Deafening hip-hop streams through the stereo and Nikki’s house already reeks of sticky spilled beer and stale air. Red plastic cups cover the entire dining room table, just barely hiding the chip that Robert kicked into it last summer. Nikki’s parents never said anything, even though it’s made of crystal and was a gift from some famous Swiss artist. She’s not even sure they noticed.
Now Nikki is hard to miss. Suspended over a keg with her legs up in the air, she’s upside down, grasping the metal handles. Tyler Renford, a quiet kid on the golf team who’s been obsessed with Nikki for years, holds her feet and someone else shoves the spout into her mouth.
“Ni-kki! Ni-kki! Ni-kki!” the crowd shouts. She’d been a keg stand natural since freshman year. I guess she had a lot of practice, though. She had to do one at every single Player party for an entire semester. That was one of her recurring pops. I slip out of Henry’s grasp and find Marla at the kitchen counter, now covered in half-full bottles and plastic cups.
“Thank God,” she says when I hug her tight. “This place is overrun with undies. We needed backup. Drink?” she asks, holding up a handle of vodka. It looks deadly.
I nod and she splashes some into a red cup, topping it off with seltzer and pineapple juice.
“Bottoms up,” she says.
“To the final year.” I raise my eyebrows and she lets out her tiny, warm chuckle.
“At last.”
The first sip is sharp against my throat. Before I can decide otherwise, I gulp down half the cup. It won’t be long until the familiar feeling of electric warmth courses through my blood. I peer around the dark living room for Nikki, who’s now standing upright.
“Where’ve you been?” Nikki wraps me tight, resting her cheek against mine. She’s strapped stilettos to her feet so she has to stoop to be at eye level with me. “This vibe is nuts!” she shouts over the music. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs for a bit. Grab everyone.”
I catch Henry’s eye and motion toward the spiral staircase planted in the middle of the room. Marla points to it and mouths, “Up?” I nod and she grabs Quentin and Robert from the dining room, where they had been trying to organize a game of flip cup.
The six of us bound up the stairs, leaving the party to itself. Nikki throws open the door to her bedroom and we file in, just like we’ve done hundreds of times. At first it was weird to be down two whole people after nine months of nonstop hanging out. But slowly, we started to fill in the blanks. Nikki began speaking with Shaila’s unfiltered, dry sarcasm and when I got stressed, I tied my hair into a loose knot, just like Shay did when she was buried in a script during rehearsal. Marla even borrowed Shaila’s clomp-style walk that could be heard throughout the Gold Coast halls.
The boys took nothing from Graham. Not even Robert, who was his best friend. It was like we erased him completely.
Quentin takes a running leap toward Nikki’s California king bed and lands in the middle, ruining the neat duvet. Nikki turns on her disco ball, giving the room a perfect, cheesy feel.
“There are tons of people here,” Henry says as he plops down in the velvet purple armchair in the corner. I perch on his lap and he wraps his arms all the way around my waist, hugging me to his hard torso. “I saw the freshmen I invited on the back porch. Think they’re having fun?”
“Yeah, dude. How could you not enjoy this? It’s all fun and games until we crush them with pops,” says Robert.
“It’s barely September. We’ve got all the time.” Nikki shoves his shoulder and Robert sinks down next to her against the pillows, heaving an arm around her shoulders. “This is going to be the best year of our lives,” Nikki says, and I really want her to be right.
“I hope so,” Marla says. “We’re finally at the top. We run this shit.” Quentin elbows her and they tumble into Robert.
Henry rolls his eyes but jumps on top of them, dragging me with him, so we all collapse into a big dog pile. If it’s true that we run this shit, it means we can change it.
“I love you guys!” Quentin yells, tapping his head to mine.
“You are way too emo for me right now,” Robert says. “Let’s goooo!”
Robert moved to Gold Coast from Manhattan in sixth grade and he never really shook the slick city kid vibe. His image was aided by the fact that he could get anyone into any club in SoHo—or so he said—and that he was the first one of us to have a fake ID, copped in some basement in Queens. That’s why he was picked to be a Player. Didn’t hurt that he had an insane streetwear collection or that his dad owned a bunch of resorts in the Caribbean while his mom was a former Miss USA winner. He was overconfident and pretentious, a know-it-all who somehow charmed us into friendship.
All of this made Robert unpredictable and wild at parties, a feral animal testing the limits of those around him. How far could he push us suburbanites? It’s probably why he volunteered to demonstrate last year’s All-Player Winter Pop.
“So, it’s gonna go like this,” he’d yelled from the top of Derek Garry’s parents’ staircase. Robert slid a couch cushion under his seat and propelled himself forward, head-first. But before swinging his feet around, he’d slammed his skull straight into the wall with a too-loud thwack, landing himself a sorta-serious concussion and a trip to the hospital. “Fell off my bike,” he told the doctor with an asshole grin.
“Uh, let’s take a break,” Derek had yelled over the blasting music. For once, we didn’t make anyone else attempt it.
Robert had appeared at school the next week without a scar. “No pain, no gain!” he said when set his tray down at the Players’ Table. It took us a few weeks to realize he was a little foggy and more cruel than before. The Players brushed that one under the rug. Never spoke about it again.
Now he leaps up from Nikki’s bed and makes a break for the stairs, bumping into the banister and sloshing liquid onto the rug as he descends.
Henry and Quentin follow him, racing back to the party. Marla breaks the silence. “Wanna Juul?” She whips her head around and flashes a sly, toothy smile. “Don’t tell Coach.”
Nikki pretends to zip her mouth. “Colleges don’t want athletes who partake,” Marla said once last year after her habit kicked into high gear. “Star field hockey forwards with 4.0 GPAs on the other hand? Golden.”
Out on Nikki’s balcony, the three of us stand side by side, our shoulders kissing in the night. The party has spilled out into the backyard and I watch as a few underclassmen dance barefoot in the grass. Nikki’s house sits right against the water and beyond the yard, there’s a rickety wooden walkway that leads down to the beach. When I squint, I can make out two bare butts running into the sea. They must be freshmen trying to prove they’d pass their pops. My eyes move back to the deck where two female undies kiss on a lounge chair by the pool while a group of guys cheer them on, holding their phones up to document. The salty wind picks up above our heads and I lift my eyes to the sky. The Bull. She’s right where I expect her to be, just above Orion. I picture her spindly legs galloping through the darkness, doing cartwheels above her friends. It’s the perfect night to see her.