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Jonah
I found myself standing in a dark club, the black walls shining with bright colors under the strobe lights. My head hung to one side just as my glass did in my slowly dipping wrist, and my feet were planted on the floor like two pillars of steel. I was overtly aware of the weight of myself, that cup, my jeans, and my button-down.
How the fuck had I ended up here?
And… What was that? Who was that?
My line of vision began at the black miniskirt which swayed in and out as the hips that inhabited it moved with the music. Two legs—beautiful, shiny legs—which stuck out from the bottom, each wrapped in a black, high-top sneaker at the end. Above the skirt was a back I recognized quite well peeking out from behind that curtain of silky hair before hiding again with each movement. She turned around.
Kai’s shirt looked something like a censor bar, nothing more than a black rectangle of a top that encompassed her. No straps, no length. A spinning dream stalking toward me as the earth beneath my feet nearly tipped me over.
Before I realized it, two hands were on my chest.
“More funk, Jojo!” My eyebrows fell inward. I couldn’t decipher what the fuck that meant, the dizzying mass of swaying humans in front of me only deepening my confusion. She repeated herself. “You’re drunk, Jojo!” Ah. That made more sense. A grin slid across my cheeks. Her hair parted to the sides as her face angled up at me fully, her eyes smiling just as much as her mouth was. “Don’t worry!” I watched her lips as she spoke. “I’ve got you. Just have fun.”
Fun? Fun? Is that what I was supposed to be doing? Confusion, certainly. But fun? If I was remembering correctly, and I’m almost certain I was, my beautiful girl and her stealthy sidekicks June and Oli had dragged me out of the house for the simple reason that today was a long day and it was still early. I hardly thought it a good enough excuse to land us here, in a fucking nightclub.
And so, I had started drinking. Ah, yes, that’s right. I had started drinking. Because…Justin. My face dragged down to the floor as if two ghostly palms were physically stretching it. Justin.
“Jojo.” Kai’s sweet hands replaced the ghost’s, holding my cheeks softly as she looked at me. Beautiful, beautiful girl.
She turned around to speak to two people ferociously making out on the dance floor: one tall and bearded, the other a bit smaller with long, brown hair. Oh. Oli and June. Kai seemed to give up on whatever she was saying to them because their faces did not disconnect for even a moment.
The world went black, and then I was following Kai down a dark hallway. Squiggles and lines of colorful paint spread up the walls that surrounded us. Another flash of darkness, and I was sitting on a closed toilet in a square bathroom. Kai stole the heavy glass that dangled between my fingers and replaced it with an open water bottle. When had she gotten that?
I took her silent order to drink, tilting my head up with the bottle between my lips though keeping my attention on the person in front of me. She looked at herself in the mirror, wiping a finger under each eye as she inspected her makeup. Her hands then bent inwards to pull her censored bar up a bit higher before her two palms grabbed her tits and shifted them into the new position of her shirt. A thin stream of cold water awakened my senses as it slipped from the lip of the bottle down the side of my neck. It was a rare occurrence that I felt so jealous of a pair of hands. I wanted her to pull that stupid top down and sit on me.
Our wrestling match earlier was a joke. And yet, it wasn’t. There was something different about the way she’d been looking at me lately, and I was drunk enough to investigate further.
The empty plastic bottle hitting the floor caught her attention, and she turned back to where I was seated just as I wiped my wrist up the wet streak on my neck. Naturally, she approached me. Unnaturally, I wrapped a hand around her back and pulled her down on my lap so she straddled me. Even if I was drunk, or so she claimed, I took astute note of the fact that she did not whimper in fear or flinch when I grabbed her. Instead, she placed her hands comfortably on my chest, though the question in her eyes was hard to miss.
“Your necklace,” I lied, needing more time to sense her reaction. “I just wanted to fix your necklace.”
I removed my hands from her back and willed them to slowly pick up the pendant she wore, twisting the thin chain. I took the opportunity to graze her soft skin with my knuckles until the clasp settled at the back of her neck. She was utterly still, silent, as I placed the piece of jewelry down again.
“Do you think we’ll always be this close?” I asked, thinking back to the way I’d seen Oli and June on the dance floor, deeply in love and unbothered by the world around them. If I was going to make a move that could destroy our friendship, I at least needed the security.
“Of course.” She breathed deeply, inching one thumb to play with my collar. “I love you.”
Not in the way I wanted her to, but it was nice to hear. Perhaps I could get her there. My eyes trailed down the line of her jaw, over her throat to the rim of bones that sat above her chest. “I really wish you did.” I pushed her hair behind her ear and leaned in close to whisper to her, my fingers sliding down to her shoulder. “I really wish you did. Because I’d put a collar on this pretty little neck, and I’d wear the key for the rest of my life just so everyone could see it.”
Kai loosened a small squeak as I savored the smell of her perfume. Not a thing in the world mattered. Not even the fact that we were sitting in arguably one of the most atrocious bathrooms I’d ever seen.
A sudden thump on the door interrupted our moment.
Jeez, what was this? The night of disruptive doors? First the wrestling match, now this.
The bang was followed by a voice. A voice I knew. A voice I did not care to ever hear again. God fucking dammit. “Hello?! Get out of there!”
I immediately lifted Kai from my lap with two hands, her body sliding down the front of mine as I placed her feet on the floor. Her nails clawed at my shirt. I stared down at her brown eyes, which peered at me not with a vacant distance, but with a glimmer that inched toward the surface, a speck of hope peeking out from behind its shield.
Holy shit. Was she into me? Or was it the alcohol?
No time to think. The door was screaming. The floor was spinning.
“It’s Caroline,” I whispered.
Kai’s eyebrows fell into confusion, but I pointed in the direction of the voice, telling her everything she needed to know.
