He’s just wondering when Henry’s going to make his appearance, when June appears at his side and yells, “Incoming!”
Alex’s gaze is met by a bright burst of color that turns out to be Pez’s bomber jacket, which is a shiny silk thing in such an elaborate, colorful floral print that Alex almost has to squint. The colors fade slightly, though, when his eyes slide to the right.
It’s the first time Alex has seen Henry in person since the weekend in London and the hundreds of texts and weird in-jokes and late-night phone calls that came after, and it almost feels like meeting a new person. He knows more about Henry, understands him better, and he can appreciate the rarity of a genuine smile on the same famously beautiful face.
It’s a weird cognitive dissonance, Henry present and Henry past. That must be why something feels so restless and hot somewhere beneath his sternum. That and the whiskey.
Henry’s wearing a simple dark blue suit, but he’s opted for a bright coppery-mustard tie in a narrow cut. He spots Alex, and his smile broadens, giving Pez’s arm a tug.
“Nice tie,” Alex says as soon as Henry is close enough to hear over the crowd.
“Thought I might be escorted off the premises for anything less exciting,” Henry says, and his voice is somehow different than Alex remembers. Like very expensive velvet, something moneyed and lush and fluid all at once.
“And who is this?” June asks from Alex’s side, interrupting his train of thought.
“Ah yes, you’ve not officially met, have you?” Henry says. “June, Alex, this is my best mate, Percy Okonjo.”
“Pez, like the sweets,” Pez says cheerfully, extending his hand to Alex. Several of his fingernails are painted blue. When he redirects his attention to June, his eyes grow brighter, his grin spreading. “Please do smack me if this is out of line, but you are the most exquisite woman I have ever seen in my life, and I would like to procure for you the most lavish drink in this establishment if you will let me.”
“Uh,” Alex says.
“You’re a charmer,” June says, smiling indulgently.
“And you are a goddess.”
He watches them disappear into the crowd, Pez a blazing streak of color, already spinning June in a pirouette as they go. Henry’s smile has gone sheepish and reserved, and Alex understands their friendship at last. Henry doesn’t want the spotlight, and Pez naturally absorbs what Henry deflects.
“That man has been begging me to introduce him to your sister since the wedding,” Henry says.
“Seriously?”
“We’ve probably just saved him a tremendous amount of money. He was going to start pricing skywriters soon.”
Alex tosses his head back and laughs, and Henry watches, still grinning. June and Nora had a point. He does, against all odds, really like this person.
“Well, come on,” Alex says. “I’m already two whiskeys in. You’ve got some catching up to do.”
More than one conversation drops out as Alex and Henry pass, mouths hanging open over entremets. Alex tries to imagine what they must look like: the prince and the First Son, the two leading heartthrobs of their respective countries, shoulder to shoulder on their way to the bar. It’s intimidating and thrilling, living up to that kind of rich, untouchable fantasy. That’s what people see, but none of them know about the Great Turkey Calamity. Only Alex and Henry do.
He scores the first round and the crowd swallows them up. Alex is surprised how pleased he is by the physical presence of Henry next to him. He doesn’t even mind having to look up at him anymore. He introduces Henry to some White House interns and laughs as they blush and stutter, and Henry’s face goes pleasantly neutral, an expression Alex used to mistake as unimpressed but can now read for what it is: carefully concealed bemusement.
There’s dancing, and mingling, and a speech by June about the immigration fund they’re supporting with their donations tonight, and Alex ducks out of an aggressive come-on by a girl from the new Spider-Man movies and into a haphazard conga line, and Henry actually seems to have fun. June finds them at some point and steals Henry away to gab at the bar. Alex watches them from afar, wondering what they could possibly be talking about that has June nearly falling off her barstool laughing, until the crowd overtakes him again.
After a while, the band breaks and a DJ takes over with a mix of early 2000s hip-hop, all the greatest hits that came out when Alex was a child and were somehow still in rotation at dances in his teens. That’s when Henry finds him, like a man lost at sea.
“You don’t dance?” he says, watching Henry, who is very visibly trying to figure out what to do with to do with his hands. It’s endearing. Wow, Alex is drunk.
“No, I do,” Henry says. “It’s just, the family-mandated ballroom dancing lessons didn’t exactly cover this?”
“C’mon, it’s, like, in the hips. You have to loosen up.” He reaches down and puts both hands on Henry’s hips, and Henry instantly tenses under the touch. “That’s the opposite of what I said.”
“Alex, I don’t—”
“Here,” Alex says, moving his own hips, “watch me.”
With a grave gulp of champagne, Henry says, “I am.”
The song crossfades into another buh-duh dum-dum-dum, dum-duh-dum duh-duh-dum—
“Shut up,” Alex yells, cutting off whatever else Henry was saying, “shut your dumb face, this is my shit!” He throws his hands up in the air as Henry stares at him blankly, and around them, people start cheering too, hundreds of shoulders shimmying to the shouty, Lil Jon–flavored nostalgia of “Get Low.”
“Did you seriously never go to an awkward middle school dance and watch a bunch of teenagers dry hump to this song?”
Henry is holding on to his champagne for dear life. “You absolutely must know I did not.”
Alex flails one arm out and snatches Nora from a nearby huddle, where she’s been flirting with Spider-Man girl. “Nora! Nora! Henry has never watched a bunch of teenagers dry hump to this song!”
“What?”
“Please tell me nobody is going to dry hump me,” Henry says.
“Oh my God, Henry,” Alex yells, seizing Henry by one lapel as the music pounds on, “you have to dance. You have to dance. You need to understand this formative American coming-of-age experience.”
Nora grabs Alex, pulling him away from Henry and spinning him around, her hands on his waist, and starts grinding with abandon. Alex whoops and Nora cackles and the crowd jumps around and Henry just gawks at them.
“Did that man just say ‘sweat drop down my balls’?”
It’s fun—Nora against his back, sweat on his brow, bodies pushing in around him. To one side, a podcast producer and that guy from Stranger Things are hitting the Kid ’n Play, and to the other, Pez is literally bending over to the front and touching his toes as instructed. Henry’s face is shocked and confused, and it’s hilarious. Alex accepts a shot off a passing tray and drinks to the strange spark in his gut at the way Henry watches them. Alex pouts his lips and shakes his ass, and with extreme trepidation, Henry starts bopping his head a little.
“Fuck it up, vato!” Alex yells, and Henry laughs despite himself. He even gives his hips a little shake.