I didn't know the girl. She was really pretty.

 By one in the morning I’d had enough of trying to approach girls I thought I might have seen around. Each conversation I’d tried to join had been about people I didn’t know,  so it didn’t seem to make much sense for me to stay. If Lola had been there I knew she would have grabbed us both a drink and joined in, dragging me along with her. 

I’d spent the last two hours drifting between rooms on the ground floor. Right now I was standing watching a game of beer pong that appeared to have no definitive end, someone refilling a red plastic cup each time another one was drained. Half-hearted spectators reclined on sofas and chairs dotted around the room, hands resting sloppily on the knees of legs flung over laps, with various portions of skin on show. Intention was at once both intensified and all but completely forgotten within the din of misused drugs and unquantifiable measures. 

The general sense of enthusiasm seemed to undulate, revived every so often with a cheer when a ball splashed into its target, but otherwise fading to a low chatter which mingled with the background music in between small beer-soaked victories. 

I was yet to meet the girl whose party it was. The door had been open when I’d arrived, left on the latch so that guests could walk straight in. There was a space in the corner of the room where I imagined a TV usually sat, and the carpet had been rolled up and leant against one wall.

I stood awkwardly, slightly back from the scene, hovering near a sofa in which the only free space between bodies was taken up by piles of discarded coats and bags. I’d ditched mine in one of the downstairs bedrooms that I’d figured was the party’s make-shift cloakroom. 

I need to remember to get that back, I made a mental note to myself. It belonged to Lola. 

While I watched no one approached me, and I didn’t fancy making a splash in someone else’s drink. 

None of the people playing were speaking to each other between throws, I noticed. Their attention instead on the drink they’d picked up after picking out the ping pong ball thrown into it. The two girls on the far side of the table, dressed almost identically, seemed to communicate with one another only to confirm who’s turn it was to throw. Meanwhile, the boy and the girl on the side where I was standing were both having conversations with the people watching, rather than with each other. 

I winced as the girl closest to me didn’t notice when her hair, which she’d just flipped behind her shoulder ready for her turn, hit the guy standing beside her in the face. He jerked his head away, freeing himself from the wisps that had clung to his lips, and stepped away from her slightly. When she turned around to check behind her before she swung her arm, he didn’t tell her that he’d just had her long blonde hair in his mouth. 

My sympathy for the victim of her tresses dissolved instantly when I saw him mime grabbing her arse. His friends, clumped in a group in front of the sofa, laughed loudly as the girl leant forward to take her shot.  She threw the ball, missing the cups on the other side completely. 

Unable to watch any more, I resumed my self-guided tour of the house, passing the kitchen on my way back through the hallway and pouring myself another drink from one of the spirit bottles left on the side. Plastic cup in hand, I managed to slip back out into the house’s hallway, unnoticed by the people chatting there. 

Making my way back past the entrance to the living room, I reached the back of the house and stepped through the door almost behind the stairs. Why was this one closed when the front door was still wide open, I wondered.

My thoughts were answered as soon as I stepped out into the darkness of what I assumed was the garden. As I slid the door closed behind me, the music from inside softened, becoming barely audible as I stepped away from the house slightly, out of the way of the path that led back inside. 

The only lights I could see in front of me were those of phones used as torches to designate the voices of strangers. I stepped away from the house slightly, and out of the path back to the doorway. Feeling around in the bag I’d kept looped over one shoulder I pulled out the things I needed for a cigarette, placing my plastic cup on the floor between my feet for a moment while I rolled one for myself. Once I’d replaced everything in my bag, checking my phone as I did so to see that Lola still hadn’t replied to my acquiescence, I thought about pretending I didn’t have a lighter. It was something Lola and I used to do in smoking areas, observing carefully while we rolled to determine who might actually be interesting, rather than just someone like us, well, like me, who traded cigarettes for conversations. 

Who out here could actually make this cancer stick worth it? Lola would ask me, wiggling her hips excitedly as her eyes were already narrowing in on a target. Once she’d licked her paper sealed, the challenge would begin. 

I look out at the burnt orange dots dancing through the night, emphasising the point of a story being told, or held immobile, as if in anticipation. I reach back into my bag for my lighter, grateful for the relief as I light the cigarette between my lips and breath in. 

As I bend down to pick up my cup one of the groups passes by me, almost crashing into me even though I’ve stepped to the side of the path to let them pass. They don’t say anything. Nor do I. As they head back inside, and the door endures a brief interlude between open and shut, the noise of the inside seeps out, unleashed once more into the night. The sounds of superficial life escape momentarily before being muffled once again by the closing of the door. 

After finishing my cigarette I sneak back into the house myself, thinking I’ll just nip up to use the bathroom before I head home. I’ve given it enough time. Lola can’t say I haven’t tried. 

As I step through the door and I’m about to close it behind me a girl asks me to hold it open a second. She’s heading outside herself, and pulling some guy along behind her. She’s talking to him as she drags him, one of her hands in his. 

I think it’s something wrong with the gears or something, but if you could come over sometime and have a look at it that would be great. 

It always seems so easy for other people. I'm annoyed at myself as the thought flashes across my mind.

The guy in question seems neither resistant nor overly zealous about his situation. The girl’s other hand replaces mine on the doorframe and she breaks her conversation momentarily to flash a smile of thanks in my direction. I nod and smile back before my brain has had a chance to react. 

As the guy she’s with staggers after her, he knocks into me slightly and I stumble backwards and over my own feet. Instead of the apology I’m expecting I hear him chuckle. I look up to glare at him, incensed by his arrogance. Yet when my eyes meet his, bleary from something more than alcohol, I realise we’ve met before. 

Luke? 

Maia. He nods his head towards me. I wince as his hand covers the girls’ on the doorframe, though I’m sure he’s only placed it there to steady himself. For less than a second he looks as if he’s about to say something else, but the possibility of the rest of his sentence is cut off by a click as he’s yanked all the way outside and the back door is closed behind them. I can just see his silhouette as he stumbles again, into the night I’d just left. 

I stand for a minute in the darkness of the hallway, staring at the closed door and feeling the too loud music of the party pulsate in my skull.

I didn’t know the girl. She was really pretty.