Felix Ever After(19)

He throws it open, and Marisol comes sauntering in, makeup smeared across her face, tight dress and combat boots on. She’d clearly already been out. She ignores me as she holds up a six-pack of beer and stares around.

“Where the fuck is everyone?” she says.

“You’re the first person here.”

“Balls,” she says, walking in and dropping the beer on the kitchen counter. “Suckiest party ever, Ezra.”

“Relax,” he says, grabbing a beer bottle and using his T-shirt to twist the cap off. “Some serious shit’s about to go down.”

And he’s right. Within the next few minutes, over a dozen people show up. Most are St. Cat’s students. Some are people I’ve never seen before in my life. Ezra asked Leah to bring her speakers, and an iPhone is hooked up, blasting Hayley Kiyoko and BTS. Ezra still hasn’t gotten lightbulbs, so the only way to see is from the dim glow of the TV screen, the orange streetlights outside, and the phones people wave around. No one seems to care. A few take advantage of the dark, from the sounds of smacking lips and a little too much moaning. There’s dancing, laughing, shouting as a guy yells to pass the weed. Someone brings a string of blinking white Christmas lights, I have no idea why, and half the crowd spends a good few drunken minutes decorating Ezra’s apartment with them.

Marisol dances with Hazel, kissing, hands beneath shirts. Austin is there, leaning into Ezra, whispering in his ear, hand on Ezra’s leg. Leah and Tyler are screaming the words to an old Lizzo song in each other’s faces, jumping up and down. Everyone’s shorts and skirts and sneakers and platform heels surround me while I sit on the mattress, back against the wall, watching.

Watching, watching, watching. It feels like that’s all I ever do sometimes. Watch other people dance, watch other people kiss. Marisol was the first—and last—person I worked up the nerve to ask out. We never kissed. We barely touched. What do you call someone who’s never been kissed? A lip virgin? I guess I’m a lip virgin.

Why am I always the person who just sits to the side and watches? What is it about me that no one likes, that no one wants? It’s like it’s too much for other people—me having brown skin, and being queer, and being trans on top of that . . . or, maybe that’s just what I tell myself because I’m too afraid to put myself out there again, too afraid of being rejected and getting hurt. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.

I pull out my phone and place it on long-exposure mode, snapping a photo. When enough time has passed, I look at it. The photo is a smear of cell phone and Christmas lights, streaks of white across the screen, blurs of legs and shoes.

I go to Instagram to post the image, but I hesitate. The piece of shit who’d messaged me—I’m positive it was Declan with a stupid fake account—hasn’t said anything else, but I don’t know if posting this would make him want to message me again. I shouldn’t be afraid to post photos on my own Instagram account, but I am. Besides . . . I don’t want anyone to see this picture. It feels too vulnerable. Too lonely. People right here at this party could check their phones and see it. It’d be weird.

But something like this—I want, no, need to put the photo out into the world, into the universe, as if the second that picture exists somewhere besides my phone is the moment I’ll start to exist, too. I log into the luckyliquid95 account and post it. The caption reads “the watcher.” Perfect.

There’s a furious pounding on the door. When Ezra cracks it open, his upstairs neighbor yells that it’s one in the morning, some people have to wake up for work tomorrow, turn the fucking music down or he’s going to call the cops, etc. Ezra is nowhere near as petty as me—Ezra’s neighbor is a jerk, so I 100 percent would’ve kept the party going—but Ez says things are winding down anyway and turns off the music. People eventually trickle out the door, yelling that they’ll see each other in class tomorrow, laughter and loud voices and footsteps echoing on the staircase, until finally it’s just me, Ezra, Marisol, Leah, and Austin.

Ezra and Austin are sitting by the open window as they smoke weed, whispering, eyes shining as they lean forward and laugh, making intense eye contact. I feel like I’m witnessing something private, like I shouldn’t even be looking at them. Leah and Marisol are lying down flat on their backs on the hardwood floor, arms and legs spread out like they’re about to make snow angels. After Marisol and I attempted our three dates, she declared to everyone one morning before class that she’s only interested in dating other girls. I try not to be too self-involved, but it almost felt like she was saying that just to make a dig at me—to say that while I’m misogynistic, she is clearly not (how can she be, when she loves girls so much that she’ll only date them?); to suggest, somehow, that she only dates girls, which is why she was willing to go on a date with me. I don’t know if she’s purposefully trying to hurt me—if she even realizes she’s doing it, or if I’m just being oversensitive. It can be hard to get a feel for what Marisol’s thinking, and I’m pretty sure she likes it that way. What’s worse is that I can’t even talk to Ezra about it—not without admitting what Marisol had said.

Marisol is in the middle of a monologue about Hazel. “She’s so confusing. I mean, what was that tonight? Is she just fucking with me? She’ll do this thing where she won’t answer a text for, like, five hours, and I don’t know if she’s just playing it cool, or if she actually just doesn’t look at her phone.”