I narrow my eyes. “I did, actually.”
Freddy laughs. Across the room, Ellie 2 shouts at Alfred, “If you had justtoldme you like to dress up as a woman, then none of this would have happened!”
Alfred blushes, fumbling for his script.
“I think someone assigned the character cards wrong,” Benny grumbles.
Miriam throws up her hands in exasperation. “It was mostly random!”
Cop Hector strolls past. His detective notepad is taking a bath in his cocktail glass. “You’re all under arrest,” he slurs.
I point my finger at Freddy. “I need another drink, but when I get back, Iwillget you to admit that someone who has had, say, thirty perms in their life would know showering risks deactivating the ammonium thioglycolate.”
“Please.” Freddy winks. “Everybody knows that.”
Alex comes out of the bathroom right as I reenter the hallway. I scoot up to him and slap the wall beside his head. He freezes, amused.
“Is it true you stand to inherit the club now that Doctor Disco is dead?” I ask.
“Disco was like a brother to me,” Alex says. “Sure, we were business partners, but I’d never off him. You, on the other hand…”
“What?”
“The bouncers overheard you and Disco fighting.”
I gasp theatrically. “We never fought!”
Alex consults his script, then goes rogue. “You were mad he wasn’t giving you enough stage time. Disco said you were pitchy.”
“He did not. That’s not on the script!”
He rasps out a laugh and grabs me by my waist, pulling me against him. “I guess you’ll have to sing something to prove you’re not the killer.”
“Alex, the stakes are too high, you have to take this seriously!” I cry.
But this feeling—this giddiness I can say with 100 percent confidence I’ve never felt so intensely—swallows us both up in a feedback loop of wanting and being wanted. The days apart are demanding an end, and my free hand comes up behind his neck, and I let him tip me back a little, and—
“Ha!”
My drink tilts, sloshing out of the glass. Alex and I both twist to see Benny staring at us, mouth agape.
“Fari, you owe me five bucks!” he shouts, running off.
I groan in exasperation, and Alex hums against my throat, “You said I didn’t have to stay away from you if I wasn’t the murderer.”
“Did you just give yourself away so you could kiss me?”
“Yes,” he says, tilting my face toward his, and rumbles, “I’m done with games.”
We slip away when the party winds down—the murderer still at large due to an admittedly botched investigation—and head back to the West Village, where cold air and wind and lights revive us from the edge of sleep the Uber ride sank us into.
“When’syourbirthday?” I ask Alex when he comes out of a bodega and hands me a Gatorade. “And why didn’t you get the nipple-top bottles? They taste better.”
He slants his head, looking down at me with amusement. The blue lights of the neon sign above us paint his face a dreamy glow. “They definitely taste better, but they were out. And my birthday is Christmas Eve.”
“What?”
“For real.”
