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MAYA

“Come on , Maya,” my best friend, Iris, said from nearby.

Despite the chilly mid-October air outside, her face was flushed from the heat trapped in the house.

I pulled my hair off my neck, already drunk enough that I wasn’t worried about whether I looked good or not.

There was never anyone worth impressing at these parties, anyway.

“I don’t want to,” I admitted, shaking my head. “I can’t. I can’t do it.”

It wasn’t exactly party girl cool of me, but I’d seen the combination of drinks poured into that thing. If I had any concern for my well-being, I wouldn’t bring it anywhere near my body, let alone drink it.

“Come on!” someone groaned from nearby. He smacked his hands playfully onto the table, and everyone else joined in.

“Ma-ya! Ma-ya! Ma-ya!” Iris chanted, clapping her hands gleefully. The only reason she was allowed to be a bad influence was because she was really good at taking care of me when I was hungover. There was no one else in the world I’d rather have as a roommate when shit hit the fan.

I took a deep breath. I’d done so much in my life—including kicking that 250-pound football player in the nuts last year when he tried to make a move on me. I could handle a bitch cup. The bitch cup was going to be my bitch.

I picked up the cup, the eyes of everyone else around the table on me, and chugged as hard and fast as I could.

I chugged like my life depended on it, because it kind of did.

If I stopped, the taste would catch up and I’d gag (best case scenario) or throw up on everyone’s shoes (worst case scenario).

I threw the empty cup down moments later to cheers from the table around me.

I laughed, playfully bowing. I—as someone who embodied the multiple Leo placements in my chart—loved the attention.

And the people who hosted the parties at 151 Marshman Ave—affectionately referred to as just The 151—loved me, so I could get away with causing a scene.

The table cleared as people shuffled in and out to start a new game.

Iris walked over to me, throwing an arm around my neck like I was a quarterback who just threw the game-winning pass.

Our limbs stuck together with sweat, and the sensation of my hair pressed against my neck was making me nauseous.

Saliva pooled in my mouth, a glowing neon sign that I was going to throw up if I didn’t get moving.

“You good?”

“I feel so sick.”

She snorted. “Okay, let’s get you outside.”

Iris took me out near the bushes, and I put my hands to my knees, taking deep, intentional breaths. Every type of alcohol was swirling around inside of me all at once, and I was worried it was going to push me over the edge.

“Oh, vodka is coming through so strongly,” I said, nearly gagging.

“You are the most powerful woman alive. You are so strong and capable. Everyone loves you,” Iris said.

The cool air was helping. It was a particularly crisp night and really felt like fall, dropping to the lowest it had so far in the school year.

I loved it. I grew up in the heat of the Arizona desert, where ‘cold’ was any day below seventy-five and any night below forty-five.

I adjusted quickly to the weather here, mostly to spite the people back home who said I was stupid for moving further up north, but if all went well, I’d probably stay here even after graduation.

In my mind, I bought my heavy winter coat freshman year with the intention of never looking back.

Admittedly, there wasn’t much to go back to even if I wanted to.

My hometown of Engleston housed an old high school boyfriend from before I came out, a bunch of former classmates in real estate and construction, and my mom, who’d been waiting since the day of my birth to be an empty nester.

I was willing to adjust to any climate to get out of there; Lakeside Green University just happened to be the school that offered me the most money.

Iris, however, was responding to the cold like any normal person would.

She hugged her arms tight to her body and subtly hopped side to side, doing her best to make me not feel like a pain in the ass for keeping her out here.

Her booze blanket wasn’t doing much to protect her, and neither of us was stupid enough to risk bringing a coat to a house party of this size.

The one thing no one had warned me about before moving was how expensive dressing against the cold could be; I was not letting someone snatch what was practically an inheritance away from me.

“We should go back inside,” I offered, watching as Iris practically started doing jumping jacks to stay warm.

Her teeth chattered. “Take your time.”

I took another deep breath, fighting off the swirling, sickly feeling consuming my body.

I had a pretty good sense of when I was going to vomit—this was definitely not my first rodeo—and I wasn’t getting that feeling now.

But that didn’t mean I felt good; I still felt like I’d been tossed into a washing machine and put through a spin cycle.

“I’m going to be so hungover tomorrow,” I moaned, squatting to the ground. “I already feel like shit. It’s only going to get worse from here. Why did I do that?”

“And that’s okay. It’s Thursday. You have one class tomorrow, and it’s not until the afternoon.

We just got through midterms, so it’s smooth sailing until finals.

” Iris’s tone was supportive and warm. She had the best gentle parenting voice—never patronizing, always kind.

“I can pick us up In-N-Out after my shift tomorrow.”

Iris was so impossibly sweet it was hard to believe she was a real person.

She worked as an in-home caregiver for the elderly on most weekends and on the days she didn’t have class, being the perfect saint that she was.

She was in school for nursing and was so spectacularly good with people.

We balanced each other well; she was the Pisces to my Leo, the I bought us Pedialyte to my I’m viciously hungover , the girl who would practically kiss me on the forehead and tuck me in after I’d spent all night drinking too much and flirting with the hot lesbian DJ on campus.

“An angel on earth,” I said. I would definitely be hungover tomorrow and probably have the spins tonight in bed, but I considered not throwing up to be a victory. “Can you get me a milkshake?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, that sounds so good right now.”

“I know.” Iris nodded with a deep understanding. I could hear in her tone that she was holding back a laugh, and I realized the alcohol was hitting me. My speech was slurring. “Do you want to go home? We have food at the apartment.”

“But you wanted to find that basketball player,” I protested.

“He’ll probably be at another party, like, next weekend. It’s not a big deal. I’ll just find him later.”

“No, I need you to find him,” I said. I put my hands on her shoulders. “Iris, you need to bag the hot basketball player from your sociology class last semester. It has to happen. I want this for you. He’s tall, he’s beautiful. I’m sure he’s talented.”

“Our men’s program isn’t actually that good—”

“He’s an athlete either way. Playing at a college level at a D1 school. I know his arms are crazy.”

Iris sighed with acceptance. “His arms are crazy.”

“He could probably bench you.”

“I think I want him to.”

“That’s the spirit!”

I nodded, mentally getting myself together enough to go back inside. I wasn’t at the point of needing to wave my white flag yet; I could still keep it going for at least another hour or two, especially knowing Iris’s love life was on the line.

I shook out my hair, flipping my head over to give my neck a chance to breathe. The cold was finally starting to seep into my bones, and it felt so good. It was times like these that I understood the concept of an ice bath.

“How do I look?” I asked when I came back up.

“Never better.”

I doubted that. Even though the haze of alcohol—the kind of drunk where I was probably going to flirt with myself in the bathroom mirror later—I knew I looked like a mess. I didn’t particularly care; the smudged makeup, messy hair thing was cool, and I was hot enough for it to seem intentional.

Or, at least, drunk enough to convince myself of that.

“Let’s go find your man,” I said, reaching for Iris’s ice-cold hand to bring her back inside.

The warmth of the house hugged us like a blanket immediately upon stepping through the sliding back door. It was only rounding on one a.m., so it was still packed.

“Water?” Iris offered, raising her voice over the music blasting from speakers placed around the house and the cacophony of voices and laughter.

When I crinkled my nose, she gave me a thumbs down and pushed me toward the kitchen.

On the way, I waved at familiar faces. We were in our senior year, so I’d been seeing most of the same people at the same parties for years now.

I didn’t know how many of them could really be considered friends.

Other than a handful of people in my life, I’d never been particularly good at permanency.

Friends rotated in and out, crushes never lasted long, and relationships lasted even shorter.

I’d gotten just enough therapy to know it was rooted in how my mom raised me, but I wasn’t therapized enough to particularly care.

Life was more fun on the move, existing as the manic pixie dream girl rather than best to bring home to mom and dad.

It wasn’t to say I didn’t deeply love everyone and everything, though. When I thought about the more permanent fixtures in my life, my heart tugged with a kind of affection that could make me cry at the drop of a hat. I was just hard to pin down, and I’d always preferred it that way.

Iris got me a cup of sink water—temperature tested using her wrist—and handed it over to me.

“Do you see him?” I asked.

“Not too loud!” Iris laughed, smacking my shoulder. “And no, I haven’t really looked.”

“That’s a total lie because I can literally see you scanning the room for him,” I said. “Not even an attempt at being subtle.”

Iris groaned. “This is so stupid. Do you think he’s even going to be here?”

“Amelia said he was supposed to be,” I said.

Amelia was one of three who lived in The 151.

She lived on the same floor as Iris and me our freshman year and had the very important role as our party host from the very beginning.

Amelia’s sister was a senior at Lakeside Green at the time, so Amelia always had the best alcohol and the best party invitations.

Things only got better when she moved in with one of the girls from the women’s basketball team and another from the women’s hockey team.

The 151 had accidentally become a hub for athletes and a lesbian haven basically overnight.

It wasn’t often that the male athletes on campus came anywhere near our parties, but one of Iris’s crush’s green flags was that he was a semi-regular here.

Amelia had only ever had good things to say about him—not that Iris or I really knew, because Iris was too shy to say anything to him and she refused to let me see what he looked like.

I’d tried stalking the men’s basketball website for any indication as to who he could be, but Iris had been a locked box.

“Maybe he’s sick. Or at another party. Or somewhere on a date.

” The words came out in one long stream, riddled with uncharacteristic anxiety.

She pushed her blonde hair behind her ears.

“Not my night tonight.” She looked at me.

“Where’s your crush? I think we should focus on you instead of me tonight. ”

I scoffed out a laugh. There was no genuine crush in my life; I hadn’t had one, a real one, since probably high school.

It felt pointless and, frankly, stupid to spend so much time caught up in what someone else was doing and to care so deeply about them.

I hated waiting by the phone and obsessively wondering if they were ever thinking about me.

I’d gone through the developmentally necessary and excruciating humiliation ritual of high school love, and that was good enough for me.

It wasn’t at all that serious in retrospect, but it’d felt like everything at the time.

The thought of being older now and having experienced more and knowing more—it felt real. It felt serious .

And I didn’t have time for things like that.

That wasn’t to say I was completely shut off from the idea of dating. But I wasn’t going to open myself up to something if there was even the tiniest bit of a chance I’d get my heart stomped on in the process. I had to be sure.

Unlike me, Iris was a believer. She was raised by two happily married parents and really put her hope in happily ever afters and serendipity and the possibility of forever. I loved her optimism and sometimes ached to have even an ounce of it.

But because of that, I was always worried that Iris would end up disappointed and hurt. I wanted to keep her cheerful bubble going and never burst it. I didn’t believe in true love for myself, but I definitely believed in it for her.

I had to turn her night around. I wasn’t going to let the nicest person I knew continue to go on without some kind of bite from her crush.

I looked around the room, skimming over the faces. I’d been to enough parties here to be able to guess which social group everyone belonged to—the theater kids, sorority gays, unaffiliated partiers. And then, across the way, I saw them: the athletes.

“Come on,” I said, dragging Iris behind me.