Trying to Throw my Arms Around the World

Entertainment

Entertainment

“Managed to drag yourself away from her, have you?” I slurred into Katy’s ear. Alex’s party was well past its high light − the ostentatious blowing out of twenty-eight penis-shaped candles on a rum-filled chocolate pie at midnight − and most of us left were blind drunk. Liz had made her escape hours ago, when we had started doing tequila shots and it had become clear that this decadence was no place for a seven-month pregnant woman.

“It wasn’t easy,” Katy said. “She’s smoking hot.” Usually, when intoxicated, my grudges tend to mellow a bit and I become more forgiving, but Katy had the opposite effect. There was still a part of me that held her solely responsible for the demise of my affair with Claire, and the fact that Claire and I had just split up again, made it seem all the more relevant. I had once adored her gloriously blinding smile and buried everything I had in those curls, but all I could feel now was pure and cold resentment.

“You seem to have a thing for my sloppy seconds.”

“Oh Lee, I just wish we could bury the hatchet, you and me.”

“Why? So every time I meet someone you can try to seduce them and spoil them for me?”

“If only I could change your mind about me. I’m not the evil bitch you take me for.”

“As long as your actions speak so much louder than your words, you give me no choice.”

“Okay,” she said, while spilling tequila all over the coffee table, her hands too unsteady to hold the glass. “As a sign of my good will towards you−” She brought the trembling shot to her mouth and swallowed the liquid in one gulp. “−why don’t you come home with Lou and me later. We’ll make a night of it. The three of us together.” She slanted her head into what must have been intended as a sultry position, but it looked more as if her head was about to come unscrewed from her neck.

“No offence, Katy, but I’d rather scratch out my left eye with my own bare hands, cut it into pieces with a blunt knife, and eat it raw than ever have sex with you again.” She started laughing. Maybe she was under the impression I didn’t mean it.

On the other side of the table, Lou sat slumped in an arm chair. Her vest − the same one she wore the night we met − had come undone and the V of her t-shirt hung low on her chest. Not even copious amounts of hard liquor could suppress the roaring in my blood and the tingle in my belly. That’s when the ultimate plan for revenge on Katy entered my muddy mind. I strolled over to her with the last half-full bottle of tequila and poured us both a shot. We had barely spoken all evening. She had been too close to Katy for me to feel comfortable enough to approach her.

“The least you can do is have a drink with me,” I said. “If you’re going to sleep with my ex.”

“No one told me about that−”

“−until you had your tongue buried deep inside her mouth?” The booze burned my throat. I would need to find a way to sweat it all out so I could smell fresh for Roz on Monday. It was all part of my plan. I glanced over at Katy. She had fallen to her side, the length of her body covering the couch, her head resting on her stretched-out arm and her mouth half-open and drooling. Lou followed my gaze.

“Well, it looks like my entertainment plans for tonight fell through.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I said. “I promise I won’t fall in love with you.”

To be continued…