The Lost Night (Page 43)

There was a woman on my left with cool sleeve tattoos and I asked her about them and she was cool, too, an artist who’d designed some of them herself, and I asked her how old she was and she said thirty-one and that’s only two years younger than me, so I felt better about that, too. We talked about a ton of things; I don’t remember what, but we really liked each other.

Then someone announced it was time to go to the party and I was confused because I thought we were at the party already, but apparently this was just a pregame even though it was ungodly late, and Rocco’s roommate was dancing burlesque at a warehouse party or something, and he could get us all in, so we were going to go. Who knew these things happened on Thursday nights? I think I said that aloud. We walked, laughing into the hot night, then Josh hung back a little so it was just us walking together, and I can’t remember what we talked about, but he was smiling at me.

Oh, I think at one point the girl with the tattoos pulled me aside to tell me Josh is a really good guy and I smiled and beamed and was just, like, “I know.”

Oh, and when we were almost at the venue I complained that I was starting to get sleepy and the girl said, “Here!” and got out the baggie and dipped her keys into the end and held it up to me, and I figured it was such a small amount that I went ahead and sucked it up into my nose, and I’m not sure it did anything, but it did sort of taste bad in there, like when you’re congested and you sniff in some of that nose-clearing stuff. Afrin.

Then we were at the party and there was a big line outside, but Rocco knew to just walk to the front and say something and when we turned around he had entry passes like business cards for all of us, and we took them and showed them at the door and showed our IDs, too, and put everything back into our wallets and then the party inside was like a storm, flashbulbs and lasers and strobe lights and platforms with pretty people in lamé bathing suits dancing on them, and a mass of people dancing everywhere, like a whole shag carpet of dancing people. And Josh got me a beer and then we were dancing together, swooping around and letting the music pound through our skeletons, and I wondered why I never dance like this anymore, and then Josh grabbed my chin and kissed me, and it was kind of a gross, sloppy kiss, but we were both drunk so what do you expect, and then we were making out on the dance floor and I kind of giggled, remembering how Edie used to call dance-floor make-outs DFMOs, and then

* * *

Blackness.

* * *

Pain like lightning. I squeezed my eyes closed again for a moment, taking stock, then opened them into the light streaming through my windows. Normally I close the curtains before bed; normally I pull the blackout shade down behind them. I rolled over, something grinding along the inside of my skull.

I was in my own bed, fully clothed, my jeans torn at the knee. Josh was not beside me. I stared at the sheets while pieces of the night resurfaced like developing Polaroids: shots at Jimmy Rhoda’s. An impassioned discussion with a girl at that kid’s shitty apartment. My stomach churned: a house key hovering in front of my face, a tiny hill of white powder on the end. Music so loud it joggled my skull. How had I gotten home? Had I embarrassed myself? Fuck.

Everything hurt. Every inch of my entrails ached and roiled; my head buzzed with pain like it was a bell being struck, and my neck, back, and shoulders were one hard mass. Being awake hurt. Being alive hurt. And I felt a torrent of self-hatred, shame, and disgust singeing every nerve ending at the same time, over and over and over again.

Moving slowly, I sat up and crawled off the end of the bed, pausing there, the world flashing blue and white, to see if I’d pass out. When I didn’t, I lumbered toward the bathroom, hanging on to furniture as I passed. I sat on the toilet for a while, then swallowed four Advils, the bare minimum to have any effect. I drank two cupped handfuls of water, unsure I could make it to the kitchen for a glass. Then, almost crawling, I crossed to the dresser, took the antidepressant I’d missed the night before, and climbed back into bed.

I woke up to someone touching my shoulder. Tessa.

“How are you feeling?” she asked when I squinted at her.

I groaned.

“I brought you this.” She handed me a huge Gatorade in my favorite flavor: orange. I struggled to uncap it for a moment before she snatched it back and opened it for me. It tasted like cold, flavored sweat.

“Here. For your head.” She spread a damp washcloth over my eyes as I let out another groan.

“What are you doing here?” I said finally. So grateful she had her own set of keys, my hangover fairy godmother.

“You scared me last night,” she said. “Once I got you into bed, I went home to shower and stuff, but I thought I’d come by before I went to work. Want me to email your boss and say you’re taking a sick day?”

“That would be good. Thanks, Tessa. What happened last night?”

She sighed. “It’s pretty serious, Linds. Maybe we should wait and talk about it when you feel better.”

“No, no, no, I want to hear it now,” I said, because who hears that and thinks, Sure, let’s delay?

She chewed on her lip and stood up, crossing into the kitchen and returning with her phone. She sat on the bed next to me.

“So obviously you went out with…that guy,” she said, “who I didn’t know anything about. You ended up super drunk at a club and started sending me these really weird text messages that didn’t make any sense, like you were talking about go-go dancers and…and trying coke and that you were angry with this Josh guy and didn’t know how you’d get home.” She swallowed. “So I made you send me a screenshot of where you were—thank god you could still do that—and I took a cab there, even though it was like four in the morning.”

That uncomfortable hum all through my torso. “Thanks for that,” I murmured.

“Well, so I pulled up and got out and realized you were in this little crowd on the side of the street and…and you were yelling at this guy, I guess the one you were there with? And you were incoherent but just yelling and kind of pushing and everyone was trying to calm you down, and there was a truck coming and suddenly you…” She paused. “Well, I can show you.”

She held out her phone and it took a moment for me to make sense of what I was seeing. It was a shaky video of the dark scene, a group of us lit up by the sallow streetlights overhead; I made out the black woman and the tall Asian guy, plus Josh, his eyes wild. The one I barely recognized was me, definitely me, swaying and screaming and cracking both palms against Josh’s chest, over and over.

Then suddenly I’d stepped forward and pushed with both arms, and Josh tipped off the back of the curb, toppling down to the blare of a big rig’s horn as everyone in the circle screamed. The camera lens jerked around, then refocused on Josh lying flat on the ground, a pair of arms trying to help him up—Tessa’s arms, her face popped into view, so she hadn’t been the camerawoman, she hadn’t recorded this—and the bang of a heavy truck door and the sound of a gruff man cursing, but the camera swung back to me, my eyes unfocused, staring, expressionless, at Josh’s body at my feet.

The video ended and Tessa set the phone on her lap. “Is he okay?” I asked, tears streaming down my cheeks.

She nodded. “The truck stopped in time, thank god. He had the wind knocked out of him and he gashed his elbows, but he was otherwise okay. A woman—she was tall with tattoos? She was the one recording, and once she figured out I was your friend, she made me airdrop it onto my phone. She said…” She took a deep breath. “She said if you go anywhere near this guy Josh again, she’s going to post it and tag it with your name.”

I laid my head back and pulled the washcloth over my eyes. This isn’t happening.

“What was I so mad about?”

“I don’t know. No one told me.”

I flipped the rag over to its cooler side.

“Lindsay, this is really bad.”

Hot tears soaked into the washcloth.

“This is assault,” she went on. “I’m deleting this, but…but I wish I hadn’t seen it. That woman still has a copy. What is going on with you?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured.

“This is not you. You don’t assault people.”

“I don’t know, Tessa. I don’t know.”

She stayed silent long enough that I slid the cloth up to peek at her.

“So this isn’t the first time drinking made you violent,” she said quietly.

I nodded.

“I think you should tell me,” she said.

I pulled the fabric back over my eyes. Maybe like this, with the world blocked out and my forehead like an iron against the damp cloth, I could tell her about the Warsaw Incident.

“When I was twenty-three,” I began, my voice small, “Edie and I went to this bar called Warsaw. It was in Greenpoint—this old Polish space with pierogies and Jell-O shots and weird beers and a dinky stage in the corner.”

I swallowed.

“It was spring—the spring before everything went down, before Edie and Alex broke up, before Kevin left his trunk unlocked with the gun inside, before everything. There was an event at Warsaw, something Edie and I had RSVP’d to for the one-hour open bar, and I remember ordering two vodka Red Bulls, which came in plastic cups the size of Slurpees.” I held my hands out, miming the double-fisting. “They were both for me, so I could keep drinking for free after the open bar ended. I have a flash of myself shortly after, holding a bag and freaking out; apparently I was so drunk, I’d taken my free swag bag, like a promotional tote bag, you know? And then I convinced myself I’d stolen it from someone else. Almost like dream-logic.”