#135 The Order of Things

by Kathleen Latham

“Dibs,” Zoey says as soon as we see you.

“You can’t do that,” I tell her, but she’s already squeezing her cleavage into position and teetering in your direction, a high-heeled doe on spindly legs.

I look around the party. A guy in skinny jeans bumps into me and asks if I’ve seen someone named Stacks. Before I can answer, a girl with a lip piercing jumps on his back.

Across the room, Zoey throws her head back and laughs. Not because you’re funny, but because she thinks she has a sexy neck. Zoey thinks a lot of things. About herself. And me. And the order of things.

I watch the two of you—the calculated jut of her hip, your predatory smile—until the heat of my stare makes you look up. A lion pausing over an outstretched neck. Your eyes, just hungry enough.

I linger a beat—a long, important beat—then I turn and make my way through the apartment, past swaying bodies and thumping music and shot glasses glinting to fist-driven chants; the room pulsing with life, and me, cutting through it, until I emerge on a balcony, and there is symmetry to this sudden solitude, to the strict, straight lines of the buildings around me, the muffled sounds of the street below, the weight of the sky above.

I breathe deeply and wait.

Later, when you take me home, you whisper in my hair. I run my nails down your naked back and answer, Mine.