If the inside of the restaurant was heavy with spice, the air inside the club is weighted down with beer. I could get drunk just from inhaling. The sprites that swirl around my head already are. They make clumsy passes at my cheeks, as if trying for a ghostly kiss. I wonder, just briefly, if we should switch from coffee to beer. It might make them easier to catch.
Bass thrums in my ears, vibrates through the soles of my Mary Janes. Malcolm’s hand is snug in the small of my back, and we inch our way toward the bar.
“Something to drink?” His mouth brushes my ear, the only way I’ll hear him with the unrelenting thump, thump, thump from the stage.
“Just water.”
He goes fancy, getting me something bottled along with a beer for himself. It’s too loud to talk, the music too jarring to dance t
