Author Note: This story was a collaboration between myself and another. He started the story, and then we switched off, the asteriks noting our switches. It's a bit slow in the beginning, it was our first combined effort story, so we didn't really know where we were taking it at first.
* * *
A cold, stiff wind was blowing down the dark suburban street, the kind of wind that blows past the nooks and crannies so that you don't feel it until you step out and it blows right into you, making your breath catch. Colm was standing on the porch smoking a cigarette, not in the direct path but not entirely out of it either, one hand in his pocket and the other perched on the cigarette. He took a drag and exhaled and watched the smoke disappear almost instantly, torn to pieces and blown away. He could have smoked in the garage but it was full of people and he needed a moment alone. The urge to smoke had dissipated in that wind as quickly as the smoke itself, but he felt uncomfortable at the thought of just standing on the porch, for no set amount of time, no task to complete, nothing to do, just standing there for no reason until he decided to go in. He couldn't do that. So he smoked, puffing quickly, until he had smoked about two-thirds of the cigarette and then stepped to the edge of the porch and flicked the butt toward the driveway. The wind took it and threw it down in the grass on the far side of the yard where it rolled, embers flying, into the neighbor's yard, and then on. Well, he wasn't going to chase it.
He went back inside and it was another world. His cheeks stung in the warmth and light of the house. The music was loud, coming from the living room, and people were spread out all over the living room and the kitchen and the garage and a back bedroom full of instruments where a few guys were jamming and there were even a few diehards in the backyard gathered in a huddle around a joint that the wind kept trying to murder. He made his way to the kitchen and through the tangle of people there to the cooler and got a fresh beer, then went back to the living room to look for a place to sit.
The chairs were full but the sofa had an open seat, but there was a conversation going between some people he had never met and he didn't feel like sitting down in the middle of it, so he sat on the hearth. He was nearing the end of his beer and was somewhat dreading threading his way back to the cooler, balancing his discomfort against his desire for the means to relieve his discomfort, when Sarah floated by.
"Hey darlin', what are you doing sitting on the fireplace?"
"Just chilling."
"Everything cool?"
"Yeah. I'm just not so much in the party mood, I guess."
"Well you need to liven up, man." She gave him a playful shove. "Getcha 'nother fuckin' DRINK, man." She laughed. She wasn't as drunk as she was playing at, but she liked playing drunk and she was funny, a tiny little woman with great big eyes and an enormous voice. It was her house, her party, and she was almost the only one he knew. Her cheer was virtually invincible and it never failed to infect him, at least a little.
"I think you're right, I need another beer." He stood and as he walked past she slapped him heartily on his ass. He yowled and jumped.
"That's the spirit!" He could still hear her gasping, twittering giggle when he got to the kitchen.
The heads had given up and come in from the backyard and were now warming themselves on the girls and the beer in the kitchen, making it even more impassable. He accidentally elbowed one girl, nearly stepped on another's foot, and some guy with a Cossack beard grabbed his ass before he made it to the cooler.
If there's not a beer in there I'm going to fucking kill somebody, or everybody.
He opened the cooler and found someone had restocked it. He reached down below the fresh ones on top and his fingers felt and wrapped around the neck of a cold bottle. As he was rising again he heard a gasp and a wave of hair bounced off his head. He looked up and a girl was staggering back a bit.
"Are you ok?"
"Yeah, I was just peeking over you to see if there was beer in there and you started to stand up and I wasn't ready, you almost got me."
"Sorry."
"It's ok."
He looked at her. She was pretty, with long brown hair and wearing a black dress. He held out his beer.
"Well here, you can have this one."
"Are you sure? Is there more?"
"It's full. Go ahead."
"Thanks."
"Sure."
He went back into the cooler and when he came back up all he saw was a swirl of hair and a black skirt being swallowed by the crush at the door leading to the music room.
***
The music was of a mind-numbing, teeth-aching intensity. The bass pounded in time to the pulse in her temple as she maneuvered herself through the crowd of strangers, back across the room to the group of people she knew from work. She almost sighed with relief as she took her place back in the circle of women, and twisted off the top of the long-neck she had just been handed. She put the bottle to her lips, closed her eyes, and tilted her head back, thinking of nothing as the cool liquid flooded her mouth, and then trickled down her throat. She stood for a moment, sipping on her beer, as she silently observed the conversation going on around her.
Leah looked around the crowded room, and through the doorway into the kitchen, at all the people she didn't know. She barely knew Sarah at all, whose house was the focal point of the party, even though they worked together. She wouldn't have normally come, either, had Beth not bullied her into it.
"You need to get out more", she had said.
"I don't know anybody, it would be awkward", Leah had protested, but Beth had insisted, and then resorted to thinly veiled, half-teasing threats about scheduling her to work every weekend for the next 2 months if she didn't come to the party tonight. So, agreeing at the last minute, she didn't really have any clothes to change into, like the other girls did, and she lived too far away to be trusted to go home and come back. So, she was dressed in her work clothes, a black dress that she wore today, somewhat dressed up by knee-high boots, on loaner from Beth. She looked out the window again over her beer bottle, cursing the rapid change in weather. It was a balmy 75 this afternoon, and now the chill wind was enough to take the flesh off of bones. She didn't even have a jacket; she shuddered at the thought of the cold outside.
She hardly noticed as her group dwindled in size, until she glanced around and noticed Beth was no longer there. She made a quick survey of the room, but she wasn't any where to be seen. She saw Sarah running around, and she leapt forward to get her attention.
"Sarah, did you see which way Beth went? I swear she was just here..." she started.
"Oh, hon, Beth left a while ago! She usually finds someone to hook up with here, there are lots of people here usually, and she either has a special someone she meets up with, or just picks someone new, I don't know! But she's gone..." Sarah gushed, and then she was running off, leaving Leah to stand in the living room, alone.
"Great, now how am I supposed to get home?" She muttered softly to herself.
She tried not to get too upset, but as she glanced around the ever changing crowd, she saw no one she knew who could help her out. She set her beer bottle down on the mantle of the fireplace, and squeezed her way around the bodies in the living room, scouring the faces of those she didn't know for a familiar one.
***
Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought. There was an opportunity to talk to a pretty girl and you just let her walk away. I guess it's all for the best. She's probably got a boyfriend anyway. And she'll be enjoying the party, maybe dancing, talking with a pile of friends. I'm just the guy in the corner waiting to leave.
The beers he'd drunk so far had little effect, which surprised him as he was a lightweight. He looked at the beer in his hand and then did his best to chug it down, but it was a trick he had never learned and so it took him half a dozen big swallows. His insides burbled and tickled with beer. He pulled out another and picked what looked like the path of least resistance out of the kitchen, toward the living room. It was fairly clear but for one girl who was standing dead center of the walk space. She was sexy and wore clothes so tight she appeared to have simply been dipped into paint. Under other circumstances he would have enjoyed brushing past her but now all he wanted was for her to move. He stood and waited, then after being unnoticed he began to say, "Excuse me. Excuse me." His voice got louder but she was drunk and didn't seem to hear, so he reached and took her by the waist and walked her right into the guy she'd been talking to. She hardly even seemed to notice that, but the guy winked at Colm as he slid past.
As he came into the living room he saw the flash of hair and skirt, again departing through the other doorway. Suddenly he wanted to find her, have a better look at her, see who she was here with, see if maybe he could talk to her. He saw Sarah talking among a cluster and grabbed her arm.
"Hey sweetie, are you having some fun yet?"
"We'll see. Do you know that girl with the really long hair, wearing the black dress and leather boots?"
Sarah knitted her brow and thought.
"She was just in here."
Her eyes widened. "Oh, that's Leah. I work with her."
"Is she here with anyone?"
"Well, I don't think she has a boyfriend if that's what you're asking, but I'm not sure. She did come with Beth but Beth just split a little while ago."
"Thanks."
He made for the door she had disappeared into, a new certainty in his step. He saw an opening and made a kind of lunge for it. As he gained the hallway he felt something soft glance off his shoulder and saw a cascade of hair and when he looked it was her, stumbling back against the wall.
***
She felt the air whoosh out of her when she hit the wall, and she put a hand to her head, closing her eyes and leaning against the wall for a bit. The sudden change in direction made her slightly vertiginous, and she tried to gain her bearings slowly. She opened her eyes to see the guy from the kitchen, the one that had given her his beer, standing there with a look of pure horror on his face.
"Where you going in such a hurry?" she wisecracked.
