15⎜The Party

           “So, babe,” the girl before me shouted over the music, smiling widely at me, “where ya from?”

           “Uh, New York,” I replied back, bobbing my head a little, for it was the only thing I could think to do in the situation.

           To any bystander just brushing past us, it would appear as though the girl and I were dancing. If one were to observe us for more than two seconds, though, they would quickly learn that only one of us was actually dancing. Personally, I happened to be standing as straight as a plank of wood, trying to nod my head to the beat wafting through the air as the girl I had been pushed into moved her body rhythmically and appropriately, not as tense as I. I happened to be a typical white boy, so didn’t dance. It was rule I had made for myself long ago, and I had stuck by it thus far. I was only so coordinated to the point where I could throw a ball while simultaneously running, but couldn’t dance. Eric Wilson and dancing were like Peyton Manning and water polo—they didn’t mix.

           “Oh, yeah?” the girl shouted. “I’m from Jersey!”

           “Nice,” I said with a tight smile, not desiring to voice my views on the Garden State at the moment. She was about to say something more, but then a certain blonde girl bumped her way over to me, apologizing sweetly to the Jersey girl as she pushed her away. She smiled up at me angelically, resting her hands on my shoulders so that her arms stayed rigid, separating us. Tentatively, I found myself placing my own hands on her waist, unsure if it was what was supposed to be done. She didn’t object, so I figured that I was fine.

           “So, are you havin’ a good time so far, Eric?” asked my southern dance partner.

           “Yeah, I guess,” I shrugged a bit.

           “Who was that trashy girl you were just talkin’ to?” she decided to insult the girl from New Jersey, but it didn’t sound like an insult at all. Somehow, she had the ability to make it sound sweet and nice, as if she had been complimenting the poor girl.

           “I have no idea, Kay,” I answered honestly.

           “Uh huh,” she mumbled, looking over to someone or something behind me. I twisted my head in order to see what she was looking at, and turned back when I realized it was Ari and Scott dancing. Well, kind of. Ari was almost as stiff as I, though Scott refused to acknowledge her obvious aversion to dancing, so kept his hands on her waist, even though she remained unresponsive. It was certainly an Ari Remon thing to do—that was for sure.

           “They seem close,” I commented, talking about Ari and Scott.

           “They are,” Kay replied, smiling softly. “They’ve known each other forever and have been through a lot.” I nodded at that, not saying anything else, for I had a hunch that Kay would soon fill the momentary drought of conversation. “So, um, I know this is none of my business, but I really think that you should join the frat. You’d like it, and all the boys are just wonderful!”

           “I’m considering it,” I replied halfheartedly, because honestly, I hadn’t really given it much thought. There had been so many other things occupying my mind that I didn’t need the pressing decision of the frat looming closely in the air.

           “Good,” she smiled, her gaze not fixed on me, but rather someone behind me. I could only assume that she was staring at Scott, for Ari was turned around, unable to see either of us.

           The loud song that was pumping through the air came to a close, pausing momentarily as the next one started up. At that transition moment, I witnessed Kay Rodgers meticulously nod her head, and mouthing what I thought to be, “Go!” over to the person at whom she had been looking. And then, I felt myself being propelling from Kay’s causal grip straight into another girl, who also seemed to be a bit confused at what was going on. Our bodies collided, and an on instinct I grabbed her shoulders to steady her, and then looked from Kay to Scott, both of whom had sheepish grins on their faces. They had pushed Ari Remon and me into each other for whatever reason, conjuring all the awkwardness that could be found on earth to this one moment.

           I stared at Ari, and she stared at me. We both didn’t do anything, and I removed my hands from her shoulders. A slow song that I sort of recognized began to play, and I was absolutely bewildered as to what motives Kay and Scott possessed behind forcefully shoving us together. Ari looked nice, but she always did. For the party tonight, she had chosen (or Kay had chosen for her) to wear a simple black dress that had thin straps and fell right above her knees. Unlike the majority of the girls here, she wasn’t wearing heels of an absurd height, but rather flip-flops, as she normally did. Her hair was down, falling in loose curls over her shoulders. She looked beautiful, but that was really like saying that the sun was hot. An understatement.

           “You don’t own a lot of black, do you?” were the first words I heard come from Ari Remon’s mouth of the entire evening.

           “No,” I shook my head, glancing down at my nonblack (aka white) button-down, “but you do.”

           “Yeah,” she nodded her head slowly, “I do.”

           “For heaven’s sake, y’all!” a southern belle interrupted our highly intellectual discussion. The blonde rolled her eyes at both of us, and then pushed her best friend a few inches closer to me. A sense of annoyance seemed to be radiating off of Kay, but I couldn’t quite tell why. “Ari, Eric, y’all had better dance while this song is playin’. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to convince the DJ to play One Direction. Apparently, most college students aren’t the biggest fans.” One Direction. Out of all the artists in the world, I happened to have the ability to discern the generic sound of the UK boy band. Go figure.

           “But I don’t dance, Kay,” Ari stated simply.

           “Neither do I,” I added in quickly.

           “Y’all are gonna dance, and y’all are gonna like it,” was all Kay muttered, ramming Ari yet another inch closer to me. With that, she walked a few yards away over to a waiting Scott, and crossed her arms, as if daring us to defy her.

           I looked over to Ari, and she looked over to me. Our eyes connected, and I finally caved into Kay’s bizarre desire. My hands hesitantly moved to Ari’s waist, just barely making contact with it as they hovered in uncertainty. She let out an audible sigh, and then put her hands on my hands, securing them to her waist. With a roll of her eyes that wasn’t directed at me, her hands found their way to my neck, and securely clamped down on the back of it. We both gazed at each other, unsure of how to continue, when I decided to bust out one of the only moves I had in my fictitious collection. I began to gently sway back and forth, and Ari did the same. If this wasn’t a position meant to bring back nightmares of middle school dances, then I didn’t know what was.

           “Ugh! You two are impossible!” Kay Rodgers exclaimed after marching back over to us, only to inform us, that apparently, we were impossible. She shook her head in aggravation, and then used one hand on Ari’s back and one hand on my back to sandwich the two of us together. I was pressed up against Ari, and Ari was pressed up against me. Our unlisted supervisor from the South then strutted away once again, shooting us both daggers, as if to say, “I better not have to come back over!” Most forms of supervision tended to separate couples from dancing too close. In our situation, it was the exact opposite.

           Neither Ari nor I dared to take a step back, the wrath of Kay Rodgers serving as an incentive not to do so. For the first few seconds it was pretty weird, just being mushed up against Ari with my hands still around her waist and her hands still by my neck, but the moments passed by, and it thankfully became increasingly less strange. Ari rested her head on my chest, her eyes shutting briefly as we swayed back and forth. All I could really do was watch, every so often glimpsing over to a delusional Scott and Kay who were smiling like they had just one the lottery.

           When the slow song about thighs and freckles and tea finally came to an end, I wasn’t quite sure what do. Generally, when songs ended, I was pretty sure that it was customary to either slink away from the individual with whom you were dancing, or continue dancing with them. Since I didn’t dance, I wasn’t really sure what to do as more upbeat melodies began to propel through the air. It seemed as though Ari also wasn’t quite sure what to do, for as she gently lifted her head to stare at me, neither of us moved.

           Ari was the first to speak, but it seemed only fair, because I had been the one to initiate the dancing. “I hate dancing,” she told me.

           “So do I,” I returned, my hands sliding off her waist at the same time that she removed hers from my neck.

           “I also hate parties,” she added thoughtfully.

           “Yeah, I’m not really the biggest fan of drunk college kids fist-pumping, either,” I nodded my head, trying to match the beats of the song, but knowing that I probably just looked like a psychotic turkey. I had once been asked at a high school bash if I was tone-deaf, due to my extreme levels of suckage in the distinguishing rhythm department.

           “Huh,” Ari mumbled quietly, “that surprises me.”

           “Why?” I asked equally as soft.

           “Just…everything except your personality screams frat guy,” she said, tucking a loose strand of her dark hair behind her ear.

           “What do you mean?” I questioned, wanting her to elaborate yet again.

           Slowly, she shook her head, but it wasn’t in response to what I had said, but rather something else entirely. With a bucket load of apprehension coating her actions, Ari lightly took hold of my hand, and began to tug me through the maze of people drinking beer and being drunk. Personally, I didn’t really want to live like that, but if that was how they wanted to spend their college years, I had absolutely no issue with it. To each his (or her) own. Ari skillfully maneuvered her way through the frat house, until we came across a familiar stairway.

           The stairs were the ones seen immediately after entering the house, and I had only ventured up them once before. Now, with Ari, we were practically racing up the red steps with a carpeted covering, hands still loosely entwined. When we came to the top, an all too memorable hallway came into view. Ari dragged me over to the first door on the left, and I quickly glanced at the one opposite it. It was closed, and a sense of panic washed over to me. For all I knew, there could be guys on the other side of that door smoking pot at this very moment, just like the last time I had been here. It was all too real and close.

           A sudden tug at my hand reminded me that unlike the last time I was here, I wasn’t alone. I was with Ari, and she had no intention of running into some college stoners, which was why we were going into the room to left, not right. As I had to manually regulate my breathing due to nerves, Ari seemed relatively fine, leading me past the majority of the communal room meant for lounging about. We came to a double-door entrance that I remembered well, and then Ari pushed one of the closed doors open, just enough so that we could both fit through.

           The sliced-in-half-circularly-shaped balcony that overlooked the courtyard of sorts was empty of all people, though the noises of other individuals could still faintly be heard. Ari released my hand, and then walked a few feet away so that she was at the railing. She rested her arms on it, looking out into the nearing darkness of evening. I remained by entrance for a moment, but then relaxed a bit, going over to the wall of the frat house and leaning my back against it as I sat down. My heart was still rapidly beating, but my mind was beginning to clear of most worrisome thoughts.

           “How do you know the layout of this place so well?” I abruptly inquired, addressing Ari, obviously, since she was the only other one here.

           She turned from the balcony to face me, and then a dim smile tugged at her lips. With a sigh that had no emotion fueling it, she finally decided to answer. “Last year, when Scott first joined the frat, he didn’t really know anybody, so since I happened to live in the same state, he invited me to a lot of the events. My dad loves him, so it wasn’t really an issue if I spent the night at the campus—as long as I was with Scott, he was fine,” she told me, crouching down so that she could sit beside me, a few inches separating us from touching. “The two of us did a lot of exploring of this place, so I got to know it pretty well. And then I introduced him to Houston, who I knew through Kay, and who obviously just so happened to join the same frat as Scott. In a matter of minutes they became best friends, and it’s been that way ever since,” she concluded, running over the rims of her nails with the pointer finger of her opposite hand. “So, basically, Scott’s to blame for why I know the floor plan of this place inside and out.”

           “Oh,” I said for lack of anything better to fill the void of silence.

           “You’re not as reckless as other guys I’ve met. You think a lot about things, and you’re not impulsive. You’re not a total douche, or a douche at all, really, and it seems to me that—by choice—you’re not as a social as you could be,” Ari then said. I looked over to her, bewilderment plastered onto my face, and then she explained the sudden observation of my tendencies that she had voiced. “Your personality, Eric. The only part about you that doesn’t scream frat guy.”

           I nodded my head, remembering back to the conversation we were having downstairs. “Thanks, I, uh, guess,” I said, unsure if it was the best possible thing to utter in the situation.

           “Eric, I, uh, know—” Ari began, but was cut off by the fitting sound of an old telephone I had set as my ringtone long ago. It was boring just like me, so it was only appropriate that it was the sound that played whenever someone elected to call me—which didn’t happen much, mainly due to the fact that I was a product of the Texting Generation.

           “Sorry,” I apologized, fishing my phone out of my bad pocket. When I glanced at the name that was flashing across the screen, I knew that it was pretty much my duty to answer it. “It’s my dad,” I told Ari, “again, I’m really sorry, but I have to take this.”

           “Of course,” she nodded, “family’s the most important thing in life.” Maybe it was just me, but the way she had just said the last phrase felt so…morbid. But then again, Ari always sounded like that—sullen with a touch of a rain.

           With one last hesitant look at Ari, I answered my phone, putting it up to my ear, and saying, “Hey, Dad! What’s up?”

           “Son!” my dad greeted back. “How are you?”

           “Good,” I replied, glancing around me. “I’m supposed to be a frat party right now, but I’m currently just chilling on a balcony with a pretty girl.” In response to the compliment, Ari merely flicked my shoulder, and then returned to silently listening in on half the conversation.

           “A girl? Eric, you haven’t been dating much, have you?” he sighed.

           “Uh, Dad,” I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn’t see, “you are aware that I’ve only ever had two girlfriends, right? I don’t exactly ‘date’ on regular basis…or ever. So, no, I haven’t been dating much. Or at all.”

           “Glad things are normal,” he laughed heartily. It struck me as a bit odd that he was randomly calling, but I figured that he would soon inform as to his drive behind the call. My dad always had reasons for doing things. Unlike my mom, he wasn’t the type of guy to just casually check up on his only son just because he missed me. Instead, there had to be a motive behind it. That was just the type of person my dad was. I had gotten used to it over the years, and didn’t really mind anymore, because at the end of the day, he was still my dad. “You said you were at a frat party?”

           “Yeah,” I answered, “not really my favorite scene.”

           “Is this the same frat that asked you to join?”

           “Yeah.”

           He was quiet for a moment, and I felt the climax of the conversation coming. “Have you given them an answer yet?” he finally asked.

           “I haven’t, actually,” I told him, feeling the suspense as I awaiting his next words.

           “Well, I think you should join, son.” And there it was. He wanted me to join the frat. Of course he did. If I didn’t have football to distinguish me anymore, then in his mind, a frat was the next best thing. I could already picture him at company events when Johnny Smith’s daddy was bragging about Johnny’s Ping-Pong record in the dorm, whipping out a trusty anecdote about how his son, the perfect Eric Wilson, was in a fraternity. He would have a glass of champagne in his hand, and then dive into how well I was doing at Stanford and what a leader I had become, joining a frat and all. Johnny Smith’s dad would probably walk away in a huff at that.

           “Glad to have your input on the subject, Dad,” I said slowly, trying desperately to not have my tone come across as overly sarcastic. Sarcasm was a thing in life that my dad didn’t particularly appreciate, so when talking to him, I tried to use it as sparingly as possible.

           “Look, Eric, when I went to Yale,” he was always telling stories about his time in the Ivy League institution, “I joined a fraternity myself,” somehow, that didn’t surprise me, “and it just so happened to be the same one that invited you to join out there at Stanford, and that your grandfather joined way back in the day.”

           “I don’t understand,” I stated densely.

           “You’re a legacy, son, meaning that you’d be the third generation to join,” he explained, but it didn’t make much sense to me. “I think it would be good for you, Eric. I developed a real sense of brotherhood in my years, and loved every second of it.”

           “Well, I’ll keep that in mind when I’m deliberating my answer at the last possible moment,” I said civilly.

           “You should join, son,” he said with firm tone in his voice.

           “Your perspective has been acknowledged,” I mumbled formally. “How’s Mom?”

           “Your mother’s doing fine. She misses you,” he told me with a sigh following. “Look, I have to go. Have fun, but not too much fun. Bye, Eric.”

           “Bye, Dad,” I said, hanging up as I stared at the railing of the balcony in front of me. I could hear and feel the vibrations of the party, and then a finger poked me in the side, causing me to remember that I wasn’t actually alone, but with Ari. I turned to her, and tried to form a smile, but couldn’t seem to do so. “Apparently, I’m a ‘legacy.’”

           “Congratulations,” Ari said, her face not leaking even a single emotion. Her lips were pressed together and her eyes were looking forward. Though the expression she wore was a typical one for Ari Remon, I couldn’t help but find it somewhat sad. Ari always looked sad.

           The loud music that was audible served as a reminder of the party occurring in another sector of the house, and a slight breeze began to pick up, causing my shirt, Ari’s dress, and Ari’s long curls to rustle about, blowing with the wind. I closed my eyes, taking in everything discernable by my ears, and then I felt Ari’s head lazily lean against my shoulder. Hesitantly, I allowed my own head to droop down on top of hers, and we just sat there, not talking, with my eyes closed, and the party just a distant notion.