tarot cards; The Lovers, upright
3.1k words
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I should have made being anti-social a more prominent part of my personality earlier in life. Even if just to get out of being dragged to this stupid house party by my roommate, Persy "I want you to meet my other friends" Reyes. It's not entirely his fault, my annoying sister wouldn't stop chirping in my ear about how exciting it is for her brother to finally "leave his depression room and see other human beings", or whatever it was she said.
For a popular college roomie who gets invited to this kind of shit, Persy isn't even that bad. He lets me know when he's having friends over, and didn't leave me to navigate this drunken house-jungle once we entered about 30 minutes ago. He and his picturesque curls led me through and introduced me to multiple people, none of whom I recognize now, and none of whom I will recognize later. They aren't people that run in my social circles (does family count as a social circle?), and I don't run in theirs.
Needless to say, when I was left to my own devices and told to have some fun by my ever-so-kind roommate, the plan was to escape and run back to the dorms. At least, until I walked outside and realized that being in the middle of the North End, a place in town I never step foot in, meant I would be left to the whims of whatever map I could use. Which was none, since I had left my phone in my other black hoodie.
Which leads to now, where I'm situated in the corner between the second pantry and the door to what is probably the garage. The sheer size of this house amazes me. There is probably 30 to 40 different people in the first floor, and it could still hold more. It's things like this that are probably why my sister likes to drive through this part of town.
"The houses are this really fun in-between size of mini-mansion and two-story suburbia dream," she had said once, "And they have mostly gotten rid of the lead paint! They're very chic."
The only chic thing is the green and yellow patterns the owners of this house painted on one wall, and I don't even think I'm using that word right. Maybe taking a cup of whatever was in the glass bowl on the kitchen island was a mistake, especially now that the buzz under my skin no longer feels like the heavy thrum of the house-music bass. It's also not the buzz of alcohol, seeing as how it keeps crawling through my dermal layers into the subcatenous tissue and then into the muscle wrapped around my bones. It might be trying to get to my heart, but the buzz can't compete with the writhing, trembling mass that is that traitorous, needed muscle.
The mix of bass-boosted synth, idle chitter chatter, and the loud cheering of whatever drunken shenanigans that have been started is starting to make isn't helping with anything at all. I don't want to sit outside and risk someone either wanting to start idle conversation, or have it get back to Persy that I spent this whole thing alone and unable to get home. He'd probably try and ask me why I was alone and didn't make any new friends, or talk to any of his friends, or why I didn't try and find him.
I don't think he wants my answers to those questions, not that he's even going to ask them in the first place. Because I am not going outside; I'm going up the carpeted stairs that go above one of the bathrooms.
The effect is almost, just barely almost, immediate. At the zenith of the house (I think, there might be a secred third floor. Rich people), there's the beginning of a hallway that abruptly turns right about 10 feet in. I can still feel the sound of music thrumming in my feet and hands, but I can be away from the endless chaos if I just turn the-
"Shit!"
I barely dodge the warm body and lukewarm cup of the glass bowl concoction as it falls through a doorway just around the corner. I hear the cup snap under her body as she hits the ground, and watch as she rolls over and hops up into the wall just as quickly. "Fuuuuucking hell—- I just did laundry, fucking dammit—"
Her eyes snap up from the damp alcohol-soaked circle that makes up most of her blue on blue stripped t-shirt, and I forget that it's polite to blink when looking at someone. She's the antithesis of me, in a lot of ways. Smooth, pockmark-free skin, clear eyes that make me think of the 'orbs' my sister loved to gush about as a child, and curly red hair that falls just below her eyebrows.
The buzzing and squirming and thrumming all halt as we sit and stare at each other. The party going on downstairs makes the silence that sits between us weigh heavier with each moment that passes by. In the twilight of the upstairs, it's hard to tell if her face is trying to figure out if she knows me, or if I pose a threat, or both.
Her hand moves, and everything settles back into my body. I'm reminded of when my mother called me a wind-up tin soldier. I'm also reminded of when I was told about my 3 year old anxiety diagnosis. And finally, I'm reminded that I think the person just tried to ask me something.
"I said, who are you—"
"I don't know."
Stupid. Idiotic. Brainless, if I was being generous. Why did I do that? Why didn't I just wait to see if she was repeating her question, or even ask what she had said? Is this my default answer to things? I need a better option than I don't know. Who even says that?
It's the sound of her laughter that drags me back to the real world. She's holding onto her side with one hand, and covering her mouth with the other. The squirming starts to go faster.
If there wasn't a wall so close to me, I'd have stepped back. "I'm sorry, I mean, um, well, I don't know anyone. Wait, no, I know one person, just, I know myself, I just…" I trail off and shove my hands into my sweater pocket. There's nothing in it. Right.
She takes a deep breath and stands back up. Pushing her hair back, she smiles at me. Just her top teeth are visible, or, as visible as they can be. They pull at the top of her lip for a second, and then they disappear. "I should be sorry. I wasn't laughing at you, man, I prommy," Why did she say that? "It was just a great answer. It's… bizarre. I like it."
She takes a cautious step towards me, not enough to crowd me. I can see her face more clearly now, which means she can also see mine. I force that train to stop before it can start to leave the station. "So, I Don't Know, wanna blow this popsicle stand and get some actual food?"
"I don't know." I also don't want to get even more lost, but I don't say that. Why did I have to say that again? Default, default, default.
"Look, man, you don't have to go with me. I'm going with or without you, but if you came up here this early into a party for the same reason as me, you wanna leave. I'm also hungry as fuck, and I want cheap pizza at dark-o'-thirty. You can text someone where you're goin' if you're worried, or you can stay here. I'm just offering company." She tilts her head slightly to look at my face more dead-on. I wish she'd stop looking.
"I don't have my phone, or the keys to my dorm. I have to wait for my roommate to get home if I want to get in." Do I want to go? Is this me implying I want to go, or making excuses not to? Better question, do I want to stay here?
Why am I here?
That's a question for tomorrow. I don't have the energy to go through a full psychoanalysis of my actions tonight right now, not without paper.
Wait, she's turning the corner.
"I do want to go, though."
She looks back, and smiles at me again with the corner of her lip stuck between her teeth again. "Coolio, friend. Who's your roomie? I can tell them where we're going, and give them my number to text me when they get home."
Friend? The way she says it, it sounds like a pet name for strangers. Does she call her real friends something different? Or does it just come out differently? I don't know, the few people I decided to call 'friend' have long since left my life. For good reason.
"Persy. He's in a green sweater."
"A dorm full of cold-blooded creatures. I see. I'll be back in two shakes of a dead lambs tail! Meet me by the front door!" She jumps down the stairs two at a time, and almost spins out at the bottom. She gives me a thumbs up as I begin my way down the stairs, carefully.
I am reminded, as I go down, why I went up a few minutes ago in the first place. Has it been a few minutes? I can't tell, my sense of time is bad on a good day, and it gets worse when I interact with people.
I get to the front door, and I decide to stare at a wall and let the shapes blur together so I don't have to think about all the people that might look my direction. I don't get to that point. The moment I have started to slip backwards where reality is a badly made watercolor painting, she slides in front of me with a sound effect that she makes.
I blink a couple of times as she opens the door to the warm night air, and follow her outside. It's that perfect precipice between summer and autumn. The darkness coats my skin with a gentle touch of lingering heat and a light brush of wind. The sound of the latch closing behind us brings me back into my body, a sensation I hated most days and craved most nights.
She starts to walk down the old sidewalk, and I follow right behind her. Or rather, I try to, since she takes a step backwards to keep in step with me instead. I look at her, she looks at me, and we don't say anything for the next few minutes.
It's nice, being able to walk in silence. My sister loves to talk, which is great for her, she's so incredibly passionate about life and the world and what she does in it. Persy is the same way, but he's more passionate about talking through his homework and home struggles out loud. I don't have the heart to tell him that the walls aren't that thick, and instead usually put on my headphones and let them dull his voice to the idea of consonants and vowels.
"My dad used to live in this building." She points to a historical building-turned-apartment complex. "With his best friend. Their stove top burners worked weird, and they almost caught the kitchen on fire the first week they lived there."
I hum in acknowledgment. I don't know if she wants me to add anything to that story. I don't have anything, if she does.
"He's the one who chose the name Nike for me. She's the goddess of luck in Greek mythology. I didn't like that name very much, so everyone calls me Nickey." She stops for a moment, staring at the place her dad used to live. I wonder if he's dead, and decide that's a bad addition to what she just said.
"My mom named me after a Greek goddess too." I offer instead, and it's her, Nickey's, turn to hum. "Eris. I don't have any feelings on it, though. So it's just Eris."
She looks up at the stars and the gibbous moon. "Goddess of discord. How interesting." She looks back at me. "I'd say more, but I think I'm still kinda buzzed."
It's the face she makes as she says those words that gets me to bark out a laugh. The streetlights should have let me see her features morph and change in reaction, but I wasn't looking for them. I was too busy keeping my composure.
I look back at her, pretty sure I'm smiling. "Yeah, I agree with that."
Then, like she's a cartoon character, she slaps her palms to her cheeks and shakes her head back and forth vigorously. When she's done, the glint in her eyes only adds to the cartoonish moment. "Let's go on an adventure!" Her hands come up and grab my shoulders, and drop down by her hips when I flinch.
"I thought we were getting food?" I stumble for a moment as she starts to walk down the street again.
"And isn't that an adventure? Wandering the night streets, in hunt for an objective?" She turns around and walks backwards. "Oh Eris, found in the discord of a college party, this is only the beginning!"
She holds a hand out as she walks, almost tripping on a raised chunk of concrete. I stare at it for a moment, thoughts swirling around in my mind.
I won't see Nickey again after tonight. If Persy or I haven't met her at this point, our paths will never cross again. I'm scared about what will happen later, if Persy gets home later than usual, or if she realizes I'm not some exciting person to go wandering with.
Will she hate me tomorrow morning?
I take her hand, and she laughs.
Nickey guides me to the center of downtown, which is strange this late at night. I can hear the spots of town where bars are open and thriving, none of which are close by. There's crowds of people wandering around, taking up the entire sidewalk space and forcing us to wander into the street.
We make our way down one of the walk-only streets, and she stops in front of a pizzeria that is still open, and has people sitting outside with paper plates covered in grease. "Voila, heaven for those of us who don't like to sleep at night." She spreads her arms and does a little spin, stopping to dramatically point at the entrance. "You ready?"
I look at the windows, which are covered entirely in stickers. The neon sign is duller than the ones around it, making the spot look like it should be found in an alleyway, and not on this center of pedestrian patronage. It looks like a dive bar fronting as a pizza place.
"I guess."
My guess was right. The interior of this place is small and dark, with ripped leather seating around the singular long table, and worn bar stools in front of the sticker plastered windows. There's music playing, nowhere near as loud as the house music, and even more stickers littering the walls and ceiling.
We go around to the register, and the employee's eyes widen when he sees us. "Nickey! I didn't expect you tonight, I thought you had a party or something." He leans on the counter, and looks at me. "Fresh meat?"
"Be nice." Nickey flicks her fingers at the guy. "You make me sound like some sort of people eater."
"Nonsense. You're a ginger, it's soul eater. The usual?" He steps back and spins a pair of tongs around in front of the case full of pizzas. I glance over at the chalkboard, which lists all the flavors and toppings available. There's some sort of feeling crawling in my veins, making their way back to my heart.
Someone taps my shoulder, and I turn to see Nickey and the pizza employee looking at me. Waiting, expecting me to give them something. What I want? Do I want something? I think I'm hungry, but it's hard to say this late at night. Whatever alcohol was in my system is gone. The buzz comes back.
"Do you want a cheese? We can get more later, if you're still hungry. And you can try some of mine too." Nickey's voice is non-judgmental, and still has the lilt of excitement that's been threaded through her every word tonight.
I just nod and try to crush the sensations that are making their way through my being. The world around reminds me more of a painting than reality. The noise burns its way into my ears, the hand that circles around my wrist and gently pulls me through the door is more akin to sandpaper than skin, and the cool wood of the bench I am eventually led to is a salve.
“Sorry about that.” I turn my eyes to a very real looking Nickey. She folds a slice of green-tinged cheese pizza and takes a bite. The sigh that comes out of her hooks into the center of my chest and pulls it tight, drawing every horrible sensation that is destroying my innards towards it. “I didn’t even think about how small that place is inside, and how the music is. If you need something, let me know. Or if you want your slice.”
She looks down at the foam clam shell for a moment. Then, with careful tugs, she tears a top corner off her slice, and the slice below, and puts them on the plate with a single slice of normal cheese. I watch as she leans back on the bench, and eats her food while taking in the street. Her eyes dart to every motion, and the stars, and the trees lining the street. Despite the way her gaze moves, her posture is relaxed.
I clear my throat, feeling the muscles in my body shake. “Can I…” I look at my plate of food. Without a word, she passes it over, and we eat in relative silence, watching this microcosm of the world move around and exist.
I look back at her. I will never see her again after tonight. She might wake up tomorrow and wish she hadn’t spent tonight with me. No matter the future, right now, it’s nice to just share space with another person.
I think I’m going to miss her, if only for tomorrow.
