A Kind of Contradiction

“Danny, it’s a Tuesday. We can’t have a party on a Tuesday.”

My brother groaned, banging his forehead against the fridge. “Why not?” he whined, slouching across the kitchen to me. “Mom’s coming home tomorrow, and we haven’t had a fucking party. How have we not had a party?”

“Because yesterday was Monday,” I said, dropping my spoon back into the bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. “And today is Tuesday.”

“Fuck the day, man,” Danny admonished, finally sitting up like a normal human being. He took a long pull of coffee and blinked tiredly across the table at me. “What are we gonna do then?”

Last night, Danny and I had decided not to invite anyone over, opting instead to have a siblings night in. We ordered Chinese and he beat me at Call of Duty — God knows why he still even plays that ridiculous game — and then we talked like we’d never really done before. When I woke up on the couch this morning, a blanket haphazardly thrown over me, I felt a strange sense of appreciation and even love for my brother that was completely foreign.

“We could do like a mini party,” I suggested. “No keg or anything, and only like ten or fifteen people. The weather’s supposed to be good, so we could do it in the backyard.”

Danny considered this. “I’ll call Nash and get him to pick up. We can get people to chip in like five bucks, and we’ll be golden.”

“Sounds good,” I said, grinning at his excitement over the prospect of a party, and watched as he ran out of the kitchen with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old about to get cake.

I finished off my cereal and refilled my cup with fresh coffee, taking it with me upstairs. I passed by Danny in his room, listing different kinds of alcohol for Nash to buy. “Cos!” Danny called out, just as I was opening the door to my room. “Nash’s is picking up, any requests?”

I held my hand out for the phone, wanting to talk to Nash directly. “Hi,” I said, once Danny had finished grumbling and handed the device over.

“Hey,” said Nash, and I tried not to smile too widely as to rise Danny’s suspicion. “I’m already bringing whiskey. Was there anything else you wanted?”

“Whiskey’s good,” I replied, ignoring Danny’s wild gesturing for me to give back his phone. “Are you coming over early or just for the party?”

“When do you want me to come over?”

“I’m sure Danny wants you here immediately. He’s waving his arms around like an idiot, by the way, that’s how much he misses you.”

“I didn’t ask about Danny,” said Nash. His voice was thick with sleep, and I imagined him lying in bed with messy hair and a sleepy smile.

“I know,” I replied, sticking out my tongue at my brother. “Danny’s going to tackle me any second. I’ll see you later.”

“Bye,” he mumbled. I bit my lip, handing the phone back Danny.

Later, Danny came by my room to tell me that Nash would be here soon with the alcohol. I’d spent half the day drawing Aunt Mel’s house in San Francisco, the floor plan configured in that weird pseudo-Victorian style I’d only ever seen in San Francisco. It had to do with the hills. I was getting better at birds-eye view sketches; there was a whole mathematical element to it, dimensions and measurements and angles, that I’d watched videos and read tutorials about but didn’t really know how to do properly because I technically hadn’t gone to any drafting classes. I’d gotten advice from a guy at the architectural school at the AA in San Francisco, but that was nothing more than a couple hours of talking about buildings. He told me I could be great, but didn’t give me any of the practical skills I needed in order to actually be an architect.

I flipped my sketchbook shut and dropped the pencil I’d been using into the holder on my desk, then headed over to the closet. The grey cotton shorts I’d slept in weren’t exactly house party attire — even though it wasn’t really a party, but more of a hang out. I swapped them for a pair of dark green cords and slipped on sandals, knowing I’d be going in and out of the house. The crop top I’d spent the day in, oversized and decorated with drawings of tulips, was one of my favourite shirts ever, so I kept it on. I wasn’t really one for “primping,” but I lined my eyes with kohl and put on some eyeshadow, and even dragged a comb through my hair to make it a little less chaotic, pinning back the slightly shorter strands that fell into my face. After putting on a few rings and a tightening the knot on the bracelet I’d found at a shop in town while picking up art supplies this weekend, I shut off the light to my room and made sure the door was closed properly, then headed downstairs.

Danny had done a bit of cleaning up, making sure nothing breakable was out in the open (although I didn’t think that twenty people could cause that much damage). He’d also plugged in the string lights that went along the top of the porch in the backyard, so that when the sun went down in a couple of hours we wouldn’t be stuck in the dark.

“How many people did you call?” I asked, eyeing the absurd amount of junk food he must’ve picked up earlier.

“Dunno. Maybe thirty?” Danny shrugged.

“Danny, this was supposed to be small.”

“Thirty is small, Cos. I know you said to invite half that, but I don’t want this to be awkward. People wanna have a good time, and in a small group it gets intimate.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine, but if anyone pukes anywhere other than in the toilet, you’re cleaning it up.”

“Got it,” Danny replied with a wink. I doubted he’d remember in the morning, leaving me to do it, but it was worth asking just in case.

The doorbell rang a second later, and I wondered absently why Nash didn’t have a key since he practically lived here anyway. It wasn’t like I’d been anxiously awaiting Nash’s arrival (well) so I stuck in the kitchen, grabbing a bag of pretzels lifting myself up onto the counter and leaning back against the cabinet. I popped a pretzel into my mouth, listening to Danny and Nash argue over how to carry the keg properly, grinning to myself. How those two ever got anything done was beyond me. A moment later, they ambled into the kitchen awkwardly carrying the keg between them, going past me to put it on the porch outside. Danny came through first, muttering something about too much vodka and not enough rum, and disappeared almost immediately.

Nash, on the other hand, wandered over to me. “Hi,” he said with a little smile.

“Evening.”

Nash grabbed a pretzel and tapped me on the nose with it, grinning a little wider, then went after my brother. They came back toting bags of liquor, which made me curious about how Nash could put up so much money when half the people who came to this thing would probably forget to pay him. His parents weren’t that wealthy, and he didn’t even have a job. But then I saw Danny hand him a few bills with big numbers on them, and I understood. Danny, thanks to Mom being a workaholic, never had to worry about cash. If only he spent it on more useful things instead of copious amounts of alcohol.

While Danny tried to figure out his speakers, I went out onto the porch where Nash was hooking up the keg. I could see the flask poking out of his back pocket and pulled it out, receiving a wary look from Nash in return. I leaned against the railing and sipped the whiskey he’d brought, thinking I’d never be able to drink whiskey again without thinking of him.

“Should be good to go,” Nash said, straightening up. There was a stack of cups on the wooden planks next to the keg, which seemed a bit unsanitary, but I doubted anyone would care. Nash filled a cup and offered it to me, then made another for himself. He stood next to me, close enough so that our arms brushed but not so close for us to lean into one another. “How was brother-sister time?”

“Ugh, awful,” I groaned dramatically, passing the flask over. “Remind me never to spend time with him ever again.”

Nash chuckled, his gaze travelling lazily up and down my frame. His finger grazed the exposed skin on my side, over the bottom half of my tattoo. “Still not used to you having these.”

“Tell me, what freaks you out more, the tattoos or the hair?”

“Neither freaks me out,” he replied. “It’s just different, is all. But at the same time, I can’t really imagine you not having them.”

I tugged at a strand of pale hair. “God, I can’t even remember what it was like to have dark hair.”

“Did you dye it right away when you got to San Francisco?”

I shook my head. “It’s only been this way for about six months. My hair was a lot shorter when I first got there, and I was thinking about doing something crazy, and this guy I was seeing told me I’d look good with whatever hair I had, so I dyed it purple. He never thought I’d actually do it, and we broke up a week later.”

“You, ah, you date a lot, then?” he asked, staring fixedly at his cup with furrowed brows.

“Don’t you?”

Nash glanced up at me, a smile quirking at the edges of his mouth. “Not so much lately.”

“Me neither,” I said with a shrug. I looked at him with wide eyes. “Weird.”

“Nash, quit flirting with my sister,” Danny said, stepping out onto the porch. Nash cleared his throat and stared at his battered sneakers while I threw Danny a bland look.

“If you’re gonna accuse, might as well call out the right person. Nash would never flirt with me, honestly Danny. Do you pay any attention?”

Nash sputtered, and I when I looked over I could see the grin he was trying to hide behind his hand as he doubled over, covering up his laugh with a really terrible attempt at fake coughing. “You okay, bro?” Danny asked, eyes narrowed.

“F-fine,” Nash stammered, straightening up. “Beer must’ve gone down the wrong way.”

“Right,” said Danny, drawing out the word. Fortunately, before Danny could make another suspicious comment, the doorbell rang. He cast one last doubtful look toward us before spinning on his heel to go and let the first guests in.

We breathed a collective sigh of relief, and I leaned over and kissed Nash for good measure. It turned into something heavy fast, with his free hand reaching out to cup my hip and pull me closer, mouth open against mine and his heartbeat steady beneath my hand on his chest.

“Mmm,” I murmured, pulling away. “Bad idea.”

“You shouldn’t go kissing me like that,” Nash retorted. “I can’t really stop it.”

“Where’s that award winning self control of yours?” I asked, as our hands dropped to our sides and we stepped back until there was a friendly amount of space between our bodies.

“Probably hiding under your bed.”

Nash took a pull of his beer, and suddenly there were ten people on the porch, half of whom I was certain I’d never seen before. Danny shuffled through, looking apologetic. “I guess I never said people couldn’t bring friends. There’s another fifteen people in the kitchen.”

“You’re an idiot,” Nash supplied helpfully.

“I’m going to kill you,” I said, glaring at him. “There is definitely going to be a mess now, and all because of you.”

“I can stick around, help you clean up in the morning,” Nash offered, looking mostly at Danny but throwing a silent question my way as well. There was a time I’d asked Nash to stay, and he’d said that he couldn’t. Tonight, it would seem, the answer was different.

Julia arrived some time in the next half hour, though I’d been busy trying to stop people from eating the food in the fridge to notice. At parties, I liked to get drunk and make bad decisions, not have to worry about people spilling alcohol on the carpet or breaking into Mom’s office (we were lucky she kept it locked in the first place). Like I’d tried to explain to Danny earlier, I was all for parties. I loved a good party. Just not when it was in my own house.

She came up to me in the hallway outside the living room, wearing a flimsy peach tank/dress (I wasn’t really sure), which was weirdly un-Julia like attire and I wasn’t quite sure what to think of it. “Cosima!” she shouted, even though we were about three feet from one another, nearly spilling her drink on me as she lunged forward to wrap an arm around my neck. “Great party!”

“You’re drunk. You never get drunk.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“Apparently,” I replied with a tight-lipped smile. Julia pranced off and left me wondering what the hell was going on. There was no way I was going to get through another hour of this party sober, and the shit beer that Nash had brought over definitely wasn’t going to do me any good, so I went in search of him, if only to steal the flask he kept in his back pocket.

It seemed that the back porch was where all the “cool” people were hanging out, judging by the strong smell of weed coming from that direction. I’d never been one for smoking, preferring the burn of alcohol, but it was a popular recreation among Danny and his friends. They were passing around a joint, standing in a sort of oval with Danny at the centre, telling some dumb story and gesturing wildly as he spoke. Nash loitered just outside the ring, cup in hand, watching his best friend with an amused smile.

As surreptitiously as possible (it helped that he wasn’t facing the back door) I went up to Nash and snatched the flask out of his cutoffs, quickly darting to the side and hoisting myself up onto the railing. I had to hook my ankles around the vertical posts to keep from falling, but I had the whiskey and that was all that mattered. Nash spun around, doing a double-take toward the door before he spotted me a few feet away. Eyes narrowed, he sauntered over.

“You can’t just take stuff out of people’s pockets,” he said. “It’s impolite.”

The redness in his eyes and the unsteadiness of his gait told me that Nash was high, and probably drunk too. I took another sip of whiskey, trying to speed up the intoxication process.

“Deal with it,” I replied, quirking an eyebrow.

Nash sighed. “Really wanna kiss you,” he muttered. “Not good.”

My attention was diverted when Julia stepped out onto the porch, lip caught between her teeth and her eyes wide, the hair that she’d so carefully straightened messy and falling into her face. She was pale, frighteningly so, and her chest was rising and falling rapidly. She threw a panicked look at me, a silent cry for help, and I shoved the flask into Nash’s chest before going over to her. I grabbed her hand and pulled her inside, trying not to drag her with too much force, and led her upstairs to my room. There was a couple making out that I shouted at to leave, and they hurried out adjusting their shirts.

“You look like you’re gonna hurl,” I said.

“Already did. I think I might pass out.”

“Okay, just sit down and try not to puke. I’m gonna get you some water and a bucket.”

Julia blinked at me, unamused, but stayed where she was on the edge of the mattress. I got to the bottom of the stairs and ran straight into Nash. He grabbed my hip, but whether it was to steady himself or me I wasn’t sure. “Why did you leave?”

“Got a friend who drank too much upstairs. I really don’t want her throwing up on my bed, so can you do me a favour and get some water while I grab a bucket?”

Nash nodded, hand dropping from my hip, and headed for the kitchen while I went to the hallway closet where Lucia kept all the cleaning supplies. There was a bucket filled with all sorts of sprays and cleaners that I dumped out and tucked under my arm, dashing back up to my room.

I lent Julia a pair of sweatpants and one of my many baggy t-shirts, and she was sitting at the top of my bed flipping through one of my sketchbooks as she liked to do (which I usually hated, but I was letting it slide for tonight) when Nash knocked on the door. He looked a little better than before, I and I guessed he’d had his own glass of water to help clear his head. Nash sat on the edge of the mattress and handed the red cup over, which Julia took tentatively and actually sniffed before being satisfied that it was only water.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Fine, thanks,” Julia said with a small smile. She glanced between us. “Sorry, you guys probably wanted this room to yourselves tonight.”

Nash jerked around, throwing me a surprised, accusatory stare. “You told her?”

“Uh,” I stammered. I hadn’t really told Julia the truth when I’d said Nash and I were a thing, last week it had been Patrick giving me hickeys. God, a week. It felt longer. “Not, like, on purpose.”

“Yeah you did,” Julia — to my complete horror — objected. “At the bonfire, I asked who gave you that hickey, and you said it was Nash. But before you’d said that he refused to go near you and you thought it was really annoying, and remember how surprised I was that he was the one who did it?”

“Please stop talking,” I said in the kindest voice I could.

Nash was still watching me, more accusatory than surprised now. “No, please continue.”

“I’m confused.”

“Sorry,” I said, grabbing Nash by the wrist. “We’ll be right back.”

I pulled him into the bathroom across the hall, which was thankfully unoccupied, and locked the door behind me. Nash stood there with his arms folded, definitely not impressed. “Want to explain what just happened?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to tell her that I was making out with her brother, was I?”

“You didn’t have to tell her it was me either!” Nash exclaimed. “What the hell?”

“Sorry,” I groaned, stepping toward him. I put my hands on his shoulders. “I was under pressure, okay? And you were the first person I saw, and to be fair we almost hooked up like fifteen minutes after that, so I don’t think you should be dwelling on this.”

“Now somebody knows, Cosima, don’t you get it? She could tell someone.”

I sighed. “I realize that, obviously. But if I tell her not to, I trust her enough to know that she won’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“I damn well hope so.”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine.”

“Okay, good,” I grinned, taking another step. My arms slid across his shoulders bringing my upper body closer until our chests touched. “Hi.”

“Julia did have a point earlier,” Nash said. “I definitely wanted that room tonight.”

“I’m not kicking her out.”

“I know.”

“So you’ll just have to wait a little longer.”

“Award winning self-control, remember?”

Then I kissed him.