Exotic - Chapter 35: Chapter 35

As we approached Aaron's house, it became quite clear that Max's party was far from winding down. I could feel the bass emanating from the house shaking the car from down the street. It was some sort of miracle, and a testament to the patience of his neighbours, that the place wasn't swarming with cops.
Aaron's little house was overwhelmed by cars and guests, spilled out on the front patio, and packed up against the front windows. Maya's native garden beds had become a graveyard for red solo cups and empty beer bottles, and the curb was sprinkled with my classmates in various states of drunkenness, unperturbed by the rain, which had reduced to a fine mist. It was a mirror of the March of Progress, from a group of slightly tipsy girls mingling, to someone kneeling in the gutter, to a couple in a drunken and partially naked embrace under the rusting mailbox.
Aaron nearly hit a girl who staggered out into the road, a yellow cruiser in one hand, high heels in the other. Her blinking mobile phone was tucked under her chin, and she dropped it as she kicked Aaron's headlight with one bare foot.
"Please tell me that's not your house," Zsa Zsa groaned.
He pulled up behind an off-white hatchback, killing the engine and switching on the overhead light. "Okay, I know it looks bad..."
"Max!" all three of us flinched as the same girl who'd picked a fight with Aaron's SUV started hammering on his window. "You fucker! I'm the best lay of your life! How'd you get out here so quickly?"
Aaron rolled his eyes in a dramatic arch. "It's Aaron, Madison. Wrong twin."
She pouted like a spoiled toddler and staggered away without apologising. Thankfully, she didn't grant Zsa Zsa or me more than a cursory glance.
"Twin?" Zsa Zsa echoed. "Not brother?"
Aaron glanced back at me, mouthed sorry as my knee began to jiggle agitatedly. "Yeah. Well. Twin brother."
"Happy birthday," Zsa Zsa rasped.
"Thanks," Aaron flustered.
Zsa Zsa turned as much as his body allowed and fixed me with a suspicious stare. I ducked my head, distracting myself by readjusting my mop of a wig. Aaron popped the lock on the driver's side door but hesitated before climbing out.
"I know this isn't ideal," he added. "But my bedroom is sealed off. I locked it myself. I'll go in first, open the window and you and Miles can sneak around the side. You know where to take him, Miles?"
I did. Aaron's window led almost directly out onto the street, and it was so low to the ground you could almost step out of it. We'd discussed sneaking out on numerous occasions, but never actually done so. It meant we'd be able to circumnavigate the drunk teenagers crowding the front yard.
Zsa Zsa thought about it for a while, before nodding waveringly. Aaron smiled encouragingly and turned quickly to me.
"I'll text you," he told me, and then he was gone.
Zsa Zsa was throwing himself around to stare me down the second Aaron slipped out of the car, despite his injuries. His voice was low and gritty; his free hand clenched down on the centre console as he spoke.
"What the hell is going on right now?" he demanded.
"You agreed his place would be best," I said weakly.
"The teen kegger is the least of my concerns right now," he hissed. "What are you doing hanging around high schoolers? Is he your boyfriend?"
"What?" I startled, pressing back into the seat. "No!"
"Then why is he helping me?" he demanded. "And why would you lie about where you were living? You know I don't care if you lived with your parents, right? What gives?"
I sucked in a shaky breath. "Zsa... this isn't a great time..."
"Seph," he said seriously, and my stage name had the effect that my real name should have. "I need you to be honest with me right now. I'm not in the mood for being jerked around or patronised. You can tell me what's going on, or I'm going to get out of this car and walk to Fiona Stanley."
The silence that followed was nauseating. From the look of Zsa Zsa's face alone, I knew he wasn't joking.
With a deep breath and a heavy heart, I leaned forward to make my confession.
"I'm not twenty-two," I said carefully.
Zsa Zsa let out a humourless snort, and hung his head against the back of the seat. "Christ, you're not about to tell me you're eighteen or something, are you?"
"No," I denied, but no sooner than he'd let a relieved thank fuck leave his lips, I continued. "Aaron and I go to school together."
He let a lengthy pause sit in the air, weighing my head down with shame. "Like... community college? Night classes? TAFE?"
"I'm seventeen, Zsa."
He let out a long exhale like he was being punched, very slowly, in the chest. I half expected him to spill out of the car anyway, based on the look of utter despair dawning on him. To his credit, or maybe the credit of his debilitating injuries, he stayed put.
"Seventeen," he echoed, so softly I wouldn't have heard it if I hadn't known what I was listening for.
"I'm sorry," and I meant it, every agonising letter.
He didn't respond, and the next sound that broke the silence was the chime of my phone. Aaron was telling me that he was ready for us. I looked to Zsa Zsa for confirmation, but he was staring dead ahead at the road. A year of secrets shared and experiences flashing before his eyes, as he recounted everything he thought he'd know about me.
"So, when we met..." he uttered. "You were sixteen."
Sixteen going on seventeen, my brain desperately added, but I had enough self-restraint not to say it out loud. "Yep."
"I've gotten wasted with you."
"Yep."
"I've offered you drugs... I've tried to hook you up with people my age," he fretted, placing a hand over his mouth. "Halloween... you were..."
"Seventeen, by then," I assured him. "I know, it's a lot. And I'm genuinely, genuinely sorry for deceiving you because you're one of the best friends I have and I... can you just let me help you, tonight, and we can have it out when you're healthy? Please."
I wouldn't have blamed him for refusing. I had a flash-forward of chasing him down the street, begging him to at least take my phone and call someone who hadn't lied to him from the moment they'd met.
But Zsa Zsa wasn't in much of a position to walk unaccompanied, let alone storm away in a flourish. With a final thump of his head against the head of the passenger seat, he pushed open the door. "Come on. I need a hand."
I scrambled over the middle seat, rushing to help him out of the car. With his feet bare and mine aching from the shoes I'd been strapped into far longer than I'd intended to be, we staggered like drunks to the curb. A girl I recognised from Maths class was ashing her cigarette over the mailbox and gave us a squinting glance as we passed, but it was dark, and our sorry states didn't make for interesting viewing. That was the closest we got to being spotted; thankfully, the road by Aaron's window was deserted, and the light from his bedroom spilled out onto the tarmac. He poked his head out as we rounded the corner and offered Zsa Zsa his arm to help him slide inside. Zsa Zsa grasped his biceps gratefully, ducking gracefully under the blinds before he was quickly deposited onto Aaron's hastily made bed.
I was not afforded the same luxury, left to fumble inside alone, folding my chest over the sill, and scissor-kicking my legs clumsily until I was able to spill inside. Aaron didn't so much as glance my way as I tumbled over his bedside table all but face-first. He was far too distracted making Zsa Zsa comfortable.
I rocked up to my knees, hastily unbuckling my shoes and freeing my toes from their blistering embrace. Poorly muffled conversations drifted through Aaron's barricaded door, and the speakers in the living room made the floorboards vibrate beneath me.
Zsa Zsa was giving Aaron's bedroom a once over, eyebrows raised mildly. They came to rest on Aaron's desk and the Foo Fighters poster for Wasting Light hanging above it. I'd bought it for his fifteenth birthday. There was a little scribble in the corner of the band's neon heads, where I'd tried to replicate Dave Grohl's signature and given up part of the way through.
"How do you sleep with that thing staring at you?" Zsa Zsa asked bluntly.
"Come on, Dave's not that bad," Aaron responded almost immediately. Zsa Zsa breathed out a laugh, and I gave him a stricken glare. I'd made that joke first, a few years back when Maya had asked the same thing. It was my joke. He raised his eyebrow at me, daring me to call him out.
We had bigger issues at hand.
Someone was braying like a horse outside the door. Aaron began rifling through his top drawers, pulling out clothes and tossing them in my direction. "I think Maya has makeup wipes in the bathroom. I can go grab them?"
Zsa Zsa accepted graciously. I didn't see Aaron leave, distracted by closing the window and shutting out the cool night air; the roar of Max's party crowd grew momentarily before being muffled again by the slamming of his door.
I peeled out of my wig, digging my fingers under the hair-net and removing it whole. I turned back to Zsa Zsa as I combed my fingers through my bangs to free them from the hair gel, setting the blonde hair on the back of Aaron's desk chair.
Silence settled between us as we removed the pieces of us we could; I tugged off my false eyelashes and dug out my hip and breast pads. Zsa Zsa didn't have pads and the like to remove, focusing on taming his hair and struggling with the catches on his outfit. I watched him tussle with the lacing out of the corner of my eye, eventually finding the strength to speak up.
"Need a hand?"
Surprisingly enough he nodded, and shifted on the bed to I could carefully loosen his corset. He slipped free of it with gritted teeth, and I immediately handed him one of Aaron's shirts, a black and grey striped, collared top. Despite his height eclipsing mine, the sleeves still swallowed him up, and I helped him roll them to the middle of his corded forearms before assisting him to slip out of his bottoms. I was well-acquainted with every inch of Zsa Zsa's body – he wasn't shy in the dressing room – but I still looked away to give him privacy. He gripped my shoulder as he painstakingly untucked himself, the ripping of duct-tape singing in harmony with the hissing through his teeth.
Once he was swimming in a pair of Aaron's sweatpants and sat on the bed once again, I began undressing. Zsa Zsa remained quiet as I skinned myself in front of him, draping my wet outfit on Aaron's headboard and digging myself free inside my underpants. For me, Aaron had laid out two items of clothing I recognised well because they were mine; left behind from some long-ago sleepover. It was irritating that they still fit me, knowing I hadn't seen them in over a year.
"How did you..." Zsa Zsa began but paused the second I turned back to him. I balled up tape in my hands, and chucked it into Aaron's paper bin, "... does Jamie know?"
"No," I confessed. "And... I won't ask you to lie to him but... at the moment, it's my only source of revenue. The clubs. I'm saving up to move away."
He was quiet as I plucked out the green of my eyes. "From your mum's terrible boyfriend, who you told me you hadn't been living with for four years."
I ducked my head to avoid his gaze.
"Things are as bad with him as you told me?" he asked.
I shuffled my feet, and took a seat on the edge of the desk. "I never lied about him. I just changed it to past tense."
His eyes drifted closed. "And I guess you want me to keep up the charade?"
"No. Zsa..." I leaned forwards. "I'm not asking anyone to keep my secrets."
"But you expect me to," he said, sharply.
I drifted back, drumming my fingers on the desk. Zsa Zsa gnawed at his bottom lip, wiping drizzling mascara from his lower lids.
"Jamie could get in legal trouble, Miles," he continued. "I know... I hope you don't intend to put him at risk, but there's so much wrong with you working at Crescendo underage. I know it's not the only club you work in. I know it's not the only club you drink at. God knows I started drinking before I was of-age but sneaking boxed wine from your mum's fridge to get tipsy behind the bike sheds is different from getting free drinks from a licensed establishment because they think you're twenty-two."
I nodded solemnly. "I know. I only ever cared about performing. It's just hard when everyone else is drinking and you don't have an excuse without blowing your cover. It felt like I had to drink to keep up the ruse. I don't care about any of it, Zsa, I just want to perform."
He pursed his lips, stroking his injured side thoughtfully. "I get it."
"Yeah?"
"I do. I started painting for the back row in high school. Which, as you can imagine, didn't go down amazingly with my parents," he mused. "Maybe if my town had clubs, I would have tried my luck. I was definitely looking for a place to belong back then."
I melted under his softer gaze. Zsa Zsa clearly hadn't forgiven me for my trespasses, but the understanding was unexpected, and treasured. "When I become Sephora, I just feel..."
"Like you burn brighter," Zsa Zsa finished. "Like you could do anything and everyone loves you and you're just..."
"Spectacular," I finished.
He smiled softly. "Been there, babes. It's an easy way out. If you're always playing a character, anyone who doesn't like what you are can't touch you. But it can have the reverse effect, where you start to believe people only like the person you're playing. You can forget that you're still there, beneath the surface."
"You're amazing, in and out of drag," I protested. "I sometimes can't tell the difference."
"There is no difference," he immediately countered. "We're the same person, babes. Zsa Zsa is just a louder version of Grayson."
My heart panged. "I wish it was like that for me. You don't know what I'm like during the day. Sephora isn't just an escape, she's... everything I'd rather be."
"You're Sephora, babes," he insisted. "You made her. You decided what she says and does and acts like. You make people scream and cheer and buy you drinks. It was you making people laugh and holler up there tonight. What's with the 'she'? She's you. Dialled up to eleven."
I was unable to formulate a response before Aaron returned, red in the face, and brandishing a half-empty tup of makeup wipes.
"Sorry. A lot of people stopped me to wish me a happy birthday," he panted. "Even though it is technically no longer my birthday, and most of them thought I was Max anyway. Anyway. Here."
He tossed them down on the covers. Zsa Zsa and I tore into them like rabid dogs, putting out the white entrails of a fallen kill. The rain had already washed the essence of Sephora away; I was only moping up the chaos left behind.
What Zsa Zsa had just said rang clear in my mind. I had compartmentalised versions of myself out of necessity; there was a Miles for school, a Miles for home, a Miles with Aaron, and a Miles who cried when he knew no one was watching. Sephora had always existed on a different, enviable plane of existence. Floating above it all, head held high. And she was nothing like me.
But what had Alba said? You believe you can only be all those good qualities when you're pretending to be someone else.
Sephora couldn't be me. She was from another realm entirely. One where she could move a room to tears with her voice, cut bullies down to size with biting wit and boy's like Caleb Proust kissed her.
But I had done all of those things. Because I was Sephora. Because I had crafted her.
Logically that made us one and the same, but as my face was reduced to a flushed, thin eyelash-ed, blonde eyebrow-ed husk of Sephora's, I found it difficult to believe. Sephora wasn't a louder version of Miles, she was a parallel universe Miles where I could be...
Myself.
Fuck.
"Do you need ibuprofen?" Aaron asked after we'd gone through all the makeup wipes. Zsa Zsa had to dab his face gently to avoid agitating the bruising; scrubbing tracks of mascara from his swollen cheeks.
He glanced up at Aaron, who was hovering. Aaron always hovered when he felt useless. "I wouldn't say no."
He immediately went to the door, but I stopped him; mostly out of a fear of being left alone with Zsa Zsa again after my revelation. "I'll get it. People are going to keep trying to talk to you. I'll fade right into the wallpaper."
He looked unsure, so I continued. "Top cupboard, third from the stovetop, blue Tupperware container below the tea lights left over from Colin's fiftieth. Unless you've moved them?"
After a few startled blinks, Aaron shook his head, exasperated. "Jesus, we need to go out more."
With a smile and a final check in his mirrored closet door for residual makeup, I slipped through the door and into the fresh chaos of the Sanchez household.
A couple was hooking their tongues together right by Aaron's door, cradling a bottle of cheap cooking wine between them. There was a line to the bathroom crowding the hall, which I wriggled my way through with no one taking much notice. With my face bare and clothes massively casual for a party filled with cocktail dresses and button-down shirts, it wasn't hard to disappear into the throng of bodies.
The kitchen wasn't as packed as the narrower spaces in Aaron's home, but considering the whole house was seven rooms, it was still fairly crowded. There were butts perched on the breakfast bar, two guys passing a joint with their backs against a fridge, and a group playing beer pong on the dining table I had been eating Maya's lamb cutlets off not more than a fortnight ago. I shouldered through two girls nursing red cups and placed a knee on the counter to reach the cabinet.
While I was rooting around for a familiar silver packet, someone cranked up the music – it seemed impossible that it could get any louder – and people began crowding towards the living room. Someone bumped past my stray foot and sent me sliding off the countertop, landing heavily on my right side. After that, it was a free-for-all; I was jostled around the swarm of people like a pinball as I struggled back to the counter like I was caught in a rip.
Considering the sheer volume, a shoulder brushing against my back or hip colliding with mine wouldn't have fired off my alarm bells. But a hand coming to cup my shoulder, heavy and warm and intentional...
"You're here!"
I startled, not at the familiarity of the voice, but the uncharacteristic eagerness that came with it. I turned on the heels of my bare feet, locking eyes with Caleb. He appeared effortlessly beautiful on the surface, as per usual, but considering how'd he'd looked on other nights out, I couldn't overlook a few glaring differences. His hair was falling in dishevelled, flaccid strands over his eyes, having melted out of whatever hair product usually kept it all pushed back. His button-up top was unironed, and the rings around his eyes were exacerbated from lack of sleep. The hand that wasn't clasping my shoulder was clenched around the slender neck of a Carlton Mid.
"I'm here," I echoed, effortlessly sliding out of Caleb's grip. "Sorry, I'm kind of in the middle of something."
"Struggling to reach the top shelf?" he guessed. He passed me to the cabinet, effortlessly lifting the box out without having to stretch too high – just enough to reveal a tantalising strip of skin between the seam of his shirt and the waistband of his jeans – and passing it to me.
I hugged it to my chest gratefully. "Thanks."
"How'd the show go?" he immediately asked. His eyes were an odd mixture of intense and glazed over. Wasted, my internal security system chimed helpfully.
"Alright," I glanced back over my shoulder. "Nice to see you, Caleb, but I won't keep you."
He didn't take the hint. "What happened between you and Lauren?"
I bristled instantly. "Nothing. I just decided there was no reason to keep up the ruse anymore. And guess what, your family hasn't lynched me for breaking their baby girl's heart."
He shrugged guiltlessly. "They liked you. But I thought... you and Lauren had a good thing going."
"What, a fake relationship for no other reason than throwing Reece of the scent?" I demanded, unable to mask my irritation. "It didn't work. It was a bad idea. Lauren and I are going to say friends, but I won't be bothering you at home anymore."
Caleb's eyebrows bunched in the middle. "Who said you were bothering me?"
I scoffed and shook my head as I dug through the box to find the ibuprofen and went to shove the medical box back in place. Caleb's shoulder brushed mine as he took it off me and replaced it, closing the cabinet door. I jolted automatically back; Caleb noticed this.
"What?" he asked bluntly.
I almost rolled my eyes at him, and gestured around the kitchen, spotted with party-goers. "I wouldn't want anyone to misinterpret."
Without giving him a chance to respond, I turned my back and started towards Aaron's bedroom. Caleb followed hot on my heels, without so much as a moment's hesitation.
"What's going on with you?" he suddenly demanded, loud enough to draw the swivelling heads of several of our classmates. I bristled at the sudden abundance of eyes on us. "I thought we were doing alright, and now you don't want to talk to me?"
"Jesus, Caleb," I hissed.
"What?" he demanded again, drawing more curious looks our way.
I knew sober Caleb was in there somewhere. I just needed to bring him to the forefront. "People are watching us."
He glanced around, locking eyes with a few familiar faces. They, in turn, turned back to their own business, ears open to our conversation. But he must have been skulling absinthe before I'd arrived, because he only turned back with double the outrage. "What, you have a problem being seen with me?"
I was sure my eyes had popped out of their sockets at that.
"You've got to be kidding me," I uttered. "No, Caleb, I don't mind being seen with you. You're the one who... you know what? I'm not doing this. Go back to your friends."
I took a generous step back, hoping that would be enough to dissuade him. He continued to pursue me as I pushed through the nosy mob of people in the hallway. Aaron's door seemed so close, yet so far away.
"Can't we talk about this?" he pressed. "You're mad at me."
I got to Aaron's door and tried the handle. He'd locked it behind me. I rapped my knuckles across it twice, urgently. "I'm not mad. At anyone. You're just drunk."
"I'm not drunk," he insisted, taking a swig of his drink before saying so.
"You're hammered. You wouldn't be talking to me otherwise," I emphasised. Hurry up Aaron.
"I've had a few drinks. It's a party," he conceded. "I would have preferred to go out somewhere less tame, but I didn't want to risk throwing you off. Since apparently, you don't want me hanging around your clubs anymore."
"What the hell?" I couldn't help but turn back to him, face beet red with anger. "Caleb, Crescendo is one club, and I didn't want you there because Aaron was there tonight. Unless something has changed, you wouldn't have appreciated bumping into him."
His face softened immediately, and he had the decency to look embarrassed. He put his bottle on the ground by Aaron infuriatingly still-sealed door.
"I didn't know," he said quietly. "You didn't tell me."
"I told you it was best if you didn't come," I countered. "I didn't divulge the details of my night out because it didn't involve you. Do I need to ask your consent to go out with someone else?"
He opened his mouth to respond, but I heard Aaron's latch click open and immediately turned to escape without hearing him out. My heartbeat was like a hummingbird, dangerously quick, and frustratingly fragile. I cracked the door open, slipping through with plans to slam it in Caleb's face. What I didn't account for was Caleb sticking his hand through the gap behind me, catching the door and forcing himself in after me. I let out a cry of protest, but he was already inside Aaron's room, and just like that, the fragile walls separating each of my conflicting personas came down in smoking heaps of rubble.
All that remained was the four of us, staring at one another in the most bizarre Mexican standoff to date. Outside, the party raged on, but inside Aaron's room, things moved at an agonising pace.
Aaron and Zsa Zsa were perched on opposite ends of the same bed, staring up at Caleb and me with fraternal expressions of confusion. Caleb froze at the door, stuck between fight or flight, lips parted as he recognised his mistake. I was trapped between them all, suspended in the silence that followed.
I'd chosen the wrong night to stay sober.