Page 25 of White Lights
She sways with vertigo and staggers back toward the entrance of the bar, coatless, shivering, and wearing a pelt of quickly melting snow. Frustrated tears sting her eyes. She’s so tired. So lost. So cold. She isn’t dressed to be out in this weather for longer than a second. She takes out her phone. Still no service. She paces the porch, pissed off at everything, especially herself.
“What am I doing?” she mutters, wrenching snow out of her shoes. “What is wrong with me?”
“Will … you … please,” a female voice pants from a shadowy corner of the porch, “shut … the fuck … up?”
Dez turns around, startled. She hadn’t realized she’d been speaking aloud. “Me?”
She squints into the darkness where she barely discerns two shifting shapes in the dark. Pressed against the railing like they’re … Oh, they’re fucking.
“Yeah, you, in the Burger King uniform,” the woman says, still out of breath. “You’re distracting Felipe, and when Felipe gets distracted, I can actually feel his dick shrivel up inside me. Do you think I like that, Burger King?”
“I’m guessing no,” Dez says. “And it’s Dairy Barn, not Burger King.”
“How about guessing your way off this porch?” the woman says. “Shit, I wasthisclose. It’s not your fault, baby.”
Dez hears something that sounds like a spanking; then the woman’s voice sharpens into a shape. She’s beguiling, a little bit younger than Dez, petite with dark skin and a high, dyed blond ponytail. A veneer of wealth sparkles through her balayage, her microbladed brows, therows of pavé diamond hoops running up the lengths of her ears. She steps toward Dez, tugging a crushed red velvet dress down her slender hips.
Behind her, a Latin male model’s muscled shoulders ripple as he zips his pants. He looks Dez up and down.
“What’s that smell?” he says, handsome face pinching.
“Trans fat and desperation,” the woman in red velvet says. “The Dairy Barn.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Dez says. “I’m just looking for—”
“The first bus home? Good idea.” The woman lights a cigarette. “Name?”
“It’s Dez. Desdemona Rae. I just got here, and—”
“Fuck.” The woman closes her eyes. She takes a long, deep drag, holding it in her lungs an inconceivably long time. It seems like she’s trying not to lose her shit.
“What?” Dez says.
“You don’t make a great first impression. Did you know that? Now, go inside and leave us alone.”
“I just want to get down to the—”
“If you’re going to stay here yapping,” the man says, stepping toward her, “at least join us.” He holds out a huge meaty hand, as if Dez might take one step closer and just start fucking them both.
And that she takes as her cue to go. Her hand finds the bar’s front door. She needs that drink after all. Then she’ll make Rafe show her how to get down to campus and stay far away from these two.
She swings open the bar door—and steps right into Rafe’s arms.
“There she is.” He nods, closing the door behind her and giving her waist a squeeze. It’s been such a long and embarrassing five minutes that when he holds out a highball glass brimming with a pale green concoction, she almost tears up.
“Here’s your drink,” he says, then turns toward a woman in a gray hoodie with two strawberry-blond braids extending from beneath a black ski cap. “And here is the dullest new student I could find. Someone you won’t be so offended by.”
“You’re an asshole,” Dez says.
Rafe ignores her, turning to the woman. “What did you say your name was, honey?”
“Alice Quinn,” the girl says so softly Dez and Rafe both have to lean in to hear her.
“Dez, Alice, Alice, Dez,” Rafe says as Dez takes a sip of her drink. “Well, now that that’s done, I’m going to find some less suicidally depressing company. Excuse me.”
He slides over to the banquette where Esmeralda squeals, throwing her arms and legs around him.
Dez can’t help watching Rafe become absorbed by the crew at the banquette table. He looks so entirely comfortable in all that gorgeous company, in the mostly naked woman’s embrace. Envy courses through Dez. She isn’t sure at first who she envies more—Esmeralda with her long, oiled limbs splayed over Rafe, or Rafe for how easy life and pleasure seems to be for him.
