Page 25 of So Thirsty

Elisa drinks in Naomi. She approaches her, slips two fingers under her chin, and then kisses her right on the mouth.

My jaw drops. I swear it hits the floor.

The kiss lasts for a solid minute.

Eventually, Elisa pulls away. She strokes Naomi’s face with the back of her hand, then says, “Yes, let’s go to everyone.”

I lag behind, let Ilie and Elisa walk ahead. I grab Naomi by the sleeve of her jacket.

“Um, what was that?” I whisper.

“A friendly greeting?” she says, laughing a little. “Don’t overthink it, okay? It’s cultural.”

“Oh? What culture, exactly?”

“Hey. Just be present. Open-minded. Have you considered the possibility that this could be the best night of your life?”

“No,” I say.

She blows a raspberry.

“Most I can hope for is that it’s not the worst. Or the last,” I say. Bringing my voice down to a whisper of a whisper, I add, “He closed the gate.”

“Overthinking,” she says. She takes my hand and spins me around. “Come on. Would it kill you to loosen up?”

“It might.”

She gives me this look that makes me want to swallow my tongue. She’s serious. She’s rarely serious. “You want to pretend you’re some dull suburban normie. We both know that’s not who you really are. Be honest with yourself for a second. Don’t you want to let your hair down?”

“Not here. Not now. This whole thing is weird. These people, this place. Let’s call a car while we still can. The snow—”

She lets go of my hand. “You assume the worst, and it’s this self-fulfilling prophecy. You think you’re in control, that you’re playing it safe by never taking any chances or leaving your comfort zone, but—”

“That’s not fair. Don’t bully me for using common sense.”

“Someday you’re gonna look back on your life and there’ll be nothing but regret.”

She starts after Ilie and Elisa.

After my wrist surgery I randomly started reading up on the Hindenburg. One rainy Thursday afternoon during summer break, Naomi drove me out to the memorial in Lakehurst and we walked around the field where the zeppelin went down in flames.

That was when I told her I’d decided to drop out of NYU and move back to Jersey.

“Without the scholarship, I’ll never be able to get out from under the debt. Even with the scholarship it was a lot,” I’d said, trying to get at an itch inside my cast. “It just isn’t worth it. Risk a lifetime of debt for what? A degree is a degree.”

“I probably shouldn’t smoke a cigarette here, right?” she asked, not acknowledging anything I’d said.

“Probably not.” I waited for her to call me out, bring up the Smith ordeal and my subsequent spiral, which resulted in my GPA’s nosedive, costing me my scholarship, and culminating in my drunkenly falling off a curb and breaking my wrist in front of a Saturday-night crowd on St. Marks Place, almost getting run over by a cab, the front tire missing my skull by an inch. The other, less practical, more shameful factors in my decision to drop out.

Instead, she said, “Not to be insensitive, but I feel like it’s pretty obviously a shit idea to ride in a giant gas-filled sky balloon.”

“Yeah,” I’d said.

“Worth it for the view, though. Don’t you think? Worth the risk?”

“View is fine from here.”

I knew the point she was trying to make, but it was the wrong place to make it. I knew the charred spirits roaming the field with us would be on my side, would agree with me. If they had it all to do over again, they would have stayed safely on the ground. Never taken the risk.