It takes me a second to piece together what she’s trying to say. “Like I’m—”
Her face pops up again. Her eyes are big, a little too big, like she’s on the edge of panic. “Like you’re expecting a punch in the face.” Her voice, too, has a breathlessness, like now that she’s started, she can’t stop. “I see you all the time in the ED. That kid who shot himself in the leg, remember? And the guy who had a heart attack, with the wife who kept claiming she should do the CPR instead of me. And the lady who went into labor on the side of the road. And Oscar and Yvonne and the rest of our frequent flyers, and those kids who lost control of their bonfire, and—”
“And the mom who flipped her car,” I finish for her, trying not to remember her shaking hands as she bent over the little girl, her venom in the break room.
“No.” That same venom is back, but fainter, softer, like sunlight filtered through a gauzy curtain. “You were different that time.”
Iwasdifferent. I was hungry.
She shakes her head, clearing a thought away maybe. The panic’s gone. The venom too.
“Ellis.” She makes my name sound like a full sentence. “Can I try again? Start over from the beginning?”
I nod. She steps closer. I suffocate on the smell of her curiosity, like anise and black pepper cracked between her molars.
“Okay. Good. Okay.” A twitch of a smile, like she’s nervous about letting it all the way onto her face. She tugs the cup from my hands and finishes it in one go. I imagine her tasting remnants of me amid the plastic and alcohol. “Wanna dance?”
The empty cup joins its brethren on the counter. “Yeah,” I say. “Sure.”
Veer holds out a hand and I take it, and then we’re threading back toward the living room with its blaring speakers and twisting bodies. She walks fast, like she’s worried that if we slow down, I’ll change my mind. I remember the wailing wife, her insistence that she’d sue the medics for negligence. I remember the kids and the acrid smell of smoke. But I don’t remember the others, and even if I did, I definitely don’t remember which medics brought them in. But Veer noticed me, all those times. She remembered.
That shouldn’t make me feel warm, but it does. Or maybe the two drinks I had at Rosy’s are starting to get to me.
The living room is lit blue green by LED striplights, punctuated by the glow of phone screens. The music roars and warps, going fuzzy where the song is too loud or too low for the cheap speakers to handle. We swerve around furniture shunted into corners to make way for unapologetic bodies, and Veer tugs me out of the way of a trio in combat boots and cartoon character backpacks who are shoving each other to the pump of the bass.
“Watch it.” But she’s smiling, like it’s less a warning, more a suggestion. Watch them. Wouldn’t that be fun?
In front of us, someone in a hot-pink T-shirt screeches and runs full tilt at someone else. They collapse to the floor together, a swamp of limbs and laughter.
“Shithead,” Veer calls to them, and they swipe giddily at her ankles. Another partygoer tips head over heels as we pass, Doc Martens barely missing the back of Veer’s skull.
“Are you sure—”
Her teeth flash, and she steers me toward the wall. “It’s cool. I’ve got you.”
The song switches, goes slower and sludgier, and Veer pushes her fingers into the spaces between mine until we’re twined together, swaying. She leans in, so close I can smell the orange juice and cinnamon on her breath, and whispers something.
“What?”
She pulls back a bit. Repeats it, louder. “Ever been to a party like this before?”
“No.” I’m sure she knew the answer before she asked the question.
She looks at me, and the air grows heavy with the smell of sweat and spit and rapture.
“Me neither,” she whispers, so quiet I see it in the earnest curve of her mouth more than hear it. So quiet that it might be just for me, that I might be the reason that she, too, has never been anywhere like this before.
Her chin is tilted up. I think she wants me to kiss her.
I think I want to too.
The song ends, and another one starts. Veer shrugs her fingers out of mine and throws her head back, howling or laughing or singing along, I’m not sure which. She dances a few steps back, beckoning me to follow.
“Come on!” she insists, but I’m frozen. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be the way she wants me to be.
Her friend in the pink T-shirt is back, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, and Veer holds up one finger and mouths something.
“It’s okay,” I shout back. It doesn’t matter what she said. That’s always the right answer.
