“Brandy?”
“You know who the fuck I’m talking about.”
Alcohol is funny. It’s arrogant. It’s dizzying. One time somebody told me it’s like taking shots of dopamine to the head.
“How much did you drink tonight?”
She shrugs and looks at her twisted sarong.
The humid air has her baby hair curling along her fat cheeks under her scarf and I hate that I don’t know how any of the shit on her body ended up the way it did.
“I asked you how much you drank.”
“Go to hell. You drink all fuck—”
“Watch your mouth.” I breathe out. “Do you hear me?”
Her chest pumps out in quick motions, and mine does too. “Why? What you gon' do if I don’t? Hit me?Make megive you what you want like you did that girl?”
I swipe my tongue out to wet my dry lips while I stare at her wearing everything I obsessed over for this moment—the one where she’d go out and do the things a girl her age should do without me. It’s all the shit I already did and couldn’t do anymore because of those last few words she hissed out.
I take a step forward and she stays planted.
“That’s what you think I did to her?” I ask.
I can’t even say her name anymore. It’s lodged somewhere deep in my throat where I tried to bury it with all the shit I keep torturing myself with.
“No,” she squeaks, lifting her chin and squinting at me. “That’s the problem with me and you.”
“What is?”
“Her.”
It’s just like that day in my bedroom where LA hid between our words. Now the girl whose name I can’t even utter is back. That’s the shit they don’t tell men like me about afterward—how the girl never leaves our subconscious. She’salwaysthere. I can’t even drown her in alcohol, no matter how much I try.
“I—I remember reading the way she looked for the first time back when that report leaked online,” she whispers with a slur. “White, blonde, blue eyes.”
She swallows and her throat bobs. “My heart ain’t know which way to beat—with her or with you.”
I reach out and curl my fingers in her sarong because they’re screaming at me again.
“I hate that girl.” She stabs a finger into my chest. “I hate her so fucking much and I hate your ass too beca—because I should believe that girl. Right? I should believe what she said you did.”
“Lourdes,” I mutter, yanking her to me.
“I saw it on Twitter. I read about the horrible shit you did.” Her eyes widen. “But then... I saw you at—at practice, dribbling that ball like you was born with that shit in your hands and smiling like it was impossible that you could ever do something so ugly to anybody.”
“C’mon,” I whisper, pulling the scarf off her head and clawing my fingers through her braids. “You drunk, kid.”
She pushes her chest so far into mine that I think I can feel her indecisive heart beating. Her arms knock my hand from her hair as she thrusts them around my neck and my loud ass fingers are almost at their breaking point because they want me to reward her for being so damn perfect.
I smell sunscreen and the tart scent of whatever alcohol she let other dudes feed her while she dangles from my neck. Her eyes are wet, like she has to convince the world that I was never a bad person—maybe just a misunderstood one.
“Iamdrunk,” she murmurs. “And I’ll do it again. Is that how she made you do what you did? She did all the shit you didn’t like for her to do over and over again? Do you hear what you’re doing to my head? I’m blaming her. I’m not supposed to—to do that.”
Tears line the rims of her eyes because alcohol is irrational too. It’s almost as irrational as my loud ass fingers because they’ve heard enough. Their nerves drum against the muscles, warming them up.
Toilets flush next to us and the girls keep rotating in and out of the stalls as if I never ran in on them. Their loud voices overpower ours, and the DJ screams in the mic.
