EIGHTEEN
Rowan
I must come across as miserable at work, no matter how hard I’ve been trying to keep my head down, because one of my coworkers invited me to a party tonight.
I must actuallybemiserable, because I accepted her invitation, and now I’m walking up to the door of a condo I’ve never been to before, to walk into a party filled with people I really don’t know.
I don’t really have friends; people my age are usually interested in being wild and taking risks, if they’re not the group that goes to the gym twice a day every day. I just don’t fit in with them, and there isn’t room for my illness in their little groups.
Even with that in mind, I’m excited about tonight. This is the first not-work-related party I’ve ever been to, and the girl who invited me seems really nice. I think this is her condo, but I’m not entirely sure. I just know she was really excited when she told me to come, and that was the tipping point for me. All it took was someone acting like they cared that I showed up.
God, that’s pathetic.
The inside of the condo is eclectic, clearly thrown together by a group of early-twenty-somethings making amish-mash of furniture they either brought with them or found somewhere cheap, and the whole condo smells like vanilla and cinnamon, courtesy of several candles burning throughout the living room.
There’s a massive, clear storage tub on the kitchen counter, filled with blue liquid and an array of fruit slices, and people walk over to it with a big soup ladle, scooping some out and dumping it into their plastic cups. Cups like the ones Dad uses.
“You made it!”
The girl from work runs over to me, a cup full of blue booze-soup in one hand, the other raised over her head in excitement. Her cropped sweater lifts to expose her pierced belly button, and I shudder, thinking about how much that must have hurt. I only have my earlobes pierced, and I think I’m probably just fine with that.
“Hi, Mariah,” I say, trying to cover my nerves with a smile. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“Girl, of course! I’ve been wanting to get together for so long. Want a drink?”
“I’m good with just water,” I tell her.
One thing I can appreciate about my generation is that, at least from where I’ve been standing, they seem a lot better at accepting the word ‘no’ when I tell them I don’t drink. It always seems to be the older groups who push it on me or wonder why, what must be wrong with me to not want to get all liquored up at any given moment. I already feel a little more comfortable, not feeling like I have to lie or make up an excuse to not have a cup of that awful looking blue crap in my hand.
I make my way around the party, taking in the different people in attendance – some already practically swallowing each other’s faces, a few sitting on the couch, others dancing in a corner to the hip-hop music playing over the bluetooth speaker.
Butts and waists bounce and gyrate to the music; some in the air, and others directly onto the crotches of someone standing behind them.
I decide to join the couch-sitters, both because I want to claim a spot in case I start feeling bad, and because I see Emmett among them. We may not be besties, but he’s a safe familiar face, and I’ll take it.
“So anyway,” one of the guys in the group says, “she’s riding me and my phone rings. It’s my girl.”
My lip curls in not-so-subtle disgust as he recounts – in detail - his phone call with the girlfriend he was actively cheating on, and I see Emmett throwing me an apologetic cringe, like this is one of his friends and he actually listens to this crap on a regular basis. Maybe I’m glad that date went so poorly. Do all men talk about their sexual experiences like this? I would hate to have wound up as cheap party conversation.
The couch group isn’t for me. I decide to move along to the kitchen, where I find Mariah cutting up more fruit to toss into the booze-soup, and I take the spot next to her, pick up a knife and a lemon, and start cutting.
“Do you do these a lot?” I ask.
“Uh-huh! Every weekend. Sometimes during the week, too, but don’t tell Davis. He’d kill me if he knew I was coming to work hungover.”
“What does that…feel like?”
She stops slicing, taking a second to consider the question. “A hangover? What, have you, like,neverdrank before?”
I shake my head. “Not once.”
“Well,” she tells me as she balls her black hair into a bun on top of her head, wrapping an elastic around a couple of times to secure it in place, “if you ever want to, this is a safe group to do it with. I’d babysit you and all.”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’ve never even been to one of these before.”
“Girl. Seriously?”
I nod.
