Dangers of Drinking Pt 1_(0)

I had three friends over to celebrate – or mourn – the end of the Christmas break. John, a mild mannered friend from childhood; Sam, whom I’d known for a few years and a pretty decent guy; and Mike. Mike was closer to the other two than he was to me and a bit arrogant, but he meant well and we got along so it was never a big problem. All four of us were 18 years old and right now we were gathered around the living room TV, playing a game my sister had bought me for an all night session.

So where was my sister in all this?

She was turning 20 next week and right now was off on a pre-birthday bash. She said she was off with her friends, but I knew her party actually consisted of three girls (including her) and two of their boyfriends.

In other words, chances were high she and her beau would be taking a detour on the way home.

It was just when John cheered and exchanged high fives with Sam for a point well scored when the door bell rang. Being the host, I went to open it and was surprised to see my sister stumble in.

“Woah, you okay Jess?”

She looked down at me, tossing wild strands of her dirty blonde hair behind her head. I’ve heard people say guys usually have a height advantage but I guess she’d had an extra growth spurt since she was an inch or two taller.

“Yeah…”

She leaned and threw out an arm for support against the wall. I took the chance to glance over her body. She was wearing short shorts and a tank top, pretty standard fare for a party. It was now that I noticed she’d splashed something over her top making her collarbones show through and at that point I looked away; I didn’t want to see anything else.

“Bit too much to drink?” I asked, recognizing the smell of the liquid over her top.

“Yeah…” John cheered again and she looked into the house. “Your crew’s still here?”

“Well, yeah. All nighter, remember?”

“Oh yeah. I’ll just go say hi then.”

I followed her down the corridor and overtook her in time to enter the room as she leaned against the doorway. “Hi, guys!” she called.

Mike and John turned at once. Sam paused the game while I leaned against the sofa positioned by the door.

“Hey, Jess.” John waved.

“Heya,” Mike held finger pistols up to her for some reason.

“Thanks for the game!” Sam waved with the controller and my sister smiled.

“Glad you enjoyed it guys. Anyone beat my record yet?” we all shook our heads and she laughed before rubbing her forehead. “Well, you have a few hours left ‘til Mom comes home so good luck.” She beckoned me to join her outside the doorway.

“Yeah?”

“Matt, I really need to go sleep this off. What time is it?”

I leaned into the living room to check the clock and my eyes went wide. “Quarter to two?! Shit, I thought it was 11.”

Jessica sighed and rubbed her forehead again. “That would have been nice. I had way too much fun at that party. I got a lift home right after Sarah called me out on it.”

“Huh.” Sarah was the resident drunk in Jessica’s friend circle, so if she’d said Jess’d gone too far, Jess had definitely gone too far. “You’re not gonna throw up are you?”

“Course not! Just, cover for me if Mom says something in th’ morning, yeah?”

“Sure.” Mom would calm down as soon as Jess said she didn’t spend time with Simon anyway.

“And…” Jess sat at the foot of the steps to take her heels off. “You guys have fun, but don’t get too loud.” She tossed her heels to the line of shoes by the door and bounced off the stairs to the living room again. “Night guys!”

“Goodnight!” They called as one.

Sam was speaking over his shoulder from the screen, but now that I was standing behind Jess I could look straight at Mike and John and saw what she was too drowsy to. It made me grit my teeth.

Mike’s eyes had gone from her face to her bare feet and was now fixated somewhere beneath her waist, while John was pretty blatantly staring at her tits. I remembered the beer on her top and hoped he wasn’t seeing too much. I didn’t even know who to be madder at: Mike, for being the perv he always was in my house or John, who’d known us for so long Jess was practically his sister too?

All of these thoughts had come to me in a second and by the time they registered Jess had turned to the stairs with a “Goodnight, Matt,” behind her shoulder. I watched her climb the stairs and noticed that her shorts ended about an inch beneath her ass, so Mike would have gotten quite an eyeful of her bare legs.

I shook my head to clear that image (which was tricky since she was climbing up and thus bringing her ass closer to my line of sight) and marched into the room. I sat on the arm of the chair until I heard her enter hers and closed the door.

“Guys! Can you not make eyes at my sister of all people?”

Mike snickered. “Are you kidding me, man? I wish I had a sister like her.”

“I do too, and then you might know how awkward it is!” I stood over the trio on the floor with my arms folded.

“Matt, go easy on the guy.” John spoke while concentrating on the screen, “can’t blame him for your sis looking like that.”

“Or dressing like that.”

“Wish she hadn’t been wearing a bra.”

The two grinned at each other and I groaned.

“She looked pretty messed up,” said Sam, still watching the TV. I fixated on the normalcy of his question.

“Yeah, she got wasted apparently.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” That was Mike, of course.

“A-anyway,” I looked back at Sam’s dark brown hair, “she just needs to sleep it off. She’ll be fine.”

“You sure? She doesn’t throw up or anything? My cousin does that a lot.”

I shrugged. “Well, I’ve never seen her throw up. Then again, apparently one of her friends told her she’d overdone it so she probably did it there. She does go out like a light though.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” interrupted Josh. “You could sound a horn by her head and she wouldn’t even notice.” He grinned at me and I grinned back. He was referencing her second hangover. I had gone to grab a pair of scissors from her room, only to have the alarm he’d set on my phone as a prank go off at max volume in her doorway. I could have sworn I’d stopped breathing for a second before realizing that she had, as he said, not noticed a thing.

Mike chuckled. “Really? So we don’t need to be quiet or be on our best behavior then?”

“Nah, but hey; she’s cool even when she’s awake. But Mom will be home at, like, 7 or 8 so we need to at least pretend we’ve gone to sleep by then, k?” I would have sat on that info a while longer but after realizing my mental clock was at least three hours slower than I thought it was I decided against it.

—

Sam stopped playing a few minutes after that and 5 minutes into Mike’s session he tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, I need to go to the toilet.”

“Uh…sure? Why are you asking me that?”

“The downstairs one reeks, so I wanted to check if I could go upstairs.”

I raised an eyebrow. There was nothing wrong with the downstairs toilet in my opinion, but Sam was fussy over a lot of things so I shrugged. “Go for it.”

“Thanks, man.” He clapped me on the shoulder, told the others where he was headed and left.

—

“What the hell is taking him so long?” I was sitting on the arm of the sofa, tapping my foot as I glared at the roof. It had been another 3 minutes and now it was John’s turn at the controls. Mike pivoted on his butt to face me.

“Maybe he got lost?”

I rolled my eyes, but froze as a thought came to me. “Oh yeah, he was complaining about his stomach last week wasn’t he? Is that still bothering him?”

Mike smirked. “Yeah, that’s gotta be it. You hear anything about that John?”

John shrugged. “Maybe one of you should go check.”

“I’ll do it,” said Mike at once. He clapped me on the shoulder too. “Who knows, John may screw his game up sooner than later.”

“Hey, fuck you” laughed my best friend as Mike also left.

—

Mike turned out oddly prophetic as John lost within 5 minutes after a fumble even I could have avoided and I was horrible at the game. He held the controller out to me, now sitting on the sofa proper. “It’s your turn, Matt.”

“Yeah, thanks.” But I waved it away. “What on earth is going on up there?”

“Maybe they’re playing Cave Story?”

I frowned. Sam had caught me playing it in class before the Christmas break (yes, I’m an old-school gamer, sue me) and I had promised he could have a go on it today, but “Bit of a dick move for Sam to start playing it himself. That’s something Mike’d do.”

“Eh. I think I can understand where he’s coming from.” He placed the controller in my hand. “How ‘bout I go upstairs and take a look?”

“Yeah, thanks man.”

“Hey, I won’t let them keep anything from my friend.”

He clapped my shoulder on his way out too.

—

I’m sure everyone reading this is smarter than I was at the time so it should come as no surprise that John didn’t come down either.