Grace and the Fever

by Zan Romanoff

  The blonde—Ivy—nods in agreement. “Totally. Come hang.”

  Grace shoots Jes a look, but he’s nodding, too. “Sure,” he says. “Cool.”

  —

  The sun is just starting to set, sending long shadows shooting out to the east from under people’s feet. It’s still not cool enough for hot water, so everyone is sitting around the Jacuzzi on the concrete or in chairs, dangling their legs into the water and then pulling them out again.

  Mostly what they’re doing is passing around a joint and talking about drugs—what they’ve done, what they’ve liked, what they want to do again. Grace finds herself next to a guy with a serious-looking beard who’s telling a long story about finding god in a basket of fake fruit while tripping on ’shrooms in Joshua Tree.

  “There’s beauty in everything, even the artificial, because it’s all made of stardust, too,” he concludes.

  Someone hands Jes the joint, and he passes it to Grace, so she hands it to her new friend. He looks at both of them curiously. “You don’t want? It’s nice, mellow stuff. I think the strain is called Harlequin? Sara says it’s the best seller at her dispensary—totally a body high. Doesn’t mess with your mind too much.”

  “No thanks,” Grace says. “I’m good.”

  “Me too,” Jes agrees. “Already mellow.”

  The guy seems satisfied by this. He takes an enormous hit and entertains himself by blowing a series of wobbly smoke rings.

  Grace leans over to Jes and ducks her head so that she can mumble just to him. “I hope you don’t feel like you can’t because of me or something,” she says. “I’m cool with whatever.”

  “That’s—oh. Yeah. No. I’m not worried about you,” Jes says. “I’m just kind of babysitting today, especially with the gruesome twosome here. Ivy is like George’s mentor in bad decision making, and then they always get Land riled up.”

  Grace says, “So you’re just here to keep an eye on people?”

  “I’m here to do a lot of things,” Jes says.

  As if on cue, across the hot tub George is getting restless. “It’s, like, too mellow over here now,” she says to Land. “Didn’t you say someone was going to bring us something fun to play with?”

  But Land is way past her, taking a long hit off his vape pen, too relaxed to care. “I guess,” he says. “My phone’s over there if you want to see if anyone texted.”

  “Your phone’s a mess,” George says. “Everyone is always freaking texting you.”

  “Oh, that reminds me, where the hell is Solly? G, look for that, too, on my phone, okay?”

  “I’m not looking for anything,” she says.

  Ivy is more intrepid. She curls up from where she’s been lying on the cement, and crawls off on all fours to find Land’s phone, wherever he left it in the grass. He swats her idly on the ass as she passes him.

  “Hey!” she says.

  “Hey yourself,” he says, and smirks at her.

  Ivy smirks back.

  The jets have come on in the hot tub. Grace looks down at the whirling water and the intricate pattern of the tiles they’re sitting on. Jes’s shirt is rucked up and his shorts have gotten pulled down slightly, baring the curve of a hip bone and the edge of the only one of his tattoos she’s never seen a whole picture of. There are one or two things even the paps don’t get access to.

  “What’s that?” she asks, gesturing, not touching.

  She expects Jes to shrug her off, but he seems grateful for the distraction. He tugs his shorts down so she can see properly.

  “I got it in Japan,” he explains. “There’s this guy there I’d read about who does crazy, amazing work. I wanted to get something on my arm—turn all of this mess into a proper sleeve—but he wouldn’t. He doesn’t do cover-ups. He didn’t want to take the appointment at all, actually, but even badass principled Japanese tattoo artists have daughters who listen to American pop music.”

  As soon as she sees it up close, Grace understands why it always looks so strange in pictures: Jes’s hip is brilliant with a blush of flowers, intricately colored and finely lined. It’s something that’s meant to be looked at intimately, not publicly. The work is stunningly beautiful, nothing like the random assortment of scrawls and doodles that cover his arms and chest. She knows those ones pretty well.

  “It’s beautiful,” she says. “Do you still want to get the rest of them covered up?”

  “Not covered up,” Jes says. “Just, like, integrated, you know? They look kind of random, all over, the way they are now. I think I’ve just gotten jealous of Land’s sleeve. The way it all seems to, I don’t know. Fit together.”

  Grace hears unspoken meaning in his voice: the way that Land and Solly fit together.

  “Does it get easier to decide after a while?” she asks. “I mean, I feel like, I want a tattoo, kind of, but the first one is such a huge decision. I’ve never had a tattoo before! I can’t be sure what I like, you know? And I can’t go back and change it after.”

  “I wouldn’t cover up any of mine, but there’s some I might not get again.”

  “Which ones?”

  Jes looks down at his right arm. “This one,” he says, pointing to the word TONIGHT where it’s inked just above his elbow. “And this,” a sketchy flower that blooms on his left wrist. “That was supposed to be a Georgia rose. I got it when I was homesick, in Munich, I think? Europe, anyway. On the first tour. I remember that I decided I didn’t care if the art was shitty as long as no one photographed me getting it. I think I felt like I kind of wanted it to suck. It felt like everything sucked, right then, which is okay, but not something I necessarily need on my skin forever.”

  “Yeah, see, that’s the thing. Do I want to, like, memorialize pain? No, not really. But the things I care about—that I love—” Grace stops herself. The only thing she’s ever loved enough to want to keep is Fever Dream, and it’s always seemed too stupid to get, what, a logo? Their lyrics? So much of her self is wrapped up in them; she would know what it meant, but to anyone else it would look silly, and young, and small. “Nothing that’s fun seems important enough.”

  “I guess I just decided that everything was important enough,” Jes says. “I always feel like the idea that you’re going to get through life without screwing up—without any scars—it’s not going to happen. I may as well decorate myself with my mistakes, you know? I don’t love all of them, but they’re mine.”

  He pauses, and picks the words in his next sentence carefully. “A lot of my life gets decided by committee. This stuff is all—it’s always—mine,” he says again. “Maybe I should get that somewhere next.”

  “Which ones do you love?” Grace asks.

  “This is my favorite,” Jes says, tapping his hip. “I always love new work the best, but I think this one’s really a keeper. Umm, the compass is pretty good,” he adds, shifting up the hem of his shirt to show her the black outline where it’s inked underneath the curve of his ribs. Grace feels, like a knife going through her, how intimate this is, the way he’s revealing all of his soft, vulnerable skin to her so casually, glimpse after glimpse, like he trusts her with it, with him.

  “And my octopus friend,” Jes is saying, splaying his fingers around the tattoo where it sits wide-eyed over his navel.

  Grace is overwhelmed by the looking. She keeps her eyes steady there: his hands, his belly. “Which one was your first?” she asks.

  She knows the answer to this question, but she wants to hear him tell it. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Jes tugs his shirt all the way off to show her. The words are etched over his heart, black and certain.

  Land sees him doing it, and lets out a long, lazy whoop. “Nice nips, bro,” he says. “Please, keep showing off.”

  “Grace asked about my tattoos,” Jes says.

  Land comes over to crouch behind them. He does a decent impression of Jes, narrowing his eyes and leaning in like he’s telling a secret. He tilts his head the way Jes d
oes, so that the line of his jaw is somehow always catching the light.

  “This one is from Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1,” he says. “I got it the night before Burning Up came out, when I was too nervous to sleep. I slipped out of the hotel—sorry, guys,” he says, ribbing imaginary security guards, who are usually somewhere nearby when Jes tells this story for a camera. “We were in LA, so it was easy to find a place that was open late. I wanted something that would remind me of who I was and where I came from. That my life wasn’t just the things I had done or was doing. That there is always something unseen. And something to believe in.” He drops from the crouch so that he’s sprawled out again, lazy against the sun-warmed tile.

  Land continues, “What he doesn’t say is that he got it to piss off his mom.”

  “That’s not, like, entirely true,” Jes says. “She would have hated any tattoo that I got.”

  “Yeah, but she hates this one the most.”

  “My parents weren’t really into church stuff, before we moved,” Jes explains to Grace. “I mean, my mom grew up Hindu, and my dad is Episcopalian, so they only joined the local Baptist parish to make friends. They freaking hated it when I started singing in choir—meant they actually had to go every week, you know? They were fine with the social stuff, but they really never wanted me to be a small-town Jesus freak.”

  “Now you’re a small-town Jesus freak with a massive career,” Land points out. “And a bunch of ugly-ass tattoos. Did he show you the skate key, Grace? Jes has a Holden Caulfield tat, like the world’s most basic bitch.”

  “It was my favorite book!”

  “He has a design that Kendrick sketched when they were both high that he thought was a map to the stars,” Land goes on. “He has the call code for the Athens airport, and a white ink burrito somewhere on that hide. Chipotle, Grace. That’s what our boy Jes here really values. He’s a lunatic.”

  Grace knows all of this already. She knows about almost every tattoo Jes has, these ones, and what I want and what I have inked on the backs of his wrists, faithless with an upside-down cross for a t on the back of one shoulder, and his mother’s name at the center of a lotus flower nestled at the base of his skull.

  She knows that whatever’s inside of him is too big to be contained or remain unseen: whatever his professions of blind and accepting faith, it seems like everything he catches he has to pin down with a needle. He got an R behind his left ankle three days after he and Rowena met.

  “Doesn’t seem like anyone here has a problem with that,” Jes says to Land.

  Land’s wearing a loose tank top. His sleeve of tattoos, the tangle of sharp things he carries with him everywhere, looks even denser and more imposing up close. Grace has met him twice now but she feels like she knows him less than ever. Unlike Jes, who opens himself up to her, Land insists on remaining encircled and removed. What’s true is hidden right now, but Grace knows exactly where it is on his body. Evidence of things unseen.

  “You don’t regret any of yours?” Grace asks Land.

  He presses up to his elbows and looks around. “Nah,” he says. “Not really.”

  Ivy catches his wandering eye. “Found your phone,” she says. “Bash is heading over soon. And, um, what’s his name. Raj says he and Solly are just parking up front.”

  “Nice,” Land says. He gathers his limbs under himself and starts to stand. “I’m gonna go say hi. And I’ll grab Bash when he gets here, too.”

  “Don’t forget to find us,” George says. “We helped arrange the fun. We deserve a little cut of it, right?”

  “You know I never leave you behind,” Land says, reaching down to stroke her hair. She nuzzles into the touch, trailing her fingers along his ankle in return. Grace wonders if George knows about Solly.

  Land is trying to play straight, but if you know, you can see it: how distracted he gets the minute he knows Solly is nearby. Grace wants so badly to see them greeting each other—whether they’re less careful when they’re here, in private, at least in theory, or more so, because there’s no way to be anonymous at a party like this. Just because it’s behind closed doors doesn’t mean people aren’t here mostly to see and be seen.

  Jes pulls his legs out of the hot tub. “Ugh,” he says to Grace. “I should probably go find out what Bash is getting everyone up to.”

  “Yeah, no, and I should go home. Since I’m still, you know. Grounded.”

  “Oh yeah, wow. Right. Thanks for coming out,” Jes says. “It was nice to be able to actually talk to someone at one of these things.”

  “Thanks for inviting me. Thanks for the rescue.”

  “It was mutual.”

  Jes wraps her up in a hug. He smells sweet and spicy, like sweat and chlorine, like every boy and every summer Grace has ever known but better, somehow, too. She flattens her palms against his back, and even though she knows it’s covered in ink (decorated by his mistakes, he said), it’s smooth to the touch. She likes that about tattoos: the way you can get them and hide them. The way they become a part of your skin, like something that belongs to you and always has.

  Jes scans the crowd, and Grace looks with him. Cricket has been accosted by a guy who seems to be asking a series of too-intimate questions, judging by the way he keeps leaning toward her, and the way she keeps shifting away. Kendrick has taken the opportunity to open his first beer of the evening. Jes nods to himself. He asks Grace, “Do you need me to walk you out?”

  “Nah,” she says. “I got it.”

  —

  She picks her way back across the yard, skirting little knots of people who ignore her so intently she’s pretty sure they’re dying to look. Back into the house, and down a hallway. The bottle of water is starting to sit heavily in her bladder and it will be a long drive back to the Valley.

  Grace finds the screening room again, and the bathroom she passed on the way there—only it’s locked. There are voices inside, male, indistinct, sounds of an argument, and then laughter, and then silence. She pulls out her phone while she waits.

  On it, there’s a text from Katy that says, well this keeps happening. Below it is a screenshot that makes Grace’s stomach twist: someone here Snapchatted grainy photos of her and Jes by the hot tub, and they ended up online. In the picture she’s bent over, examining the tattoo on his hip. It looks intimate, which it was, but—not like that, she thinks. They were just talking.

  The bathroom door bangs open, and Land spills out with Solly behind him. They both look stupid-happy, rumpled, roughed up by their secret.

  “You’re not Raj,” Solly says.

  “She’s not George or Ives!” Land adds. “Or Jes, or Bash. Bash said he was getting them, right?”

  “We can go get them,” Solly says. “Grace, want to come with us?”

  “I was leaving,” she says. “I just wanted, to uh—” She gestures toward the bathroom. “If you’re done.”

  “We’re done,” Land says. He wraps an arm around Solly’s waist. “All yours!”

  Grace watches them disappear down the hall. She can hear Solly saying, “This is how we end up in trouble, you monkey.”

  “I DON’T CARE,” Land yells. He turns back and hollers toward Grace as Solly drags him farther down the hall. “I’M DONE CARING, DO YOU HEAR ME? I’M GONNA DO WHAT I WANT! WHAT I WANT!” They turn a corner and disappear. Grace can still hear him: “WHAT I WANT!”

  She locks herself in the bathroom. There’s no evidence of anything, really, just a towel crumpled and out of its holder, which could mean anything. Grace pulls out her phone and immediately feels ridiculous. What does she think she’s going to do? Take a picture of the damp countertop? She has to tell Katy. And she can’t. She really, really can’t.

  The more time she spends around them, the more the thing between Land and Solly takes on dimension in front of her. It’s starting to seem like the ink on Jes’s hip: something you can see at any angle, but only really understand up close. She’s always thought of them as helpless against a love that keeps them lock
ed away in private. It’s always seemed impossibly sad to have to hide.

  But then look at what happens to everything the boys expose to the light. Grace has felt its glare only briefly, but it’s easy to imagine the way it would start to burn you up if you stayed under it too long. An hour at a party and anyone on the internet can know how she spent it.

  They looked so easy together just now. Maybe there’s joy, too, in having something that belongs always and only to them. Like Jes said: Not by committee. Just theirs.

  —

  When she comes out of the bathroom, Rick is standing in the hallway. She recognizes him right away, even though, just like everyone else, he looks slightly different in person than he does in pictures. She can’t figure out what it is at first, and then it hits her: older. He looks older than she was expecting. He’s well preserved, trim and handsome with a soft toffee tan, but in person you can see the effort that preservation takes. There’s something a little bit cracked around his edges, and his smoothness comes with a faint Plasticine sheen.

  “Hi, Grace,” he says. “Can I see your phone?”

  “Um,” Grace says. “No.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” Rick says. It occurs to her that he didn’t introduce himself. Also, from the soft slur in his words, that he’s more than a little bit drunk. “It’s just that the last time you went somewhere with my boys, some photos ended up online. Jes says you had nothing to do with that, and I want to believe him. But it would be easier if I could see your phone.”

  “Why did you let me come if you don’t trust me?”

  “I figured you needed— What do people say? Enough length—rope—to hang yourself on.” Rick shrugs. “I’m not judging you. I can imagine how tempting it must be to have all of this attention just drop into your lap. Of course you couldn’t let it walk away.”

  Grace knows she’s being needled, but that doesn’t do anything to dampen her fury. It stings all the worse because he’s sort of right. “Fine,” she says, shoving the phone into Rick’s hands. “By all means. Go ahead.”