“Oomph,” I said, surprised, looking up at my surroundings. Then I realized where I was. The bedroom. Anna’s bedroom. From that awful first date with Ethan. I sat up. “I can’t be in here. It’s the sex room.” I tried to stumble to my feet but getting up so quickly made my stomach lurch angrily.
I felt sick.
Oh no. No. I can’t be sick.
“I’m going to be sick!” I yelled, panicked. Why? Why had I done all those shots? My forehead was sweating, I was shivering, panic panic panic panic panic.
“No, you’re not.” Guy’s voice had this soothing quality I’d never heard before. It was the exact opposite voice to all the guttural vocals he sang in his band. “Lie back down…I’ll get you some water and crackers.”
I grabbed him, wide-eyed. “I can’t be sick, Guy. You don’t understand, I can’t get sick. I can’t I can’t I can’t…” The panic won over and I did what I always did, I cried. There was no build-up, no slow ascent to a crescendo. Just one minute Guy was trying to get me to lie back down, and the next I’d grabbed his hand, squeezing all the blood out of it, sobbing uncontrollably.
“I can’t be sick. Guy, what if I’m sick? What have I done? How do I stop it, Guy? Help me. My stomach, oh God, help me. I can’t be sick.”
I began shaking uncontrollably. Guy, his eyes wide with shock, hugged me into him.
“Shh, Evie, you’re not going to be sick. We’ll get you some water. Calm down. Shhh. Shhh. Christ, where are your mates? Shhh, you’re not going to throw up. We’ll get you some water. Shh, shh, stop crying.”
His jumper smelled smoky, but in a sweet fragrant way, like flowers being burned. And his armpit was so squidgy and lovely and his hand was on the small of my back, and no boy’s hand had ever been on the small of my back before. Pins and needles erupted around where his fingers met my skin. His voice, his touch, brought me back.
My sobs quietened.
“Evie?”
“Yes?” I answered into his armpit.
“I’m going to go get you some water. Are you going to be okay?”
I nodded into his armpit.
“You’re going to have to come out of my armpit.”
“I like it in here.”
“Come on.” Even through my sambuca haze I could hear the impatience in his voice. I was just sober enough to know I’d pushed my luck and withdrew from under him. “Now lie down, take deep breaths. I won’t be long…”
“Where are Lottie and Amber?”
He sighed again. “I’ll go check they’re okay. Now, are you feeling all right?”
I nodded and it made the world go wonky. A late tear slipped out of my eye.
“I’ll be back in just a minute.”
The sound of the door closing. I lay back, like Guy said, and looked up at the ceiling. It spun, my head spinning with it. I closed my eyes to stop it but my head just kept on whirring. The bass beat made the room vibrate, steadily, like a heartbeat. I counted the thuds to stop the panic creeping back in.
Breathe, hold on for ten beats.
See if you can go twenty beats without being sick.
Good, there you go. Now let’s see if you can make it to forty beats.
People were yelling right outside the door. It could’ve been Lottie’s voice, it sounded a bit like her. Where’d she been all evening? With Tim? That wasn’t like her. My stomach swelled, nausea rose in my throat.
No no no. Can’t be sick, can’t be sick.
Oh how I wished my head would stop circling.
The door opened, the music got louder. It closed, the music got quieter again.
“Evie? You asleep?”
It was Guy. He’d come back. I opened my eyes and looked up at him sideways. I could see right up his pointed nostrils, but there weren’t any boogers. He had quite nice nostrils actually.
“You have quite nice nostrils actually,” I told him.
He grinned and put the toast-laden plate and glass of water on the bedside table next to me.
“So you’ve not passed out then? Your mate, Amber, is it? Jane and Joel are looking after her. She’s come round and is vomming in the front garden.”
I shuddered. How was I going to get out of this party without walking past her sick? Would some of the atoms of it break off and float into my nose and make me sick too? Hang on…I already felt sick. Another tear leaked out.
Guy saw it. “Oh no, Evie, not again. Come on, eat this toast. It will help you not vomit.”
“You promise?”
He looked me right in the eyes. “I promise.”
I lolled over and made room for him on the bed. He pushed me so I was upright against the wall and then wedged me up with his own body – budging over on the bed so he was right next to me. A whole side of me was touching a whole side of him.
He held the toast up. “Come on.” He spoke like I was a baby at feeding time. “Open up.”
“Did you wash your hands before you made the toast?”
He rolled his eyes, like I’d instantly become a misbehaving baby. “Yes.”
“And is the plate clean? You didn’t get it out of the sink, did you? Did you know there are more germs in a kitchen sink than there are in a toilet bowl?”
“Just as well I took this plate out of the toilet then.” He saw my face. “Relax, Evie, I got it out of the cupboard. You could say thank you, you know?”
I slowly leaned forward and took a bite of the buttery toast. It tasted amazing. And he’d cut it into triangles.
“Thank you,” I said, through a mouthful of crumbs.
He kept feeding me, until my tummy didn’t want any more, then he forced me to slowly sip a pint glass of water… “I got it straight out of the dishwasher, don’t worry.”
When I’d finished, I felt…better. Like the worst had passed, though seeing straight was still a bit challenging.
“This is the room where it happened,” I told him, my head wanting to rest on his shoulder. I resisted and lay it back against the hard plaster.
“What happened?”
“My date, the nympho…this is the same bed he shagged someone else on.”
Guy twisted his head in my direction and grinned.
“So it’s a lucky bed then?”
I’d sobered up enough to hear his innuendo. “Hey, I am very drunk right now. You are not to take advantage of this.” And I pointed to myself in all my drunken unattractive glory.
He rolled his eyes again. “Where’s the ‘thank you for looking after me’? No, I get sexual assault allegations…”
I opened my mouth to protest and then realized he was right.
“Why are you so drunk anyway? This isn’t the control freak Evie I know and love.”
Did he just say love? No. Well, yes, but not like that.
“Bad date.”
“Jeez, another one? Hang on, weren’t you meeting pussycat boy today?”
It stung somewhere in my foggy mind that he’d forgotten I had a date.
“Yeah, it was him. We went to the cinema.”
“And what happened? Why didn’t you bring him here?”
I let out a deep breath, reliving the day and tonight like a superfast flickbook of crap. “He brought his parents with him…” I waited for the laughter to start.
Guy didn’t laugh though. He just looked concerned. “What? Seriously? Is he okay, like, in his head?”
My mouth dropped open and stayed open longer than was probably necessary in the attractiveness stakes.
“I don’t think he is okay. In the head, I mean…”
“Wow, poor guy.” He was quiet a moment, before adding, “I had a mate like that. In school…” He trailed off. “He wrote some brilliant lyrics for our band at the time, I’m telling you. But man was he messed up. He moved away. To the sea or something.”
I smiled at Guy. We were exactly the same height and my nostrils were right up in his nostrils. I didn’t even worry about my breath smelling. Though I did afterwards. Loads.
“Thank you,” I said.