My boyfriend’s friend Paul supposedly does a lot of math, but I’ve only seen him do weed. Maybe this is because I don’t go to the math lounge anymore, so I only see Paul at the parties he hosts. They’re grand things, these parties. Last time, he opened up a bottle of absinthe for me, and we watched the liquid turn opaque as he added water. I took a sip, everyone watching me grimace, before my boyfriend Jason took the drink away. I told myself I didn’t mind. I liked drinks with more pretenses, the sweet syrupy types, so cloying as to make the alcohol almost disappear. Afterwards, I watched the clusters of conversations around me from the corner of Paul’s living room. The others were talking about math or grants. Jason smiled at one of the grad students I recognized but never talked to, while I leaned against the wall in the dark, pretending to be wallpaper.
This is all to say that sometimes when I’m with Jason and his friends, I fall silent and paste on a soft smile and drink another glass of port. They all seem to talk about math like their lives depends on it, and I guess it does because they’re grad students. Jason tells me he and I are both lucky to be attending these parties, and I think I know what he means. He’s lucky to have grad student friends. I’m lucky they even recognize me as his girlfriend in the first place.
They have better things to do than talk to random people, that’s what one of them said. They’re not English majors who snort chalk all day.
Paul is having a party tonight. Jason wants to know if I’m going, if I want to get high with them. We’ll be back by two, he promises. He won’t get into another hour long conversation with Philip. We can go back to campus whenever I want.
I am unsure.
“Come on,” he says. He grabs my hand and pulls me closer. “It’ll be fun, even if Daniel is there. Of course you don’t have to talk to him.”
I pull out of his grasp. “What? He’s going to be there?”
“Yeah. I wanted to let you know. You don’t have to come if you’re afraid to see him.”
I’m not afraid of him. I just don’t ever want to see Daniel ever again. But a few days ago we walked past each other in the science center, and it took me hours to be myself again. Sometimes I wonder how much Jason knows. My friends tell me it’s so obvious, but they also tell me Jason is an idiot.
“Should I tell Paul that you’re not coming?” Jason reaches for my hand again, and I let him.
“Babe,” Jason says when I don’t reply. My name comes out of his mouth in a whine. “Just come. Please.”
We are the first to arrive at Paul’s house. It’s dark out, a night of looming shape and shadow. There are new plants in his front yard, lavender and tomato and something that I can’t quite place yet. I crouch down to get a closer look, but Jason presses his hand on my shoulder and prods me to get back up.
Paul answers the door holding a drink. He hugs Jason before hugging me next. He thanks me for the chocolates in my hand and asks why I haven’t been to the math lounge in a while.
I ask him what the plant in the front yard is instead of answering. Is it lemon balm or mint? It’s dark out, and I can’t tell.
He smiles. Tells us that it’s ghost pepper and takes another sip from his drink. He’s going to surprise everyone later when they’re sufficiently drunk, so we have to keep it secret.
Secrets. I’m good with those.
I am dancing and drunk when Daniel comes. Half slipping on Paul’s hardwood floors, half dancing on my own like a maniac. We see each other but avert our gazes immediately. Paul hugs him before bringing him into the kitchen, where everyone else is talking about math. Or maybe not math, but topics adjacent to math. Their first year of grad school, the secret lives of the faculty here, something salient I guess.
Now I’m watching him talk to Jason, and Jason is laughing. I feel my breath go in and out quickly and almost feel tears in the back of my eyes. I can’t cry here. I have already done enough of that. But it still hurts, seeing everyone talk to him like his inside matches his outside. They hang onto his every word because he’s tall and charismatic and published papers that have won awards. Because he knows how to lure them in without leering, doesn’t he?
He sees me watching him. This time I don’t look away. There’s no point. I haven’t been subtle enough, and he knows me well enough to know that I’d be staring. I wonder if he can guess what I’m thinking. I certainly can’t.
I don’t know why I go outside and share the joint with them. I honestly don’t know. Jason and Daniel smoke for a bit before passing it to me. I put my mouth there, where Daniel just put his, and manage not to cough. Paul would be proud. Jason leans into me, asks if I’m alright under his breath. I’m not sure, but I nod.
“You dyed your hair red,” Daniel says. It’s the first thing we’ve said to each other since then.
“Yeah,” I reply. “I wanted a change.”
“It looks good like this. Long and luminous.” He takes the joint from me.
Paul calls Jason’s name from inside the house, so Jason leaves. He presses a kiss onto my cheek before disappearing. I sense the apology he sends me.
Right now, it feels like before. I’m not petrified yet, and I can almost forget what he did. Nothing has happened: we’re just two people outside together smoking. Maybe we’re strangers, but if I lean in close, I’ll smell the cologne he wore that night. I had on my honeysuckle perfume, but I threw the rest away the month after. His cologne wasn’t sweet. It was intoxicating and spicy and peppery.
“You like spicy things, don’t you?” I ask him, bringing him to the front yard.
“Sure,” he says.
I kneel down to the plant and tell him to hold out his hand. “Here, take a bite.”
“How big of a bite?”
“Just take a bite,” I say and smile, waiting for the fire to start.
Later, when he can breathe again, I wonder if he’ll call me a witch. I wonder if he’ll stumble out of the house with a vision of me in his head, my eyes gleaming in the dark. His tongue will be burning still, and his throat in a panic. He’ll try to curse but cough instead. He will be scared and scarred, but he’ll still live.
Valerie Zhang is a student at Harvard College ‘21.
Instagram: @statistics_witch
Photo by Begoña Herrera on Unsplash