Slowly Dying Night

“Mom, I just- just need a ride, ok? ….No. No, it’s not like that, Mom, please can you just take me h-”

The phone beeps twice and goes silent. 

Holy fucking shit. This cannot

“-be happening.” You hear your mom yell at your dad, muffled by the door to your room. It’s seven in the evening. “She cannot go on thinking this is normal-” Lying sideways on your messy bed, you clutch your phone like a lifeline, scrolling through K-pop Instagram until your mind goes blissfully numb. You’re trying not to cry. Something small hits your window, clinking softly. 

You call again, but it goes straight to voicemail, and you sink to your knees on the sidewalk outside the venue, surrounded by dismantled fences and random bits of trash. A piece of confetti clinging to your disheveled hair comes dislodged by the movement, and flutters in a lovely downward arc toward the cold concrete. The sun’s rising. 

You open the window and look down. It’s Sammy, all dark curls and smiles and mischief. She’s wearing something ridiculous, like a tracksuit with huge gaps in the sides cut off at the legs, fishnet stocking peeking through, crop top over the tracksuit, glitter rave makeup on and it’s so wild and weird but your stupid traitor heart flutters anyway and she holds up a sign that says

“Codex HM concert?” 

You nod jerkily, eyes blurring a little, and then realize he can’t hear you nod over the phone.

“Um. yeah.” 

“What the fuck are you doing there? I never pegged you for a K-pop fan. How’d you even get there? I thought mom was like-”

”Uh. 1. I don’t know. 2. There’s a lot you don't know about me. 3. I went with-”

“Sammy!” you whisper-yell as soon as you exit the lobby of the building, and she smiles so wide it swallows your whole entire world. 

“I brought you cool clothes,” she whispers, and grabs you and hugs you and you start to cry again.

You wipe your eyes and streaky mascara stains your hands. 

“I’ll be there in a few,” your brother says over the phone. You don’t want to hang up, so you just hold the phone loosely to your ear and try to breathe as you sit on the curb. Try to block out the daylight with both hands. Stare through your fingers at a red solo cup rolling on the ground. Your head hurts. Stupid. You’re so stupid. This never could’ve worked out, why did you think it would-

“Work, girl!” Sammy screams over the din of the music, probably-illegal beer sloshing over the edges of her solo cup, and you imitate Chin-hae’s dance move at the same moment as he does it on stage, the move you practiced for hours in front of the mirror weeks ago, watched millions of videos about, and Sammy screams with delight and it’s all worth it, every bit, everything for her. The lights swoop over the crowd as Chin-hae leans into the mic and goes into the final verse and she grabs your face with both hands and yells “I love you!” and you grab her face back and you

“-kiss her? IN FRONT OF- I mean- Mei, that’s- it sucks that Mom is homophobic, but you have to-”

“I know, Ming.” 

“-it’s, like, self-preservation, y’know?”

“I know, MING.”

He sighs heavily, slightly distorted by the speakerphone, and you can hear him switch gears and turn off the engine. The red solo cup rolls down the street a little more, and then stops, as if having encountered some invisible roadblock. “So she grounds you for having a girlfriend, and then that very night you immediately run off and-”

“Not anymore.”

“What? ………Mei. What-”

“-does that mean?” Sammy says, in the bathroom. It’s bright, too bright, and you’re a little drunk, clutching Sammy’s red red red solo cup, it’s blinding, and it’s too much, everything is too much, the muffled bass creeps under the door, it’s so so loud, this was a mistake- “I said- I said I don’t think we should be together anymore.” 

“Mei, that’s- you’re not thinking straight. You’re drunk.”

You giggle a little, and swallow your tears, eyes stinging. “Straight?” 

She laughs too, but cuts herself off, biting her lip and looking at the corner of the room, trying to blink back tears. She’s gorgeous. This is torture.  

“I’m thinking- like- logically, Sammy. I can’t- If I were to come out to my parents, like, for real-” 

“We could hide.”

“No. Sammy.” You can’t let her throw away her happiness for you, for a black hole of a human being. “You’re, like,” and oh great, you’re tearing up again, and now you want to throw up, “the best thing. Like, ever,” and you have to swallow some air, like it’s solid, and it’s suffocating you. 

“I’d kill you off, I think. I think being with me would kill your light.” 

“Mei-”

“Just go,” you say, eyes squeezed shut, “please just go-”

Sammy’s voice breaks. You sway on your feet, afraid to open your eyes, afraid to see the damage. And you hear her waver for a second before turning and pushing the door open, stumbling back into the crowd and the music and for a second it burns, explodes like a supernova in your head, the karaoke nights and practicing dance moves at her house and boba tea dates and secret kisses in the apartment building lobby, your hands in her dark hair, her dark hair disappearing from view as the door closes, and you’re left with humming fluorescent lights and the bum-ba-dum-ba-duh of distant partying and the promise of life and joy outside this fucking bathroom.

And it’s like the moment becomes real all of a sudden and you have to sit down, because your head is rushing and 

“I’m gonna throw up,” you mutter into the dashboard as Ming pulls away from the curb, and he grabs the back of your leather jacket and pulls you away from the dashboard and pushes your face out the open window, and the breeze feels nice on your swollen-from-crying face.

The light hits your eyes, temporarily blinding you, as you stumble through the crowd, trying to find her, but you can’t, she left, and you’re crying on the ground and random strangers are asking if you’re okay and you shake your head and they’re holding you up, “Let me call your parents, sweetheart,” and you need to tell them no, no that won’t help-

And hours later you hide in some secluded corner shielded by black curtains, curled up with your head nestled between your arms, and the music has long since stopped, the confetti lies dead on the ground, and you want to go home, but you don’t want to go home. The cleanup crew jostles and clatters in the distance, murmuring voices discussing mundane things, and the world continues on relentlessly, dragging you forward with the force of its orbit, as if your life hadn’t fucking stopped the moment that door closed, and you know you'll remember this night forever.

Ming rolls down the window on his side and drives slowly down the street, and you can tell he’s trying to stall as long as possible before going home. You shift your position so you can stick your hand out the open window. The breeze glides over and past your fingers, and you curl your fingers softly, trying to hold it as long as you can before it slips through the gaps and continues on.