I smile. He is not wrong. Getting good at beer pong was the best way to avoid getting drunk in high school. Although I usually preferred to play against hockey bros rather than my friends.
“Are you playing?” I ask.
He cocks his head, a funny little smile on his face. “I’m your partner.”
I look at Deepti setting up cups across the table from me and she is so studiously avoiding eye contact I can only assume this was a set up. Well then!
We win beer pong. Eventually, Finn takes mercy on Brendan and starts taking some of his drinks for him, and Deepti just flat out refuses her drinks, which is fine. We don’t play to get wasted. We play for glory.
Inexplicably, Brendan wants to play again, but Deepti wants to dance, and I follow her to the small dance floor Josh set up in the living room. He’s pushed the couches and coffee tables against the wall and set up his DJ equipment in front of the fireplace which seems like the worst possible location, but what do I know.
Josh claims to be breaking into the acid house electronic music scene, but immediately starts playing every pop song we could possibly request like he made a set just for us. Meriah has a fantastic singing voice that clearly makes Bea immediately hot for her. Finn leads Faraz around and between us in a ballroom-style dance no matter what song comes on. And it’s loud, so loud we will almost certainly get a noise complaint—something we are too old to be getting—but I can’t stop myself from singing, screaming garbled, half-remembered words into the shoe Judith uses as a microphone.
I don’t notice when Bea sets out the bottles of sparkling wine. When someone changes the channel on the wall-mounted flat screen from the Canada v. US World Junior Hockey Championship game to the countdown coverage happening downtown at the Harbourfront. I don’t notice until Josh turns the music all the way down, but Bea still insists on yelling, “Two minutes left!” like we’re not all gathered right in front of her.
I want to say that I’m in control, that I choose what I do next, but it happens too quickly. It’s almost reflexive. I look for him. I find Finn in our tiny crowd, standingonthe couch with Faraz and his girlfriend—heathens—his arms around them both, a flush in his cheeks, hair wild and loose, a bottle in one hand, Faraz’s shirt fisted in the other.
And perhaps the only saving grace of hearing that it’s almost midnight and looking for Finn like I am a hungry little dog and he is Pavlov is that he looked for me too. We’re both caught looking.
I jerk my gaze away, embarrassed, then embarrassed for being embarrassed. Absurd! So, I look back, my gaze hard and jaw set. Like I’m daring him to kiss me, when in reality a dare feels like too much of a risk. Something he can take back, or choose Truth.
Finn leans into Faraz, saying something in his ear that makes Faraz laugh. He kisses Faraz on the temple, a smacking kind of kiss I can almost hear from across the room. He sets the bottle on the table as he steps down from the couch and he weaves his way between our friends to get to me.
“Hey, Nor,” he says. “I, uh, don’t have anyone to kiss at midnight.”
“Oh. That’s too bad.”
Kiss me kiss me kiss me.
He drags his finger down the strap of my dress, the back of his hand skirting my breast, stopping to cup my hip. “You look pretty tonight. I meant to tell you.”
Oh.
“Thanks.”
Ask him to kiss you, you obstinate ass.
He squeezes my hip, a tender gesture at most, but my body is too primed. I’ve waited all year. Ishavedfor this. I press my thighs together, a subtle shift of my weight, half to ease the tension between my legs, the other half to feel it more.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That I was late.”
I swallow. His face is serious, a frown in his forehead. I press my thumb to the skin and watch the tension leave his face, something like relief in his eyes. “I’m sorry I missed your text.”
“Nora?” he asks. “Can I kiss you at midnight?”
“Ten seconds,” Bea shouts.
I adjust the chain beneath his collar, flatten down the panels. I say, without embarrassment or teasing or antagonism, “Yes.”
“Happy New Year!”
The kiss is chaste,a gentle brush of lips, a mingling of breath. His heart beats, a steady thump beneath my palm. His hand presses against my lower back. Both of us uncaring aboutthe sweat that has accumulated against our skin. The kiss almost virtuous in its briefness, its dryness. It would be a disappointment, a three hundred and sixty-four–day anticlimax, if not for the way he presses his forehead to mine, his hair a cocoon around us for the briefest moment. His eyes closed, a groan that I feel against my own chest that makes this kiss a promise.
I make it another twenty minutes, thirty at most, before I slip upstairs. I shower, wipe my eyes with baby oil to remove the makeup, and moisturize. I take my hair out of the space buns, do my best to fluff the sparkles out of it, but there’s not much chance of that without multiple washes, so I give up.
And I probably wouldn’t admit this, even under duress, but I am pleased by the thought that my sparkles might end up on my skin by the end of the night. The image warms me enough that one might say, could suggest, that I give up on the sparkles sooner than I should.
I didn’t buy lingerie for tonight. Not in the technical sense. But this black cotton thong with the most delicate lace trim and matching tank top are certainly new, and they’re certainly prettier than anything else I’ve worn to bed in the last year.
