Page 5 of Night Fever
I hop out of bed, furiously searching for my phone in the tangled-up sheets on my untucked mattress. That’s also when my phone starts ringing, which is actually a huge help because the sound guides me right to it, hidden in some crevice in myblankets..
“Hello?” I answer, eager to get my friend’s call out of theway.
“Go-go-go-go-go-go go shorty, it’s your birthday. We’re gonna party like it’s your birthday. We’re gonna sip Bacardi like it’s your birthday. And you know we don’t give awhat‘cause it’s yourbirthday!”
I indulge Olivia with a laugh and I can’t help but smile, as her off-key singing and her exclamation in place of the song’s expletive are, frankly, verydelightful.
“Thank you babe,” I say, picking a sports bra, t-shirt and yoga pants from my basket of clean laundry on the small round kitchen table tucked into the corner of myapartment.
“We are going to go out,” she says with determination. “We are going to drink. We are going to get a little bit crazy for your twenty-first.”
I met Olivia when we were both very young. I swear she came to my school in third grade, and her story is that she came in second grade. I suppose she would know better than I would, but I wouldn’t be able to pass a polygraph if hooked up to one and asked when I first met Olivia. She was just kind of always around. One of the pretty, popular girls who could seamlessly travel between cliques and who was a born, naturalpeacemaker.
“My little baby’s first drink,” she says. “First official, legal, over twenty-one drink, Imean.”
“Mhm,” I reply into the phone with a smirk in my voice before hitting speaker and tossing it onto thebed.
I can’t help thesmirk.
I peel myself out of my pajamas, half-twisted around my body and slightly sweaty from the night. The fitful, restless night because my thoughts and dreams were all occupied by the stranger in the bathroom who had claimed my virginity in the most incredibleway.
“Wait,” Olivia says. I can envision her tapping her chin. “It sounds like there’s something you’re not tellingme.”
“What do you mean? I ask with a little bit of a sarcastic edge in my voice, unable to drop that smirk. “If you can sense there’s something I’m not telling you, then maybe in a way Iamtelling you something.Right?”
“Oh good lord,” Olivia replies. “Just tell me what itis.”
“Okay,” I say, exhaling deeply and biting my lip. “Somethinghappened.”
“What?” she asks eagerly. “No. You didn’t. You hadsex?”
The incredulity in her voice borders oninsulting.
“You don’t have to sound sosurprised!”
“But I am surprised!” she shouts into the phone. I continue busying myself with getting ready to head out the door, dodging her squeals as I throw my long brown hair up into a bun in the mirror above the small chest of drawers next to mybed.
“This had to happen some time,” I sigh, checking myreflection.
“Do you feeldifferent?”
I suppose I hadn’t thought about that yet. Through all the reflecting on the past year I did last night, I didn’t do much thinking after I left thebar.
And that dull ache inside me, the desire for more, it’s only dissipated a little. The truth is that there is now a far greater need that’s replaced it, and it centers on the man I threw myselfat.
Regretfully, I didn’t get his name. I could go back to that bar, but the very thought of going through those doors again terrifies me. Plus, this wasn’t supposed to be athing.
No, this was a one-off, a ten-minute stand, and despite not being able to get his diamond-cut jaw or his scent out of my head all night, I wouldn’t go back to see himagain.
I’m glad I didn’t get hisname.
“I also had a drink last night,” I say, “though I’m not sure if it was after midnight or before. So technically I don’t know if I’ve had that first legal drink yet, which is why, yes, I will let you take me outtonight.”
“Uh huh,” Olivia replies, “you didn’t tell me whether you felt anydifferent.”
Different from what, exactly, I think tomyself.
“Nah, not really,” Isay.
