They joined a group of people outside, Drew with a beer and Alexa with a glass of sangria. She almost coughed when she took a sip; there was a lot more alcohol in that sangria than she’d been expecting. Drew introduced her to more people, and she tried to deal with this party the way she would at work: smile, make small talk, ask questions, get people talking about themselves. Like the way she’d done at the wedding.
The thing was, right now she was too anxious to be professional Alexa. When she was at work events, she was confident. There, she knew who she was and what she was doing. The wedding had been a lark, with a guy she barely knew, where she was just playing a role. Here, none of those things were true. She felt uncertain. Off-kilter. She took another sip of sangria and plastered a smile on her face.
She fell back on the time-honored way to befriend strange women: compliments.
“I love your sandals!” she said to a woman named Emma. At least she was strawberry blond.
“Thanks!” Emma said. Like lobbing a tennis ball back to Alexa, she returned the compliment. “Great lipstick! I always wish I could wear red lipstick, but with this hair, I feel like it always clashes.”
“Oh no, I think there’s a perfect red lipstick for everyone; it just takes trial and error. You need plenty of time at Sephora and a friend you trust.”
They talked about makeup for a while longer. Either the conversation or the glass of sangria relaxed Alexa enough so that she stopped scanning the party for someone with brown skin or an errant eyebrow hair or even a tiny roll of fat.
She walked over to refill her glass of sangria. A guy Drew had just introduced her to followed her.
“Alexa, right? Having fun so far?” He put an arm around her. Lots of huggers at this party.
“Yeah, it’s great.” She stepped to the side so she could pour her drink. “Mike, right?”
“Yeah, so smart of you to remember.” Mike liked to stand close, didn’t he? “So Alexa, where are you from?”
She took a sip of her sangria and a half step backward.
“Berkeley. I’m just down here for the weekend.”
Oh look, he’d moved closer.
“You live in Berkeley? That’s cool. But I meant, like, where are you really from?”
Now she knew where this was going. Like she couldn’t “really” be from California? Why did people always try to ask her about her ethnicity in the clumsiest of all possible ways? Getting this question, especially in this way, always made her feel like such an object of curiosity. Today it made her feel like even more of an Other in this party full of golden-haired beauty queens.
Now she was doubly annoyed with Mr. Stands Too Close. So she was going to fuck with him.
“Oh, not that far from there. I grew up in Oakland. Northern California girl!” She gave him her biggest, fakest grin.
He chuckled and took another swig of his beer.
“No, no, like where are you from from? Where are your parents from?”
This conversation was so predictable. Yet this dance people did was irritating every time.
“My parents are from California, too. My dad grew up here in L.A., actually, and my mom up in the Bay Area. What about yours?”