It’s 6:41 am. I should still be sleeping and hungover but I am neither. I feel the need to get up and write about last night before I forget. The taste of alcohol is still on my tongue but I haven’t done anything yet but turn on my computer and begin this.
He bought me a drink last night. An Adios Mother Fucker, to be exact. That name is not to be underestimated. I was GONE. He knew it would happen. But he said I deserved to be drunk for my birthday, since it had not happened yet - at least as far as he knew. I didn’t argue. (Of course I didn’t.)
He gets to the bar later than the rest of us because he is in class until 10. I had already had a screwdriver before he arrived and had a couple sips of everyone else’s drink. Double Bailey’s, tequila & pineapple, some fruity drink that tasted like coconut. He and I share a Miller Light. And then he says he’ll be right back and walks off to the bar. My eyes keep straying over to where he stands at the counter. I think he is getting another beer but he comes back with a blue drink in a plastic cup with two straws, hands it to me, and says, “Happy birthday!” My friends all tell me to drink it slowly. Naturally, I nearly chug it down.
I’m still sipping at the ice cubes when there is nothing left. I’m a little dizzy and a lot giggly. He takes the cup out of my hands, places it on the table next to us, and tugs me gently towards the dance floor. The rest of our friends are telling us to come out there, too. “Come on, let’s dance, you’ll feel better,” he says. And I do. We are pressed up against each other, moving together, and the music is pounding throughout my entire body, just the way I like it. We are talking in each other’s ears and laughing a lot. The conversation topic eludes me. I do, however, distinctly remember laughing at how ridiculous it was that he just successfully one-handedly got me drunk, and he just laughs with me and tells me it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, just dance.
My friends offer me a cup. I lean into it and ask what it is. It’s water. The small part of my brain that hasn’t yet been affected by the alcohol tells me I really need it so I take gulp after gulp, and then he and I dance for a bit longer. His hands travel down, warm on the skin of the small of my back. It gives me the good kind of chills. There is some unspoken extent of desire between us, but still I already know that this night is not going to end like the other one. I tell him I feel safe with him, but that since he’s the one who got me this way he had to be the one to get me out of it. He laughs and says into my ear, “Let’s go home.”
We say bye to our friends and I grab his hand so as not to get lost in the giant crowd. He intertwines his fingers in mine. I cling on very tightly, the lights unwieldingly bright in my eyes, as he leads me through the dance floor, through the tables outside, up the stairs into the bar, through the hallway past the crowd in there, until we’re outside. The walk to his car feels long, and I can hear myself talking really loudly, or maybe it just seems loud because it’s much quieter outside now that there isn’t a pair of speakers in my ears. He opens the passenger door for me and for some reason that I can’t recall, I’m refusing to get in, so he sweeps his arm underneath me and picks me up and places me in the car.
He takes the long way home, avoiding the freeway. I proceed to talk. A lot. I am telling him about the problems with my current relationship, about how I felt about life pre-Nova, how I feel about life post-Nova, about everything. And he listens. And responds, even. When he gets to my house I tell him to park somewhere. He obliges. And then a long, long conversation ensues. He is only half willing to have it. He has class at 7:30 the next morning and he wants to go home and sleep. I apologize but tell him I’m pretty selfish when I’m drunk, and he just laughs in that good-natured way of his and seems to have all the patience in the entire world for me.
“You’re probably never going to buy me a drink again now,” I say, laughing.
“Of course I will,” he says. “Just not one as strong. And besides, I don’t see why we can’t just have these conversations when you’re sober.”
“Because we won’t have it. Because I won’t say these things if I’m sober.”
He understands. And leans back in his seat ready to let me talk. Our friend texts him asking if I’m alright and if I’m still with him. I lean against him and watch him send back, “Yeah, we’re conversing.” and then he looks at me and also sends, “And having sex.”
We laugh for a while and I say, “You just did that because I was watching you reply, didn’t you?” He laughs and says yes. And then I let it go at that. No need for a repeat of last Tuesday night.
Then somehow, we get on the subject of what a relationship between me and him would be like. Things are said that I don’t remember much of at the moment, although I’m sure throughout the day bits and pieces will keep coming back to me. Perhaps I will record these as they resurface, if they seem worth it. It’s a little odd that I don’t recall this part very well, considering it felt like the entire point of the night.
A large amount of the conversation also consists of him trying to convince me to go inside. He says we both need to get some sleep, and he needs to do the responsible thing and help me inside and then rest in order to get up and get to his class early the next morning. He says it’s not that he wants to do any of that, it’s that he has to. He says if it was his choice, we’d still be back at the bar, being stupid and drinking and dancing. I ask him why that would be his choice… it’s a shame I can’t remember his answer. (I always wonder why it is that when I am recalling drunk conversations, I really only remember mostly my own side of it. It is an utterly useless ability.)
I mention something about wishing he’d drank more, and he says he wishes he had been able to also (at least I think he said this). I ponder vaguely this snippet of conversation, wondering if he had been wishing the same thing for the same, immoral reason I had been.
Finally I realize two things: 1) he has impossible amounts of self-control and respect for me, and is a much better man than I have originally given him credit for, and 2) I have kept him here and awake far too long. So I get out of the car. Or at least attempt to. My head is spinning a little bit and I’m clinging to the door and afraid to let go of it. He comes around from the driver side and offers his hand.
We make it down the sidewalk very, very slowly, both of us laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. Or at least I was laughing because of that. He may have been laughing because I could not walk straight to save my life. He sweeps me up into his arms again when we reach the driveway and says, ” ‘…And then I had to carry her to her door because she didn’t have any balance.’ What a great story this is gonna make for everyone.” I nuzzle into his neck and laugh softly and say against his skin, “Yeah right. You’re not gonna tell anyone about this.” And he says, “You’re right, maybe not. I may like having the memory of this part of tonight all to ourselves.”
He’s carrying me down the steep driveway and he says, “This hill is hard”, through breaths that are getting heavier, so I tell him he can put me down, that I can walk as long as he holds my hand. So he puts me down and I am holding on to his hand as he walks backwards slightly in front of me, just smiling at me in that “you are ridiculous but I’ll take care of you” kind of way.
Making it up the stairs takes forever. We’re both shivering in the frigid 2:00 am air. Finally we’re at my front door. He is saying goodbye but I wrap my arms around him, holding on tightly, not wanting to have to deal with myself alone just yet. I tell him so. He whispers into my ear, “You can do it. You’re a strong person, I know you are. You had Nova, you can do this, right?” But one arm is around my waist, tight and secure, and the other is stroking my back softly, and I am taking in his scent and the chain of his necklace against my cheek, and I don’t think I can be alone at all.
He turns me around to face my door. I try to twist back around but he holds me firm. “Go inside, Ash. You have to go inside,” he says gently.
And then I feel myself shaking with some sort of completely irrational drunken fear, and I am scared to go inside for some reason. I fight his grip suddenly and turn back towards him, collapsing against his chest, shaking my head back and forth, and he closes his eyes and holds me again, and it is quite possibly the best feeling on earth, him holding me like that.
I remind him of what I said earlier, how he has to be the one to get me out of this drunken state because he is the one who got me there, and he laughs and I laugh a little bit and he is holding me and we are shivering still but I’m not entirely too sure it was only because of the cold by now. I am taking short, sharp breaths and he is whispering to me, “Calm down,” in what I must say was a very calming voice indeed, except I am not really calming down because all I can think of is how he is taking such good care of me and I am feeling tears of an unknown emotion somewhere in the back of my head that I am very, very unwilling to let come.
So I am breathing fast and he is trying to create friction on my arms to warm me up, and then in a quick moment that even in sober retrospect I still do not understand, I feel his hands on my neck searching for my cheeks, and he finds them and lifts my face up to his and he presses his lips against mine, hard, and my breathing stops, just… stops as he is kissing me. And everything is imploding and intense and his kiss is very long and very… purposeful, though I cannot imagine what purpose it was for. I just know I have never experienced any kiss like this. It is filled with something. Spontaneity, passion, longing, a craving for unfamiliarity, an intense desire to understand, a beautiful tension. It is consumed with all these things and it is with which I also become consumed during this one piercing moment.
When he pulls away from me I open my eyes, completely disoriented, and my heart is pounding nearly out of my chest and then the tears come. I am leaning against my front door. He is apologizing with entire sincerity, saying “Please don’t cry,” but it’s too late, and I tell him he can go, I have kept him here longer than enough. He says, “I want to see you go inside before I leave.” But I shake my head and tell him just to go, I’ll be fine. So he puts his hand on my back and says, “I’ll see you tomorrow…” I feel his hand slowly trail off my back, what I hope is reluctantly, and I hear his footsteps down the corridor, down the stairs, up the driveway. I hear his car starting quietly, driving down the road. I see his headlights as he turns the corner onto the other street.
And then I go inside, and I lay in bed for four hours but I don’t fall asleep, not once. My mind is hazy and then suddenly at 6:30 it’s not. It’s very sharp and clear and I need to get up and write, write for however long it takes to sort out the mess of last night’s story.
And I can very easily fall back into that all-consuming kiss, but I cannot figure out its meaning. I can’t even use alcohol as the explanation because he was completely sober in that moment.
Therefore, I am perplexed.
