“Just water,” I croak, my throat dry. “What are you having?” I nod to her tumbler glass filled with something clear and bubbly, a slice of lime wedged along the rim.

“Keep a secret?”

I nod. She could make me do just about anything right now.

“It’s just sparkling water. Normally, we get a little rowdy on drag show night, but I wanted to keep things low-key.”

I nod. “Smart.”

I have no idea what I’m saying; I’m too busy getting high on the smell of her. I’ve never cared before, how much the skin of a peach resembles a person’s skin, when you put it on your tongue. I think she wears the peach scent on purpose, just to remind me. “Do you come here a lot?”

“We started in college. It’s harder to get together now with everyone’s different schedules, though.”

The table jostles, interrupting her, and she covers her glass with her hand to keep her drink from spilling. Jeremy has migrated down the table to sit on the lap of a white woman with short choppy hair in a mesh tank top.

“So that’s Jeremy, eh?”

She bites her lip. “Yeah.”

“Your first kiss?” It’s meant to come out teasing. Half an hour is not a lot of time to collect data about a person, but so far, my top three descriptors of Jeremy would be: goofy, tall, and goofy again.

But somehow, I end up sounding short. He’s handsome and their history is obviously deep and strong. It’s not that I’m jealous of that goofball. He’s her friend, her good friend, her almost best friend if it wasn’t for Wes, but there’s a silly part of me that imagines a world where Amy and I were sixteen together. And that silly part wonders what it would be like to be her first ever kiss. If she’d make the same quiet sounds that she does now, if her lips tasted the same, or her cheeks turned the same rose tone they do now.

Amy’s smile slowly fades. She searches my face, her eyes stopping at my lips again and again. “Not my last though,” she says.

I grab the tumbler from her hand and gulp down the rest of her drink as she smirks.

The music stops and all the lights go out in the bar. I jump but no one else makes a sound. The room goes almost silent, a feat for such a rowdy group. A spotlight illuminates the stage and a white drag queen dressed in a black top hat and red circus ringmaster bodysuit steps into the circle of light.

“Welcome to the Hideaway.” She swoops her arms grandly, smiling coyly, and the crowd whistles and stomps. She struts around the stage, explaining the show through a combination of stand-up and song. More queens join her on the stage and in no time I’m sitting forward in my chair, giggling. I’m drunk on the crowd and the pageantry and the music but mostly, Amy. Every point on my body that touches hers burns, the sweet kind, like the smoothest whiskey, or ginger root and chili. The club is packed but it might as well be the two of us here with the drag queens.