This is enough to appease her and she squeezes back, smiling before returning her attention to the movie.
Once upstairs, I change into black jeans and put on my chest holster under the bright red and green matching sweater that Nate insisted we all wear this year.
I slip on my shoes and leave the house as quietly as I can.
It’s freezing outside, and not much is open on Christmas Eve, but I take one of the cars, roll the windows down until I’m shivering, and drive with one destination in mind.
The club is busierthan I thought it would be. I didn't even know that it would be open, I just thought I'd try it, and when I drove past, I heard the beating music through the car’s open windows.
The Brickyard’s bouncer looks surprised to see me and waves me in without a cover fee. I’ve been staying away these last few months, first because my shoulder was still too busted to go out clubbing. But when it was healed enough, I wasn’t in the mood to dance with strangers. Too stressed about the non-strangers in my life to humor the idea of meeting anyone new.
Plus, I have more destructive things I can get up to than this, and sometimesdestructiveis exactly the right thing to distract me.
There are fewer people than a normal Friday night, but still a crush of bodies on the dance floor moving to the loud music. It overwhelms my senses immediately, between the lights and the thudding bass in my skull, I start moving on autopilot.
I beeline for the dance floor, not stopping to smile at my favorite bartenders or sip sparkling water while I assess the crowd for my target of the night. I just push through until I reach the middle of the floor and take a few deep breaths.
This has to work. It has to be enough to distract me.
It will.
Even with my shoulder, at least once a week I find myself at Leroy's for a fight; it's impossible to worry about the crushing reality of mortality when I'm trying not to get my ass handed to me by a man twice my size. It's how I used to feel here, when dancing and making out with strangers was enough to occupy my mind for a few sweet hours. It’s never enough to make the anxiety go away fully, but sometimes I can pretend.
I don’t know if the club’s owner is here to watch over me tonight, his heavy gaze following me around the club. I’m not here for him.
I close my eyes and start swaying to the music, loosening my arms and hips trying to get out of my head for even a single moment. When I'm not so tense, I’ll dance until I’m dizzy and pick someone to go home with, and by the time I leave their apartment without fanfare, I will feel much, much better.
My family is safe. My sisters are probably in bed now, wrapped in the arms of their spouses. Angel and Artie are surely asleep beneath the Christmas tree with that old dog that owns us. In the morning, Leo and my mom will make something delicious for breakfast, we will open presents, watch movies, sleep, and do a puzzle. It will be just as it should be, and everyone will be safe.
So why can't I get my chest to stop squeezing in on itself?
There's a trembling about my limbs that won't settle, but I jump to the music anyways, as if sheer exertion of energy will cure me from the impenetrable dread that has snaked itself around my lungs.
A man and woman dance together near me, grinding indecently against each other. Her eyes are bright and mischievous when she catches mine lingering on their bodies, and after a few unmistakable glances, she beckons me toward them with a crook of a finger.
They're drunk, or almost drunk, entirely loose and warm.
This is perfect.Theywill be perfect.
I slide over to the pair and fall too easily between them, taking the woman’s place, my back against her front and her boyfriend facing me. They're both tall, completely beautiful, and I’ve never seen them before in my life. They want one thing from me, which I can most certainly give to them. I reach one hand behind me and hold the woman’s neck while gripping the man’s shoulder.
He tries to yell their names into my ear, but I can’t hear them over the music and the still-rushing blood in my ears, and that'sjust as well. I don't need to know them. They don't need to know me.
One song bleeds into two, and by the end of that one, the woman is kissing me. She tastes tropical, piña colada if I had to guess, and as we kiss, the man's hands run down my sides.
They're perfect, I remind myself; nameless, young, harmless. Six months ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity to leave with them—a way to blow off steam, have some fun, and escape the weight of everything that lives in my mind.
They should be perfect, but this isn’tworking. There's no escape now, no distraction. I find no loss to the sensation, there is only a pleasant, if sloppy, kiss on a dance floor, my skin too hot, pressed between two too-hot bodies, and the urgent, unending torture of my anxieties.
My thoughts race through an infinite supply of horrific images in my head—one of my family members dying,allof them dying, the gun to my sister’s temple last summer, my dad’s face as his heart stopped working?—
I recoil from the beautiful woman's mouth and pull away from the pair's embrace.
I don’t know what I need, but it’s not this, not here.
If they're disappointed, I don't give them a chance to convince me to stay before I push through the crowd toward somewhere, anywhere.
The lights are too much, the sound, the bodies—there's a sheen of sweat on my skin.
