My Love for Her

3: Cocktails

"You're late," Kim accused when we arrived at the bar.

"Sorry, Kimmy, we got caught up," I answered. I grinned at Liv, and couldn't help but giggle about how flushed she was. Then, my eyes drifted towards the person sitting beside Kim.

My breath caught in my chest. The eyes I gazed into were a lighter blue than anything I'd ever seen, even Olivia's. I couldn't look away from them. What's happening? Distantly, I heard a voice saying my name.

"Alice. Alice, honey, are you okay?"

I jerked back to myself. "Olivia. Yes. I'm okay." I sat down, pulling Liv down with me, keeping my arm around her.

"So, Nicholas, this is Alice and Olivia," Kim gestured. He nodded towards us, seeming uninterested.

There was an awkward silence, then. We all expected Nicholas to say hello, or at least acknowledge our existence, but he sat in silence. He stood up abruptly, then. "I'll get the drinks. What do you want?" He threw the words at me and Liv.

"Em, a vodka and 7up?" I said quietly, feeling very nervous.

"I'll just, um, take a Coke," Liv chimed in. "I have a 9am class."

"And the usual for you, Kimmy?" His entire tone changed. "A Bellini?" She nodded.

"Oh, it's a cocktail kind of occasion?" I lit up. "In that case, I'll take a Sex on the Beach!"

Olivia looked devastated. Cocktails were the one thing that could break her no-drinking thing when she had an early class. She looked torn.

"Baby, it's just a communications class in the morning," I told her. "Order a real drink."

She caved with no persuasion. "A vanilla margarita, then," she gave in, looking excited.

Nicholas went to get our drinks.

"I'm so sorry," Kim said, looking embarrassed. "I don't know why he seems so hostile."

"It's okay, Kim. Maybe he's nervous. Meeting your girlfriend's best friend is like meeting her parents." I grinned. "I mean, remember when I met Gina, Liv? She was awful!"

"You two are a couple?" Nicholas asked, setting the drinks down.

Olivia and I exchanged looks. Generally, people were pretty tolerant of us, but occasionally we'd get shit. We both thought that this was going to be one of those times.

"Yes, Nicholas, they are a couple. They're a great couple. It's sweet. Right?" Kim looked genuinely terrifying in that moment.

He looked at us with disdain. "It's... Very modern. Have you both always been lesbians, or have you had relationships with men before you realised?"

His question was quite personal for somebody we'd just met, but we answered anyway. "Well, I've always been a lesbian," Liv answered. "I've never done anything more than kiss a guy, and that was when I was, like, 13."

"And you?" Nicholas asked me, gazing intently.

I choked on my words slightly. "I'm actually, em, bisexual. I've had serious relationships with one guy for like a year and a half. I've slept with more girls though."

"Alice! Don't bring up sex the first time you meet someone," Olivia chastised, blushing furiously.

I shook my head. That wasn't something I would normally say. What's making me feel like this?

Three hours later, Olivia announced that she had to go.

"Honey, I don't want you walking home by yourself," I wailed. At this point, we were all very drunk.

"Actually," Nicholas interrupted, "my brother is in the area. I'm sure he'd bring you back to your apartment, and then Alice won't have to leave."

Ordinarily, I would have argued against Liv getting into a car with a complete stranger, but Drunk Alice saw this as a wonderful solution.

And so, Charles Umberton brought my girlfriend back to the dorm, while Nicholas, Kim and I left the university campus, and walked to a 24-hour fast food place that he said his sister worked at.

"So, looks like he's introducing you to his siblings," I said to Kim, as Nicholas walked ahead, calling his sister to see if she was working.

"I guess so," she grinned, and then tripped to the ground.

"You're drunk," I giggled. I lifted her up, and checked her knees. They should have been scratched to pieces on the road, but they weren't even red.

"You're drunker," she returned, and pulled me along to catch up with Nicholas.

Twenty minutes later, we were sitting and talking with Nicholas's sister, who had just finished her shift.

"So, Diana," I forced out, trying to eat something before the tiredness hit her. "What was Nicholas like as a child?"

"Why do you care?" Diana asked, scathingly. "Just because he's interested in-"

"Diana!"

The two siblings stared at each other, almost like they were having a conversation. After a seemingly endless moment, Diana looked at Kim and said, "Gosh, it feels like he's been the same for the past 20 years."

The three of them laughed, as if they were in on a joke I wasn't. It was very... Strange.

__________________

"Honey, I'm home!" I bellowed, opening the door to mine and Liv's apartment. I stumbled inside.

I put my handbag down and immediately unzipped the back of my little black dress. My hair, which I had had up in a bun, fell down my back as I took it down. I took a chunk of my dyed hair in my hand, and started giggling. "My hair is so blue!"

I looked to our bed then, and saw it was empty.

"Olivia?"

I looked to the other side of the room, and was surprised to see that Olivia was in the other bed, the one that she had slept in when we started college, before we were a couple. Why wasn't she in our bed? I was too tired to think about it, and was about to get into our bed, when I heard crying.