NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY | ✓

30: mystery drink for bad decisions

            Caleb taps his plastic champagne flute with a knife, which obviously makes no sound, and clears his throat. 'Queerly beloved, thank you for gathering here today to celebrate everyone's favourite time of year: my birthday.'

Once his welcome speech finishes, he bows, everyone cheers, and Eilidh helps him off the kitchen table. The music starts up again.

Though Caleb could probably get dozens of people to a party with zero notice, he usually limits his birthdays to close friends only. We can play board games easier and he won't have to worry about masking.

He bounds up to me and thrusts a glass into my hand. 'Drink up!'

I agreed to drink tonight (Reminder: I am allowed one night of having fun. Reminder: If summat happens with Cece, Bobbi is there and Bobbi is brilliant and much better at all this than me. Reminder: "They wanted you to live your life, that's why they left".) but I inspect the cocktail.

It's blue, first of all, and I can't tell if it's fizzy or not through the dick-shaped ice cubes. I got Caleb the penis ice tray as a joke when he started T, but he uses it very dutifully. As in, it's the only ice he has.

'What is it?'

'Better yet: what isn't it?'

'He'll be meeting God after drinking all that,' Eilidh remarks as she wedges past us to join Daisy and her queer-platonic partner Fallon on the sofa.

Caleb stares at me intently as I take a sip of his mystery cocktail. It tastes exactly like the sort of "let me pour everything I can get my hands on into a glass" thing we'd drink as freshers. Which is to say absolutely hanging. Instant war flashbacks to Ring of Fire. You can tell Caleb does drag and does not bartend. 

But Caleb nods eagerly with every sip until he deems me to have had enough and latches onto my arm. 'I have an itty bitty little cheeky birthday favour to ask you. And remember that you can't say no because it's my birthday and that's illegal.'

I try to scrub the flavour of what might be Sourz Tropical off my tongue against the roof of my mouth as I watch the glass. The dick ice bobs among dregs of electric blue. 'Did you just drug me so I'd say yes?'

'What gave you that idea?' Caleb scoffs. He shakes my arm, jostling my eyes to his. 'Can you teach me to drive?'

I screw up my face with exaggerated agony. 'Can't your mum teach ya?'

'Nah, cause I tried that, and she called me an idiot in ten languages and then I had a panic attack. Put me in a right state, innit. And then the other one spent our whole "lesson" assuring me that it's okay if I'm too traumatised and don't wanna drive. Well, clearly I want to or I wouldn't've asked ya to teach me, would I?' Returning to the present, Caleb pleads, literally hanging on my arm now. 'Please, Nikki. If you teach me to drive, you won't have to chauffer me around. I can chauffer you around.'

'Yeah, to the hospital.'

Caleb continues to hang on me, sliding progressively lower until he's clinging to my leg, pleading like I've got the power to bring his childhood tiger barbs, Keanu Reefs and Sir Adam Anthony Azrael of Ardania, back to life.

'The point of you teaching me is so I can get better at it,' he whinges. 'How were I supposed to practice before: I've not had a leg for nine years.'

'It's not RuPaul's Queers Who Can't Drive Race so when you crash my car, I won't be getting a cash price of a hundred thousand dollars to replace it.'