On the Edge
Music: Explosions in the Sky – Your Hand in Mine
If only things could be as simple as a Saturday night when music and friends are enough to keep me smiling the whole way through. Eleven of us managed to fit into a room for a single, along with five different kinds of shampoo and heels intended for our respective boys. But I was content singing Backstreet Boys with the girl from a Capella as they played drinking games that made no sense. The New Guy I’ve been seeing kept pinching my hips or shooting furtive glances at me while he poured shots for his friends. Each time my stomach dropped to my ankles and I stumbled around with the weight of it, completely drunk off of the knowledge that someone else is crazy for me like I am for him.
Thirty minutes and a bottle of Smirnoff later we were on the dance floor. The basement room was filled with bodies held together by sweat and shitty rap music. There were boys who couldn’t find the beat, boys who could manage to follow her hips, and the boys who stood against the wall, passing out “come hither” looks to any girl with enough cleavage. It’s the quiet, strategic flirtation that I quit being a part of the moment Mr. New Guy walked by me on campus and gave a smile that was only intended for me. I wouldn’t let myself find out if I could like him because Four keeps going through hot and cold moments. He likes me. He doesn’t like me. And so on.
But Mr. NG made it easy a month ago after days of skirting around the issue. He grabbed my hand and told me he liked me and that was that.
I’m finally letting myself live on the edge of my skin where I only do something because it feels good. There was no work being done this weekend. I let my eyes rest instead of keeping them open for hours and hours under the dim light of my desk lamp. I danced with someone who thinks I’m amazing and while I assure him that I’m just a girl he stares at me as if I’m much more than that.
I want to replay these last two days and wake up again at 8 a.m. with the stubble of his beard grazing my face.
really well-written!