NOTHING GOLD BY ALEXANDRA RICHARDSON

“Dance with me.”

     Taylor nearly leapt out of her skin. She hadn’t been paying much attention to anything, just drifted away with her thoughts, lost whatever tether she had to the world and vanished. Out of the party, and out of the light. Just like that, she was gone.

     Until he asked her to dance. Then she was back, leaning against a dark wood wall in a narrow bar with creaky uneven floors now sticky with spilled booze and illuminated only by the lights strung across the low, scratched, dark wooden ceiling, listening to the music and the laughing. Then she was reminded of dark nights and long conversations and bitter alcohol and cigarette smoke and sneaking around behind her two older brothers’ backs and running, lots of running, down back streets and narrow corridors and laughing until her sides hurt and that little lace dress she used to wear and Rolling Stones songs and jumping the fence between her house and her cousin Will’s because he had been staying with Will since last summer and he and she  and Will would always go down to the beach no matter how late it was and splash in the ice cold water and talk about everything and nothing and let her fell small against those vast cliff faces and the vaster universe.

     Serious, serious, serious. He had never made her be that, whatever it meant.

     He was the last person she wanted to see; him and his beautiful smile and his flirting and sarcasm and that dark, sharp, razor-edged streak that ran through him and made him hurt and want to hurt everyone he came into contact with.

     He was the last person she wanted to see, so, it was fitting, of course, that he would show up.

     “One dance and you can ignore me for the rest of our lives.” He didn’t look at her as he stepped up beside her, hands clasped loosely behind his back. She hated herself for the traitorous goosebumps that rose on her arms and shoulders. Then, she hated him for being there, just like he used to be, before they were friends, when they were friends, and then when they were more than friends, whether to annoy her or save her from herself or make her laugh. And then, she hated herself again for missing him.

     But that was a different Taylor. That Taylor belonged to time of studying in the library or at the desk in her bedroom, of impromptu soccer matches, of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway and Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and James Baldwin and Charles Dickens Novels (so many novels), of late nights in the library or drunken ones at parties, of loud, loud, loud music, of dreams and counting down the days to graduation. That had been a girl who grappled for control where she could, oscillated between her parents’ houses and wavered between their screaming matches, chafed under her father’s iron-fisted control. That girl didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, screamed into her pillow but couldn’t cry. That girl had fallen head over knee-high school uniform socks for exactly the very last boy in the world she should have.

     “I thought you didn’t dance.”

     “I don’t, usually.”

     She studied him out of the corner of her eye, taking in the fitted black suit, the crisp white shirt, the long dark brown hair, the gray eyes, the angular features, the knife-like cheekbones and jagged jawline that collided with a pointed chin. The lips, Cupid’s bow shaped and bow pink, like a girl’s, were curled in their usual smirk, conveying boredom, tragedy, and vicious amusement at once.

     He didn’t look at her, and she didn’t dare turn her head.

     He kept his eyes – dark, slate gray – on his best friend of twelve years – Will – whirl Scarlett under the flurry of lights strung over the ceiling of the bar hosting the Heuron – Evans wedding party. Scarlett’s red hair streamed out behind her like a banner as Will spun her under his arm and the lacy champagne-colored skirt whirled around her knees.

     Scarlett laughed and Will was smiling as she hadn’t seen since his parents died; Taylor wanted to squeeze his hand tightly, as she used to do when they were little and neighbors and he was her closest cousin and they were unconscious and fearless in their friendship, before age and gender and new friends transmuted their interactions to something more distant. Now she calls Scarlett her best friend but it is not untrue. She loves them both and they love her and that’s more important anyhow. She loves them, she loves them so much it hurts.

     Taylor should have been pleased that Will’s god-parents had insisted on a church wedding and a little party afterwards, no matter how self-conscious the attention made Scarlett. There were so few reasons to celebrate these days. Will had had especially few in his short twenty-two years and Scarlett and Will were the best people she knew and their happiness was probably the only thing worth celebrating she could really think of.

     He sighed and turned to look at her, one dark, jagged eyebrow, the one with the faint white scar slitting the end, jacked upwards.

     “Come on, Legs?” He held out his hand, palm up. “For Will?”

     “One dance,” Taylor replied warningly. She set her champagne glass down and took his hand. It was still dry and covered with scratches, cold from carrying glasses and bottles all night. Somehow, Will had begged, pleaded, and threatened until he had agreed to play bartender for much of the night.

     She had spent the past six months teaching herself how not to miss him, but two seconds and a glass of champagne could apparently wreak havoc on well-forged resolve. So, she didn’t say anything as he pulled her onto the dance floor, set his other had on her waist and pulled her towards him.

     He had noticed how different she looked the moment he walked in, the moment he saw her, and had been thinking about it most of the evening – he hadn’t seen her since they said goodbye at the train station in London – and Taylor looked younger, strangely. Thinner, paler, with dark bruise-like circles under her eyes; her hair was longer and she’d lightened it. It was tied up with a length of light pink ribbon. She’d clutched her champagne glass with a shaky, white-knuckled hand, but never drank from it.

     But she was still her same old self, tall and daddy-longlegs-like, with big sad eyes and the gap between her teeth and the other between her legs and the bruises all over because she was wildly clumsy and knocked into everything. Her green eyes still reminded him of the laughing, bitching, dancing thing she’d been. And he was still himself, cool and aloof and cynical and sarcastic and charming.

     “It’s “Legs” again,” she commented casually. It wasn’t too difficult to feign. The days when he used to make her heart race with a fizzing cocktail of irritation and anxiety were gone, and she wasn’t sure if there was anything left behind.

     He raised his eyebrows in question. He didn’t even have to look down at her. In her heels she was only about two inches shorter than he was.

     “You’ve called me “Taylor” all evening,” she told him. “Now, it’s “Legs” again.”

     He shrugged. “Doubted you’d appreciate it.”

     “That’s never stopped you before.”

     He grinned crookedly. “It’s more to piss off Prewett than anything.”

     She attempted to refrain from rolling her eyes and failed. “Which one?”

     “Does it matter?” The grin widened. “The middle one’s hated me I fought him in the school hallway when I was eleven. Probably didn’t help that he was mates with your brother. The younger one’s glaring at me. What’s his name again?”

     “Lionel.”

     “That’s it. He really hates me, doesn’t he?”

     “God, yes.”

     “Thank you, Legs, ever helpful.” He spun her under his arm, her skirt lifting and twisting after her. “Oh, now he’s muttering to his brother at the bar. It’s probably my fault, I’m dancing with his girl, aren’t I?”

     Her ankle turned slightly under her and she teetered, surprise getting the best of her. He steadied her without taking his eyes off her face, without seeming to think about it. “N-no, I’m not.”

     His eyebrows rose back towards his hairline.

     “Where did you hear that?”

     He shrugged. “Can’t remember. Weren’t you seeing one of them at least?”

     “Fabian. Briefly. Ended months ago. The middle one, Why, jealous?” She sounded listless to her own ears, not light and flirtatious and teasing as she should have been. As she used to be, a million years ago. Verbal sparring had been the earliest incarnation of their relationship and it was territory that felt all too familiar.

     He barked a harsh laugh that made her jump. She hated that laugh, and he knew it.

     “Jealous of him? It’s not like you were anything worth being jealous of, love.”

     She was glad he took the opportunity to dip her so she could arrange her features into an indifferent mask. The sting of the verbal slap tingled numbly, as though it had come weakly and from far away, but she sensed it on the surface of her skin, deep in her chest, away in her mind.

     She looped her arms around his neck so that when he pulled her up, her torso was pressed against his. She could smell the booze on his breath.

     “I’m confused. Why are you trying so hard to piss him off, exactly?”

The knife-smile remained. “Just a bit of fun. Kind of my thing, you’ll remember.”

     She tilted her head so that her lips were next to his ear. “Why’s your heart beating so fast then?”

     He could smell the champagne she’d been drinking and her perfume. When he brushed his hand against her bare back, he felt a trail of goosebumps and the ridges of her spine.    

“No faster than yours, Legs.”