Currents

Six ~ Intoxication

Six ~ Intoxication

Armed with a bottle of Pinot Grigio, I headed to the beach. Only the sound of rolling waves cut through the deadly silence. The lights from the house didn't reach this far, and after a few metres of stumbling through the sand, I turned on my phone's torch.

I wasn't stupid enough to go near the water, no matter how much I'd drank, so I plopped myself down on the beach at the foot of the lifeguard's chair, leaning against its wooden legs for support. Sighing, I unscrewed the lid from the bottle and then took two large gulps.

My head spun as I tilted it back to rest against the chair, closing my eyes as I did so, while my left hand continued to grip the wine, unwilling to risk it toppling over and spilling onto the sand.

I didn't normally get wasted—and never alone—but the more I drank, the more I wanted to escape reality. My mind swam with troublesome thoughts involving Alastair, Daisy, and my family, not to mention feeling utterly trapped out here with just one friend. A small twisted smile made its way to my lips as I imagined my mum's reaction to seeing me swigging wine from the bottle.

Come to think of it, Mum would be horrified at a lot of the stuff I got up to behind her back. My friends and I presented ourselves as the perfect, classy socialites in public, but once we headed for an after party, it was another story.

We'd go from drinking out of hand-blown cocktail glasses to drinking straight from the bottle, passing it around as we all got drunker and drunker. We'd go from little interaction with boys to inviting the whole male friendship group round.

On one occasion earlier this year, we'd left a swanky bar in Chelsea and headed to Hattie's place. Her parents had been attending a black-tie event elsewhere, so we'd had the house to ourselves. Straight away, we'd invited the boys, and they'd turned up with bottles of wine and champagne.

The girls watched in amusement as the guys had a few drinking competitions to get to our level of intoxication. I was proud to see Alastair down his bottle of wine quicker than the others—and without throwing up. It was one of the things I loved and admired most about him; like me, he could have fun, but he never embarrassed himself in the process.

As the night went on, inhibitions lowered, and the usual scandalous activities unfolded. It started with harmless kissing as various friends paired up, and soon couples disappeared into spare rooms to take their flirtations to a more intimate level.

I perched on Alastair's knee as we laughed and kissed in the living room. Every so often, his hands would start to wander. It began innocently enough, with just a caress of my back beneath my silk top, but then developed into a hand sliding over my stomach or up my skirt.

"Behave." I smiled against his mouth.

He nibbled my lip as he smiled back. "Oh, Rosa, believe me, I am behaving."

Across the room, Daisy was making out furiously with Oliver, their hands having already ventured under clothes. She'd always been the wild one, though. When I'd found out about her night with Alastair, that had been my first thought: had she offered him something I hadn't? Although mine and Alastair's sex life was pretty good, I'd assumed Daisy's carefree attitude had appealed to him—the perfect lady in public but the ultimate animal in bed.

"Do you guys wanna get a room?" I called across to them.

Daisy detached her mouth from Oliver's and tilted her head to shoot me a coy smile. "Would you like us to, Rose?"

"I know you've not got much dignity left, Daisy, but try to cling onto that last ounce, for your own sake," Alastair said.

I ran my hand through his hair, partly as an act of possession but mostly from relief that he'd not suggested a group session of some sort. Since they'd slept together, Alastair had acted cool towards Daisy. He'd insisted he regretted it, and it was almost like he was trying to prove that.