A few weeks after Kate’s work on the crash scene was finished, the producers of Gristle threw a wrap party. Lately, Kate and Max had been on different schedules—out on different nights, asleep at different times—but tonight she had invited him to come with her. Kate, anxiously aware of the possibility that Andrew might also be at the party, had drunk most of a bottle of wine before they left the flat. Her tolerance was high; this much wine wouldn’t get her particularly drunk, but it would relax her enough to navigate a crowd of relative strangers.
“How are you feeling about this?” Max said when they got to the entrance.
Kate groaned.
“We’ll be fine.” Max squeezed her shoulder, then checked his watch. “Elias has a work thing but he said he’ll try and come by after.”
“Elias is coming?”
“He said he’d try,” said Max brightly.
This news did not thrill Kate, who tried to avoid spending time with Elias. This could be difficult, since Max saw him most days, and he often stayed on the sofa after they’d been out together, or in Nicole’s bed, if Nicole was staying with her boyfriend. Kate couldn’t help but notice that Max was sharper when Elias was around: a little less kind and a little more destructive.
“I didn’t put him on the guest list,” she said now.
“You know Elias,” Max said, choosing to ignore the subtle hostility of this comment. “He always manages to talk his way in.”
The bar was dark, but not too grimy, not the kind of all-night place Max had given up trying to drag Kate to, and the people in it were well dressed. After months of being on set, early mornings and late nights spent in torn jeans and old sweats, the production team and crew owed themselves a night of looking good. The atmosphere was loose, familiar, most of the people here knew each other well by now: they’d worked too many hours against too many deadlines for it to be anything other.
“It’s quite busy,” said Max.
“I’ve taken my body weight in beta-blockers.”
“Well done.”
Kate took Max to the bar, where she introduced him to Ben the Vegan and a couple of the crew members she’d be working with on the next film. She surprised herself with her sociability: she couldn’t remember the last time it had been her introducing Max to somebody new rather than the other way round. She supposed that this was the first time in a long time she’d actually been doing something she liked: there had been little incentive to bring Mark Cummins and his penicillin-infested milk home to meet Max when she’d still been at the restaurant.
“Are you in film?” said Ben to Max.
Max shook his head. It occurred to Kate that he might mention Zara in response to such a question, but she was unsurprised when he didn’t.
“I’m actually developing an app,” he said.
Kate took a deep sip from her drink. It amused her, watching people encounter Max for the first time: his buoyancy always seemed to confuse them.
“What’s the app?” said Ben.
“Well,” said Max. “The idea is fucking ingenious, if I’m honest. I just need to get a handle on some of the more technical aspects. But it’s a dating app. For older people.”
“Oh, that sounds really good,” said Ben generously. “Quite a lot of them have phones, you know. My granny’s all over Candy Crush.”
“We do have an aging population,” said Max sagely. “The name is my favorite bit, though. It’s called Embers.” Max paused, waiting for Ben to catch up.
“Like Tinder,” Kate supplemented. “But for people much nearer death.”
It was when Elias arrived, and Max went to the front entrance to attempt to negotiate his entry, that Kate saw Andrew leaning against the back wall, looking like he was deep in conversation with the cinematographer. She smiled at him and took a step in his direction: he looked at her without recognition, and she turned quickly back to the bar, where she ordered herself two drinks and willed the room to implode. By the time Max was back, this time with Elias, it was difficult to tell which of the three of them was most drunk, and they stationed themselves at an empty table near the bar.
“I mean, it was a charity thing,” Elias said. He was gesticulating as he spoke, unaware of how much space he was taking up, and he hadn’t taken off his coat. “I really don’t understand why they had to throw me out. It wasn’t like I didn’t know anybody.”
“Was that Nicole’s friend’s thing?” said Max. “Ellie?”
“Yeah, some bullshit. All because I didn’t have a ticket.”
“Those tickets were, like, two hundred pounds. For charity. That’s the point.”
“Yeah, something like that. They had a free bar, though.”
“Uh, maybe that’s why they threw you out, then?” said Max. Kate laughed, while Elias looked indignant.
“I’m a valuable contact. A potential investor.”
“Don’t most people just donate to charities?” Kate said.
“Well, that’s where they’re going wrong. We need to set up a charity, Max.”
“Get the app going first,” Kate said.
“Yeah, the app, fuck.”
For once Kate was relieved to have Elias there. His conversational dominance made it easier for her not to think about anything else: particularly Andrew. She found it easier, too, not to notice that Max was buying more rounds than anybody else and that he seemed to disappear off to the bar for longer than it took to get a couple of drinks. By comparison with Max, whose eyes had lost focus and whose foot was tapping restlessly beneath the table, Elias appeared surprisingly composed. By the time it was Kate’s third round, the party was thinning out a little, and she went to get drinks while Max went in the direction of the bathroom. Kate leaned on the bar, booze warm in her stomach, swaying absently to the music, and feeling—as she had not felt in some time—that tonight she might actually be able to enjoy herself. As she was about to order, Andrew appeared next to her. Kate tried not to look at him.
“I didn’t recognize you,” Andrew said. He was smiling, not the half smile from set that had made her feel like he’d heard a joke she wasn’t in on, but full, candid. “You stole my screwdriver, didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry about that,” Kate said. She saw that he was wearing headphones around his neck, and that he was chewing gum. “In case you run out of conversation?” she said, nodding at them.
He laughed and glanced down. It was a warm, deep laugh.
“Got no pockets. I don’t want to look rude, though.” He looked Kate up and down before taking off the headphones and pointing at the shoulder bag she was wearing. “You can look after them for me.”
Kate, giddily aware that she was being flirted with, accepted.
“I’m not giving these back.”
He bought them both a drink and sat on a bar stool: enough to tell her that he wanted to stay and talk to her. Kate sat next to him. When he asked her name, she pretended not to know his. He told her that he had been working on several projects at once, which was why he hadn’t stayed until the end of the shoot. He was from south London, he’d studied film at University of the Arts London, and his older sisters were both teachers. When she was halfway through her beer, Kate realized that she’d hardly told him anything about herself. But this wasn’t because he was self-involved, in an Elias kind of way: his openness was not a performance, more like an invitation, to which Kate responded, involuntarily, by leaning toward him. His knee touched hers.
Andrew seemed quite a lot less drunk than most of the people at the party, including Kate, who was now doing her best to give the impression of sobriety. A woman Kate recognized from the crew came over to them and flung her arms around him in a sloppy greeting, but he didn’t introduce her to Kate, nor did he show any signs of wanting to take this new arrival as an out. The woman untangled herself and moved toward the bar, and Kate knew that she had his attention, his headphones in her bag, anchoring him there.
When Elias came to find her, Kate pretended that she’d forgotten she’d gone to buy him and Max drinks.
“I thought you’d be with Max,” Elias said, his tone mildly accusatory. “Do you know where he’s gone?” She told Andrew she’d be back and went with Elias to look for him. They found him, eventually, outside the bar, swaying as he talked to the bouncer, who was holding his arms out, pushing him back whenever he stepped too close. Max waved when he saw them.
“See,” he said, “my friends are in there.”
“Take him home,” the bouncer said, “and we won’t call the police.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Elias said, “nobody’s calling the police.”
“I am.” The bouncer held up the little white bag of powder he had in his hand. “If somebody doesn’t put him in a taxi in the next thirty seconds.”
“That’s not his,” Elias said.
“That’s why he was snorting lines in the ladies’, then, was it?” The bouncer appeared to be more offended by Max’s use of the female toilets than of the drugs.
“The signs are very confusing,” Max said, frowning, before adding, assertively, “gender fluid.”
“They should sell that,” said Kate, who was still flying high from her conversation with Andrew. “It’ll be the new almond milk.”
“Will you take him back?” Elias said to Kate. “I’ve got another party.”
Abruptly, Kate landed. “I guess,” she said wearily. “Can you wait with him? I just need to give someone something.”
Andrew was where she’d left him. She told him that she had to leave, so she’d come to give him back his headphones.
“That’s a shame,” he said. “Will I see you again?”
As he got up to hug her, she lifted her face to his, not caring that there were still people here they’d both worked with. It was nearly three in the morning, and nobody was in a state to remember anything much. He paused, as if to pull away, but then kissed her, briefly, on the lips.
“You can see me. If you want,” Kate said.
When they’d got back, and Kate had waited for Max to throw up on the pavement outside their flat, she got straight into bed, her chest pounding: not the panic-driven, fearful pounding, but lustful, alive. She put her hand between her legs and, feeling that she was wet, started rubbing slowly, closing her eyes. She could still feel the pressure of Andrew’s against her lips. She pressed her hips into the mattress, not wanting to come, wanting to make this last for as long as she could. Her phone was on the pillow next to her in case he texted her, though presumably he wouldn’t tonight, presumably he would wait; she was making herself wait for him, too. Wanted to wait, wanted to make it last, to remember the full softness of his mouth, the smell of mint and something sweet, berry-flavored. She was close, now, still with him pictured in her mind, hearing his voice. She slipped her fingers inside herself: that was when he flickered and disappeared, and another voice, clearer, sharper, came into her mind, telling her her cunt was tight, telling her to taste herself. A searing pain shot through her, iciness spreading up through her stomach and her chest, and she pulled her hand away, turned her face into the pillow to stop herself from crying out, rolled onto her side, and curled her arms around her knees, her body smothered by the guilty heat it had created.