Aquarius

The world is no longer a sphere hurtling through space. The world or at least LA is a docked boat rocking and bobbing in a harbor. I haven’t had anything to drink in at least two hours but I still feel drunk. Drunk on sun. Drunk on heat. Drunk on the season. I slither my leg off the lounge chair and try to plant a foot to steady the boat but the deck is too hot and I recoil. I don’t know anyone here except Riley—it’s his birthday—and Dane. Dane and I aren’t speaking. I tried to blow on those embers but they wouldn’t catch so now we aren’t speaking. He’s sitting in the corner of the pool drinking a Corona and his freckled shoulders are turning deep pink. I should tell him but I don’t because something still has to burn and I will let it be him. I also know Jena. She’s Riley’s girlfriend. She’s huddled close to her friend showing her something on her phone and trying to shield the screen from the late afternoon sun. I don’t know the friend’s name because she started talking to me like we were old friends even though I’d never met her.

One of Riley’s likewise-unnamed friends grabs the last beer from the cooler and announces that we’re out of drinks. Riley asks if anyone wants to go get more and I volunteer before I’m asked because I know I’ll be missed the least. I'm surprised when Jena says she’ll come too. I pull my dress over my head and it might be inside-out but it doesn’t matter because we’ll be right back. I’m lightheaded probably from dehydration and definitely from something entirely else.

I follow Jena down the narrow staircase from the rooftop and it feels good to be out of the sun. My skin is prickly. The thwacking of our flip-flips against the cement stairs echoes. Her tank top is damp where it’s touching her bikini top and the ends of her hair. We step out onto the street and my eyes readjust to the assertive sunlight. She stays five paces in front of me the whole way to the store, skipping and twirling and singing a verse of some Top 40 song. People are staring because they’re uncomfortable seeing joy without a reason. She twirls past a laundromat with brilliant pink bougainvillea exploding from the white facade and I think I’d like to take a photo of her in front of it. Even though the street is bustling with people I can still hear the power lines above us buzzing and cracking in the still, hot air.

We enter the store and she skips to the liquor aisle and turns to face me for the first time today to ask me if I think we should get seltzers too. Her hair is tangled and the ends are tinged with green from a summer in Riley’s pool. The air between us smells like chlorine. “You’re so red” she giggles and presses two cold IPA cans to my cheeks and smushes them together. We laugh until we think we might pass out and the people at the deli stare because they’re uncomfortable seeing joy without a reason.

On the way back she sets down the box of seltzer on the sidewalk and lets me take a few photos of her in front of the bougainvillea. The button-fly of her shorts is undone revealing the waistband of her green bikini bottoms and I think she’s done that on purpose. An elderly man accidentally walks through the frame of one of the photos and when I show them to her she says that’s her favorite one and asks me to send it to her.

“Do you want to see something?” She asks as we approach the apartment building and I say of course and we go in through the aggressively air-conditioned marble lobby where our laughter and flip flops echo even louder. She doesn’t want to wait for the elevator so we go up another cement staircase. She grabs my hand and as we run up the stairs our arms make one big rubber band. We expand and contract and move like water. She has a key to Riley’s place so we go in and she tells me to wait for a second and goes into the bedroom. The apartment is big and has wooden floors and exposed brick walls and faces the east so it’s in the shade at this time of day. I sit in the middle of the bare wooden floor and she comes back holding a gray kitten and puts him in my lap. She says his name is Raging Bull and I say that’s an interesting name for a cat and she says it’s because he’s a Taurus and very destructive.

“What are you?” I ask and I know I mean it in one way but I think I mean it in a thousand other ways too and I hope she’ll answer all of them. “Aquarius” she says and that makes sense because she is exactly the same kind of ephemeral as air. She’s in the air but she also somehow is the air. She’s filling up my nose and mouth and lungs and she’s kind of everywhere but also kind of nowhere.

I lay my head in her lap and Raging Bull starts attacking my hair like snakes. I look up at her and ask her if she loves and him and by “him” I mean Riley. She’s taken aback and says “Love doesn’t really have anything to do with it.” She looks flustered and continues on with maybe a little bit more hostility but I don’t think it’s necessarily towards me. “We’re just having fun. Like you and I had fun. We had fun, didn’t we?” I respond that yes we did have fun and reach for a strand of her tangled hair but she suddenly gets up from the floor and says she should take the drinks back up to the others. She tells me I can stay and play with Raging Bull but just put him back in the bedroom when I’m done. And then she leaves.

It’s quiet except for a siren in the distance. The cool hardwood floor creaks as I lie back down and it feels good against my flushed skin. I am abruptly sober. I don’t want to go back up to the pool and I know that if I don’t no one will notice I’m gone anyway. But part of me is still up there. And part of me is still in the liquor aisle at the store and part of me is still taking photos in front of the laundromat and part of me is still in the cement staircase and part of me is still at the bar last night where Jena kissed me and Riley cheered because he thought it was a birthday present for him. And part of me will inevitably stay here on this creaky wooden floor when my sunburnt body leaves. I’m kind of everywhere but also kind of nowhere.