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Kier

Devon, July 2018

Past midnight and my brain has a pulse of its own, sounding out in time with the throbbing pulse of the music, the lights flickering above.

The club reeks. Booze and sweat, cheap aftershave.

My mouth is dry, my throat tight. My stomach turns.

I shouldn’t have had that last shot. Lurid blue and flaming, it was like battery acid at the back of my throat. No one else seemed bothered, Zeph and Penn knocking them back as if they were water.

They’re out there on the dance floor now; stags and hens and members of public merging in one big drunken melee, strobes like searchlights, jerkily careering across their sweaty bodies.

I should get back there, in the mix, but something’s holding me back. An odd sense of grief, I suppose. No matter how much I try to pretend, tonight doesn’t feel like a celebration. Even with Penn’s reassurances, weirdly, it feels like I’m on a countdown. That this night, this milestone, is one step closer to losing him.

I shake myself; it’s the booze talking. Booze and being back here.

Mum always used to say that places held power, but I never knew how much until I left and came back again .

Each time I return, I think it’ll be different, but it never is. Every day I’m here, this place strips a layer off me, taking me one step closer to the past. To all the things I’ve tried so hard to escape.

I scour the dance floor to find Zeph among the crowd. We’d drifted the past hour or so. I’d started dancing, Zeph absorbed in chatting to Penn’s best man.

Circling the dancefloor, I walk around, watch Penn and Mila for a moment, swaying from side to side, arms wrapped around one another, but I can’t see him. I give up and walk to the bar, order some tap water. The man gets it begrudgingly, like they always do, tap water a chore as opposed to profit. Half full when it arrives, he slides it roughly over the counter.

I sip it slowly, almost finished, when I glimpse Zeph weaving through the crowd.

Within seconds, I can tell something’s wrong. His loose walk. The way his hands are clamped tight around his beer.

‘You all right?’ He stops beside me.

I train my mouth into a smile. ‘Yeah, just too many shots.’

We wedge ourselves in by the bar, a bad place to talk because the man next to us knocks over a drink while he’s shouting a big order at the barman. Amber liquid rolls towards us. The yeasty, hoppy smell makes my stomach fold. I swallow.

It’s only when the order’s taken that Zeph starts talking. ‘I saw you with him earlier … your ex.’ He’s speaking like he can’t catch his breath, lips pressing together, making the shape of something strange.

‘Who?’

‘That guy, the one you used to go out with. You were dancing with him.’ His hand moves up as he says the word and liquid slops out of his glass, foam trickling down its side.

It feels like he’s speaking in code. ‘I don’t know who you mean.’ I’ve danced with loads of people tonight. Friends of mine, of Penn’s and Mila’s, total strangers.

‘The guy. Your brother’s mate. The one you used to go out with.’

I think. ‘You mean … Ben?’ I say finally. A month-long relationship when I was seventeen. ‘I’d hardly call it a relationship, and we were dancing, but—’

I try to anchor my brain to the moment, thinking about Ben’s smiling face, his slack, drunk smile revealing his snaggle tooth as he’d flung me around the dance floor. Halfway through, he’d spun me off into a corner, taken a stranger’s hand, done the same to her.

‘It was how you were dancing, Kier. When you’re in a relationship, you shouldn’t—’

I frown. ‘I wasn’t dancing in any way . We were having fun.’

Zeph keeps talking, making accusations, and though he isn’t shouting, only barely raising his voice, it’s like he’s screaming. My ears burn.

His hands find mine, and they aren’t squeezing, but it’s like they’re crushing me.

He is crushing me.

As he keeps talking, I start to wonder, did I do something strange with Ben?

I must have done something because he wouldn’t react like this to nothing.

I replay the moment, slowly this time – our back-to-back move, only the barest of touches. The way Ben had spiralled me round and his funny pissed-up mock sexy hip sway, but none of it is weird, none of it can be misconstrued.

‘Fuck, Kier.’ Zeph slaps the side of his head with his palm. ‘You’re not even listening, are you?’ He looks sad. No, worse than sad. Disappointed.

‘Zeph, I—’ I start the sentence, but the words won’t come out. My hands are sweating so hard I can barely keep hold of the glass.

He shakes his head and starts to walk away. I wait for him to turn back, restart the conversation, but he doesn’t. All I can see is the back of his head, shoulders, as he pushes through the crowd.

The absence of him, the void he’s left, is even worse than all the emotion.

Once again, I start to freeze over. The numbness descends. I am no longer me.