“Good night,” my mom cried as I creeped outside my parents’ bedroom. I froze in place, my foot hanging an inch off the ground. “Good night,” I managed to say through trembling lips and a dry mouth. I moved slowly to my room and pretended to make my bed. I dropped the decorative appendage of cushions violently, try to produce the loudest thud. I lay with all my weight on the squeaky bed. The noise died and not another was made. After a while I took off my heavy shoes, held my breath, and glided across the corridors conjuring every bit of feline in me. Dani, who was waiting outside, grabbed my impetuous body, and closed the front door meticulously.

Back in Dani’s car, the music bellowed so loud. The speakers at the back distorted the bass to a thick static. We didn’t mind. The hoarseness was pleasant. Everything was pleasant. Dani was so happy, and it was exhilarating to see him like that. His wide grin emphasized the dimples and the creases around his mouth. He was glowing and it underlined the slight indentation on either sides of his lower lip. In the shifting lights, his face came together like never before. And it was breathtaking.

The windows were wide open letting in the cold gusts of wind, but we didn’t mind. Dani’s hair blew and tangled and whirled in every direction, and apparently that was the funniest thing in the world to him. My hair just loped around from eye to eye. My arm rested on the window frame and my hand lay limply in air, and rose as Dani sped. The cold wind drove through my skin and bit the bone. I felt the heat leave my body. All the heat.

The streets soon began to branch out and we were moving further and further away from Beirut. The lights were not as bright which helped ease my looming nausea. Turn after turn led us to a seemingly isolated suburb. At the end of the street, a four-story building was pitch black except for the beaming bright ground floor. Dani parked the car in front of the gates and sat back in his seat. “We’re here!” he said, “and it only took us twenty-seven minutes.

There was something disconcerting about the house. It had a large terrace with a neatly mowed backyard, visible from the facade of the house, and a square shaped swimming pool in the middle. But the darkness had swallowed it in a way that highlighted its grimness. Statues of nude women, tipping over urns and streaming water out of their breasts, surrounded the pool. They were worn out; their faces dissolved and their dermis peeling off. The gate creaked as Dani pulled it open forcefully. A low frequency drone filled the air above the path leading to the front door. There the drone changed into a bass strain.

I leaned on Dani’s shoulder as we waited for someone to open the door. A slow mischievous breeze mustered and stuck between Dani and me, and soon I was cozied under his coat.

After a third and fourth knock, someone finally came to the door. It was a thick glass door leading into a large kitchen. A girl plodded down the hall and across the big kitchen. Big boots, big eyes covered with red-dyed hair, small thin limp fingers; she opened the door with a tired exhale. “Welcome,” she said in a rather unwelcoming tone.

“Hey, I’m Dani, and this is Youssef. Maria invited…” Dani began as he usually did.

“Oh hi,” she said with a slightly more joyful yet still unwelcoming tone. “Come on in, follow me.”

She did not introduce herself nor did she check if we were following her. She walked steadily through a large corridor stacked with artwork on either sides. Her neck was shaved and her hair went around her scalp and down her face. We followed the girl down a stair case at the end of the hall. Loud trance music came from the basement, and the hardwood floor of the stairs vibrated below our feet. Downstairs, thirty or more people distributed themselves along three large couches and a small dance floor and crowded bar. I grabbed Dani by the upper arm and followed him around. He was asking our host questions I could not hear over the music. Dani dragged me through the crowd and I tried to look for familiar faces, people I’d seen at the bar, but none of them were there. Maybe these were different people, and maybe I shouldn’t have been holding Dani so tightly.

We met Maria at the bar. She had the same spark she had almost a week earlier, only sweatier and more out of breath. She greeted us with hugs a directly pulled us out onto the dance floor. I bobbed my shoulders, moved awkwardly left and right, and called it dancing. “You met Vera right?” she said in my ear.

“Her?” I said pointing at the girl who escorted us.

“She’s great right?”

“I guess. Seems a bit emotionally distant.”

“That’s what I like about her,” said Maria with a wide grin. “No, she’s all right. She invited me. She let me invite you guys so that was nice of her.”

“Who are all these people?” Dani asked with a voice that turned some heads our way.

Maria giggled and put her index finger over her lips. “Vera’s friends. I haven’t gotten to get to know them, but I know that they’re ‘the coolest’,” she said air quoting with her middle fingers. “This is the pre-party.”

Dani rolled his eyes. Behind him Vera appeared, holding two red solo cups. She handed them to Dani and me, and said, “I’m taking her.” Maria and Vera were dancing incredibly close, almost touching. “We should be doing that,” he said.

“Yeah, but you think…” I tried to say.

“I hate that word, Youssef. You have a cup in your hand. Make use of it,” he said with his cup at his lips.

“I guess we came all the way here, so why not?” I though.

I drank. “Hey, what is this?” I asked, but I don’t remember getting a reply, or even waiting for one. I held Dani and drank.

One second, we stood there talking in murmurs and watching the dance floor fill up. The next we were surrounded by the blurred bodies moving faster than my eyes could see. They seemed faceless, even headless at times, but the motion blur at their backs glowed vividly. I looked into Dani’s eyes; they seemed to be everywhere, and in more than one place at once. I was dancing effortlessly (which does not mean well). Up and down, to the side, and short jumps; so slow, but fast enough to make me dizzy. I tripped, several times, and landed on Dani’s chest, my lips pressing just below the seams of his V-neck collar. I might have kissed him a few times, too.

I don’t recall much. The dancing mostly, Dani’s wide smile below his glistening yet blurry eyes. I remember I had laid my head on his shoulder when I got too dizzy and tired of dancing. I remember because he was kissing my lower neck.

But there was something that I couldn’t forget. Someone. Someone who seemed too delighted by the spectacle of Dani’s lips against my neck. That someone was not strange. Better yet, that someone was too familiar. Not Maria. Not Vera. Not reassuring.

 

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So here’s part two 🙂 Hope you enjoy it. To be honest, I haven’t reviewed it well, so please point out anything that needs to be corrected or changed in the comments. 🙂

Adam. xx