Lockdown Summer

IX. When This Is All Over

Lockdown Day 45

"Guys! Look at what I found!" Rica came down the stairs with an unopened tall bottle of tequila.

She's in red sweatpants and a thin white t-shirt this evening. I could see the outline of her black bra from the brightness of the light in the ceiling.

Pablo paused our game. "Where did you get that?" he asked her.

"Andrei's room."

"How were you able to get in there?" I asked.

"Dude, the door's unlocked. I've been in and out of there for days now. Where else do you think that book I'm reading came from?"

Dude. She just called me a dude.

Why did I even set my hopes high? She's one of us.

Oh, but I knew why. It's because it never felt like so whenever she talked to me with a smile that reached her eyes like she's seeing sunshine for the first time in years. Or when she called my name in a way that I haven't heard before. Mar-koh. And I knew it's far from how she'd drop the o from Pablo. Or when I heard her voice as it traveled through the wall that separates our bedrooms. Or when she laughed at whoever she's on the phone with. Haha...hahaha...ha...

Pablo threw his controller to the end of the couch. Then he approached her at the foot of the stairs and snatched the bottle from her hand.

"I'm going to kill Andrei when he gets back here," Pablo said to me. "He's been hiding liquor all this time?"

I shrugged. How should I know what secrets our friends have inside this house?

"Did you do that on purpose?" I asked Rica when she dropped her body on the chair beside me.

Two days before, Pablo whined about his thirst for any alcoholic drink.

"Nope," she said as our other housemate searched for shot glasses from the corner cupboard.

Pablo let out an eerie almost devilish laugh. "My man, Andrei," he said. "You are the best." Then he opened the bottle and filled the three shot glasses on the coffee table.

"Woah, Pablito! Should we go easy on that?" Rica asked.

He didn't stop filling the glasses until they're up to the mouths. "The world is ending," he pointed out. "How else should we spend our last night on it?"

"Here's to Andrei," I said when we raised our glasses. "The absentee savior of our lockdown summer."

If the world was indeed ending, I wouldn't mind if I'm too drunk to even witness it. I rarely even drink, but I resonated with Pablo's cravings the other day. How else should we spend the end of the world if not hammered?

Rica leaned back on her chair. "That's...wow...that's strong."

I nodded and read through the label of that tequila from Andrei's room.

The thing's legit, as I expected from him. So, that's why it tasted pure and strong. Or it could be because Pablo filled us up to the brink. Or it could be because our threshold for alcohol tolerance had decreased since this March.

"Maybe we should save the rest," I said after our second round of shots. "You know, for later. When this is all over."

Pablo stared blankly at me for a few seconds until he sighed. "I hate that you're always our voice of reason. And I also hate that I agree with you." He twisted the cap back on the bottle. "What else is rich boy hiding in his room?" he asked Rica.

"Does he have a girlfriend? Is he, like banging anyone?" For some reason, she looked at me when she answered Pablo's question with compound questions.

"Uh..."

"It's just that there are things there that are suggestive of such."

"Oh, right. Well, considering this situation, the answer to that question is, not as of late."