping and the sound of their heavy breathing loud enough to carry. A moaning girl bent over in the bushes while her girlfriends held back her hair and urged her to “get it up.” Bess reached for the pitted metal railing but tripped anyway on the last concrete step and twisted her ankle hard enough to make her curse.

“You okay?”

She looked up to the wink of a cigarette tip. “Yeah. I just tripped. I’m not drunk,” she added, angry that she felt she had to explain.

“You’re one of the only ones.”

It was too much of a coincidence, too much like fate, but even before he stepped out of the shadows and into the streamer of light from the streetlamp, Bess knew it was Nick. He took another drag on his cigarette and tossed the butt to the dirt, where he ground it out with the toe of his boot. They both turned at the sound of vomit splattering and moans, and Nick grimaced. He took Bess by the elbow and steered her around the corner of the trailer, toward the street, so easily she didn’t have time to protest.

He let go of her before she had time to protest that, too. “Some people shouldn’t drink.”

Bess shivered a little. The light was brighter here, and it painted his face in silver with purple highlights. He looked like Robert Downey, Jr. in Less Than Zero, she thought a little disjointedly. The un-strung-out version.

Nick smiled. “Hi. You’re Bess.”