Beer cans, the smell of sweat, bodies mingling and touching and rubbing against each other like they really want to be here and not in some other world entirely. A girl, somewhere between twenty and twenty-three shifts through them in a way that shares she’s done it countless of times.
Long dark braids down her back, some curls, sweat mingles on her forehead with her concealer that expired weeks ago. Dark red rims her lips, full lips that once held the same color. She walks and looks. Blinks back a memory.
She reaches the kitchen. Blue and white tiles, tan-colored cabinets and an island, an ugly mix under the artificial LED lights sourcing from somewhere. A group of people circle the island, much like her, too drunk and tired to care about their volume.
The girl doesn’t speak, she just shows them her empty cup, an offering to get more lost in this night. They take the hint. Fill it up and up and she has to wave her hand for them to stop before it drips down her hand. But it does. She wipes the residue on her too-short shorts, a hand already dirty from wiping her lipstick off when she forgot she wore lipstick. She takes a sip. Enough so the cup isn’t spilling, enough to wince and splutter like she hasn’t winced and spluttered all night.
The group already moves on, in a conversation they won’t remember tomorrow, and she walks away. She takes another sip. Walks away. She already forgot about them, some low-life losers and their performance of performance. The girl looks at the ceiling as her platform boots weigh her feet down with each step. A crack there, some water damage in the corner. Someone has an astral projector and she watches the stars made up of green dots spin around.
A grunt and a stop, a press of another warm body, and her drink is spilling down her black tank, staining her hand once more. The daze stops, record scratch, her breath now too loud in her ears. “What the f—”
Another girl. Same youth and the weariness of some life lived in her eyes. Her lips are near bare too, but with less of lips around a cup, alcohol licked off them, and more teeth and rough pressure. Anxiousness or maybe too much energy carves marks into her lips, her eyebrows, a strong grip on a drink not touched.
The girl notices her bright red curls first. Rolls her eyes. Another one of these. Someone restless, bored of themselves or other people. She can’t quite trust someone that stains their body for fun, finds life between chemicals and dirty sinks and burned scalps. She tries to walk away.
The other girl stops her. Not quite meaning to, but moving her body in a way that doesn’t let her leave. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine.”
She pulls a napkin or a paper towel out of one of the pockets of her ripped jeans. Her whole knee is out. Like her foot keeps getting caught in the hole when she puts them on, making it bigger and bigger.
Girl number one reluctantly grabs it. If she fake wipes it off as quickly as she can—this is the kind of stain only a washing machine can rid the smell and feel of—she can leave. She guesses this is her cue to finally leave, it was about time. Her whole life is waiting for the right moment, some sign that something is right or wrong or another direction. This is just what she needed.
In the physical silence of the paper towel rubbing hastily against fabric, the other girl speaks. “Sorry, again, I didn’t even drink that much. Honestly, I don’t even need to drink to really mess anything up, it’s just—” She stops, starts again. Like the rambling will grow any sympathy from the other girl in the dirt holes between words. She is almost tuned out. “I’m Calla, by the way. Like the flower.”
The other girl does not know what she is talking about, nor does she care to. The paper towel has soaked all it can, the rest absorbs into her shirt, and she gives up. Or pretends to. She thinks about walking away. Calla’s wide, brown eyes are glued onto her. Waiting, waiting. The silence is full of waiting.
Those brown eyes shrink into a smile. “What’s yours? I think I might have seen you around somewhere—”
“If I give you my number, will you leave me alone?” She says. Calla reeks of desperation and the girl almost feels bad for her. A dead, wilted thing this flower will be if she walks away now. She can’t quite leave, she realizes she is not drunk enough.
A shrunken smile, mixed confusion and hopefulness.
Someone changes the astral projector to green. It turns Calla’s hair black and the girl can almost picture someone different, someone she might hang around. At a different party, the music different, something smooth and jazzy she used to play in middle school. There’s no alcohol reeking from her shirt or her breath, sweat isn’t collecting between her thighs and behind her neck. She blinks.
“Well?”
Calla blinks. A smile grows, then disappears. Something is warring on her face, a mix of desperation again and something sadder, something that makes a beating heart twinge behind ribs. The girl grabs a marker from her back pocket, thank god or she would have to save her number in her phone right here, right now. She thinks of writing some fake numbers, maybe a fake name, but she’s still drunk and a little sad and Calla’s hair is back to red.
Calla laughs a little stunted, eyes going back and forth from the marker to the girl’s face. “You just… have that on you?” Her mouth opens and closes and maybe she had just enough alcohol to pretend to be someone else. “Lucky me.”
She watches her own hand write from somewhere far away, the marker thicker than she thought, Calla’s skin much paler than her own. The short swirls of her name, a cursive she never outgrew. Just enough to fit between two freckles.
And her number. She doesn’t include the area code, she can let Calla guess if she’s from here, if she’s truly seen her around or just pretended to seem aware of her surroundings. The pen clicks shut and back in her pocket it goes.
Calla looks down. It is so stark against her skin, her bright blue veins she didn’t quite remember were so stark until now. She tilts her head to the side before she thinks she can just move her arm.
Amy. Seven numbers. Calla traces the letters with a bitten fingernail, the same chipped color of her hair. She mouths the word. Says them aloud. Looks up and no one is there.
There’s a small spot in the carpet from spilled alcohol, heavy steps of boots she can still hear behind her before she turns and watches them disappear in a crowd.
A number and a name and the receding scent of beer and something apple-flavored. Dark brown eyes that looked at her under annoyed, heavy lids, someone who is here and not here.
Calla will check her arm in the morning. Sober, in a different light, some name she half-invented outside a kitchen with bad tiles. She says her name again. It gets absorbed into the peeling wallpaper.
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