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Midnight is the minimum expectation at a New Year’s Eve party, after all. But the time beyond that is all mine.
and right now, it’s a DJ who’s pumping up the crowd, saying we’re about to have the best year ever. Yeah, right.
step—and almost fall—out of the bathroom into an unexpectedly empty hallway. Chloe and Warren’s friends have impressive bladders. Speaking of, when did they even acquire this many friends? There has to be twenty people crammed into the apartment Chloe, our other best friend Emily, and I used to share while in university. Life was simpler then. When all I had to do was complete homework and assignments from the safety of my room, occasionally coming out for air and food. It’s expected of university students to be shut-ins. Hermits. Recluses. Homebodies. All words that are affectionately used
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settling nerves. “I know, Lane. We’ve met…” He smirks into the top of his beer as he takes a sip. His lips look even better that way. “Here alone?” He asks this as if he is an adult who’s found a lost child. Your mommy around, sweetie? Let’s go find her.
“Is it me, or does everyone at this party seem to know everyone else at this party?”
“Mmm, but you see, Matthew, I do not venture out much.” Ever.
“No, actually. I’m an anxious extrovert. We are a rare but not extinct breed.”
“I work with Warren.” He takes my glass and places it on the counter, turning his back to me. “I do not understand the mechanics of mechanics.”
“You worried?” I ask. “Little bit,” he replies with a dim smile. “What about you?” “Constantly.” I blow out a breath, trilling my lips.
He worships the ground she walks on and lets her shine, unafraid of being in the shadows.
“Single?” I ask. “Perpetually.” He blows out a long breath. “That’s an eighteen pointer,” I say before cracking an ice cube between my teeth. A bad habit, my mother would say. “Eighteen?” “Perpetually is worth at least eighteen points on a Scrabble board,” I explain. “You play a lot of Scrabble, Lane?”
“It’s okay. Long time ago now.” Three thousand and forty-two days, to be exact. “I’m still sorry,” Matt says, his eyes searching mine.
“To a new year, new chances, new lessons and… new friends.” “To calling family and not dying alone.” I raise my cup, smiling. “To succeeding at jobs and taking charge,” he responds, voice louder, as we cheers again.
“Too bad?” I ask, voice hesitant. What does that mean? Cute but a mess? Cute but not my type? Cute but a basket case?
can’t help but smile too. The embarrassing kind where you absolutely have to because someone’s joy is being reflected onto you.
party continues and—surrounded by people and noise—isn’t where I want to be.
“Got a new life to start, Mattheus.” I shrug playfully. Casual, unaffected, unbothered. “No time like the present.” He nods, his polite smile masked by confusion. “Right, well, good luck.” I look over my shoulder, stealing one last look, and nod. “You too.” Goodbye, lips. I’ll miss you most of all.
Someday, they all hum merrily into their drinks, it’ll be your turn, they patronise as they feed one another grapes. That last part is an exaggeration, but only slightly.
So, in the words of Taylor Alison Swift, this is me trying… to get laid (Taylor’s Version.)
I don’t actually smoke, but in the interest of equality, I take a ten-minute break every few hours, as my co-workers might.
“Good.” I don’t love that my twin sister is making sure our mother called me on our birthday to check that she shouldn’t feel guilty for being the favourite and undoubtedly getting the same deposit into her bank account this morning. I look at the doors to each bedroom and the bathroom, all shut. Simone has to be here somewhere. Unless she could fit through the vents? Shit. Can she?
Liz can’t help it. She’s always been…a bitch curt. My mother loved to say that we were left brain and right brain personified. Liz is the pragmatic, logical, detached one. I’m the impractical, creative, emotional one. Together we’d make one fully formed being. I never settled into the idea of being half of anything. My brain felt whole—just different from Liz’s. But hers is similar to my mother’s, and I’m more like my father. My parents were a great team as the left and right melded together, so I know it was with endearment that my mother considered us twins the same. But when Dad died, it
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Suddenly, qualities that I had been celebrated for—spontaneity, imagination, empathy—began to make me feel alien in my own family. That, and my feverish desire to get away from my own personal haunted mansion, had me applying to arts college far from home. When I arrived here, I found creatives again. I found acceptance. I found my people.
Turns out our first real encounter, when I was drunk, complaining about my life and listing off my many failures, was not the sexy type of impression that would score me a date or a shag, regardless of my own intentions.
Elizabeth and Phillip—never not funny.
“Your fascination with the British royal family is bizarre.”
“Nine months. Surely enough time to grow a new human is enough time to decide to marry one.” She’s got me there. “Okay… yeah. You’re not growing a human, though, right?” “Not yet.”
Damn. We truly do become our mothers eventually.
These reminders are necessary. I’m well aware of the many reasons Matt and I wouldn’t work, but I’m also a raging flirt. I’ll flirt with a lamppost if it flickers the right way.
Emily is a celebrator at heart and a total cheerleader for her people—she also has a tendency to go overboard. Chloe matches that energy—when she has the energy. Having a toddler at home while being self-employed and in a near-constant-state of flustered means that she’s as thoughtful as she is forgetful. So, powered by perhaps a bit of pity and a whole lot of enthusiasm, they’ve put together a beautiful evening.
“I think what I have read would be a shorter list… as in, none. I read Twilight in high school, though. Oh! And Twilight fanfiction. Lots of that. There was this one where Bella gets her period and—”
“What? Nah, books are books. And it helps narrow down the type you may be interested in. Gothy, angsty stuff. Romance, maybe.”
We’re both awful singers. He can’t hold a note without losing his breath, and I can’t match pitch to save my life. But it’s possibly the most fun I’ve ever had.
Warren’s grin grows wider until he’s also doing his best Danny Zuko. I feel Matt’s eyes on my profile, so I break the silence. “They’re so cute it’s disgusting.”
“Of course you do. You’ve got no shortage of romance in your life. I’m bitter.” Every once in a while, I’ll do this stupid thing where I make a generalised statement about Matt’s love life to see if he’ll correct me. It’s the least embarrassing way to bring it up, but he never dignifies it with a response. It’s fucking infuriating.
“Are you seeing anyone?” I ask boldly—and unexpectedly. I need to drink some water. Or eat some bread. Bread absorbs the alcohol in your stomach, right? I think I’ve read that somewhere.
“Yeah, it’s on a shelf somewhere at my place.” “This is such a you gift.” The words tumble out of me. “Cheap? Boring? Peculiar?” He crosses one leg over his knee, which is bouncing. “No.” I find his eyes and hold his stare. “Thoughtful, careful, beautiful.”
I’m a crier at my core. I try my best to hide it now that I’m an adult and recognize big emotions scare people off. But if I’m above a seven or below a three on the emotions scale—I’m crying. And sometimes I’m at a ten and a one all at once. Especially when drunk, as I suspect I might be as my living room whirls in and out of focus.
“Alone?” he asks. “What, like it’s hard?” I laugh. “Wait, I forget, was Legally Blonde on that movie list?”
Emily glows in love. She’s always been beautiful, but now, it’s as if her skin is silkier and her eyes are shinier.
And I hate it. I’ve never been one for conventional ways of life. Dating, marriage, kids, growing old with one person. It was never in the cards, not since Dad’s passing. But lately, when I’m watching my friends in their little bubbles of giddy love, it feels like maybe I’ve actually wanted it all along. Possibly so much so that I’ve rejected the idea to make it easier on myself. Bracing for the inevitable loneliness by giving up early. Because it can’t happen. I won’t let it.
“Mediator. Middleman. If my siblings were the United Nations, I was Switzerland.”
but the universe is unkind, and he’s wearing grey sweatpants. Furthermore, we’d both have to be tested if we had sex here, and of course there’s the matter of our friendship and keeping it.
“All right, consider me your personal bedtime story connoisseur.
I consider myself a feminist. Not always a perfect one—but I do my best. However, right now, I’d let this man take me back to his cave and have his way with me. I’d put on a fifties housewife dress, make him his favourite meatloaf, and sit with an empty plate in front of me while watching him eat adoringly. I consider the complications that may arise if I attempt to carry his giant babies between my narrow hips and decide it’s worth it.
“Oh, but Matty,” I say in a sickeningly sweet baby-voice. “He’s right! My wittle hands can’t drive da big bus!” I hold up two limp wrists. “Please, dear god, never do that again.” Matt looks disgusted, even as he fights a laugh.
“Think this thing has a speaker for Jane Eyre?” I ask. “I love that that’s where your mind went.” Matt opens the door and gestures for me to go inside. “After you.”
“Thank you for choosing this book. I actually really like it.” He smiles at me in the mirror on the windshield above him. “I’m glad.” He laughs under his breath. “Things are about to get weird though.”
“You can say slutty. We’re taking back the word.” “I cannot, and no. It’s… you don’t look happy.”
“And she loves me, but I know she doesn’t get me.”
