We settle on a fancy cheese board and bread. She’s quiteclumsy with the scooping and the bringing food to her mouth without dropping it, so I prepare individual bites for her. Must stop short of physically feeding her, though. Will if I have to. Hope it doesn’t get that far.
“This will not be pleasant to throw up later,” she slurs, dutifully chewing the bread.
“Don’t think about that.” I shove another piece of bread into her fingers.
While she eats, I distract myself with my phone, nearly spitting out a mouthful of Gorgonzola and honey when an Insta ad pops up. “Oh, my god. This is perfect.”
She leans closer, tumbling slightly so most of her body weight lands on my arm. “What?”
I right her and hand over the phone. “I am so buying you this.”
Her head tilts at the picture—a creepy mannequin head sporting a teal scrub cap printed with little pink flowers and the phraseDon’t Be Extraover and over. She lets out an inelegant, intoxicated snort. “You are so extra.”
Except it sounds likeYou er show strawand that’s how I know it’s time to leave.
“All right, baby girl. Time for bed.”
“What? No! The night is young.” She throws out her arms, nearly smacking a dude walking by in the process.
I haul her into a standing position. “The night is young, butyouare wasted. Sleep it off, and we’ll try again tomorrow.”
I really should have thought through this drunken trek we made across the strip. Now I’m stuck with a half-conscious female a million hotels away from where I need to be. People will think I’m a date rapist with atrocious planning skills.
“Joss, I need you to walk.”
She tries, bless her. She fails miserably. I catch her as shestumbles into a display of Italian bread. A couple nearby shoots her death glares.
Must not strangle strangers. Not good form.
But Joss straightens her shoulders and tries again.
Determined, inebriated woman.
“It’s these damn shoes,” she says when she stumbles again.
“It’s not the shoes. It’s your ethanol-soaked cerebellum.”
She looks up at me with the most pitiful eyes. “Help.”
In the end, I order a rideshare. It’s that or bridal-carry her two miles over crowd-thickened sidewalks. Bad enough I have to schlep her drunk ass to her room from the car.
She leans against the wall beside her hotel door. “I think I drank too much.”
I search her purse for her hotel key. “You think? What was your first clue?”
Lip gloss. Cash. Driver’s license. Receipts. Wait, is that... a condom? Just to be sure, I pull it out, still too tipsy to understand the massive mistake that is.
She catches me eyeing it and snatches it from my hand. “That’s—not yours.”
I laugh. “Definitely not mine.”
“Not meant for you, either.”
“Wasn’t thinking that.” Aha. Hotel key.
She grabs her purse as soon as I’ve got the door open. Cold, hotel-scented air wafts toward us.
“I wasn’t going to use it,” she says.
