Fifteen, twenty songs later, I felt a hand on my back. I spun around to see Char. “You’re back,” I said.
I took off the headphones and held them out to him, but he waved his hand. “You might as well finish up,” he said.
I rubbed my eyes. “Finish up? What time is it?”
“Nearly two.”
I didn’t know what answer I had been expecting. I had lost track of the night a long time ago. I played a couple more songs, all the while aware of Char standing right behind me. At five minutes to two o’clock, I put on “Wonderwall” and I took off the headphones and set them down on the table. I leaned against the railing and massaged a crick in my neck.
“Shall we dance?” Char asked me.
I shook my head. “I’m tired.”
“That’s not a good reason.” He held out his hand.
I took it, and we climbed down from the booth. We danced together, but it wasn’t like dancing to “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” Less fancy footwork, more swaying. The song was slower, the night was almost over. Around us I saw people gathering up their jackets and bags. Char grabbed both my hands and leaned back, and we spun around and around until I could see nothing but Char’s face framed against a blur of colors.
When the song ended, the lights came up on a mostly empty room. The few people left were finishing up their drinks and moving toward the door. Char let go of my hands and went back to the DJ booth to pack up his equipment.
“If you can wait a few minutes, I’ll give you a ride home,” he said to me.
I could have walked, but I had to wake up for school in four and a half hours, and it had been a very long day. I slumped on a bench, pulled my knees up to my chest, and watched Char. In the full light, he looked paler than I had expected. Paler and plainer. I probably looked paler and plainer in the light, too.
I looked around for Vicky but didn’t see her anywhere. An Irish goodbye, no doubt. I just saw the bartenders counting money and a couple still making out against a wall, until Mel came in and shooed them out the door.
“Ready?” Char asked. His equipment was packed in a big messenger bag slung over his shoulder.
We walked out of the lights of the club and down the moonlit, empty street until we reached his car. It was small, almost too small for Char to fit his long legs into.
“Where to?” he asked, starting the motor.
“Harrison and President. I’ll direct you.” We drove down the street in silence for a moment. “How’s Pippa?” I asked at last.
“She’ll live.”
I watched the shadows flashing across his face as he watched the road. “Why did Vicky say that Pippa wouldn’t be like this right now if it weren’t for you?”
“Because Vicky likes to blame other people for her best friend’s drinking problem.”
“Seriously, Char.”
“Oh, you were asking seriously? Well, in that case, there is a possibility that Pippa might be … mad at me.”
“Why?”
“She has rage issues. Just flies off the handle. It’s really quite sad.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do I have to ask you every question twice in order to get a straight answer out of you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then, for the second time, why is Pippa mad at you?”
Char leaned back against his seat and kept his eyes on the road. “Because I slept with her.”
I blushed. I’d never heard anyone say something like that so casually before. More than anything else tonight, it made Char seem older than me. “Why did that make her mad?” I asked. “I thought she liked you.”
“She did. It’s complicated.”
“Just try me,” I said. “I love complications.”
He laughed. “Okay, look. Pippa and I hooked up after Start last week. This week she showed up expecting me to … I have no idea. Ask her out? Be her boyfriend? Play ‘Chapel of Love’ and get down on one knee in my DJ booth and propose to her? Needless to say, I didn’t do any of that. And I made it pretty clear to her that I don’t intend to. So then she got mad. And then she got drunk.”
“Do you like her?” I asked.
“Has anyone ever told you that you ask a lot of questions?” he said back.
“You know, it’s possible that one or two people have mentioned that to me over the course of my life. Do you like her?”
“Of course I like Pippa. But I don’t like her like that.”
I thought of Pippa, her high heels and stunning dresses and adorable haircut and winning dance moves and charming accent. “Why not?” I asked.
“Because she’s not…” He paused, searching for the reason, then shook his head. “I just don’t want to be tied down like that.”
“So then why did you have sex with her?”
“Because she’s hot.”
There was a long silence. I stared out my window.
“I told you it was complicated,” Char said at last.
“It’s no worse than trigonometry,” I muttered.
Char cleared his throat. “In other news, I don’t think I thanked you for taking over the turntables tonight. Thank you.”
“It was fun. Well, it was hard. But it was fun, too.”
“You were good.”
It was a very small compliment, but it came from someone who mattered, about something that mattered. I felt a smile spread across my face. “Really?”
“Yeah. It was cute. How did you learn to play?”
“I just taught myself last weekend.”
Char choked a little. “You’re joking.”
“I’m sorry; I can teach myself anything. Well,” I corrected myself, “almost anything.”
He glanced at me. “That’s a weird thing to be sorry for.”
“No, it’s not. Take this right here, and then it’s two lights on.”
“Your transitions could use some work, though,” Char went on. “You don’t know how to beat match at all. And you looked kind of freaked out the entire time.”
“Hey!” I exclaimed. “I’ve had, like, eight hours of practice. Give a girl a break.”
“If you want, I could teach you.”
“Really?” I said.
“Of course really. It’s probably more interesting than teaching yourself. Let me give you my number. Just text me over the weekend if you want to come over to my place and practice.”
I programmed his number into my cell, and then I stared at it for a long moment. Char had a phone number. He had a home. He probably had a job or a college and a last name and parents and all of that, too. He didn’t just spring into existence late on Thursday night and then blink out again at two a.m. He was a real person.
I wasn’t sure I liked that.
“Is it this turn here?” he asked.
“Oh, you can just leave me at the corner. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to let you wander the streets alone at this hour.”
I considered telling him, It would not be the first time. But all I said aloud was, “Fine, then take this left. It’s that white Colonial across the street. Number 77.”
Char coasted to a stop and stared out the window at my house. I was glad to see that it was as dark and quiet as I’d left it. Although my parents had never yet caught me sneaking out, that didn’t mean they never would.
I tried to see the house through Char’s eyes. The gingham curtains in the living room. The welcome mat. The swing set in the yard. The two low-emissions cars parked in the driveway.
“This is a nice house,” he said.
“Thank you.”
He looked at me then like he was really seeing me for the first time. “What’s a nice girl like you doing at a warehouse nightclub at two a.m. on a school night?”