NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY |

31: seconds from disaster

            Allan smacks his Uno cards onto the sofa table as Rishi does his fifth victory jig. 'I'm not doing this anymore. Can we play Monopoly instead?'

'You're even worse at Monopoly than you are at Uno, mate.'

I offer my four remaining cards to Eilidh so she can slot them into the box and push myself off the rug to be immediately made aware of just how much alcohol I've had in the past hour. The floor swims under my feet. 'You lot play without me.' I throw my hands up at the protests. 'I just need a break.'

'Only cause you always lose,' Caleb jabs, jostling the lid off the Monopoly box.

'Only cause you always cheat!'

'No duh. It's a game about capitalism. You're supposed to.'

I down three full glasses of water before I search the flat for Joe—she's been gone for the last two rounds of Uno. I find her in what used to be my room when this was my and Caleb's flat and is now the hobby room, crammed with all his drag stuff and Eilidh's gaming computer.

Another thing in the room is a bathtub which is where Joe is currently sitting, smoking a zoot with the window open. She looks at me but her eyes stay out of focus.

Unable to decide whether I should leave or go inside, I sort of... stumble over the threshold. Or maybe that's the alcohol. Though I'm not drunk enough to become immune to temperatures; my arms break out in gooseflesh in an instant.

'You alright?'

She hums in acquiescence and takes a drag from her zoot. 'Just needed a bit of break. It's still a little overwhelming sometimes, being around so many people...'

For a second or two, Joe watches the smoke she exhales and, as if her words are written in it, her eyes widen. She jolts upright in the tub. 'Sorry, it's not- I really like you lot and I'm really grateful you've let me join your group, but I haven't known you for that long, and-'

'That's alright,' I interrupt, reaching for the door handle. 'D'you want me to leave?'

'No. You can stay.'

She pulls her legs closer to her torso so I have space to climb into the tub. There's a cantaloupe-sized hole in the bottom—presumably the reason why someone left the tub out in the street for us to find in the first place—meaning I have to sit sideways, so close to Joe that my arm presses into her knee.

I've barely settled before regret hits: what the fuck am I doing? Me + alcohol + Joe + privacy = not good.

Joe offers me the zoot. Definitely not good.

Combining alcohol with weed always makes the hangover worse. And it will also make the tingling in my body from my proximity to her worse. Last time I smoked were nearly two years ago, meaning my tolerance must be shit.

So of course I take it. Maybe there's a ten per cent chance smoking will make me dissociate out of my body or make me fall asleep so I can't do owt stupid. Could happen!

Besides, Caleb will take it personally if I don't party to my heart's content on his birthday. And fuck, this is some quality bud. It even tastes sweet with a hint of lemon and not at all like burnt oregano.

'I get it, by the way,' I say while holding the smoke in my lungs. 'Needing a break. We all take those sometimes. We have too much energy even for ourselves.'

Joe laughs and takes the zoot as I pass it back to her. She struggles to wrap her smile around it.

'Why is there a bathtub that's not in the bathroom?'

I bite down my grin. 'What it were, right, is that we were at uni and we were well slaughtered and then we saw this tub on the street. So of course we took it home—which were a right chore, mind you, cause we were too sloshed to even remember the way and now we had a whole bathtub with us and this building's not got a lift. Made it eventually, though.

'Oh,' I add. 'Parker was there. Cause this were well before Caleb got his prosthesis so he would've been no help carrying it.'

'Ah, uni students and their emotional support stolen traffic cones.'

'Exactly.'

            Ten minutes later, it becomes unavoidably clear that being high in addition to being drunk is indeed not making me dissociate from my body.

Even with the window open to the December night, I burn up as if my heart has turned up the central heating that connects to my veins. My tongue has swollen twice in size. My palms tickle.

Every time Joe licks her lips which begin to dry from the bud, I have to flick my attention to the ceiling for a minute and imagine myself refactoring two hundred lines of inherited code. Which is what I'm in the middle of doing when Joe knees my arm, knocking my stare down to her pout.

'Did you just smoke the last of my ganja?' she asks with the air of a primary school teacher who has just found her pupil covered in paint after the windows spontaneously gained a new coat of colour.

She holds what's left of the zoot I just handed back to her. Turns out what's left is the filter. My face burns—more than it were already—and Joe feigns a scoff. 'Can't believe you had the last of it!'

'I can give it back.'

Without waiting, I stretch forward and seal my mouth over hers to exhale the smoke into her lungs. But I pull back to see it drift out the window.

'You were supposed to inhale it. I can't get it back now, I ain't no superhero. That would be a cool superpower to have tho-'

The words die in my throat when Joe grabs a fistful of my printed shirt. I look down at the clumped fabric in her hold, then up at her face. Her eyes are foggy on my mouth and as if it's a command, I find myself staring at hers.

They're parted, the cleft in her upper lip revealing a sliver of teeth. As I watch, her tongue darts out to moisten them and I'm almost sure she's teasing me. Ethiopian jazz seeps in through the crack under the door. Somewhere at the back of my mind, Caleb reminds me about practising pre-nut clarity.

Here is the gateway. I can step back or step through.