"So," I say with a little giggle, something I don't do often, "she seemed mad."
His eyes catch me out of the corner of his line of sight, and he sighs as he lifts the bottle to his lips and finishes it off. "Yeah, she was." He doesn't elaborate, instead tipping the bottle upside down as he peers into the neck like he thinks there's some in there still, just hiding from him. "Damn, did we drink it all already?"
I shrug, toeing my heels off with a groan of relief. "Probably. It's been a shit night for both of us." I roll sideways, leaning up to look at him though I don't really need to. "You got any more booze in this place?"
"Oh yeah." He shoves up off the floor, and he's off like a rocket, rummaging through a nearby cabinet that has a fingerprint lock on it. "What do you like? I've got everything."
"Tequila, rum, cinnamon whiskey, wine, I'm not too picky," I say with a flick of my hand, reaching for the TV remote on the nearby end table. "What do you wanna watch?"
"Something dumb that doesn't require a lot of brain cells to follow." He's still buried up to the neck in his cabinet of mysteries, and I shrug and turn on the TV, looking for streaming services I'm familiar with. Unfortunately, the majority of them are Asian streaming channels. Not that that's a deal breaker—just that I'll need him to translate the menu. "You take your booze straight or do you want a chaser?"
"Depends on what it is. Most of it goes down just fine on its own."
He holds up a bottle of very expensive-looking wine and grins. "How about some citrus moscato? I've also got a nice riesling in here, or a cabernet, if you're a fan of red."
"Got anything stronger?"
He disappears again and reappears with a bottle that's got a bunch of foreign letters all over it. "Sake?"
"Isn't that like, Japanese wine-ish shit?" I flip through one of the Asian streaming channels, thankful the menu is in English. "What about liquor?"
"My bottle of tequila is mostly empty. I've got some marshmallow rum and a half-full bottle of, like, some weird shit that saysEverclearon it?—"
"That. Bringthat."I know what that is. Everclear is a strong, cheap liquor that's got the affectionate taste of paint thinner, and the strength of thirty cows stampeding at you at full speed. It'll do the job, even if there's only a fifth of it left.
"You want shot glasses, or?—"
"You're not contagious, are you? Did that wildcat you just shoved out the door leave you with some sort of STD on your lips?"
He plunks down on the rug again and sits cross-legged, grinning from ear to ear. "Nope. Not unless her clinic paperwork is forged." The bottle of Everclear isn't the only thing he's brought over. There's the bottle of marshmallow rum, and thewine, too. The moscato, it looks like. "I figured, we run out of one, we can move to another."
I take the bottle of Everclear from his grip with one hand and the rum with the other. "Pop the tops for me. The rum is the chaser."
He unscrews the lids and watches in amazement as I take a shot of the worst-tasting alcohol on the planet, next to the cheap, homeless-drunk-man shit they keep on the bottom shelves, that is, and then follow it with a mouthful of flavored rum. I grimace, because it still sucks, but I get it down, and keep it there.
My hands don't even shake as I hold the bottles out in his direction now, grinning with a wince of my eyebrow and a tic in my cheek. "Your turn, big shot."
His eye twitches when he catches a whiff of the Everclear as he brings it to his mouth. "Oh my fuck, that isstrong."He sniffs it again, his lip curling. "I bet it tastes worse than it smells."
"Very much so." But we don't have all night here. "Just do it fast, and it won't suck as bad." It's a lie, but it's a white one, and he's not paying attention to my honesty meter right now. "Or are you a chicken shit?"
"I'm no coward." The bottle hits his lips, and he takes a huge gulp. I watch the curve of his Adam's apple bob as he swallows, and have to remind my vagina that we're not here to fuck our boss. We're here to drink in solidarity because drinking alone in my car at 4am was too depressing to go through with.
He regrets his hasty action almost immediately. I can see the minute the burn kicks in, because his eyes water, and he gasps, reaching for the rum with shaking hands. When he getsthatdown as a chaser, his eyes blow wide, and he starts to cough, which slightly tipsy me finds absolutelyhilarious.
"How the fuck did youdothat?" he wheezes, one hand clutching his throat, the other running through his hair as he tries not to cry. "What the fuck did they putinthat first one?"
"Tears of their enemies, the blood of a ghoul, and the soul of a Yaoi Guai." I shrug. "It's not that bad. We used to drink it at high school parties and college ragers because it's cheap and high proof."
He glances at the bottle, and his English reading skills must be good enough to comprehend what it says, because he swears. "Holy shit, this is strong enough to peel the paint off my car."
"Exactly, and it gets you fucked up, too." I reach out for it, and he hands it over without a second thought. Clearly, it's not his cup of tea. "What's the matter, not your speed?"
"You're insane," he mutters, getting back up with a sigh. "I'm getting the sake. At least I like the way it tastes."
"More for me," I say with a shrug. There's no way I'm drinking it all, but hell, if he doesn't want it, then I'll still top off with some of it. "So what was twinkle toes so damn angry about? And whose name do you moan into the sheets while you hump your bed?"
"I don't know, and I'm not telling you shit," he says, huffing as he falls gracefully back to the rug. "I don't hump my bed. I'm not that uncivilized."
