A Story of Now (15 page)

Mia laughs. “How’s life? Aside from the fact we’re here.”

“It’s pretty sucky right now.” Claire folds her arms over her chest and leans back against the counter. “Yours?”

“Fair to middling.” Mia swigs her beer.

“Pete seems okay.”

“Yeah, he does, actually. He’s been pretty cool about it. Hey, are Nina and Josh coming?”

“Most definitely not.”

“Why not?”

“Because Nina’s away. And because she hates me right now.”

“What?” Mia turns to look at her. “Why?”

Claire sighs and fills Mia in on the whole sad, sorry saga that is Nina and Josh and, by no choice of her own, Claire.

Mia listens, eyebrows raised.

Claire frowns. “The worst part is, not only did she automatically blame me, but I can’t get her to talk to me. He’s gross. I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole because he’s her boyfriend, and he’s a freaking douche bag. Seriously, such a douche bag.” She turns to Mia to beg for support on this one. “You’ve met him, right?”

Mia nods. “He didn’t seem like the most charming person I’ve ever met. Or the brainiest, either.”

“Crap.” Claire sighs. “Maybe I should have told her. Maybe I’m a shitty friend for not telling her she’s going out with an idiot.”

“I think she’s bound to figure that out for herself eventually, so don’t feel too bad.”

“I’m great, aside from the fact that the person I’d call my closest friend thinks I’m a boyfriend-stealing slut who’d betray her in a second—which I would never do, Mia.” Claire jabs a finger in the air to emphasise her point. “I
don’t
betray my friends.”

“Okay.” Mia holds up her hands as if to defend herself. “I promise I won’t ever accuse you of trying to steal my boyfriend, okay?”

“Good. Thanks,” Claire grumbles. “Anyway, besides being tried and found a boy-thieving ho who’s only allowed at this party because Nina is away, I no longer have anyone to stay with in the city. That means I have to spend every single night at home in the company of my mother, who is driving me nuts. Oh yeah, and did I mention I hate my job? But then that’s always a thing.”

“So, you’re not really in the party mood then?”

“No, sorry.” Claire frowns. “I bet you want your friends to come back now.”

“No, that’s okay.” Mia chuckles. “I get it. That all sounds bad. I’d feel pretty crappy about being the accused too.”

“I may not be in a party mood, but I am in a drinking one. Seriously, where is Robbie? He said he was bringing the booze.”

Mia passes her a beer. “That’s all I’ve got, but what’s mine is yours.”

“Thanks.” Claire takes a swig and hands it back. They stand in a comfortable silence for a while and pass the beer back and forth as they watch the party gather steam around them. The volume rises and the dance floor swells into the kitchen area.

“These are really, really not my people,” Mia muses as a bunch of girls in barely there dresses drop their handbags into a pile and begin to dance around them. They shuffle from side to side in their heels and look around the room as they gossip.

“That speaks very highly of you, Mia.”

“Do you ever wonder what everybody is talking about all the time?” Mia passes her the last of the beer.

“I know exactly what they are talking about.” Claire slugs the final mouthful and puts the bottle behind her on the counter. “I’ve been to this party a gazillion times. They’re all talking about each other or they’re talking about themselves. Not necessarily in that order.”

“These are your friends?” Mia scrunches up her face, confused.

“Not these people exactly.” Claire looks around at the people dancing near them and then at the people making drinks in the messy kitchen. It could have been any of the parties she went to in high school, with everyone just fast-forwarded a year or two. “But people a lot like this, and I kept hanging out with them because I’m an idiot.”

“I could have told you that.”

“Thanks, Mia.”

“No problem.”

They exchange smiles.

“Well,” Claire says. She’s had enough of feeling maudlin. “You know what I always found was the best remedy for sucky company—present company excluded, of course?”

“What?”

“Dancing.”

Mia nods as if to say she could see how that might be a good idea.

“Just drinking, dancing, and ignoring them. And we have nothing left to drink, so, do you like to dance, Mia?”

“Oh, I like to dance, Claire.”

Claire grabs Mia’s wrist and drags them into the sweaty, teeming interior of the dance floor.

And that’s where they stay forever. They dance without stopping. They dance through the good, the bad, and the cheesy, and they dance with abandon because they don’t give a crap about the people around them. Nothing is too cheesy for Claire anyway. She unashamedly likes mainstream pop when she’s on a dance floor. And Mia dances as if she doesn’t care either, making her Claire’s favourite partner in crime. She doesn’t judge—she doesn’t even look at anyone else around them to investigate what they’re doing in that self-conscious, side-eyed way insecure girls do. When the music is good, they move as if they like it. And when the music is bad, they move like it’s hilarious. Together it turns out they are a match made in dance-floor heaven. It’s all ridiculous fun and, for a while, Claire manages to forget how craptastic everything has been lately.

She forgot how much she loves to dance. It used to sustain her, to carry her through the vapid empty clubbing nights and the parties when she couldn’t be bothered with the talk, with getting caught up in all the gossip, the idle chat, the crap. This—the beat and the mindless task of simply moving. This used to be her escape.

And so she keeps dancing. Every now and then she accidentally knocks some girl and gets a filthy look for her troubles, or some guy comes edging in, playing the sleaze game. But Claire smiles and turns toward Mia. Tonight, nothing is going to touch her.

She has no idea how long they have been caught up in the epicentre of the steaming, milling mass of bodies when Claire feels an arm wind around her neck and a stubbly face press a kiss to her cheek. She’s just about to shove the arm off her shoulder when she realises it’s Robbie, grinning from ear to ear with one arm slung around each of their necks.

“Both of you!” he yells. “It’s Christmas!” He lets go of them, reaches into his bag, and pulls out a bottle of tequila and a handful of shot glasses. Claire throws her head back and laughs. Only Robbie would be classy and unclassy enough to carry shot glasses around in his feral, little denim bag.

He somehow manages to wrestle some of the clear liquid into one glass without getting bumped or spilling any. He passes it to Mia. He pours two more and hands one to Claire.

“Whose party is this, anyway?” Claire shouts in his ear as she wipes the sweat from her neck with her free hand.

“My friend Megan’s. We were in photography together. But then she quit to model. She’s doing really well.”

“I bet she is,” Claire mutters, then downs her shot. Only a model could afford this apartment at her age. She looks at Mia, one eyebrow raised.

Mia laughs, drinks hers, and winces.

“Stop it, you snob!” Robbie wags a finger at Claire and then pours another shot into her glass. “She’s a sweetheart, and she’s smart too. Kind of.” He laughs, tips back another slug, and shakes his head violently. “I’m going to find her and say hi.” He eyes the room as he thrusts the bottle at Mia. “You take care of that. By that I mean drink it. I’ve had way too much already.” He grabs them both by the neck again, kisses their cheeks with relish, and disappears into the crowd.

Mia holds up the bottle and makes a face as if to say “What am I supposed to do with this?”

Claire snatches it from her. She knows she can dance just as well with or without a bottle in her hands. She perfected the art through the years. And they keep moving, Claire with one hand firmly around the neck of the bottle.

At some point, Claire has been dancing so long she’s worried she’s never going to find her land legs again. It’s not long after that they completely run out of steam and depart the dance floor in search of air and somewhere to sit.

Mia finds a vacant armchair, a decadent, beige monstrosity lodged between the front door area and the edge of the dance floor. It’s covered in discarded jackets and coats. Mia squashes up to one side, with her knees pulled to her chest, and pats the cushion next to her. Claire backs in, flops down, tucks the bottle in between them, and puts the glasses on the arm. They are so close to the dance floor that Claire could nearly reach out and touch the wall of moving bodies if she wanted. Instead, she turns inward a little, toward Mia, and leans her head against the back of the chair, spent and sweaty.

She stares across the room while she catches her breath. She spots Robbie near the wall on the other side of the door talking to a redheaded girl, his hand on her arm. It must be Megan, the model. She’s super tall and skinny, but she doesn’t look that pretty. The best models never seem to. Claire’s learned that from the embarrassing amount of
Next Top Model
she’s consumed over the years. The weird looking ones always win. They are all gawky and awkward and then turn beautiful in front of a camera.

Mia pours them another shot each. They throw it back in unison and tuck the bottle back into the sofa cushions between them. Too exhausted and now too drunk to get up, they stay put, snuggled around the bottle.

“So, what would you be doing if you were here with those old friends you used to party with?” Mia asks, playing with her shot glass.

Claire looks out at the swell of bodies around them and shrugs. She tries to recall all those parties through the fog of distance and drunkenness. She doesn’t remember much, just a sameness shaped by routine rounds of drinking and dancing and gossip—gossip about things that seemed so vital at the time and are so forgettable now.

“Same as everyone else, I guess.” She notices a girl on the dance floor looking at them. She turns and says something to the one next to her. The other girl glances at them briefly and nods. “I’d probably be wondering why those two weirdos are perched on top of a pile of coats on that chair in the corner.”

Mia laughs and leans back against the seat. “I think I prefer to be the weirdo.”

“What would you be doing tonight?” Claire asks, curious. “If you weren’t here?”

“Maybe watching movies with Pete and his housemate like they were planning before I dragged them here. Or studying for exams.”

She tips her empty glass against Mia’s. “Well, I, for one, am glad you’re here suffering with me instead of toiling over your books or watching sci-fi movies.”

“You’re not suffering. I saw you on the dance floor.”

Claire laughs. She hasn’t really been suffering at all.

Mia pokes her in the leg. “And sci-fi movies? What makes you think that? Just putting us firmly in your science-geek box and shutting the lid?”

“Maybe. What would you be watching?”

Mia rolls her eyes. “Probably some really niche indie film or an undiscovered gem of a famous director. Pete’s housemate is a total film freak.”

“So, still geeky then?”

Mia ignores her jibe. “I’m glad you’re here. I probably would have left pretty soon if you weren’t.” She corrects herself. “Actually, I know I would have. No fun following Robbie around at these things.”

“Thanks for staying on my behalf, Mia.” But it’s only a part joke because it does, sadly, warm her that she’s deemed worthy of sticking around for.

“I couldn’t leave you on your lonesome with these people.” Mia gives her a smart-ass grin. “You might have been re-infected.”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I kind of needed this—weird as this party is.”

“Me too.”

They smile at each other, slow smiles of recognition and something else, something like mutual sympathy. With that, Mia pours them another shot, and they drink it down with sober ceremony.

They debate dancing again, but the music has taken a turn for the worse. Instead, they share random memories and fill the huge gaps in their knowledge of each other. Then, as they dissolve into tequila drunkenness, they play a game. Taking it in turns, one of them picks someone from around the room, and the other one has to make up a story about him, to invent dramas, or concoct secret fears and habits. It’s dumb and pointless, and they are just drunk enough to get a complete stupid kick out of it.

After Mia finishes telling her all about the random middle-aged man who just walked in, and his penchant for the feet of young girls, it’s Claire’s turn to make something up.

“Pick someone!” She slaps Mia leg.

“Ow, okay. No need to brutalise!” Mia winces and rubs her thigh. She scans the room. Finally, she finds what she’s looking for. “Them.” Mia leans her head sideways on the back of the chair. Her hair tickles the side of Claire’s face as she points through the dance floor to a couple standing by the food table, inspecting the contents.

For a fleeting moment, Claire wishes she hadn’t drunk so much and felt like taking advantage of the free food, because it looks really good from here. The couple have their backs to her, and there are twenty people dancing between their chair and them, so it’s difficult to get an idea of what they’re like, except they look basically the same as everyone in the room—brand-named, moneyed, and boring. Eventually, the girl plucks a carrot stick from the array of food and turns slowly to look over the room. Claire is about to tell Mia how she will be off to the bathroom in minutes to purge the carrot stick, when she gets a look at her face.

It’s Kate.

“Oh shit,” Claire moans. She turns her head quickly toward Mia and buries her face into the back of the chair.

“What’s wrong?”

“Girl I went to high school with,” Claire mumbles. She swings her head back and forth, veering wildly between wanting to hide her face and wanting to see where Kate is, in case she comes anywhere near their private armchair kingdom. “I have never, ever seen her alone, without the other two.” Claire catches another glimpse as Kate closes in on the snack table again. “It’s like seeing a guinea pig in the wild. I mean, you only ever see them in cages. I’ve never seen one in the wild.”