It was freezing cold outside and as Shannon walked through the dead park, she regretted wearing her jeans with the rips at the knees. The wind traveled up her pants, chilling her warmed thighs from the inside out. It was dark, nearly midnight on a moonless evening and she couldn’t see anything. The paths were ones she had traveled well and often, usually during the day but occasionally at night. She knew this was dangerous and that her father would kill her if he knew, but he lived far away and would never find out. At present, Shannon cared about absolutely nothing but getting home and forgetting tonight ever happened.
Despite her familiarity with the winding sidewalk, she was finding the welts and bumps in the concrete surprisingly treacherous. This was due less in part to her inability to memorize familiar patterns and more to the fourth filthy martini she had had before she left the Christmas party.
It would be incorrect to say that Shannon had only known one person there – the host, who was busy socializing with a room full of people he knew. Technically, Shannon knew a handful of people, but one often knows many people. The bulk of the party was comprised of total strangers, but there were a few others that she had known in other ways – “biblical ways” her aunt would have said, but Shannon hated that phrase. These people were neither friends nor strangers, and Shannon wished that none of them were here. But this was a futile desire; the circles were small in New York, and the ruination of her social life as a result of dating within them was inevitable.
Her friend Aggie was supposed to come out with her tonight but she was currently busy nursing a massive hangover from the night before. Christmas in New York was like celebrating your twenty-first birthday for weeks on end: the booze was always on someone else’s tab and there was always too much of it. Shannon prayed for the New Year just so she could have an excuse to stay inside and drink apple juice, not a liter of vodka.
Shannon walked around the party, unsuccessfully attempting to make conversation with people she had never had sex with. She felt waves of what she could only describe as situational Asberger’s, her conversations devolving into a disastrous combination of stalled and halted “errs” and “uhhs” and “no, no, no…you go.” She couldn’t focus on anything else but Simon in the corner, talking to a girl that wasn’t her, or Jared who was holding the hand of a girl she used to be friends with some years back, or Tyson who wasn’t with another girl, but was willfully omitting Shannon from his line of sight.
Eventually, Shannon gave up, finding herself left alone in the kitchen, perusing a finely curated bar. Booze was the cure for her current disillusionment; she had come to hate parties and clubs, preferring to spend most of her evenings curled up on the couch, watching documentaries on the Civil War and peak oil. Her distaste for the scene had taken far too long: nearly five blurry years of half-baked friendships based on who bought the best cocaine and relationships that seemed as brief and pointless as a romcom staring Reese Witherspoon. She was over everything and everyone, simultaneously. She grasped the handle of a nearly empty bottle of vodka and poured judiciously into her own paper cup.
The olive juice had made the vodka disturbingly easy to drink, as did the company that inspired it. Shannon sat on the marble countertop, plucking olives out of the glass jar she had commandeered and placed in between her thighs. “Olive juice…aahhhliivvvv jooosss,” she purred in her head, remembering a nasty way children used fake professions of love. She laughed because she was drunk and she cried because she was alone, not just tonight but perpetually. The tears came slowly at first, running down in sluggish streams and developing into embarrassing torrents that forced her into a newly renovated bathroom with custom-made cabinetry and a subway-tile countertop that caught her mascara-blackened tears.
People knocked and turned the knob, polite at first and then with a palpable irritation. Shannon shut the lights off as though that would make them disappear, the room disappear, her disappear. She sat in the bathtub in her torn jeans that were not dressy enough for this party and held her knees in towards her chest. She felt ridiculous and paralyzed, filled with the desire to remain in the room until morning, which seemed like a more attractive option than exiting in front of a sea of people enjoying themselves.
Whoever had been waiting for the restroom on the other side had given up. Shannon paused, listening to the sounds of strangers laughing and a glass breaking in the kitchen. She crept out of the bathroom and around the corner towards the front door, grabbing the first black jacket she could find, knowing that it wasn’t hers but that she would return it later. For now she had to get away, far away. If she knew anyone in Illinois or even Canada she would go there – hop on a Greyhound bus and change her life.
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sequel?