Whiskey Latte

December, 2016

December, 2016

Ingrid screamed out her ecstasy loud and proud on top of Remi and collapsed at his chest, panting. He had seen her at her wildest and her lowest, but never quite so ready to be depraved as today.

"Merry Christmas, baby!" he snickered in his throaty voice, running his fingers through her damp hair.

Ingrid pulled herself together and got up on her knees, crawling to the edge of the bed. Remi pushed himself up to lean against the headboard and reached for his stash in her nightstand drawer. While Ingrid went to wash up, he rolled himself a joint. She returned looking fresh and fulfilled and Remi passed her the joint, but she scrunched up her nose, hands planted in an intimidating pose on her hips.

"Fuck it," she then said and accepted his offering, taking a long drag and throwing her head back as she exhaled the smoke.

"Fuck," she hummed, prolonging the vowel, and got back into bed next to her favourite bartender.

"How long since you've had one?" Remi asked.

"Three years, I think. Since I went sober."

"Well, now, sober is an awfully relative term. You, my darling, are anything but sober."

She chuckled and her silence agreed with him. He grabbed his phone to scroll through social media while she had the joint. She never kept it for long, though, just one absent-minded puff at a time, but enough to get the pleasure rising to her brain and numbing her neurons. Soon, she reached for her phone, skipping Dale's chipper Christmas messages.

"So tell me again," Remi began, "why haven't you got Facebook?"

Ingrid shrugged. "I had an account, once. Very late, though, because I didn't have internet as a kid. I was just playing all those stupid games. Not even Candy fucking Crush, but those things where you made your own restaurant and your own island and shit?"

Remi nodded. A vague notion of what she was talking about seemed to form in his mind.

"But then, you know, people started putting their lives on Facebook. I really didn't want to show off milking a cow. Or a goat. Or...shovelling horseshit."

Remi replied with a lazy laugh. "You know, I've never actually seen a cow...like...a live, real cow, face to face."

"Of course you haven't," she took the last drag from the joint and extinguished it on the cup coaster on her nightstand. "You're a city boy."

"And you're a farm girl."

"Something like that. Anyway," she blew the smoke out through her mouth and her nostrils, "I deleted my account, then I made a new one when I went to Uni, but I closed that in New York and haven't bothered to reactivate it."

Remi yawned, stretching his arms over his head and sliding back into a horizontal position.

Ingrid quirked a brow at him. "Am I boring you?"

He regarded her through hooded eyes. "When you're not drinking my whiskey or yelling out my name...you're pretty boring, yeah."

Ingrid pinched his shoulder hard, although she was smiling. "Fuck off."

"Later." He rubbed at the sore spot and turned on his side, his face level with her thighs. "I need a nap now."

"Sure, you do your beauty sleep, sweetheart. Tasha and her girlfriend are coming over for dinner."

Remi grinned, eyes closed. "Are we having a foursome?"

"No fucking way, Jose. Three might be company, four's already a fucking crowd."

"Cool." His breathing steadied and his chest moved slowly up and down as he drifted off to sleep.

Ingrid let him rest and left the room as noiselessly as possible, gripping her phone tight. Dale was becoming pretty insistent. He'd gone away for the holidays, to spend time with his friends and family back home. He figured Ingrid was on her own, all sad and in need of his annoying virtual compassion.

The truth of the matter was: she felt relieved to be without him.

But with this reminder of his absence and under the tranquilizing influence of marijuana, she caught herself beginning to miss him. Those kind eyes and that happy smile floated in her imagination. His face glowed whenever he saw her. Likening him to Lassie had been a joke, but his genuine joy, so pure and earnest, did remind her of a giddy puppy gleefully welcoming its master home.

All Dale lacked was a tail to wag.

He used to look at her with so much love and admiration, she sometimes felt like she was taking advantage of his naivety and reproached herself for it. She'd promised not to taint him, but as she made a conscious effort in that direction, she began to identify the damage she might have inflicted in the past, on other people less fortunate than him.

Oskar always remained at the forefront of her reminiscences, which of late triggered bouts of physical pain in her gut.

Tasha texted, asking what they should bring for Christmas dinner and Ingrid returned to reality. Merry Christmas to you and yours, she finally replied to Dale's message and attached a selfie with the tiny decorated tree on her coffee table. In response, he posed with the massive Christmas tree in his yard.

It propelled Ingrid back to that snow-covered cottage in that merry little village and the carols and the lights and the children and the hot chocolate. All of a sudden realising she had fallen out of touch with her former Uni friends, she reactivated her Facebook account and sought out Sienna Hearty.

She was Sienna Evans now and her profile picture featured a woman lovingly gazing down at a man kissing her baby bump.

"Oh my god."

Ingrid zoomed the picture until it was all pixels. It was bright, cheery Sienna, alright, her old bubbly roommate now pregnant and, from the looks of it, married.

"Fuck me."

On a whim as quick as the one that prompted her to revive her Facebook, Ingrid closed it down again and threw her phone on the carpet.