Chapter 2 - Pushed Into the Glass
His shoes hit the checkered tile before I saw his face.
I was still face-down with my cheek almost on the cold marble, and the light from the sconces blurred at the edges. My right arm was under me at a wrong angle and it burned where the skin had split open. I could smell perfume and copper and the clean night air coming through the double doors behind him. He moved fast through that dark rectangle, his jacket open, his bow tie a little crooked.
Vanessa heard him a half second before I did. Her weight shifted off me.
She had been standing over me with that beige shoe raised high in her right hand. I remember the heel catching the warm light. Then she turned toward the doors and swung, not at me this time but at him, her mouth open like she was still shouting though I couldn't hear anything except my own breathing.
He caught her wrist.
That is the part I keep replaying. He didn't grab for the shoe itself. He grabbed her wrist and held it, and for a moment they were locked there above me, his arm extended, her arm bent back. Her low bun had come loose on one side. A strand of dark hair stuck to her cheek. She tried to pull free and her whole body twisted in that long magenta dress, the fabric pulling tight across her shoulders.
Then he pushed.
It wasn't a punch. I need to be clear about that because later everyone would ask. He planted his hand against her shoulder and shoved her backward and down, hard enough that she lost her balance. The shoe flew out of her hand. I heard it hit the tile somewhere to my left and slide, a sharp clatter that cut through the quiet. I tried to lift my head to follow it and couldn't. The glass bit into my palm when I tried to push up.
Vanessa went down on the broken glass.
She landed on her hands and knees a few feet from me, her dress pooling around her legs on the black-and-white squares. One knee hit with a dull thud. Her left hand slapped down to catch herself and then immediately came up to her face. She clutched her left cheek, fingers pressed white against the skin, eyes wide and fixed on nothing. Shock more than pain at first. Her mouth closed, then opened again without sound.
Small pieces of glass glittered in the folds of her dress. A thin line of blood rose on her knee where the fabric had torn. She stared at Marcus, then down at the floor, then at me, her breathing coming quick and shallow through her nose.
I couldn't move away. My left hand was right in front of my eyes, palm down on the tile, smeared with blood from the cut on my forearm. Broken bits caught the sconce light around my fingers, clear and sharp, scattered across the white square like ice that wouldn't melt. Every time I breathed, my ribs ached against the marble. My sequined dress had ridden up at the side and the beads dug into my hip. I just stayed there, watching her breathe, watching the blood from my own arm seep a little farther across the tile.
Marcus ended standing over her.
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He didn't step back. He stayed planted between us, his chest rising and falling hard, his hands at his sides now, empty. His stubble and the sweat along his hairline showed in the warm light. He looked down at Vanessa with his jaw set, not shouting, not reaching to help her up. Just breathing. The doors behind him were still open to the dark outside, and the cold air kept coming in across the floor, lifting the edge of her dress a fraction.
None of us spoke. Vanessa kept holding her cheek. I kept staring at my hand in the glass. His shadow lay long across the checkers between us, and we stayed like that, both of us on the floor and him above us, while the hallway went completely still except for breathing.
