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“I don’t want to go in there,” Tahani protested, sitting stubbornly in the back of the parked car. She tugged at the ends of her bright orange wig. “I look ridiculous.”
“Oh come on!” Eleanor said, leaning through the open doorway. “You look hot! I mean, when don’t you look hot?”
Tahani rolled her eyes. She never knew how to respond when Eleanor said things like that to her. Was she really flirting, or was it just part of her shtick? And anyway, the longer Tahani sat in the car, the more sure she was that she was not going in to this party.
“Please,” Eleanor said, poking out her bottom lip. “I want all the losers I used to hang out with to see that I actually know you. They all think I’m lying, can you believe that?”
There was the problem. Tahani didn’t want to hang out with Eleanor’s trashy Arizona friends. She didn’t understand why this was the Halloween party they had chosen to come to. She could’ve gotten them into Keanu Reeves’s secret Tokyo penthouse party or Chrissy Teigen and John Legend’s haunted yacht tour of the Caribbean or any number of places that were far better than here, but no. Here they were in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona at the house of some woman Eleanor had gone to high school with. Eleanor didn’t even know the woman’s name. She just kept calling her Skid Martha. Her husband (who, according to Eleanor, had once soiled himself while inside his high school’s mascot suit) was Skid Mark. All in all, they didn’t seem like Tahani’s kind of people.
“Go have fun without me,” Tahani said. “The others were content to leave me behind.”
Jason, Janet, Michael, and Chidi were already inside. Chidi had been even more reluctant to attend the party than Tahani, but he had made up his mind to loosen up tonight, and thus had downed three shots of vodka before they arrived. He was in there somewhere, in the pulsating house full of strobe lights and blaring music, probably having the time of his life.
Eleanor flashed one of those small, genuine smiles that always caught Tahani off-guard.
“Well, I’m not,” she said. “So either you get your ass out of this car, or I’m putting my ass back in it.”
“Eleanor, no, I don’t want to ruin your night,” Tahani said. Because she really didn’t. Eleanor had been so excited about this party, about their group celebrating Halloween together. She had been the one who planned out their group costume.
“Then you better come inside.” Eleanor held her hand out to Tahani.
Tahani stared at it for a moment, debating. In the end, her newly developed selflessness (and her desire to hold Eleanor’s hand) won the day.
“Fine,” Tahani said. She grabbed Eleanor’s hand and let her pull her out of the car. As they walked up the driveway, hands still clasped loosely together, she added: “But I don’t know how you expect your friends to recognize me in this get-up.”
As she spoke, she pulled at the hem of her purple skirt. It was scratchy, made from the kind of fabric that $10 at a costume store could buy. That, paired with the pink tights, the neon green ascot, and of course, the ghastly orange shake-and-go wig, made up what was possibly the ugliest ensemble Tahani had ever worn in public.
“I feel like a child,” she told Eleanor as they kept walking toward the house. “Or a clown. A child clown.”
“I would pay to see that,” Eleanor said. She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Actually, no, I wouldn’t. But the point is, you don’t look like either of those things! I’m telling you, you’re about to be the sexiest Daphne any of these people have ever seen. And that’s saying something, because all grown women dressed as Daphne are pretty sexy.”
Tahani wrinkled her nose at Eleanor. She couldn’t imagine finding this outfit attractive. But then again, she had never watched Scooby Doo as a child. In fact, she had only seen it for the first time a few weeks ago when Eleanor and Jason had forced them all into a marathon on Cartoon Network. That was when Eleanor had come up with the costume idea.
Tahani did have to admit, though, that Eleanor was even cuter than usual in her orange turtle neck, bob wig, and glasses. She had even drawn freckles on her cheeks.
“You don’t look so bad yourself, Velma,” Tahani said, trying and failing to sound smooth.
Eleanor pulled an exaggerated innocent face. “Jinkies, Daphne!” she said.
Tahani smiled. If it could be just the two of them all night, she would have been happy with that. But in the next second, they crossed the threshold into the party, and Tahani forgot that thought.
Every one of her senses was immediately attacked the second they stepped foot into the house. The smell of cheap beer stung her nose as if someone had spilled it directly onto her face. The strobe lights nearly blinded her. The thud of the bass coming from somewhere deeper in the house vibrated through her bones.
Eleanor still held her hand, and now she led Tahani directly into the mass of people squirming against each other in the middle of the room.
“There you are!” someone shouted over the music, and Tahani realized that Eleanor had brought her directly to the rest of their friends. It was Chidi who had spoken. His long Shaggy wig sat lopsided on his head as he bounced to the music, flailing his arms around in what Tahani supposed was some sort of dance. Clearly he had already taken a few more shots.
Jason was standing on a coffee table nearby, shouting something incoherent and pounding his fists in the air. He turned and saw Eleanor and Tahani.
“Yo! Arizona rules!” he yelled at them. After a moment’s pause, he pulled off his Scooby Doo mask. “Guys, it’s me, Jason!”
Eleanor shot him a thumbs-up before rolling her eyes at Tahani. She leaned in close and spoke directly into Tahani’s ear.
“He fits in here much better than you do,” she said.
Tahani could hardly register the words with Eleanor’s lips so close to her, her breath tickling Tahani’s ear and sending a shiver down her spine.
“I—I know,” Tahani stammered. “I’m sorry.”
“No, take it as a compliment!” Eleanor said.
“Ok,” Tahani said. Just then, she would have done whatever Eleanor told her to.
“Let’s dance!” Eleanor said, and before Tahani knew what was happening, Eleanor’s hands were gripping her waist. Eleanor moved her body against Tahani with reckless abandon, tossing her head from side to side.
Tahani thought of what her parents would say if they could see her in such a place. She thought of the commotion it would cause if a paparazzi caught her with Eleanor wrapped around her.
And then she thought, Fuck it.
Her whole body loosened, and she moved in rhythm with Eleanor. Every few seconds, she would sweep the room with her eyes, just so she wouldn’t be staring at Eleanor the whole time. Her eyes caught on Michael in the impossible-to-miss platinum blonde wig and orange ascot of his Fred costume, wandering through the crowd with a look of amazement on his face. She saw Janet, too, in her dress printed with the pattern of the Mystery Machine, smiling up at Jason on his coffee table and bobbing her head awkwardly to the beat.
When she looked back at Eleanor, they locked eyes. Eleanor stood on her tippy-toes to whisper in Tahani’s ear again.
“You wanna get out of here?”
Tahani swallowed, and her breathing slowed as her heart beat so fast that it hurt. She nodded. Eleanor looked at her for another second, biting her lip, before leading Tahani by the hand out the back door of the house.
In the backyard, the noise of the party seemed a thousand miles away. The stars glimmered over a peaceful stretch of grass. Eleanor pulled Tahani to a wooden swing in the middle of the yard, where they sat down.
Now that they were here, alone, in the quiet, all the boldness of the party drained from Tahani. This was just her and Eleanor, as it had been a million times before. Except…something felt different this time.
“You know…” Eleanor said, sounding suddenly, uncharacteristically sheepish. “Some people think Daphne and Velma were secretly banging the whole time.”
Tahani laughed out loud. She understood the implication, and it sent butterflies fluttering in her stomach, but she couldn’t not laugh. It was such an Eleanor thing to say. Suddenly, Tahani wasn’t nervous anymore.
“Is that why you insisted I wear this horrible costume?” she asked. “Just so you could use that line?”
“Well,” Eleanor said, leaning closer. “Did it work?”
Tahani’s face leaned toward Eleanor of its own volition. Their eyes were locked onto each other. Tahani felt the pull of Eleanor’s lips like a magnet, but just before their mouths met, she stopped.
“Wait,” Tahani said breathlessly. “What are we doing? Someone might see us.”
“That’s the whole point of a party like this, dummy,” Eleanor said. “Nobody cares what anybody else does.”
The realization dawned on Tahani that Eleanor had orchestrated the whole night specifically so that this could happen. All her excitement over the past few weeks, all her gushing about Halloween, had really been about this very moment. Funny, Tahani thought, she never would’ve pegged Eleanor as a romantic.
“In that case,” Tahani said. “What are we waiting for?”
Tahani and Eleanor crashed into each other, their lips meshing together, warm and wet. A buzz of electricity spread from Tahani’s gut throughout her body as she pressed into Eleanor. Her fingers traced the outline of Eleanor, her breasts, her waist, her hips. All the while, Eleanor’s hands moved ceaselessly across Tahani’s own skin.
For one agonizing, breathless moment, Eleanor pulled away.
“Jinkies,” she whispered into the tiny space between them.
Tahani smiled, and Eleanor smiled, and their lips met once more as they tumbled off the swing into the grass.