I earn an unnecessarily condescending look.
“Seriously? How could you not know the name of one of the most exclusive clubs in the city?”
“Uh, cause I live in New YorkState,” I respond. My best friend curls her brows, looking at me like I’ve grown a second nose. “So it’s just a club, then?”
She and I have never been big club people, and we only venture out to bars and stuff once or twice a month, so I’m kind of surprised that she seems so excited about this one.
“Just a club.” She shakes her head like I’m a petulant child asking where colors come from. “New people are literally waitlisted for months to get into this thing. I only managed to score these because my cousin practically killed herself to get onto one of those lists. You should’ve heard how mad she was on the phone; she tested positive for the flu this morning. Luckily, I talked her into giving us her tickets so they wouldn’t go to waste!”
“Wow. How come I’ve never even heard of it?” I ask, lowering my voice when I spot our professor walking up to the podium.
“Because you exist in a cave, hermit. Thank God you have a sexy Sisyphus-type like me to roll the rocks away, or you’d never see the sun, Cass.”
My giggle is cut short by the start of the lecture. I straighten into my shitty, stiff seat and open my class notes, but my mind keeps drifting to the wordcity. Something cold and charged shoots down my spine every time I think about it. Memories I’ve tried so hard to forget rumble to the surface, but I shove them back down, refocusing on the low drone of the professor’s lecture.
After a grueling hourand a half of droning boredom, Sof and I are finally released into the thrall of bodies rushing from the hall. An onslaught of snowflakes smacks into us as we slip through the door, throwing us into each other’s huddled warmth.
“How about I give you a ride to your place?” I say through a laugh, grabbing the crook of her arm just in time to prevent her ass from sliding down the icy path. “Can’t have you breaking your neck before we feed you a proper dinner.”
“Such a caring friend,” she deadpans, but squeezes my arm in return.
When we reach my car, both of us have snow sticking to our soggy butts from slipping on the pavement, and we’re both losing battles with our fits of laughter.
I crank the heating as soon as we slip into the vehicle, pull out of the lot, and turn toward Sophia’s place. This weather sure doesn’t seem the most night-out-friendly.This club had better be a once-in-a-lifetime experience after having to brave all of this wind and snow,I think, as I switch the windshield wipers on faster.
By the time I finally fit my key into my apartment door and yank it open, one thing is astoundingly clear. It’s gonna take some serious self-convincing to get my ass back out into that glacial weather.
I kick off my shoes and crank the small, rickety radiator in the corner of the room to full blast. I decide to remain there, shivering and rotating around it like a rotisserie chicken, for an embarrassingly long time, until I eventually deem myself de-popsicled enough to go put away my stuff.
Being a proper degenerate in a New York winter is not for the weak.
Since my college, Riverside U, is about forty minutes from the city, many students end up taking the night train down on Friday evening, finishing their weekend benders on Sunday with just enough time to scramble through their homework and have a nasty hangover in their Monday morning classes.
Soph and I tried that routine once. When Monday morning rolled by, Sophia was completely fine. Me? I spent an unfortunate amount of bonding time with the bathroom trash can in the Marketing department building. I couldn’t attend a single class in that building for the rest of the semester without being bombarded with vomit-inducing stomach-curdling memories.
I’m the aforementioned weak.
I bristle at the trail of thought, remembering what happened the last time I headed into the city. Before I can ravel it up again like I did earlier, the memory unfurls in my mind, hitting like a physical blow to my chest. My fingers grip the edge of the nearby dresser.
Unbidden, my gaze leaps toward the bottom of my bed, where I’ve poorly hidden the last dregs of evidence from that night. The bloodstained shirt I should have thrown away weeks ago, but can’t bring myself to touch.
I know I should’ve gotten rid of every shred of evidence from that night, but every time I thought about it, this irrational worry would erupt, ultimately dissuading me. What if the evidence is the only thing that makes it all real? Without those bloody scraps, I have absolutely no proof that any of it actually happened. That meetinghimhappened.
More often than I’d like to admit, I find my mind wandering to the bite of iron and sweaty musk. That tired gaze, a deep ocean blue thatseemed to see straight through me, even as the life was draining out of him.
My pulse quickens traitorously. Even now, the memory of his hand gripping my wrist, strong and desperate, makes my skin flush with heat I have no business feeling.
So many useless questions spawn in the memory, and I hate that one drifts far above the rest, accompanied by a flutter of something dangerously close to longing.
Did he survive?
And worse, the question I refuse to even fully form:What would happen if I saw him again?
Like always, I shut the desperate line of curiosity down before I start stewing, but not before my body betrays me with a shiver that has nothing to do with the cold.
I just need to move on.
The more I dig, the deeper the shit I’ll be in.
