This Is Yr Life

Chapter Seventeen

They danced through song after song after song, moving to and from the dancefloor only to get more drinks. The more they drank, the sloppier their dancing became, but they didn’t care.

Kyle knew that this one of the best nights of his life.

As they shared the music, he felt his vision blurring, but every time he looked at Jessica, everything came into focus under the reds and blues and greens of the light above them shot like laser beams across the dancefloor, at the spilled drinks puddled on the floor that had dried and made the soles of their shoes sticky, at the couples with their faces close, whispering or kissing or singing, too, along with the music.

There were more drinks and more songs and even though Kyle had never danced in public like this before, even though he had never danced at all, really, before aside from hazy memories as a child at family weddings or birthday parties where everybody had to dance, no choice about it. He remembered dancing with his sister until she got too old and too cool to care about her younger brother and instead focused her attention on boys, older brothers of classmates that Kyle had invited to his party. Sometimes, he danced on his mother’s feet as she held his arms up and spun him around, sometimes with his grandmother, sometimes with aunts until, like his sister, he became all too aware that people could see everything that he was doing and as much as he was encouraged by others to just ignore the eyes and do whatever he wanted instead, he had skulked in the shadows and watched everybody else and on the way home, his mother had asked why he was so shy and his father would tell her to leave him be.

As the night progressed and peaked and then started to come to an end, Kyle had forgotten why he had even brought Jessica to the bar. The place was clearing out. People were heading off to the rest of their night out. To bars and clubs in the city, where they would dance until they were told that they could dance no more, or at least, they could dance no more in this particular establishment. Places where the lights would come out after that last song finished and the floor would be littered with spit and spilt drinks and lost wallets and mostly empty but sometimes full baggies of drugs.

Places where the harsh light of the end of the night would pull some people back from the edge, pull some back from making mistakes that they might later consider grave errors. Others would be less lucky and had left earlier and it would not be until tomorrow morning that they saw the remnants of what had occurred.

‘Jessica?’ A voice came from the far side of the bar and Jessica looked up. Kyle did, too and he saw Summer standing with Shaun and Rebecca and others that he couldn’t remember the names of but recognised their faces nonetheless. They were there, exhausted, sweating, stinking of booze and vapour, just like everybody else.

‘Summer,’ Jessica said, almost squealing, and their arms stretched forward and then enclosed around one another, wrapping and wrapping like a bow adorning a gift basket.

‘I didn’t know you were still in the city,’ Summer said. Her hair which, Kyle knew, was typically straightened and hung below her shoulders was by this point in the night frazzled and curled, any product she had used or care she had taken before the night started had proven to be for nought.

‘I go back and forth,’ Jessica said, and then, looking at Kyle, she put her hand on both his and Summer’s shoulders.

‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry. This is Kyle.’ She grabbed Kyle by the wrist and held his hand out towards the group.

‘Hi, Kyle,’ Summer said, grabbing his hand so that their fingers tangled and he clenched too much of her wrist, not enough of her hand. The friends behind her murmured Hi Kyle, too and some gave half-arsed waves, their eyes glazed over, perhaps not even really seeing him. Others looked towards the door. One of them, a guy he only half recognised, believed his name was something like Ralph or whatever name was similar enough, brushed his fingers through his hair, twisting his head on his neck like he was trying to crack the bones within.

The music twisted into a mere simmer. Barely audible over the conversations of whoever was left. Aside from Kyle, Summer, Jessica, Shaun, and the others, there were only a couple of groups left. They had glasses of water or some of them were desperately trying to chug the remainder of their drinks before they moved on. People were crowding around the door, ready to leave, collecting their coats. Others at the bar paying their tabs, their bills, tipping if they so desired and then leaving, disappearing into the cold darkness on the other side of the door. Every swing of the door blew in a chill that shook the knees of everybody who was left standing.

‘Oh my god, we haven’t seen each other in f**k I don’t know how long.’ Summer repeated. They laughed. Kyle laughed with them, amused by the sheer ridiculousness that was no doubt apparent between them.

‘How do you guys know each other?’ Shaun asked. He wrapped his arm around Summer and placed his other hand in his pocket, fiddling with something hidden deep at the bottom.

‘Just from around,’ Kyle said. He could feel Jessica looking at him, he shifted his eyes sideways, saw that she was about to say something. ‘You know how the city is.’

He didn’t, of course. But he understood that there were people who just knew each other. He had seen it before. At school, with Lewis and Finn, at work. People in cities that were big but not as big as the capitals or second cities tended to find each other one way or another. They would meet under stage lights at gigs and share experiences, they would find each other at bars or coffee shops or music stores, poetry readings, vintage markets, every week and they would feel connections. From there, they would know each other. They may not see each other any other place, but they would know that in these locations they would have somebody like them, somebody to attach themselves to.

‘Yeah,’ Jessica said. ‘You know the city. It’s crazy we bumped into you guys, though. You were friends with Chloe Kennedy, right?’

‘We were best friends,’ Summer said. The sparkle behind her eyes dimmed, but only slightly. Shaun gripped her waist tighter and kissed her forehead. ‘Why?’

‘Kyle was like, best friends with her when they were younger.’

‘Are you kidding, really?’ Summer said,

‘Yeah,’ Kyle said, looking away from Summer and the rests’ gaze. He had thought about meeting them for so long that he had never considered what they would say when Chloe came up.

‘It’s just so weird, I don’t think she ever mentioned a Kyle. I thought I’d met all her friends from school.’

‘It was a long time ago,’ Kyle said, unsure of what to say next and then further down the conversation. ‘I would have been surprised if she remembered me at all. She always had loads of friends.’ He motioned his arm around those before him. ‘I mean, obviously she did. There’s so many of you.’

He was on auto-pilot. The kind of talk reserved only for when he was panicking, when he was trying to justify poor exams marks to his parents or explain to his manager why the report hadn’t been submitted yet.

‘He moved away, anyway, didn’t you, Kyle,’ Jessica said, saving him from justifying why such a great friend had never been brought up.’

‘’Maybe I do remember he saying something about a Kyle. do you remember her saying something about a Kyle, Shaun?’

Shaun shrugged. Summer looked around at the others and some nodded, some avoided answering. She looked back to Kyle.

‘I feel like I’ve seen you in old school pictures.’

‘So what are you all doing now? Going into the city?’ Jessica said.

There were murmurs among the group that didn’t commit to any genuine sounds or words. Shaun leant down, turning his face away from Kyle and Jessica and seemed to say something into Summer’s ear.

‘We were just thinking about going back to ours for some drinks.’

‘I’m not,’ said perhaps-Ralph, ‘I’ve got to be up for work tomorrow. Early.’

‘Stop being such a f*****g melt,’ one of the others said.

‘f**k you.’

‘You’re coming and you’re going to carry on having some drinks with us while we catch up with our friend,’ Summer said, and then looked at Kyle. ‘And our new friend, too. He can tell us all about Chloe when she was younger.’

‘You didn’t know her when she was younger?’ Kyle said.

‘No,’ Summer said. ‘We met at college and then went to university together.’

‘All of you?’

‘Didn’t you know her too, Jess?’ Summer said. They were all still standing around tables filled with empty or at last mostly empty glasses and bottles, scrunched up napkins stained with lipstick, eyeliner, and damp with alcohol and condensation the trickled down the glasses as the night wore on. The rest of the people were leaving the bar. The lights had officially come up and the staff were walking around with rags and bottles of disinfectant, spraying and wiping, figure eights on the tables. They stacked chairs atop of chairs and balanced them against the wall. Someone who Kyle had not seen all night came from the door at the back of the room holding a briefcase with wheels that he placed on the floor, pressed a button, and allowed it to whir away, absorbing the remnants of smashed glass, drinks, and anything else small enough to be ingested.

‘Guys,’ a voice from behind them said. They all turned, slowly, seeming to be entirely unable to discover and locate the source of the noise. A girl, smaller than Kyle, but broader, wearing a black waistcoat and a yellow armband with her hair tied in a bun at the top of her head was standing to the side of them. ‘Time to go. We’re all closed up.’

She stood tall, as tall as she could muster, with her arms crossed. Her legs were far apart. She was standing her ground, expecting resistance. But instead, everyone nodded simultaneously.

‘Sure, no problem,’ said Shaun. He looked around the group. ‘Back to ours, then?’ He looked at Ralph. ‘You too, dickhead.’ Ralph nodded, holding his hands up.

‘Yeah fine whatever. Maybe I just won’t sleep and go through the day.’

‘It’s not even like you have to go into work. All you need to do is sit on your couch with the TV on and your screen on,’ said Summer.

‘Yeah, just tap some nonsense into the keyboard every ten minutes or so, they won’t know you’re not doing work,’ another one of them said. This one was wearing a dress, not unlike Jessica’s, but everything else about her was different. She had golden blonde hair with streaks of purple, Kyle could now see in the light, that faded into a teal at the tips. Unlike the rest of the girls, she was entirely without makeup and as she scratched at an itch behind her ear, Kyle saw that she had a tattoo of something he could not yet make out on the inside of her wrist.

They left the bar and outside waiting were three taxis ready to go.

‘Are these ours?’

‘I think so. Get in anyway.’

‘How many of us are there?’

‘I think there’ll be enough. It’s not far anyway, we’ll just send one back if not.’

‘It’s too cold to hang about, though.’

‘Have you even drank anything tonight? Where’s your beer jacket?’

‘There’s not a beer jacket in the world thick enough to save me from this.’

‘Just turn the insulation up on your coat.’

‘Yeah, like my coat is that advanced.’

Kyle stood beside Jessica as the others talked. She grabbed his arm and pressed her body into his. Their breath steamed in front of them and dissipated into the night above.

‘You guys are coming, right?’ Summer said, pointing sloppily towards the two of them huddled under the streetlamps. Jessica looked up at Kyle and Kyle looked down at Jessica.

‘Come on, I want to hear more about Baby Chlo, anyway. Jump in with us.’