Richie Lee Jones- Wanna Try?

Chapter 3: Slap

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So we got kinda drunk. By kinda, I mean we drunk hard until about four in the morning and started at about six at night so everything was sort of blurry now, but I could faintly remember it. At least Jay running out of the backdoor and into the fence screaming that he was ‘chasing the sun’ and Nathan dancing around claiming he was a combine harvester. Stuff happened before that though. Stuff that I really shouldn’t have done.

It was just Tom, Jay and Nath to start off with. Max and Siva were on a double date with their girlfriends so I was the only girl, not that I mind, I know Kung-Fu. We played a few drinking games, sung a few merry songs and I did a little harmless flirting with Tom. Then someone suggested strip poker, I think it was Jay and being drunk enough to have downed a bottle of Jack and a six pack within the turn of midnight it was the best bloody idea ever. You see, I am the legend at poker and I don’t think that they expected that. I lost a top and a scarf, but I got all three guys down to their underwear.

We’d put our clothes back on and danced around like mad men, going on drunken rants and rages. I think I might have stood at the top of the stairs without a shirt on and rambled on for half a year about why I hate people who lecture about stuff when they’re drunk before Tom took the stage and started singing a bunch of Oasis songs.

We danced to the radio and I remember swaying away from Tom and dancing slow with Nathan. He smiled down at me and touched my bare arms with his fingers making me shudder visibly and stare into his eyes like he was some god.

“You’re a good singer,” he whispered to me, his lips brushing so gently over my lips as he spoke.

“That’s not the only thing my lips are good at,” I say back at him, still staring at him like a child might at Santa should he climb down the chimney at Christmas.

“Really?” he replied and before I could answer I was swept away by Tom and his shirtlessness.

Somewhere between then and three in the morning Jay had ran into the fence several times, Nathan had proclaimed his love for my guitar and named it Blaster, doing a whole freaky weird ritual around it and Tom had taken off his pants so he was dancing around with me -out of tune- to some Bee Gees song in his boxes. I’m sure it was Staying Alive.

Tom had to go save Jay and I noticed Nathan sitting on the couch looking glum with a bottle of beer in his hand and saying something. I swayed over there with a Jack Sparrow walk and fell down onto the couch next to him. He was still talking and he looked on the verge of tears.

“Hey mate, what’s wrong?” I ask and tap his shoulder.

“Do you want to know a secret?” he said staring dead ahead like he was talking to the shadow of a ghost.

“Alright,” I say back and twitch my mouth into a smile, “Most like I won’t remember it in the mornin’,” I say and take another swig of the drink.

“She wrote,” he continued and I frowned. “She can paint a lovely picture, but this story has a twist. Her paintbrush is a razor, and her canvas is her wrist.”

“She sounds like she needs counselling, you being singing to the spirits again Sykes?” I reply and he shook his head.

“They showed me the pictures of the crime scene. She had blood on the walls and she’d slit her wrists…” I stopped and looked at him carefully. All the humour of the alcohol had washed away quicker than a winter breeze and left me with the same chill. “And because of it the only person I ever loved left me.”

“Because some girl cut her wrists?” I ask.

“Yeah… and I slept with her,”

“Who? The girl who cut her wrists or the girl you loved and left?”