On the Inhale

“I only smoke when I’m drunk,” I said, passing back the cigarette. 

“You’re drunk?”

She grinned up at me through the electric blue eyeliner she’d bought just for tonight. The angular wing at the corner of her left eye was slightly longer than the right. Mascara was beginning to smudge beneath her tear line. 

I shrugged. “Aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” She snorted, hiccupped, and rested her arms on my shoulders. I was reasonably conscious of the lit cigarette hanging near my ear. “But you’re not acting drunk.”

I didn’t know what to say then. Should I admit that I had drunk and drunk and still felt nothing? That the same amount of liquor that would have sent me reeling a year ago did little more than quench my thirst now? She would worry. 

“Can I kiss you?” I said. 

She smiled and leaned in. Our mouths locked, trapping bitter cigarette breath between us. Her lips were dehydrated, crusty from the drinking. I made a note to have her drink some water before going to bed. A clump of ash from the cigarette fell and brushed against the back of my leg. 

Back at the apartment, across the fenced-in parking lot where we stood, a door opened to let the noise of the party flood the air for a moment. Someone emptied their stomach on the stairs, and the door slammed shut again taking the party with it. Tears began to boil in the back of my throat, forcing acidic steam out through my eyes. 

She broke away for no more than a breath, distracted by the sound. I pulled her back to me, closer than before, so close she couldn’t see me. I pushed her up against the car to my left with a gasp of surprise. She melted into me, and as the tears loosed themselves from my eyes, I bit down hard on her smiling bottom lip. 

“Ouch.”

I stepped away. The wet taste of copper met the dry ash in my mouth. I wiped my eyes while she pressed her thumb to her inner lip and licked off the blood. 

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” she said. She sucked hard on her thumb and pulled it out of her mouth with a popping sound. “Just not quite so hard next time.”

“Right.”

“Are you done with this?” She held the cigarette out to me. There was only a sliver of white paper left on the edge of the caramel filter. 

“I’ll take one more.”

I took the nub and sucked at it like I would find something new if I only worked hard enough for it. The familiar savory, angry chalk filled my cheeks and slipped down my throat, threatening to push more tears from my eyes. (Why anyone did this for pleasure was beyond me.) I let the vapor marinate in my lungs until they screamed and then some more. 

“Are you ready to go home?”

Beside me, Emily stands unmoving, unblinking. I wipe away the tiny drop of blood left on her lip and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. She’s too beautiful here, all soft hands and fluorescent street lamps and blue lightning. 

A new bead of blood appears on Emily’s lip as I leave her, crossing the parking lot back to the apartment. The fingers of my left hand trail over the summer-warmed hoods of cars. (My right hand grips the cigarette.)

On a wooden staircase that leads up to what is more of a landing than a back porch sits Carlos. The sick dripping from their mouth decorates the three steps below them. They smile. In the morning, someone will go at the staircase with a garden hose, and Carlos will remember nothing but a faint irritation in their throat and an acidic taste on their tongue. 

I pick my way around the stagnant ick, around Carlos’ sleepy grin. An overturned can of light beer meets me on the landing: the culprit (one of many.) I pick it up on my way inside. Dani will be looking for Carlos soon enough, and they’ll be found.

The kitchen is lit only by the white glow of the fridge, shaded by someone’s body, squatting in search of a snack. 

Marla rummages through the crisper, her ass hanging out under the hem of her traffic-cone mini dress. Two Solo-cup-equipt strangers watch her from the corner of the room, grins frozen on their moon-crater faces. Who, at this party, could they possibly belong to?

I tug Marla’s dress toward her bare heels, pausing for a moment to wonder if she was showing herself off on purpose. Hadn’t I leaned a little too far forward on occasion, allowing a stranger a secret glimpse down my shirt? Gotten off on the control I held over their perversion? But I can smell the saccharine seltzer perfume all around Marla. She does not hold the same control tonight, so I hide her body away from the strange eyes that devour it. 

Standing between her and the strangers, it’s me they’re watching. 

“What?” I ask. 

They do not answer, only stare and grin and hold their uncovered drinks with confidence. 

I discard Carlos’ can in a bin already brimming over with refuse and push past the strangers (“Excuse me.”) into a narrow hallway that spits me out into a living room. 

A high-pitched buzz, like tinnitus, comes from the television, stuck between two frames of a music video. A pair of candy-pink lips floating like a ghost over a pair of pale breasts. Three bodies in the middle of the room create a tumbleweed of limbs. I duck beneath an outstretched hand to look at Dani’s face. 

She hasn’t yet realized that Carlos is missing. Maybe she won’t. Her eyes are half closed, peering beneath blinking lids at John, whose smile is directed at Xander, who reaches out, mid-dance, to Hal on the couch. 

I sit beside Hal and watch the silent, motionless dance, thinking about my nights spent between Dani and Carlos, clutching her body close to my front while they held me from behind. Had Dani felt her lover’s fingers caressing her through me? Did she feel me at all? Or was I merely a vessel through which they held one another? To be sandwiched between two bodies, holding, being held, unperceived. When Carlos held her now, who did she feel?

Brie occupies the couch alongside me and Hal, her manicured hand halted in its journey up Hal’s thigh. Has he noticed? His face, with eyes and thoughts on Xander alone, tells me no. The gem glued at the corner of Brie’s eye has slid down to her cheek. I move her hand into her own lap. 

This room steams with sweat. 

Down, down a claustrophobic curving stairway into the heavy night again, this time with a whole house between Emily and myself. 

Far to my left, three partygoers in uniform neon face away from me, heading home (or somewhere else.)

Close to me, on the right, Chris and Hayden sit on the curb. Chris’ arm is draped around Hayden’s back, his spindly fingers like ivy on their bare shoulder. Tree sap tears stick to Hayden’s cheeks, an entire block of street lamps trapped in their reflective surface. 

Did the trio down the way walk right past this miserable duo? Were they apathetic or embarrassed? Were they dismissed? More likely too drunk to notice one crying person sitting on the curb. 

I kneel down in the street in front of Hayden, Hayden whom I loved once, Hayden whom I probably love still, and I wipe a tear from their face. Gravel sticks in my knees, the asphalt warms me all over. I feel sick to my stomach. 

Back inside, back through the haze of limbs, back into the narrow hallway with two doors. 

Door One, the bathroom. Someone I do not know holds back the hair of someone I faintly recognize. Now I know why Carlos was outside. This person’s vomit is almost as pink as their blouse, filled with artificial strawberry poison. 

Door One closes with a click, and Door Two opens (though I wish it hadn’t). Riley, my oldest friend, my dearest, who allowed me to love him without consequence, splayed out on the bed beneath a person I do not know. One, two square paper wrappers on the floor. One greasy rubber sock.

Riley and the stranger are barely undressed, but they are tangled in one another, lodged in one another. Riley’s eyes are closed, yet he smiles. 

I roll into bed beside them in the little space they left just for me. 

“Having fun?”

Riley smiles. I count the popcorn bumps on the ceiling. 

I press the lock on the doorknob in before I leave. 

The Solo-cupped strangers are still in the kitchen, staring at Marla’s bright orange ass. The door slams behind me, and I try not to slip on Carlos’ vomit. Emily waits in the parking lot, a bead of blood dried black on her lip. 

I exhaled. 

An ungraceful cloud of white smoke obscured my face. My eyes stung. 

“Yeah,” I said, tossing the cigarette butt to the ground and grinding it into the pavement with the toe of my shoe. The party announced itself again. Carlos returned to the house. The door slammed. “I’m ready.”