The Eyes In The Dark

It takes a bit of time to get me looking back to normal again. My hair can be fixed with a little bit of smoothing and it’s a short little pixie cut anyways so it’s not like it needs much. My dress is a little disheveled, a few errant twigs and leaves poking into it, but once they’re plucked away and it’s shifted a little on my body I look, at most, just like a girl who stumbled into a bush maybe and maybe that’s the best I can hope for. As for the freshly fucked look in me, the flushed skin and the blush of something more, well I’ve been drunk before and know that the signs can somehow be mistaken one for the other in the dark and that will have to do because that’s the best that I’ve got.

Besides, I don’t have to look perfect. I just have to look good enough that there are no rumors as people catch me at a glance. Because I’m not staying here anymore.

I’m going home. It’s a decision I made while I was staring myself in the reflection of the window. Enough fun for the night for Emily, she needs her beauty sleep or more accurately needs to spend her night staring at the ceiling split between wondering how she’s going to navigate Blake during the rest of orientation this week and worrying that girl-Kim might have spotted her and have questions or plans for ****. As far as options go it’s certainly not the best one, but at least heading home means that I can take the long road around people, avoiding the crowds and the scrutiny and any questions of why I look the way I do. It’s easier to pass off a lie at a distance, where people can’t look up close and pick apart the details to suss out the truth.

Of course all that is contingent on not fucking stumbling right into someone. Or more specifically not noticing that they’ve been mere feet away while you’ve been fixing yourself in the reflection of a window to make yourself look at least decently presentable.

I turn away from my reflection, fully ready to put my plan into action, when my eyes turn over a silhouette in the dark and the sudden shock of finding that I’m not alone makes me jump and take a step back, smacking my head against the door behind me and seeing stars while I clap a hand over my mouth to silence my cry of surprise.

“Was wondering when you’d notice me,” a familiar voice mumbles, the long lines of the shape untangling itself as he gets to his feet and Eddie, my best friend, steps forward into the light.

My head was still ringing and I blinked a few times, narrowing my eyes to look at him, “Eddie?”

“You know my name?” he asked, instantly closing over on himself and taking a step back.

In retrospect I should have been smarter. Now, looking around, I recognized the building I was beside and more specifically the bench that he’d been sitting on.

The last time I’d been to this party, years ago and in another life and another body, this is where I’d wound up. Eddie had managed to score a fifth of vodka and we took turns taking short pulls off it and trying to keep it down while the party raged around the corner. The two of us alone had bonded here, the conversation eventually drunkenly drifting into talking about life in general and our perspective on it.

Eddie hadn’t hesitated to tell me exactly what he thought of the group, of the people in it. He’d laid out his whole perspective while I, drunk for the first time in my life, had nodded blindly along with it. I couldn’t remember any of the details anymore, it was a long time ago and I really can’t emphasize enough exactly how drunk I was, but I remember his hushed tone and the sneer he had on his face. The way that he’d let me know how much he despised all the people that we were with, something that even then I thought was odd since he didn’t really know any of them.

But soon enough I’d see things his way.

“Of course I know your name,” I said, “We’re in the same group together. How could I forget your name?”

Eddie narrowed his eyes, looking even more suspicious of me. He didn’t respond he just shrugged and turned away and I heard the gulp of him drinking before he started to walk.

I was compelled. I didn’t want to leave him alone. I didn’t… I thought…

Or maybe I wasn’t thinking at all.

“Wait up,” I called after him, pushing my plans to head on home to the side for now, “I’m coming too.”

This time could be different. This time… Well maybe he didn’t have to be so angry.

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