Half-glass full and cynical Calista Dames can sketch out her life in a series of plans, predictions and preparations. She's the girl who knows what she's doing and where she's going, the girl with all the questions answered, the girl with a foundati...
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CHAPTER FIVE
Closer Than Strangers
We heard the party before we saw it.
It came in an apartment duplex in Queens with Astrid and I travelling five flights of stairs when sounds of laughter, intoxicated chatting and rock music echoed off the walls, making way to our sweet ears. It was a miracle the police haven't arrived, screaming at everybody and threatening everybody to arrest anybody who didn't shut the fuck up.
We walked another flight when we finally saw people loitering and hanging around by the stairs, red plastics cups in hand, talking, mingling and me, cursing like a sailor, staggering into a mess of pants, gasps and disgusting sweat.
"Why the fuck is there no fucking elevator?" I grumbled, clutching in my chest and the stairs railing, eyeing a couple kissing by the corner in disdain. Ugh, get a room.
"Must be an old building," explained Astrid, not as tired due to her extra fit legs from cheerleading. She combed back her blonde hair, holding it up to bat some air on her neck, and wiped away the sweat gathering on her forehead. She spotted the door where everybody seemed to be exiting and entering. As the entrance cleared, there was a banner proclaiming: Party RIGHT HERE. "And hey, we made it! Let's go find Toby!"
"I don't get it, Astrid. He's gay- he told you himself. He's not going to magically change his sexual preference for you just because you like him."
"I don't like him," protested Astrid.
"Bullshit," I countered, fanning myself. I was holding my folded leather jacket by my arm, after taking it off on the second flight up. It was too fucking hot for words. "Come on, let's get in where there's colder AC, beer and your gay boyfriend."
"He's not my gay boyfriend," sputtered Astrid as I smirked and dragged her through the crowded doorway, littered with shoes populating the welcome mat. We kicked out our shoes and placed them together so we could identify them at the same instance if we ever needed to find them in the midst of chaos.
"Whatever you say," I loftily replied and entered the apartment. It was spacey with wooden cedar-beamed floors and ceilings, like a studio apartment. There was a small open foyer of people with red plastic cups, talking and mingling. The red worn bricked walls smelled distinctly of coffee. The decor was very hipster-chic, something I'm sure that Brooklyn would never run out of- fern trees in badly crafted pots, cheap Christmas fairy lights to ignite the apartment, tweed couches with stitched patches that looked like you could buy it off Craiglist, amateur paintings, fairy lights draping by the walls even though it was nowhere near Christmas, bookshelves covering every corner of the room.
Even the people matched the interior. I counted three hundred and forty six horn-rimmed glasses, two hundred and fifty nine beanies, a hundred and two flannel over-jackets and an innumerable amount of faded, ripped skinny jeans.
