Chapter 1: Bad Decisions
The air in the living room tasted of warm beer and impending bad decisions. Gavin, three shots deep and buzzing with frustration, scans the crowded room and lands on Heather, who's arguing passionately about a footnote in a beat-up copy of Ulysses. He doesn't usually go for her type. She was fat, neurotic, an opinionated cynic, but the night was young and his standards were sinking fast. He needed a fuck.
Her hands moved as she talked, jabbing the air with the spine of the book, and a slice of kitchen light caught the black linework of a tiny house tattooed on her wrist. She’s all curves and intensity, he thought, the tequila turning his usual calculus into a simpler binary: available and arguing.
A hollow clatter echoed as someone knocked over a can. Heather didn’t flinch, her voice cutting through the background drone of the TV’s static. “But that’s the whole fucking point, Marek. If you ignore the concordance, you’re just reading a dirty joke and miss the whole thing.” Her listener, a glazed-eyed guy in a band shirt, nodded slowly, already defeated.
Gavin watched the way her mouth formed the words, the quick flash of her tongue. He noted the flush climbing her throat, the puff in her cheeks, the way she furrowed her brow in frustration. He finished his beer, the glass slick in his palm, and started weaving through the bodies crowding the room.
He arrived at the edge of her conversation just as Marek shrugged and melted away. Heather stared down at the open book in her hands, her shoulders dropping a little, the fervor evaporating and leaving something quieter in its place. Gavin leaned a shoulder against the wall next to her.
“So,” he said, his voice a low rasp she had to lean in to catch. “Are the dirty jokes any good?”
She looked up, her eyes a deep, assessing brown. They traveled from his sneakers to his face, not missing a thing. She looked suspicious, but not displeased. It made him think, just for a second, he wanted to step back. She closed the book with a soft thump. “They're fine,” she said, a tiny, wary smile playing on her lips. “But the architecture is what makes you want to live inside them.”
He liked that. A retort formed in his head, something smooth and clearly practiced, but what came out was simpler, pulled from the buzz. “I’m Gavin.”
“Heather.”
“You want another drink?”
She looked at the can-strewn table, then back at him..Her gaze was direct, intelligent, and slightly sad. He knew that look; it was the one he avoided in mirrors. “Only if it’s water,” she said. “I think my night needs some structural integrity.”
He fetched a bottle from a cooler, the plastic cold and wet in his grip. When he handed it to her, their fingers brushed. Her skin was warm. She took a long drink, her throat working, and he watched a drop escape the corner of her mouth and trace a path down her neck. She wiped it. He had to look away, his own thirst a sudden, sharp pang.
“This is a shitty party,” she scoffed, not looking at him, stating it as a plain fact.
“The worst,” he agreed, rolling the cold bottle across his own forehead. “Why’d you come?”
She shrugged, the motion making her dress strain and settle.“I thought it would be a story. It’s mostly just damp and sad.”
“And the Ulysses?”
“A shield.” She met his eyes again, challenging him. “Better than standing in a corner.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, I came over, didn’t I?”
A real smile then, unexpected and bright, cracked through her weariness. It changed her whole face. Made her look younger.
He watched her smile fade back into something more guarded, pursed. “So,” he said, shifting his weight, the floorboard creaking. “You here with the girlfriends, or flying solo tonight?”
She took another sip of water, her eyes on him over the bottle. “Solo. It’s less complicated. What about you? Got a girlfriend waiting to text you wondering where you are?”
He let out a short laugh, the sound brittle in the thick air. “Nah. Though I do have a loving relationship with a potted cactus on my windowsill. I forget to water it though."
Heather chuckled, coyly silent. Was she checking him out, he wondered. Suddenly, he realised he didn’t know how a girl like her worked in the bedroom, assuming she was even casual about it. The thought was clinical, a cold flicker behind his eyes.
“So, what’s your story, Heather?” he asked, to drown it out.
She shrugged, looking past him at the static on the screen. “Writer. Over-thinker. Professional regret-haver.” She took a quick sip of water, then blurted, “And single. Very, very single.”
Gavin watched a flush creep up her neck as she said it. He felt a familiar, calculated calm settle over him. “This corner’s pretty loud. Wanna find a quieter spot?”