Chapter 1: The Party
The kitchen was a haze of cigarette smoke and laughter. The fluorescent lights buzzed like trapped insects, casting a sickly yellow glow over the sticky countertops and the forest of half-empty beer bottles. A keg hummed in the corner, its condensation dripping onto the linoleum in a slow, persistent tap-tap-tap. The bass from the living room thrummed through the walls, a physical vibration in the teeth.
Veronica drifted through clusters of laughing strangers, her smile a tight mask. A guy in a band tee spilling beer, a girl shrieking about a text message. She moved through them like a ghost, the noise a wall of static she had to tunnel through. She went to the kitchen.
She saw him from the doorway.
Gavin leaned against the counter, a beer bottle in hand, his body angled toward a blonde in a cropped sweater. His hand, resting on the laminate, was inches from the small of her back. Not quite touching. But the intention was there, in the lean of his shoulder, the focus of his gaze. He dipped his head to catch something the girl said, a laugh breaking over his face. It was a good laugh. Easy. Warm.
Veronica felt the familiar sour twist in her gut. A sharp, acidic knot right below her ribs. She forced her eyes away, her mask hardening into something neutral, something observational. It's nothing, she thought. Just a study in social navigation. Male subject, displaying affiliative behavior. She hoped to God he didn’t spot her.
She slid into the room, skirting the edge of the crowd, and reached for a cleanish red cup from a pyramid on the table. The punch bowl was a neon pink, suspect. It disgusted her. She dropped it back down.
“—so he literally tried to fix the router with a spoon,” Gavin was saying, his Australian accent rounding out the vowels, making the story sound funnier than it was. The blonde giggled, touching his arm. A fleeting contact. Gavin’s eyes crinkled, but his gaze flickered over her shoulder, past her, scanning the room. It was a restless scan. Hungry, almost. Then it landed.
On her.
His expression didn’t change drastically. The smile didn’t fall. But it settled. The performative ease dialed back a few notches. His blue-grey eyes held hers for a beat too long to be casual. The blonde said something else. He nodded, not looking at her, and pushed off from the counter.
“Excuse me a sec,” she heard him say, his voice a low rumble under the music.
Veronica turned to the punch bowl, pretending there was great interest in the floating orange slices.
“That stuff will strip paint,” his voice said, close to her ear. He smelled like cheap beer and laundry detergent and the cold outside air he’d carried in on his jacket. It was perfectly male.
She couldn’t look up. “Oh, I’m not planning on drinking it." She peeked back at his glass bottle. "Where'd you get that?"
“Brought a six-pack,” Gavin admitted, scratching the back of his neck. The gesture seemed self-conscious.
Veronica watched his hand fall, the simplicity of the admission making her question her own calculated silence. “Would you mind if I had one?” she asked, the request feeling like a demand the second it left her lips.
“Sure,” he said, already turning toward the fridge before she could offer him an opportunity to back out. He shouldered the fridge door open, the light bleaching his t-shirt white for a second.
“Oh, you don’t have to if it’s your last—” she started, but the cold, damp bottle was already in her hand, his fingers brushing hers. The contact was a spark up her arm. He let go first, taking a slow drag from his own bottle, his eyes never leaving her face.
“Hey, it’s better than the paint stripper,” he said, the corner of his mouth ticking up.
“Thanks,” she said, the word feeling brittle in the charged air between them.
He shrugged, a quick, dismissive jerk of his shoulder as his eyes darted toward the laughing blonde now chatting with someone else. “S’nothing.”
The dismissal stung, a sharp poke at the careful detachment she’d constructed. She traced the cold, wet label on her bottle with a thumbnail. “So how have you been?”
He nodded, taking a pull from his bottle. “Good. Yeah. Work’s work. Classes are a drag. You know. And parties.” His eyes drifted back over to the blonde by the fridge, then snapped back. A muscle in his jaw twitched.
“I'm not keeping you, right?” Veronica asked, her voice colder than she intended.
“What? No, not at all.” He shook his head, a quick, frustrated motion. He leaned in closer, the buzz of the party fading behind the sudden intensity in his lowered voice.
He leaned in closer, the buzz of the party fading behind the sudden intensity in his lowered voice. Veronica watched his mouth, unconvinced, waiting for the smooth lie. “She’s a friend,” he said, the words rushed. “Her girlfriend dumped her last week, so I’m just…making sure she doesn’t do anything sad.”
Veronica’s skepticism evaporated, replaced by a sharp, unexpected curiosity. "I almost thought you were sleeping with her."
"Well," he shrugs. "Once. Months ago."
Veronica went silent, swallowing dryly.
He clarified, the words tumbling out in a low rush. “We just hung out. Agnes was feeling shitty, it had been a while for me, it was just… something that happened.”
He took a long drink, his eyes on the fridge door across the room. Veronica felt the explanation settle between them, a dull, familiar weight. She simply nodded, the condensation from the bottle cold against her palm. "What are friends for, right?" She scoffed.
He nodded, chuckling softly into his bottle. “Sorry,” he said, his eyes finally meeting hers properly. “Didn’t mean to make it weird.”
The hum of the fridge filled the space between them. “No, it's okay. I appreciated the honesty,” Veronica said, and meant it. She finished her beer in one long swallow, the bitter aftertaste coating her tongue. "I'll be back in a second," she said, setting the empty bottle on the counter with a definitive clink.
She pushed through the bodies in the hallway, the bass from the living room throbbing in her temples. Inside the cramped, graffiti-strewn bathroom, she locked the door and leaned against it, the cold wood a shock through her thin jacket. Her mind, against her will, sketched the scene: his easy laugh in a dark room, the casual removal of clothes, the efficient, frictionless transaction of it.
Fuck me, she thought. She leaned herself upright, unbuttoned her jeans, undid her underwear, sitting on the toilet. She briefly tried to imagine the view that woman had as he was fucking her: the slope of his shoulder, the concentrated blankness in his eyes, the groan as he'd come. The image was clinical and left her feeling hollow, the sound of her own piss hitting the water oddly loud in the tiny room. She finished, flushed, wiped, and briefly rolled her eyes, the vibration of the music feeling like a threat.
She washed her hands under the tap’s thin, lukewarm stream. Contending herself to not have sex tonight, she stared at the water circling the drain. She wouldn’t be so deserving, she figured, drying her palms on her jeans.
She stepped out into the hammer of bass and body heat. Finding him on his phone waiting in the hall, she froze for a second.
“Hey,” Veronica said, the word scraping out, awkward and too loud.
Gavin smiled, a quick, genuine flash as he slipped his phone into his back pocket. “Actually, I forgot to tell you something,” he admitted, his voice dropping, stepping into her space. He used the momentum, the closeness, to bridge the final gap, his mouth finding hers in the humming, beer-scented dark.
She stiffened, her brain short-circuiting at the sudden heat of his mouth. Then her body went liquid, a pathetic little sound escaping her throat as her lips parted under his. Her kiss was clumsy, all nervous teeth and too much pressure, but he didn’t pull away. He tasted like hops and winter, and his hand came up to cradle her jaw, his thumb rough against her cheekbone. The hallway noise dissolved into a dull roar, her thoughts scrambling into static.
He pulled away, peering over her with those searching eyes. Veronica couldn’t look at them. She found comfort in his lips, nodding. Neither of them knew what for, but it was enough.
He folded into her ear. "You're so fuckin' hot." His voice took on a confident whisper in her ear, his breath hot against her skin. "Let's get out of this hallway," he murmured, his hand slipping from her jaw to cradle the back of her neck, his thumb tracing the line of her vertebrae. He pulled back just enough to scan past her shoulder, his eyes sharp and assessing the flow of traffic toward the back door.
His hand slid from her neck to grip hers, fingers intertwining with a possessiveness that made her breath catch. "C'mon," he said, not asking, already leading her through a gauntlet of slumped bodies and spilled laughter, past the kitchen's buzzing glow. A narrow, dim staircase swallowed them whole, the wooden steps groaning under their weight, the party's roar softening to a dull throb below.
At the top, a short hallway lined with closed doors; he shouldered open the first one that gave, revealing a sparse room—a desk, a twin bed, a poster for a band she didn't recognize. He kicked the door shut with his heel, the click of the latch louder than any music, sealing them into a sudden, waiting silence.