Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [103]
Later, we’re in the living room and it occurs to me that I might be buzzed because Jeremy seems to be holding my hand while I’m talking, and I don’t seem to be snatching it back. When he leans in to kiss me, I get the distinct whiff of bacteria breath, and this—not the fact that he’s about to kiss me—is what makes me wake up and push him slightly to the side while I straighten my skirt.
I think it’s around the time when I light my first indoor cigarette—he’s given me free rein to smoke wherever I want to now—that I see Jeremy reach into his pocket and pull his hand out with his fingers folded over as they clasp something.
“I don’t feel bad about giving you the wine,” he says, and I think that this seems like an oddly serious comment to be making at this point, seeing as we’ve mutually decided I’m not and have never been an alcoholic. “But I do feel a little bad about the Ecstasy.”
I look at him, confused, thinking for one brief, horrifically wonderful second that he’s dosed the wine with Ex and I’ve thus just done drugs without it having been my fault, when I glance into his previously clasped hand and spy a slew of small white pills gathered there. Is that Ecstasy? I’ve done it a bunch of times, but I’ve usually been so drunk or wired by that point that I don’t really remember what it looks like.
“Well, my problem was with drugs,” I say, regretfully. “I mean, I was addicted to coke, and that’s a drug. So doing a drug is out of the question, right?”
I’m not sure if I’m asking a rhetorical question but it doesn’t really matter because by the time the sentence is out of my mouth, I’ve already grabbed a pill and gulped it down with the wine. I look at him as he swallows one himself, and want to feel guilty for having just taken a step down the proverbial rabbit hole, but that age-old I-just-took-drugs feeling kicks in and I feel only excited, like I’m about to take a trip where my head will leave me alone for a little while. And then I think, Well, since I’ve already taken one and clearly blown this whole sobriety thing, I may as well take another one. If I’m going to go out, why not go all out?
So I swallow another pill and light another cigarette and wait for that feeling of deliriousness to start rushing over me. “I don’t feel anything,” I say to Jeremy as he puts U2 on the CD player.
He looks at me. “You’re sweating bullets,” he says. “Trust me, you’re feeling something.”
I feel my forehead and notice that it is uncharacteristically moist but I don’t do drugs to sweat, I do them to feel good, and since when does sweating mean I must be feeling good? At my senior prom in high school, my boyfriend and I took Ecstasy and didn’t tell the other couples sharing the limo because we thought they would judge it. But trying to hide the high I was feeling over dinner took its toll on me, and my trip turned decidedly negative. When we got to the after-party and the two other couples found out what we’d done, they spontaneously decided they wanted to do Ecstasy, too—and they all had an amazing time. I remember sitting on a couch trying to figure out why exactly I couldn’t seem to communicate with anyone while watching one of the girls, who’d never touched drugs before, jumping up and down and shrieking, “I feel like I’m dancing on a cloud! This is the best I’ve ever felt in my life!”
I watch Jeremy open another bottle of wine, feeling convinced that his Ecstasy sucks. “Can I see those pills again?” I ask.
Jeremy smiles and pulls another one from his pocket. “Open up,” he says, and even though the act seems overly intimate, almost invasive, I want the pill too