The music is louder than I remember when I step back out. Or maybe the bathroom was just that quiet. Either way my ears need a second to adjust and I'm standing in the hallway blinking under the colored lights when I hear him before I see him.
"Bella! Yo, Bella, come here!"
Ethan is in the middle of the floor with his boys. His shirt is damp at the collar from dancing and his face is open and lit up and he's waving me over with both arms like I'm across a football field instead of fifteen feet away. The guys around him are hyping up the DJ who just dropped something heavy and the floor is vibrating under my shoes.
I go. What else am I going to do?
He grabs my hand the second I'm close enough and pulls me in and suddenly I'm in the middle of this circle of guys I barely know and Ethan is moving and I'm trying to keep up and failing because I dance the way I do most physical things — with more enthusiasm than skill. He doesn't care. He spins me and I almost trip into the guy behind me and Ethan catches my arm and pulls me back laughing.
I'm laughing too because it's impossible not to when he's like this.
A song changes. Something I know. Nadia put it on her playlist yesterday morning while I was unpacking and I was humming it in the shower without realizing. I mouth the words and Ethan catches me and points at my face — "you know this one?" — and starts singing it badly on purpose, off-key, loud, getting the lyrics wrong in a way I can't tell if it's genuine or a bit. One of his friends shoves him and tells him to stop and Ethan gets louder and I'm covering my face with both hands laughing so hard my stomach hurts.
Across the room I see them. Nadia and Kira. They must've gotten here while I was in the bathroom. They're near the back wall, not really dancing, more like holding each other while the music moves around them. Nadia's arms around Kira's neck. Kira's hands on Nadia's hips. Their foreheads are touching and Nadia is saying something that makes Kira smile with her whole face and neither of them is looking at anyone else in this room.
I gave him a whole year.
Stella's voice. Right there in the middle of a song I like, between one beat and the next, uninvited.
I gave him a whole year of my life and he just—
I look at Ethan. He's got his arm around one of his boys' shoulders singing the chorus wrong and grinning and the light catches his face .Three years. Not one. Three. Three years of knowing exactly how he takes his food and what makes him laugh and which voice note to play when I can't sleep and he's standing four feet away from me singing a song he doesn't know the words to and I'm just another body in his circle.
The DJ brings it down. The tempo shifts. Something slower bleeds through the speakers and the energy in the room changes like someone dimmed the lights and the volume at the same time. Half the floor clears. People walk off toward the drinks or the walls or outside. Couples stay. You can tell who came together by who's still standing on the floor.
Ethan turns to me. His face is flushed and his breathing is still up from the last song and he holds out his hand.
"Don't make it weird," he says.
"You're the one making it weird by saying don't make it weird."
"Just dance, Bella."
I take his hand. He pulls me closer. His other hand goes to my waist ,My hand goes to his shoulder because I don't know where else to put it and my fingers press into the damp fabric of his shirt and I can feel the heat of his skin underneath.
We sway. That's the most accurate word for it because neither of us is actually dancing. He's talking. Of course he's talking. Something about the guy across the room who just got turned down by a girl in front of everybody and is now standing by the DJ booth pretending he meant to go over there.
"Look at him," Ethan says close to my ear because the music is still loud enough to require it. "He's requesting a song. Like that's gonna save him. Bro got rejected and his plan B is becoming the DJ's best friend."
I'm laughing. My forehead drops against his collarbone because I can't hold it up while laughing this hard and for three seconds I'm pressed against him and his hand tightens on my waist slightly and then I pull back and the moment is gone and he's looking at the rejected guy again and I want to scream.
The song ends. Something faster comes on. He lets go.
"I need air," I say.
"Yeah, me too. It's hot as hell in here."
We end up on the steps outside. The music is muffled through the walls but I can still feel it in the concrete under me. He sits with his legs stretched out in front of him, leaned back on his hands, face tipped up toward the sky. I sit next to him with my arms around my knees, my chin resting on top of them.
People pass in and out of the doors behind us. Laughter, shouting, someone arguing about an Uber. The air is warm but it feels cool after being inside that room for two hours.
"This is good," he says.
"What is?"
"This. Being here." He keeps his face toward the sky. "I know I was wilding about orientation and the finance professor and all that but I'm glad I'm here." He pauses. "Wouldn't have felt right doing this without you though."
He says it and moves on. Drops his head forward, cracks his neck, pulls out his phone to check something. Like the words cost him nothing. Like they didn't just land in my lap with the weight of something I've been carrying alone for three years.
Wouldn't have felt right doing this without you.
My mouth opens.
He's still on his phone but he glances up. Catches something on my face. Locks the screen. Turns toward me.
"What?" he says.
Everything is right there. Sitting at the front of my tongue pressed against my teeth. Every single thing I've swallowed since sophomore year when he sat next to me in class and wouldn't stop talking until I laughed.
"What did you wanna say?" he asks. Softer now. His head tilted slightly. Waiting.
The steps are cold under me. The bass thumps through the wall behind us. A girl walks past talking too loud into her phone about someone named Tyler who's apparently in a lot of trouble when she gets home.
"Nothing," I say.
He watches me for a second longer than usual. Then he nods. Goes back to his phone. The moment folds itself up and slides between us, settles on the concrete and stays there.
"You wanna head out?" he asks.
"Yeah."
He stands. Offers me his hand. Pulls me up. Doesn't let go immediately — holds it for a step, two steps, then drops it when he reaches for his phone to text the driver.
We ride back in the same SUV. Same seats. His head on my shoulder , eyes half-closed. My head against the window, eyes wide open. The guys in the back are asleep. The driver's music is low.
Ethan's breathing evens out. He's not asleep but he's close. His hand is on the seat between us, palm up, relaxed.
I look at it. I look out the window. I look at it again.
I put my hands in my lap and watch the streetlights pass until we get back to campus.