My Italian Nightmare

Chapter 10: The Party Part 1

When we arrived at the party, it was already so crowded that we barely found our way to the hostess. "Jesus, I underestimated how badly people want to party again", Cecile said loudly so we could understand her over the loud music that was playing. I reached Winter first and waved heavily.
"Jeez, full house, right?"
"Yeah, it's fucking crazy!", they yelled and handed me a bottle of beer. Winter was studying art in her third year and worked at the art facility, which had the nice benefit of having access to good party locations.
"Ari, I'm begging you, please don't harass the DJ this time", Winter said and handed bottles out to Cecile and Freyja. When she talked her brown curls were bobbin up and down and her green eyes looked at me sternly.
"If they play good music, I won't", I mumbled and grinned.
"I swear to fucking god Ari", Winter said but grinned and was already leaning to another person, that was asking her something.
"Well, let's go party!", Freyja exclaimed, grabbed me by my arm and dragged me into the crowd. The music was, to my relief, pretty good and I probably wouldn't need to "harass" the DJ – not that I would ever do that. My friends kept mocking me about my habits as a music snob, but I didn't think it was that bad. Just in this moment, Freyja discovered Nick and smiled widely. She waved him over and he seemed very pleased.
"Hi Nick!", Freyja exclaimed and they hugged quickly. Cecile and I raised our eyebrows at each other.
"You look fucking stunning", Nick complimented her and Freyja laughed. "I know! I like your look as well." She smiled widely. Nick ran his hand through his hair and grinned back.
"Alrightttt", Cecile said, "where are your friends, Nick?" She gave me quick look from the side and grinned, "Ari had really something he wanted to tell Stephan." I glared at her and replied "Ari really needs to go look for his other friends first", and I threw her a kiss with my hand before I turned my back and squeezed past some people to get back into the kitchen.

Okay, that was a little over-dramatic, don't you think?

Whatever.

I emptied my bottle of beer, I really didn't like this stuff, and grabbed a bottle of gin instead to mix myself a good old Gin-Tonic.
"ARI oh my god!", I heard a high-pitched voice next to me and almost jumped.
"Beth, oh my god, thank god you're here." I hugged her tightly.
"God, I haven't seen you in forever, look at you!" Beth held me on arms-length and smiled. "You look more beautiful every time I see you."
"Talk about yourself!", I replied and smiled back. Beth was a big girl with beautiful shiny hair, gorgeous blue eyes and, of course, an amazing fashion sense. She was my oldest friend, our parents had been neighbours for almost 20 years and we'd already played together in kindergarden. She wore blue bell bottoms today with a green blouse with bell sleeves that accentuated her décolleté and matched perfectly to her green eye shadow.
"Well how is Leipzig?", I asked and continued mixing my drink.
"Oh, please make me one as well", she said and leaned against the kitchen counter. "Leipzig is great and I love my courses so much. But ugh Ari I miss y'all, you can't even imagine." "Then come back!", I demanded half-joking and began to slice up some lemons. Beth rolled her eyes and shrugged. "I will, after my bachelor degree." I pouted dramatically and handed her the drink. "All done."
"Hope you haven't made it so strong again."
"Do you even know me anymore?", I sighed and wiped imaginary tears away.
"Ah, Ari, I missed your dramatic bitch ass", she said and we grinned at each other.
"Anyywaayss", she said and stretched the word, then took a sip from her glass. "What's up with the guys, hm?"
"What guys?", I asked casually.
"Well, any guys – you always have one!"
"I..uh", I stammered and quickly drank from my glass. I had not told Beth about the thing with Angelo, because we haven't been able to see each other in person since it happened and I had kept relatively quiet about it in general. First, I wouldn't think that a lot of people would believe it anyways, and I felt like it did put neither Angelo nor me in a very good light. But Beth was my oldest friend and I should have told her earlier, at least over the phone. I sighed. "Ari? Anything you want to tell me?" "Hnhnhnnh", I made and looked at her guiltily.
"Alright there's something I haven't told you that happened. But it's uh, quite...delicate?"
"Arian!", Beth exclaimed and pressed her hands into her hips. Whenever she did this she had a scary resemble to Molly Weasley and it had a really strong effect.
"I'm sorry!", I said and really meant it. "Okay let's go for a cig. I will tell you outside."
"There's always something happening with you", Beth mumbled and followed me into the hall. We grabbed our jackets and then proceeded to go to the balcony, which luckily, but very surprisingly, was empty. Usually you'd have a lot of people out here smoking or trying to talk without the music blaring over their conversation.

"Okay, well, what happened? What did you do?"
I took a deep breath and lit up my cigarette.
"You still know who Angelo is, right?"
"Are you fucking kidding me Ari, of course I know who Angelo is. You haven't been talking about much else for five months."
"Yeah." I took a drag from my cigarette and blew the smoke into the chilly air.
"Well what's with him?"
"Okay...so...you know how Hanna, Freyja and I went to the Mezzanotte concert in Berlin two weeks ago?"
"Yeah, definitely saw that on Instagram", Beth nodded.
"Well okay so, Freyja and Hanna kinda uh, persuaded me to try to go into the backstage and..."
"Ari please, please, please tell me this is a joke. Oh my god."
"Well, will you let me finish?"
Beth remained quiet but looked at me with big eyes.
"Alright so...yeah I met Matteo, the guitarist, at the entrance of the back stage. And I was like, really pissed so he was like, come in and have some water. And then I saw Valentina and Edoardo as well, uh so the bassist and the drummer."
Beth kept staring at me and her eyes widened even more.
"Well and then...yeah then Angelo came in and he was like all flirty and basically asked me to come back to the hotel with them."
"I need to sit the fuck down, what the actual fuck", Beth said and squatted before carefully sitting down on the floor, leaning against the balcony barrier.
"How..." she breathed in and out again and looked up at me "how am I only hearing this now? I can't believe you managed to keep it quiet for so long!"
She laughed hysterically and I smiled, relieved. Beth didn't seem mad that I hadn't told her, she seemed freaked out about the fact that I had been able to not say a word about this. I sat down as well and shrugged.
"Well...then I was in their tour bus. And there was this German security guy, oh my god you should've seen him. It was fucking hilarious. He was all like, 'Zeig mal deinen Ausweis, wie alt bist du' and stuff."
"I can't, oh my god.", Beth shook her head.
"Well anyways, we uh, when we were at the hotel we went into the back entrance and then into the elevator and went up like 20 floors. And Beth, I shit you not, this was... the most insane experience ever."
"Did you kiss?", Beth asked and I looked at her, and froze in my spot.
"Ari?"
"No, I just...", I thought really hard but I had remembered everything from that night. I took the last drag from my cigarette before putting it out carefully and then looked at Beth again. "We didn't kiss."
"Well, I'm sorry Ari. Would have been nice, I imagine."
"No, you don't understand", I said and buried my head in my hands. My breath elevated and I felt that dragging pain in my nose that I always felt before I needed to cry. I told myself to calm down, took another deep breath and then looked back up.
"We slept together, we fucking had sex and all and we didn't kiss. He didn't kiss me, once." Beth looked back at me, her expression was blank and she tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear.
"Oh, Ari...", she said and sighed deeply.