“Yo… Benny just got attacked with a bottle in the club.”
My head lifts fast. “Wait—what?”
She scrolls, reading faster. “Says the guy’s nose is broke. Security had to drag him out the back. People saying the bottle came out of nowhere.” She squints, then bursts out laughing. “Someone brained him clean across his bald arse dome.”
My blood runs cold.
I turn to Jabari slowly and he’s staring straight ahead at the road, looking entirely too calm.
“Jabari…”
He doesn’t look at me, just adjusts his seatbelt.
“Crazy world, innit.”
?It’s painfullyobvious Jabari is drunk.
Not tipsy. Not buzzed.Drunkdrunk.
We end up club-hopping for another hour, mostly because Zaza flat-out refuses to let the night end on Benny’s nonsense, and partly because Jabari keeps swearing he’s “good” while actively failing to walk in a straight line.
Every time I ask if he wants water, he laughs like I’ve told a joke.
By the time we get home, the situation is bad. I’ve got one arm looped around his waist, Zaza’s got the other side, and we’re both silently wondering how someone this athletic can be this useless when intoxicated.
“Bruv,” Zaza grunts as we reach the last step, “lift your foot.”
“It is lifted,” Jabari mumbles, face buried in the collar of his jacket. The same jacket he’s somehow wearing crooked, one shoulder half out, zipper fighting for its life.
“It really isn’t,” I say, already tired.
We shuffle him forward inch by inch. He keeps apologising to the floor. At one point he stops moving entirely.
“Why’ve we paused?” he asks.
“Because you stopped walking,” I reply.
“Oh,” he says thoughtfully. “Carry on.”
We finally get the door open and manoeuvre him inside, steering him toward the sofa with very little grace and a lot of muttering.
Zaza looks at me, breathing hard. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
We coordinate poorly, count silently, and drop him onto the couch.
He lands heavy, bounces once, then immediately goes limp.
Mouth open.
One leg hanging off the cushion.
One arm sliding down until his fingers brush the carpet.
Out cold.
Zaza straightens and claps her hands. “Perfect. Let him sleep there. He’s lucky I don’t throw water on him.”
