Standstill

It was cold. Well, I was cold. They try to make it seem like you can wear your best party dress, you know, the one that makes you look like a H&M model, and not be cold. Now, here I am, standing outside a club—the one next to the one that burnt down last year—freezing my ass off and wishing I’d at least worn thigh-high boots so that my calves wouldn’t be right on the brink of freezing completely, cracking and breaking off into a thousand tiny shards of ice, leaving me to fall over and die here on New Year’s Eve. 

I didn’t want to come. I mean, I wanted to come a little bit, but that was before I remembered all my friends are married and I’ve been tragically alone since Marta. Alright, that was dramatic. Not tragically alone. Just, alone. 

The door behind me opens, and I have a mini nightmare that it’s some man I rejected on the dance floor earlier, and he’s followed me out back to slit my throat. I don’t turn around. 

“It’s freezing,” a voice says. Not a man’s. 

I look to my right. “Yeah,” I say intelligently. 

Maybe it’s because she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, or maybe it’s the deep scar that runs from her forehead to the side of her cheek, but I don’t look away, and it’s starting to get awkward. 

She raises a jet black, perfectly sculpted eyebrow at me. “You out here smoking or something?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“I figured. I didn’t see a cig or anything.”

“Then why did you ask?”

She scoffs, but she’s smiling. She turns to look out at the back alleyway. “My friends left me,” she states. 

“Jesus. Like, completely alone?”

“Yup. Completely alone.”

“But you didn’t leave.”

Her shoulders drop. “No, I didn’t leave. I like places like this. Parties, I mean. Lots of people and lots of noise and lots of heat.”

“Heat,” I repeat her. 

“Heat,” she says again. “What about you? Why are you back here?”

I shrug. “You know how it is. I started thinking about my ex in the midst of a group of my friends all making out with each other.”

“Ah.” She picks at her nails. “Well, I don’t blame you. That sounds shitty. What was your ex’s name?”

“Marta.”

She laughs, but she doesn’t look at me. “My first girlfriend’s name was Marta. She moved to LA after I told her I loved her.”

This makes me feel better. “Like, immediately after?”

“Immediately after. It took her a day to pack up and go.”

“Christ.”

“He didn’t help me.”

“Sometimes he’s just like that.”

She looks at me, finally. “What’s your name?”

“Lena.” I look back at her. “What’s yours?”

She shrugs, then turns away again. “I’m not too fond of handing it out.”

“Ah. Okay.”

“I can tell you’re used to pleasing people, then?”

I furrow my brow, sitting down on the steps outside the club. I can still hear the roar of the music and people from inside. “What makes you say that?” I ask. 

She sits beside me, making me jealous with her thigh-high boots, the kind I thought about earlier, red as sin and shiny like a quarter. She shivers. “Well, I wouldn’t give you my name, and you don’t seem too bothered. So, I’m guessing you’re used to acting like you’re not bothered. Like everything is just fine.”

“That’s a wild accusation.”

“This is a wild situation.”

“How so?”

She stands abruptly and holds her arms out wide, her sleeves billowing in the breeze, her dark hair cascading over her shoulder. She takes a deep breath, and I can tell she has a lot more to say. I lean back and listen. “I talk to strangers at clubs,” she says. “I’m sure you do too. It’s just what you do. Because it’s not weird at bars or clubs or a mix of the two. And yet, you’re outside, in a back alley, by yourself, because you’re sad about your ex. And here I am, in a back alley, talking to a stranger, because my friends are all assholes who assumed I’d find someone to take me home tonight, even though people don’t go out for one night stands on New Year’s, right? Right? They come with friends or partners and have that big midnight kiss, and everything is fine. For one, perfect moment, everything is fine. The world is at a goddamn standstill, and no one appreciates it.”

“I’d say people appreciate it.”

“Well, maybe. But not in the way they should. You only get so many moments like that. Only so many years to kiss someone at midnight or under the mistletoe or on a Valentine’s date or on a birthday or something. Fuck. Jesus. I’m sorry.”

I look at her. “Why are you sorry?”

“Because I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, Lena. My friends left me. They left me, I’m alone, and it’s the end of the year.”

“You’re not really alone.”

“Right. Sorry. Again. You have made me less alone.”

“But have I made you feel less alone?”

“Sure.”

I smile a little. “I’ll take that. As long as someone helps you through the night.”

“I think it’s pitiful that I need to have someone help me through New Year’s at all.”

“It’s not pitiful. Just unfortunate.”

“Thanks. I’m glad you think I’m unfortunate.”

I sigh. “I’m sorry your friends left you. That’s shitty.”

She sighs too. “It’s alright.”

“You know, some people do go out looking for one night stands on New Year’s.”

She turns to me. “Yeah? Who?”

“Depends. Wanna get out of here?”

She says yes. 

We spend the night together, and I learn that her name is Mary. Which might’ve been useful, if I’d ever seen her again, but I haven’t since, and I don’t think I ever will. I like to think it was meant to be that way, two souls mixed up for one night, right before the end of a year, a decade, a lifetime. Sometimes I wish I’d never learned her name. Or that I’d never told her mine. Maybe then there’d be a certain mystery to it, the two of us never really knowing the other. Oh well. 

Maybe another year.