“Doesn’t matter. You can just bob around if you want.”
“Is that even a word?”
“Bob around? Yeah.”
“Okay. Well, then no. I can’tbob aroundeither.”
“You cool with me going alone then?”
Knox looks at me as if I’d asked him if I could have sex with Jason Hawk out on the dance floor. “Why on earthwouldn’tthat be okay?”
I shrug, bite my lower lip, look away, and watch all the dancing people. They’re laughing. It all looks so joyful, so real that all I can think is:How is laughing like that evenpossibleon a winter evening like this one in this world that never hesitates to show you howuglyit can be?Because it’s good at that. Really. And when you forget, it’s right there to remind you. Over and over.
Like now.
Next to me Knox lets out a breath. “I still want to kill that guy, you know that?”
Yeah, I know. My fingers are holding his hand, pressing it lightly. I smile at him, then hurry over to the others out on the dance floor. Gwen throws her arms into the air when she sees me.
Levi and Aaron are actually dancing samba, they twirl about the others as if the room belonged to them, as if they thought they were alone on the ice. I often feel the same way when I dance. My movements are similar, fluid. I want to let go and to perform my program, just let myself go and dare to do so, and I think:It’s too bad that you’re not sohardcore, Paisley.Too bad.
All of a sudden I understand why everyone is laughing here, it’s impossiblenotto laugh. This dance floor exists inside a bubble, a big, pulsing red bubble of serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins, and when you enter, it takes you into its circle of happiness, pumps you full of these messenger substances and doesn’t let you drift off.I like this bubble.
Gwen takes my hand, and we spin around, I don’t know how many times but at least the whole BTS song and half of the one by Jason Derulo because I’m dizzy, sweaty, and make a sign to Gwenthat I’m going to get us some drinks.
The bar is sticky but cool when I rest my forearms against it. I order a beer for Gwen and some kind of prosecco-strawberry-lime drink with a straw for me. It’s out of paper, the straw, and seeing that I can’t help but think:this party is the absoluteshit.
Suddenly a mass of red hair appears next to me, exuding a glamorous, eccentric perfume. Orchids and honey. Very feminine. Very extravagant. VeryHarper.
“Hi,” I say, sip from my straw, and cast her a smile that she doesn’t return. Instead she raises her hand, snaps her fingers, and then rolls her eyes when the bartender takes someone else’s order first. She ignores me completely. Although it’sincrediblyloud, I can hear the silence between us. It bothers me but I refuse to be the one to break it. Not after she ignored me completely. I’m too tired for her walls today.
I grab Gwen’s beer and my strawberry drink and am just about to go to the others when Harper says, “He’s going to toss you to the side, you know that, right?”
For a second I consider being the one to ignoreher, but then I’d be like her, and I don’t want that. I stay put. Drops of water pearl off the beer bottle into my palm. Cool. It feels good.
“Harper,” I say, slowly and softly, “he hurt you, huh?” When she doesn’t respond and just stares into her glass, I add, “’Someday someone will see your shine, will recognize how you hold the whole universe in your hands although you haven’t done anything but look into the sky. But until then, you need to stop giving your heart to someone who thinks you’re just amaybe.”
Only now does she look at me. In her eyes there’s something like fury, even rage, but, looking more closely, I recognize sadness. That’s not good; I know that expression from my own eyes and know howterribleshe must be feeling.
Harper covers it up. Of course she does. I would, too. She snarls, “You think that Knox wants you, and I won’t judge you for that.He’s got a talent for making people feel like they mean everything to him. But can I tell you something? Knox cannot feel. He puts on an act for you, takes you right to the edge, all the while holding your hand and showing you how beautiful the water is from up above, how beautifully the sun dances across the surface. He does that, and you laugh, he laughs right along, and everything feels right.” The bartender shows up with her beer. She takes a sip, her face is hard, a solid mask. There’s a pop as she pulls the bottle away from her lips and puts it down. “You both laugh, Paisley, and then he pushes you over the cliff. That’s what loving Knox feels like. Too deep a fall into black water. A fall that’s impossible to survive.”
Oh, shit, Knox, shit, what did you do to this girl?
I look at her, openly, no mask, so she can see who I am, so she can see that she’s not alone, but she doesn’t go along. She remains hard.
“Knox is going to take you down,” she says.
I smile. “He’s going to hold me, Harper. He’s going to hold me while I work on loving myself.”
Her lids flutter. It gives the impression of distress, as if she desperately wanted it to be untrue, even though she already realizes that I’m right. “How can you be so sure?”
“You can feel when something is right.”
Harper looks at me, and I think she’s just about to let her mask fall and say something, but I’ll never find out because at that very moment, Knox walks up and she falls off the edge of the cliff, incapable of holding herself. I hope one day she’ll manage.
Knox looks at me, with his birthmark and his blue-checked Ralph Lauren shirt and says, “You want to take off?”
I press Harper’s hand for a second—it’s cold, slender, lonely. Then I walk off with Knox, who’s holding onto me without holding me.
