Drunk Me And Sober Me Quotes

A lady came up to me one day and said 'Sir! You are drunk', to which I replied 'I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

Go to bed, you fool," Calcifer said sleepily. "You're drunk." "Who, me?" said Howl. "I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober." He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it. His bedroom door did escape him.

I dare you to wait for me. The real me. The sober me. The best me who wants to spend the rest of his days getting drunk on life with you.

10 things to know about Syn 1. I hate people, even myself. 2. I only tolerate my friends and I can count those on one hand. 3. So what if I drink? I like my comfortably numb state and it keeps me from killing you. 4. Money can't buy happiness, but it's better than being poor and miserable. 5. We're all victims. 6. I like to choose my own poison. 7. I'm through reinventing myself. I'm on the third incarnation now and it sucks as much as the other two. 8. I have all the friends money can buy. 9. I only trust one man who doesn't return the gesture. 10. I can steal anything, anywhere, any time. Sober or drunk, I'm the best at what I do.

He tilted his head to the side, still watching me in that same, disconcerting way. “Some things are true, drunk or sober. You should know that. You deal in facts all the time.” “Yeah, but this isn’t—” I couldn’t argue with him looking at me like that. “I have to go. Wait… you didn’t take the cross.” I held it out to him. He shook his head. “Keep it. I think I’ve got something else to help center my life.

All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, And I intend to end up there. This drunkenness began in some other tavern. When I get back around to that place, I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile, I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary. The day is coming when I fly off, But who is it now in my ear who hears my voice? Who says words with my mouth? Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home. This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all. We have a huge barrel of wine, but no cups. That's fine with us. Every morning We glow and in the evening we glow again.

Youth is an intoxication without wine, someone says. Life is an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who, disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his throat. If this be so, I want to be very drunk. The great thing is to live, to clutch at our existence and race away with it in some great and enthralling pursuit. Above all, I must beware of all ultimate questions- they are too maddeningly unanswerable- let me eschew philosophy and burn Omar.

So they gave me love in form of poison and tiny little pills, programming my emotions, teaching me how to feel. To act correct and talk correct and answer without knowing the question, because that, my dear, is how you get love. Yes that, dear youth, is how you'll be loved. I tried to medicate my own fucked up little mind with chemicals and adrenaline, tasting sweeter every night, shaking louder every time. Sitting wide awake in bed until the world disappears, writing poetry to concentrate on something real while waiting for the love to arrive. I've been looking for it night after night, waiting patiently for it to show up, maybe somewhere in between the state of awake and asleep, alive and not so alive, sober and not so sober. (I lost track of the difference somewhere in between.)

Drunk me had no business putting that out there for sober me. She was such a gossip.

Are you sure you still would want to if you were sober?" I say. Finny nods. "Yeah," he says again. "But I'm only telling you because I'm not.

That whole week, we started to divide things into those two categories: anything or something. A piece of jewelry bougth at a department store: anything. A piece of jewelry made by hand: something. A dollar: anything. A sand dollar: something. A gift certificate: anything. An IOU for two hours of starwatching: something. A drunk kiss at a party: anything. A sober kiss alone in a park: something.

Oh you, unceasing sun, to me Your particles communicate The luminous essence of God, Are you our God? I do not know. Intoxicated, I say nought, Bewitched by the magic potion. I cannot differentiate Between my drunk and sober state.

Where am I?" Magnus croaked. "Nazca." "Oh, so we went on a little trip." "You broke into a man's house," Catarina said. "You stole a carpet and enchanted it to fly. Then you sped off into the night air. We pursued you on foot." "Ah," said Magnus. "You were shouting some things." "What things?" "I prefer not to repeat them," Catarina said. "I also prefer not to remember the time we spent in the desert. It is a mammoth desert, Magnus. Ordinary deserts are quite large. Mammoth deserts are so called because they are larger than ordinary deserts." "Thank you for that interesting and enlightening information," Magnus croaked. "You told us to leave you in the desert, because you planned to start a new life as a cactus," Catarina said, her voice flat. "Then you conjured up tiny needles and threw them at us. With pinpoint accuracy." "Well," he said with dignity. "Considering my highly intoxicated state, you must have been impressed with my aim." "'Impressed' is not the word to use to describe how I felt last night, Magnus." "I thank you for stopping me there," Magnus said. "It was for the best. You are a true friend. No harm done. Let's say no more about it. Could you possibly fetch me - " "Oh, we couldn't stop you," Catarina interrupted. "We tried, but you giggled, leaped onto the carpet, and flew away again. You kept saying that you wanted to go to Moquegua." "What did I do in Moquegua?" "You never got there," Catarina said. "But you were flying about and yelling and trying to, ahem, write messages for us with your carpet in the sky." "We then stopped for a meal," Catarina said. "You were most insistent that we try a local specialty that you called cuy. We actually had a very pleasant meal, even though you were still very drunk." "I'm sure I must have been sobering up at that point," Magnus argued. "Magnus, you were trying to flirt with your own plate." "I'm a very open-minded sort of fellow!" "Ragnor is not," Catarina said. "When he found out that you were feeding us guinea pigs, he hit you over the head with your plate. It broke." "So ended our love," Magnus said. "Ah, well. It would never have worked between me and the plate anyway. I'm sure the food did me good, Catarina, and you were very good to feed me and put me to bed - " Catarina shook her head."You fell down on the floor. Honestly, we thought it best to leave you sleeping on the ground. We thought you would remain there for some time, but we took our eyes off you for one minute, and then you scuttled off. Ragnor claims he saw you making for the carpet, crawling like a huge demented crab.

She’s still smiling her little smile, and it strikes me that, actually, she is drunk, not on alcohol, but on her St. Louis hopes and dreams. I wouldn’t sober her up for anything, but she doesn’t need me anymore. She can hang on to her dreams by herself now.

He was your usual man when it came to romance, which is to say he couldn’t recite Baa Baa Black Sheep when sober, whereas when drunk, sixteen cantos of Byron’s Don Juan was par for the course.

Whiskey, glass, pour, toss back, glare. Repeat. “Cop out,” I slurred in retaliation, pointing the empty glass at Peter. “Don’t get drunk. Fuck. I need you sober,” he yelled, snatching the glass out of my hand. “There’s the problem right there. You need me sober. You need my help. You need something from me.” I laughed, tossing the bottle on the sofa, ignoring the glug glug glug as it emptied over my cushions. “And I just need you.” “Need me to what?” He asked with a huff, tipping the bottle right-side up. “Nothing. I just need you,” I whispered and flopped into a nearby recliner.

so here he sits one drunk nigger in a puclic libary after closing, with the book open in front of me and the bottle of Old Kentucky on my left. 'Tell the truth and shame the devil,' my mom used to say , but she forgot to tell me that sometimes you can't shame Mr Splitfoot sober. The Irish know, but of course they're God's white niggers and who knows maybe they're a step ahead.

Devon glanced at him with mild surprise. “For a man who’s seldom more than half sober, you’ve noticed a great deal.” “Have I?” West looked perturbed. “Forgive me – I seem to have become accidentally lucid.” He reached for his wineglass.

A Drunkard accuses a Drunkard... A sot became extremely drunk - his legs And head sank listless, weighed by wine's thick dregs. A sober neighbour put him in a sack And took him homewards hoisted on his back. Another drunk went stumbling by the first, Who woke and stuck his head outside and cursed. "Hey, you, you lousy dipsomaniac," He yelled as he was borne off in the sack, "If you'd had fewer drinks, just two or three, You would be walking now as well as me.

I dare you to wait for me. The real me. The sober me. The best me who wants to spend the rest of his days getting drunk on life with you.

Such a softness fell over her as she looked my way. "Ian?" "Yeah?" "Drunk Hazel likes you a lot." I snickered. "Let's work on getting sober Hazel to like me too." "That's easy enough." She yawned in my face, not bothering to cover her mouth. "Just say hi to me sometimes, and it helps if you take off your shirt too.

One day, you will say it to me again. You will be sober. And you will mean it.” I was actually terrified that I already meant it. A guy might just be a keeper who hears your cry for help in his head. And comes into a den of thieves to get you out. And then holds your hair while you throw up for ten minutes.

She sniffs me. “Are you drunk?” She looks back at the flushed Howlers and teetering Telemanuses. “Are they all drunk?” “Shhh,” I say and hand her a flask. “You’re too sober.” Mickey is finishing the ceremony.

Seeing him drunk makes me realize just how sad he looks now when he’s sober. I didn’t notice his sadness consumed him even more than it used to. I probably didn’t notice because sadness is like a spiderweb. You don’t see it until you’re caught up in it, and then you have to claw at yourself to try to break free.

Picking them up and reading them, I felt sadness do deep that it will never really be gone. It was a sobering moment-- sobering not because I was drunk, but because I felt like I was shifting into this new state of naked clarity. It was higher state of sobriety, a painful state of sobriety, because the truth was suddenly unvarnished, making me feel unvarnished.

Over Christmas break, I took on additional hours and was working late one Saturday night when Wild Bill came sauntering into my department tipsy to pick me up so I wouldn’t have to hitchhike home. I had scarcely seen him since he enrolled me in school, except slumped over the bar at Dave’s or when he would occasionally drop by the Tampico unannounced on the way home to his new family. He’d beach himself on the sofa while I did my homework, and when he sobered up enough to drive home, he would down a can of beer before saying goodbye. To say it made me happy to see him, drunk and all, is an understatement. Seeing my father anywhere besides Dave’s Tavern was akin to spotting a unicorn in the wild. I asked him to meet me out in front of the store, but he insisted on following me through the employees’ exit. On the way out, he stole two poinsettias. He thought it was hilarious to be running out of the JCPenney’s with a poinsettia in each hand.

He told me about his slow realization that when one person in a family was sick, the whole family was sick. In Jason's case, the sick person was his father, who was nice enough when he was sober, but mean as a snake when he was drunk.

My alcoholism is in no way any sort of excuse for any of my past behaviors. Just because I quit drinking, my life was not suddenly transformed into a tabula rasa-if I have wronged someone, drunk or not, then the responsibility for this lies squarely with me. And I must do my best to set things square with that person. ... ....And just because I am sober now does not mean anyone else should care. I do not deserve a cookie for finally trying to act like a decent human being.

French Louis Seymour of the West Canada Creek, who knew how to survive all alone in a treacherous wilderness, and Mr. Alfred G. Vanderbilt of New York City and Raquette Lake, who was richer than God and traveled in his very own Pullman car, and Emmie Hubbard of the Uncas Road, who painted the most beautiful pictures when she was drunk and burned them in her woodstove when she was sober, were all ten times more interesting to me than Milton's devil or Austen's boy-crazy girls or that twitchy fool of Poe's who couldn't think of any place better to bury a body than under his own damn floor.

I give you my drunk permission to ignore whatever the sober me tells you. You should like the drunk me better, anyway, because I like you more than the sober me does.

What if tomorrow, whatever this is between us is gone? What if it’s just … I don’t know. A mirage. What if you’re just drunk on me? What if when you sober up you don’t want me anymore?

When he was creating this picture, Leonardo da Vinci encountered a serious problem: he had to depict Good - in the person of Jesus - and Evil - in the figure of Judas, the friend who resolves to betray him during the meal. He stopped work on the painting until he could find his ideal models. One day, when he was listening to a choir, he saw in one of the boys the perfect image of Christ. He invited him to his studio and made sketches and studies of his face. Three years went by. The Last Supper was almost complete, but Leonardo had still not found the perfect model for Judas. The cardinal responsible for the church started to put pressure on him to finish the mural. After many days spent vainly searching, the artist came across a prematurely aged youth, in rags and lying drunk in the gutter. With some difficulty, he persuaded his assistants to bring the fellow directly to the church, since there was no time left to make preliminary sketches. The beggar was taken there, not quite understanding what was going on. He was propped up by Leonardo's assistants, while Leonardo copied the lines of impiety, sin and egotism so clearly etched on his features. When he had finished, the beggar, who had sobered up slightly, opened his eyes and saw the picture before him. With a mixture of horror and sadness he said: 'I've seen that picture before!' 'When?' asked an astonished Leonardo. 'Three years ago, before I lost everything I had, at a time when I used to sing in a choir and my life was full of dreams. The artist asked me to pose as the model for the face of Jesus.

Boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an Injun, and singing out: "Clear the track, thar. I'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a-gwyne to raise." He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year old, and had a very red face. Everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now because he'd come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, "Meat first and spoon vittles to top off on." He see me, and rode up and says:"Whar'd you come f'm boy? You prepared to die?" Then he rode on. I was scared, but a man says: "He don't mean nothing; he's always a-carryin' on like that when he's drunk. He's the best-naturedest old fool in Arkansaw--never hurt nobody, drunk no sober.

I nod, then let the conversation drop. But secretly I'm wondering if Haymitch sobered up long enough to help Peeta and me because he thought we just might have the wits to survive. Maybe he wasn't always a drunk. Maybe, in the beginning, he tried to help the tributes. But then it got unbearable. It must be hell to mentor two kids and then watch them die. Year after year after year. I realize that if I get out of here, that will become my job. To mentor the girl from District 12. The idea is so repellent, I thrust it from my mind.

Some sober part of my brain seemed to observe everything I did, clucking disdainfully, informing me that ought to be embarrassed, yet making no move

Write drunk (on emotion); edit sober (on rationality and intention). Faulkner, reimagined by me.

We startled awake, alarmed by her shouting, jumping to our feet, drawing swords, looking for imminent danger. Jeb was saying it was a false alarm, that there was nothing wrong, but Lia had somehow gotten to her feet on her own, her eyes wild, telling us we had to leave. A relieved breath hissed between my teeth and I lowered my sword. She’d only had a nightmare. I stepped toward her. “Lia, it was just a bad dream. Let me help you lie back down.” She hobbled backward, determined, sweat glistening on her face, and her arm stretched out to keep me at a distance. “No! Get ready. We leave this morning.” “Look at you,” I said. "You’re tottering like a drunk. You can’t ride.” “I can and I will." “What’s your hurry, Your Highness?” Sven asked. She looked from me to my men. Their feet were firmly planted. They weren’t going anywhere based on her wild-eyed demands. Had she spiked another fever? Her expression sobered. “Please, Rafe, you have to trust me on this.” “What did you see?” I asked. “It’s not what I saw but what I heard— Aster’s voice telling me not to tarry.” “Didn’t she say that to you a dozen times?” “At least,” she answered, but her stance remained determined. All this rush over don’t tarry? Ever since I had gathered her into my arms on that riverbank, I had been looking over my shoulder for danger. I knew it was there. But I had to weigh that uncertainty against the benefits of healing too. I looked away, trying to think. I wasn’t sure if I was making the right decision or not, but I turned back to my men. “Pack up.

High school basically continued with bouts of her getting drunk and then stopping for a day. There was not one major moment or birthday celebration during which she could remain sober. I learned how to plan my joy. I would front-load my birthdays with breakfast activities or plan to be with her for only the beginning of an event. Then I would go off to be with friends and know that that would be the last I would see of my mother’s real facial expressions.

He stayed sober. My dad stayed sober for a long time. For me. For Ryke. For Willow. For himself. 'Will you remember?' hide asks, fear creasing his eyes for the first time. 'Remember what?' 'That I loved you.' I realise he's worried about his legacy. That maybe in time Jonathan Hale won't be remembered as the man who fought to bring his three children together - but rather as the old drunk who shouted slurs and spiteful things. I'm not sure what'll happen in the future. How I'll describe him to my children as they get older, but I know I won't leave out the fact that he loved us. And he tried. God, he tried.

Who Says Words With My Mouth? All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there. This drunkenness began in some other tavern. When I get back around to that place, I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile, I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary. The day is coming when I fly off, but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice? Who says words with my mouth? Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home. This poetry, I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

How short?” Now or never. And Dara was tired of staying silent. Dara wet his lips. “When I was fifteen, I started getting drunk early. I’d open my first bottle around three in the afternoon. It meant I was wasted by the time he got home.” Leo’s gaze caught his in the mirror, his hands frozen with scissors still in grasp. Dara looked back at him. “Well. Eventually, he got sick of waiting for me to sober up. So one night he grabbed me by the hair”—Dara tugged at that lock twisted round his finger, tugged until it hurt—“and he dragged me into the bathroom, and he held my head under in a sink of cold water until I couldn’t breathe. Until I was choking. He only let go after I stopped fighting, that moment right before I would’ve passed out.” Dara lifted one shoulder, dropped it down. “But I guess it worked. I wasn’t drunk anymore.” Leo was still staring at him. He didn’t say anything. Dara’s lips curled in a bitter smile. “Cut it short enough he couldn’t do that again.

Despite that I was sober as a judge, I felt drunk from Jared’s teasing . Of course he thought that was hilarious and was very pleased with himself. So I bit him. The thing about Sventé saliva was that it could spark the ‘blood donor’ to have an orgasm if the vampire drank from them for more than ten seconds … I counted to eight before releasing him, but the damage was done – he was as horny as I was and more than ready to fuck. About bloody time. “I take it you’re ready to leave now.” His lopsided smile had me smiling back. “You’re a tricky bitch, aren’t you? I can respect that.” He teleported us both to the living area of our apartment, where we instantly dived on each other.

I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt,” he continued. “Mrs. Claud Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.” “Has it?” “A little bit, I think. I can’t tell yet. I’ve only been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They’re real.

Is that coffee?” Hunt busied himself with pouring three cups, passing one to Quinlan first. “A drop of coffee in a cup of milk, just as you like it.” “Asshole.” She swiped the mug. “I don’t know how you drink it straight.” “Because I’m a grown-up.” Hunt passed the second mug to Ithan, whose large hands engulfed the white ceramic cup that said I Survived Class of 15032 Senior Week and All I Got Was This Stupid Mug! Ithan peered at it, his mouth twitching. “I remember this mug.” Hunt fell silent as Bryce let out a breathy laugh. “I’m surprised you do, given how drunk you were. Even though you were a sweet baby frosh.” Ithan chuckled, a hint of the handsome, cocky male Hunt had heard about. “You and Danika had me doing keg stands at ten in the morning. How was I supposed to stay sober?” The wolf sipped from his coffee. “My last memory from that day is of you and Danika passed out drunk on a couch you’d moved right into the middle of the quad.” “And why was that your last memory?” Bryce asked sweetly. “Because I was passed out next to you,” Ithan said, grinning now.

And if I die sometime – I’m going to die very soon – I know I’ll die as I am, without accepting this world, perceiving it close up and far away, inside and out, perceiving but not accepting it. I’ll die and He will ask me: “Was it good there for you? Was it bad there for you?” I will be silent, with lowered eyes. I’ll be silent that muteness familiar to everyone who knows the outcome of days of hard boozing. For isn’t the life of man a momentary boozing of the soul? And an eclipse of the soul as well? We are all as if drunk, only everybody in his own way: one person has drunk more, the next less. And it works differently on each: the one laughs in the face of this world, while the next cries on its bosom. One has already thrown up and feels better, while the next is only starting of feel like throwing up. But me, what am I? I’ve partaken of much, but nothing works on me. I haven’t really laughed properly, even once, and I’ve never thrown up, even once. I, who have partaken of so much in this world that I’ve lost count and the sequence of it all, I am soberer than anyone else in this world;

I have lived recklessly, gambled my income away at the horse races, gone whoring, have been more drunk than sober, beaten men to a pulp with my hands, have had a man’s nose cut off for insulting my father and have been indebted to villains more times than I care to say. But, I do not want to live like this anymore. I want a quiet life with a good woman who will care and love me – not for being the Duke of Monmouth, but for me, Jemmy.

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather." He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it." I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive." "Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile." "I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall." He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?" "Isn't that life?" He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?" "Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily fed while her children sit back and watch. Where a father is murdered bacause he made the mistake of wanting a van for his family. In that world, it seems like it's raining all the time. A cold, hard rain that seeps into clothes, chills bones, and makes people feel utterly wretched. Many times, I see people on the worst day of their lives, when they feel like they're drowing. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I just know that if they make good choices, and accept the right help, they'll come out of it all the stronger for it. What I do enjoy comes after. Three months later, when I see that thirteen-year-old former prostitute pushing a mower across the front lawn of her foster home, a quiet smile on her face. Eight months later, when I see the girl who was raped walking home from school with a guy who wants nothing from her but to make her laugh. Two years later, when I see the junkie mom clean and sober and loading a shopping cart for the kids that the State finally gave back to her. Those people have seen the sun again after the harshest rain, and they appreciate it so much more.

get wound up. Kimura was a short, stocky fellow with a tight-permed hairstyle reminiscent of the yakuza from my internship story. When he was sober, he was a great guy. He was a mean drunk, however, and he’d been putting it away all night. He kept picking on me as we entered the next izakaya, and once we were sitting down, he looked over at me and sneered. “I look at you, Adelstein, and I can’t figure out how we lost the war. How could we lose to a bunch of sloppy Americans? Barbarians with no discipline, no culture, and no honor. It beats me. Long live the Emperor!

Are you that dreadful man with the circus, Fourmyle?” “Sure you are. Smile.” “I am, madam. You may touch me.” “Why, you actually seem proud. Are you proud of your bad taste?” “The problem today is to have any taste at all.” “The problem today is to have any taste at all. I think I’m lucky.” “Lucky but dreadfully indecent.” “Indecent but not dull.” “And dreadful but delightful. Why aren’t you cavorting now?” “I’m ‘under the influence,’ Madam.” “Oh dear. Are you drunk? I’m Lady Shrapnel. When will you be sober again?” “I’m under your influence, Lady Shrapnel.” “You wicked young man. Charles! Charles, come here and save Fourmyle. I’m ruining him.

Oh ho,' he says. 'My darling seneschal. Let us take a turn around the room.' He grabs me and pulls me toward the dance. He can barely stand. Three times he stumbles, and three times I have to hold most of his weight to keep him upright. 'Cardan.' I hiss. 'This is no meet behaviour for the High King.' He giggles at that. I think of how serious he was last night in his rooms and how far he seems from that person. 'Cardan,' I try again. 'You must not do this. I order you to pull yourself together. I command you to drink no more liquor and to attempt sobriety.' 'Yes, my sweet villain, my darling god. I will be as sober as a stone carving, just as soon as I can.' And with that, he kisses me on the mouth.

Paulson, what the hell are you doing at my party?” Michael asked, a bit drunk. “Don’t worry, asshole. I’m not staying. I was just wondering why you are texting Nicolette.” “I would have thought for a smart guy that it would be obvious.” Michael slurred his words. “I wanted to invite Nicolette and her friends over here to party with us.” “Well, you see, Nicolette has all the friends she needs and respectively declines your invitation.” “Is that coming from Nicolette or from you, Simon?” Michael was now suddenly sober. “It’s coming from me, so stay away from her.” I started to walk away. Michael bravely said, “What if I don’t, Simon? What will you do about it?” I just turned around and simply replied, “You don’t want to know the answer to that, Michael.

Jesus, he’s actually waiting for me like he wants to get beat up. The kid has a screw loose. Or I do. Because I prowl forward and the mechanical gates guarding his house start to open for me. He’s wet through, golden hair scraped off his forehead. I hate how sexy he looks. My shirt is soaked to my chest too. I realize as we stare at each other, we probably look like one of those teen fucking romance movies, where they do some shit in the rain. In every drunk or sober situation this shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn’t be looking at his mouth like I’m on death row and he’s a steak dinner. I’m not gay. My drunk-ass brain chants over and over until the lie is part of my taste buds. My hazy eyes focus. He presses into my chest before I know it and he tugs the front of my hair until my mouth is hovering over his. “Your move, Maverick.” He says with calm ease. Rain drips off his tempting lips. Goddamn.

Tate was sprawled across the bed in his robe early the next morning when the sound of the front door opening penetrated his mind. There was an unholy commotion out there and his head was still throbbing, despite a bath, several cups of coffee and a handful of aspirin that had been forced on him the day before by two men he’d thought were his friends. He didn’t want to sober up. He only wanted to forget that Cecily didn’t want him anymore. He dragged himself off the bed and went into the living room, just in time to hear the door close. Cecily and her suitcase were standing with mutual rigidity just inside the front door. She was wearing a dress and boots and a coat and hat, red-faced and muttering words Tate had never heard her use before. He scowled. “How did you get here?” he asked. “Your boss brought me!” she raged. “He and that turncoat Colby Lane and two bodyguards, one of whom was the female counterpart of Ivan the Terrible! They forcibly dressed me and packed me and flew me up here on Mr. Hutton’s Learjet! When I refused to get out of the car, the male bodyguard swept me up and carried me here! I am going to kill people as soon as I get my breath and my wits back, and I am starting with you!” He leaned against the wall, still bleary-eyed and only half awake. She was beautiful with her body gently swollen and her lips pouting and her green eye sin their big-lensed frames glittering at him. She registered after a minute that he wasn’t himself. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked abruptly. He didn’t answer. He put a hand to his head. “You’re drunk!” she exclaimed in shock. “I have been,” he replied in a subdued tone. “For about a week, I think. Pierce and Colby got my landlord to let them in yesterday.” She smiled dimly. “I’d made some threats about what I’d do if he ever let anybody else into my apartment, after he let Audrey in the last time. I guess he believed them, because Colby had to flash his company ID to get in.” He chuckled weakly. “Nothing intimidates the masses like a CIA badge, even if it isn’t current.” “You’ve been drunk?” She moved a little closer into the apartment. “But, Tate, you don’t…you don’t drink,” she said. “I do now. The mother of my child won’t marry me,” he said simply. “I said you could have access…” His black eyes slid over her body like caressing hands. He’d missed her unbearably. Just the sight of her was calming now. “So you did.” Why did the feel guilty, for God’s sake, she wondered. She tried to recapture her former outrage. “I’ve been kidnapped!” “Apparently. Don’t look at me. Until today, I was too stoned to lift my head.” He looked around. “I guess they threw out the beer cans and the pizza boxes,” he murmured. “Pity. I think there was a slice of pizza left.” He sighed. “I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.” “Yesterday!

You’re really nice,” I slur. We’re waiting for the valet to bring Gavin’s truck around, and it feels like the fresh Colorado air has increased my alcohol level from drunk to trashed . . . and I still haven’t cracked open my wine.   “You’re pretty nice too.” He’s watching me closely, and I’m trying to watch him closely. His eyes are crinkled with amusement; mine are struggling to focus.   “I really wish you were an investment banker.”   Oh no. The loose lips part of the night has arrived.   “Besides my mom, you’re probably the only person in the world who does.”   “Because everyone else would miss their superstar quarterback in his super-hot pants throwing the ball every Sunday?” Sober me hates drunk me so hard right now.   “Because I’m terrible with numbers. I had three different tutors trying to get me to pass my math courses in college. And I’m not sure most of the fans focus on my pants, but I’m glad you do.” His body is shaking with laughter as he nudges me with his shoulder.

was dog-tired when, a little before dawn, the boatswain sounded his pipe and the crew began to man the capstan-bars. I might have been twice as weary, yet I would not have left the deck, all was so new and interesting to me—the brief commands, the shrill note of the whistle, the men bustling to their places in the glimmer of the ship's lanterns. "Now, Barbecue, tip us a stave," cried one voice. "The old one," cried another. "Aye, aye, mates," said Long John, who was standing by, with his crutch under his arm, and at once broke out in the air and words I knew so well: "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—" And then the whole crew bore chorus:— "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" And at the third "Ho!" drove the bars before them with a will. Even at that exciting moment it carried me back to the old Admiral Benbow in a second, and I seemed to hear the voice of the captain piping in the chorus. But soon the anchor was short up; soon it was hanging dripping at the bows; soon the sails began to draw, and the land and shipping to flit by on either side; and before I could lie down to snatch an hour of slumber the HISPANIOLA had begun her voyage to the Isle of Treasure. I am not going to relate that voyage in detail. It was fairly prosperous. The ship proved to be a good ship, the crew were capable seamen, and the captain thoroughly understood his business. But before we came the length of Treasure Island, two or three things had happened which require to be known. Mr. Arrow, first of all, turned out even worse than the captain had feared. He had no command among the men, and people did what they pleased with him. But that was by no means the worst of it, for after a day or two at sea he began to appear on deck with hazy eye, red cheeks, stuttering tongue, and other marks of drunkenness. Time after time he was ordered below in disgrace. Sometimes he fell and cut himself; sometimes he lay all day long in his little bunk at one side of the companion; sometimes for a day or two he would be almost sober and attend to his work at least passably. In the meantime, we could never make out where he got the drink. That was the ship's mystery. Watch him as we pleased, we could do nothing to solve it; and when we asked him to his face, he would only laugh if he were drunk, and if he were sober deny solemnly that he ever tasted anything but water. He was not only useless as an officer and a bad influence amongst the men, but it was plain that at this rate he must soon kill himself outright, so nobody was much surprised, nor very sorry, when one dark night, with a head sea, he disappeared entirely and was seen no more. "Overboard!" said the captain. "Well, gentlemen, that saves the trouble of putting him in irons." But there we were, without a mate; and it was necessary, of course, to advance one of the men. The boatswain, Job Anderson, was the likeliest man aboard, and though he kept his old title,

After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal. I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines. Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of the world. But their wallets always waited cold sober in the cloakroom while the Icelandic purse lay open for all in the middle of the table. Our men were the greater Vikings in this regard. “Reputation is king, the rest is crap!” my Bæring from Bolungarvík used to say. Every evening had to be legendary, anything else was a defeat. But the morning after they turned into weak-willed doughboys. But all the same I did succeed in loving them, those Icelandic clodhoppers, at least down as far as their knees. Below there, things did not go as well. And when the feet of Jón Pre-Jón popped out of me in the maternity ward, it was enough. The resemblances were small and exact: Jón’s feet in bonsai form. I instantly acquired a physical intolerance for the father, and forbade him to come in and see the baby. All I heard was the note of surprise in the bass voice out in the corridor when the midwife told him she had ordered him a taxi. From that day on I made it a rule: I sacked my men by calling a car. ‘The taxi is here,’ became my favourite sentence.

How many drinks have you had today, Livia?” She shakes her head. “Nuh-uh. This is not about me being a tiny, miniscule amount of tipsy.” Her normally precise voice stumbles over the word miniscule. “This is about you lying about your super sperm!” Well. Everyone is certainly staring at us now. I take Liv’s elbow and guide her into a corner of the room, deciding that sober Liv probably wouldn’t want to rant about sperm in front of a room of strangers. Once we get into the corner, Liv yanks her elbow out of my grasp with the unflappable dignity of the drunk. “You said you had super sperm,” she continues in a whispered hiss. “And you don’t. You have the opposite of super sperm! You have unsuper sperm, you have microsperm, you have…” Her eyes glance around as she tries to think of something especially cutting. They land on my arm, where my tattoo peeks out from under my sleeve. “You have Hydra sperm. Captain America would hate your sperm.” Whoa. “Now, let’s not say things we’re going to regret in the heat of the moment.” She growls again. “And baby, you barely know my body at all if you think my sperm is unsuper, micro, Hydra sperm.” “I do know your body, and I know about your giant, awesome cock—” “Okay, well maybe you know my body a little bit—” “—and you were supposed to get me pregnant and you didn’t.” Her eyes get glossy and her chin has the faintest tremble in it. And for some reason, seeing her chin quiver is like being punched in the chest. I can’t stand it. I’m already pulling her into my arms when she manages in a teary whisper, “I got my period this morning. I’m not pregnant.

You said to step on the brake to put us into drive, then to step on the right one to-" "Not at the same time!" "Well, you should have told me that. How was I supposed to know?" I snort. "You acted like the freaking Dalai Lama when I tried to tell you how to shift gears. I told you, one was for go and one was for stop. You can't stop and go at the same time! You have to make up your mind." From the expression on her face, she's either about to punch me or call me something really bad. She opens her mouth, but the really bad something doesn't come out; she shuts it again. Then she giggles. Now I've seen everything. "Galen tells me that all the time," she chortles. "That I can never make up my mind." Then she bursts out laughing so hard she spits all over the steering wheel. She keeps laughing until I'm convinced an unknown force is tickling her senseless. What? As far as I can tell, her indecisiveness almost got us killed. Killed isn't funny. "You should have seen your face," she says, between gulps of breaths. "You were all, like-" And she makes the face of a drunk clown. "I bet you wet yourself, didn't you?" She cracks herself up so much she clutches her side as if she's holding in her own guts. I feel my lips fracture into a smile before I can stop them. "You were more scared than me. You swallowed like ten flies while you were screaming." She spits all over the steering wheel again. And I spew laughter onto the dash. It takes a good five minutes for us to sober up enough for another driving lesson. My throat is dry, and my eyes are wet when I say, "Okay, now. Let's concentrate. The sun is going down. These woods probably get pretty creepy at night." She clears her throat, still giggling a little. "Okay. Concentrate. Right." "So, this time, when you take your foot off the brake, the car will go on its own. There, see?" We slink along the road at an idle two miles per hour. She huffs up at her bangs. "This is boring. I want to go faster." I start to say, "Not too fast," but she squashes the gas under her foot, and my words are snatched away by the wind. She gives a startled shout, which I find hypocritical because after all, I'm the one helpless in the passenger seat, and she's the one screaming like a teapot, turning the wheel back and forth like the road isn't straight as a pencil. "Brake, brake, brake!" I shout, hoping repetition will somehow penetrate the small part of her brain that actually thinks. Everything happens fast. We stop. There's a crunching sound. My face slams into the dash. No wait, the dash becomes an airbag. Rayna's scream is cut off by her airbag. I open my eyes. A tree. A freaking tree. The metal frame groans, and something under the hood lets out a mechanical hiss. Smoke billows up from the front, the universal symbol for "you're screwed." I turn to the rustling sound beside me. Rayna is wrestling with the airbag like it has attacked her instead of saved her life. "What is this thing?" she wails, pushing it out of her way and opening the door. One Mississippi...two Mississippi... "Well, are you just going to sit there? We have a long walk home. You're not hurt are you? Because I can't carry you." Three Mississippi...four Mississippi... "What are those flashing blue lights down there?

Grey wasn’t quite drunk, but he was far from sober when Rose entered his study later that evening. His heart stuttered at the sight of her, but his head…his head couldn’t take any more. “I’ve been drinking,” he warned her, just in case his sprawled posture and missing cravat wasn’t enough indication. “And I refuse to dance this ridiculous dance with you any more tonight.” “May I have a drink with you?” He glanced up. She stood beside the sofa where he half sat, half lay. She looked like someone who’d just lost her best friend or puppy or something equally as tragic. He sat up. “Of course.” Never mind that it wasn’t proper. Who the hell cared? They were well past proper. He was simply trying to hold on to sane. She poured herself a substantial glass of sherry and took a seat on the chair nearest him. He sat quietly, nursing the remainder of whiskey in his glass while she took several sips from her own. “Do you remember my come-out ball?” she asked after a few minutes. “Of course.” And he did. “I remember telling you that you looked lovely in pink.” She smiled. “You danced the first dance with me so I wouldn’t have to dance with Papa.” “You were afraid the other girls would laugh at you if you danced with your father.” “They didn’t laugh at me for dancing with you.” “No.” He chuckled at took a drink. “I wager they didn’t.” Rose sighed. “They thought you were so scandalous, you know. All night I had girls coming up to me wanting to know about you. I felt very important.” He saluted her with his glass. “Glad to be of service.” “I think I fell a little bit in love with you that night.” Grey choked on a mouthful of whiskey. Coughing, he cursed himself for being stupid enough to relax his guard with her. “Rose…” She held up her hand. “I’m not telling you this to make you uncomfortable, Grey. I wanted to tell you that you were a knight to me that evening-a knight on a big white horse. I didn’t know much about your reputation, all I knew was that you made me feel grown-up.

I’m telling you, you bastard, you’re going to pay for that rum. In gold or goods, I don’t care which.” “Captain Mallory.” Gray’s baritone was forbidding. “And I apply that title loosely, as you are no manner of captain in my estimation…I have no intention of compensating you for the loss of your cargo. I will, however, accept your thanks.” “My thanks? For what?” “For what?” Now O’Shea entered the mix. “For saving that heap of a ship and your worthless, rum-soaked arse, that’s what.” “I’ll thank you to go to hell,” the gravelly voice answered. Mallory, she presumed. “You can’t just board a man’s craft and pitch a hold full of spirits into the sea. Right knaves, you lot.” “Oh, now we’re the knaves, are we?” Gray asked. “I should have let that ship explode around your ears, you despicable sot. Knaves, indeed.” “Well, if you’re such virtuous, charitable gents, then how come I’m trussed like a pig?” Sophia craned her neck and pushed the hatch open a bit further. Across the deck, she saw a pair of split-toed boots tied together with rope. Gray answered, “We had to bind you last night because you were drunk out of your skull. And we’re keeping you bound now because you’re sober and still out of your skull.” The lashed boots shuffled across the deck, toward Gray. “Let me loose of these ropes, you blackguard, and I’ll pound you straight out of your skull into oblivion.” O’Shea responded with a stream of colorful profanity, which Captain Grayson cut short. “Captain Mallory,” he said, his own highly polished boots pacing slowly, deliberately to halt between Mallory’s and Gray’s. “I understand your concern over losing your cargo. But surely you or your investor can recoup the loss with an insurance claim. You could not have sailed without a policy against fire.” Gray gave an ironic laugh. “Joss, I’ll wager you anything, that rum wasn’t on any bill of lading or insurance policy. Can’t you see the man’s nothing but a smuggler? Probably wasn’t bound for any port at all. What was your destination, Mallory? A hidden cove off the coast of Cornwall, perhaps?” He clucked his tongue. “That ship was overloaded and undermanned, and it would have been a miracle if you’d made it as far as Portugal. As for the rum, take up your complaint with the Vice Admiralty court after you follow us to Tortola. I’d welcome it.

Lark wrapped an arm around me and started to speak until Bailey’s startled voice interrupted us. A huge football player had her pinned against the wall and she was yelling for him to back off. Instead, he crowded her more while playing with her blonde hair. “Hey!” I yelled as Lark and I rushed over. Six four and wide shouldered, the guy was wasted and angry at the interruption. “Fuck off, bitches,” he muttered. Bailey clawed at his neck, but he had her pinned in a weird way, so she couldn’t get any leverage. While I was ready to jump on him in a weak attempt to save my friend, someone shoved the football player off Bailey. I hadn’t even seen the guy appear, but he stood between Bailey and the pissed jerk. “Fuck off, man,” the asshole said. “She’s mine.” “Nick,” Bailey mumbled, looking ready to cry. “He humped my leg. Crush his skull, will ya?” Nick frowned at Bailey who was leaning on him now. The football player was an inch or two bigger than Nick and outweighed him by probably fifty pounds. Feeling the fight would be short, the asshole reached for Bailey’s arm and Nick nailed the guy in the face. To my shock, the giant asshole collapsed on the ground. “My hero,” Bailey said, looking ready to puke. She caressed Nick’s biceps and asked, “Do you work out?” Running his hands through his dark wavy hair, Nick laughed. “You’re so wasted.” “And you’re like the Energizer Bunny,” she cooed. “My bro said you took a punch, yet kept on ticking.” Nick started to speak then heard the asshole’s friends riled up. I was too drunk to know if everything happened really quickly or if my brain just took awhile to catch up. The guys rushed Nick who dodged most of them and hit another. The room emptied out except for Nick, the guys, and us. I grabbed a beer bottle and threw it at one of the guys shoving Nick. When the bottle hit him in the back, the bastard glared at me. “You want to fight, bitch?” “Leave her alone,” Nick said, kicking one guy into the jerk looking to hit me. As impressive as Nick was against six guys, he was just one guy against six. A losing bet, he took a shot to the face then the gut. Lark grabbed a folding chair and went WWE on one guy. I was tossing beers in the roundabout direction of the other guys. Yet, Bailey was the one who ended the fight by pulling out a gun. “Back the fuck off or I’ll burn this motherfucking house to the ground!” she screamed then fired at a lamp. Everyone stopped and stared at her. When she noticed me wide-eyed, Bailey frowned. “Too much?” Grinning, I followed Lark to the door. Nick followed us while the assholes seemed ready to piss themselves. Well, except for an idiot who looked ready to go for Bailey’s gun. "Dude,” Nick muttered, “that’s Bailey Fucking Johansson. Unless you want to end up in a shallow grave, back the fuck off.” “What he said!” Bailey yelled, waving her gun around before I hurried her out of the door. The cold air sobered up Bailey enough for her to return the gun to her purse. She was still drunk enough to laugh hysterically as we reached the SUV. “Did you see me kill that lamp?” “You did good,” I said, groggy as my adrenaline shifted to nausea and the alcohol threatened to come back up on me. Nick walked us to the SUV. “Next time, you might want to wave the gun around before you get drunk and dance.” “Don’t tell me what to do,” Bailey growled, crawling into the backseat. Then, realizing he saved her, she crawled back to face him. “You were so brave. I should totally get you off as a thank you." “Maybe another time,” he said, laughing as she batted her eyes at him. “Are you guys safe to drive?” Lark nodded. “I’m sober enough to remember everything tomorrow. Trust me that there’ll be mocking.

Let me make you some coffee,” he suggested. “And ruin this perfectly good buzz? Hell, I’ve earned it.” She took a step and wavered. “Besides, I don’t think it’ll make me sober. Probably just wide-awake drunk.” Jack tightened his hold around her and laughed in spite of himself. “All right, Mel. I can put you in my bed and take the couch…” “But sometimes I have deer in my yard in the morning,” she said, a little whiny. “I want to go home. They might come back.” Home. That sounded good to Jack, that she thought of that cabin as her home. “All right, Mel. I’ll take you home.” “That’s a relief,” she said. “Because I’m pretty sure I already can’t drive. Even on a straight and undangerous road.” “You’re a lightweight,” he said. They

My heart had made its decision and there was no going back. Still, it was hard not to be all bitter and betrayed over his announcement. I didn’t even have the luxury of being able to get blind rotten drunk. And believe me, dealing with all this sober sucked.

Why did you get me drunk?” I asked. “I’m no rival of yours.” She made a quick, sharp gesture of negation. A diamond on her finger sparkled like spilled tears, and I realized her fingers were trembling. “It’s true,” I said, watching her bury her hands in the folds of her skirts. “What little you know of me ought to make one thing plain: I don’t lie. That is, I don’t do it very well. I don’t fault you for ambition. That would be mighty two-faced when my brother and I plotted half our lives to take the crown from Galdran. Our reasons might be different, but who’s to fault that? Not me. I gave that over last year. As for Savona--” “Don’t,” she said. “Why?” I demanded. “Can’t you see he’s just flirting with me? I don’t know much of romance--well, nothing, if you only count experience--but I have noticed certain things, and one is that in a real courtship, the two people endeavor to get to know one another.” Again I had that sensation of something important hovering just out of my awareness, but when I paused, frowning--trying to perceive it--my thoughts just scattered. “I think,” she said, “you are being a trifle too disingenuous.” I sighed. “Humor me by pretending I am sincere. You know Savona. Can’t you see him making me popular just to…well, prove a point?” I faltered at the words pay you back for going after Shevraeth and a crown? Not that the meaning escaped her, for I saw its impact in the sudden color ridging her lovely cheeks. Her lips were pressed in a thin line. “I could…almost…believe you had I not had your name dinned in my ear through a succession of seasons. Your gallantry in facing Galdran before the Court. The Astiar bravery in taking on Galdran’s army with nothing but a rabble of half-trained villagers on behalf of the rest of the kingdom. Your running almost the length of the kingdom with a broken foot and successfully evading Debegri’s and Vidanric’s warriors. The duel-to-the-death with Galdran.” I had to laugh, which I saw at once was a mistake. But I couldn’t stop, not until I saw the common omission in all of this: my disastrous encounters with Shevraeth. Had he spoken about my defeats, surely this angry young lady would have nosed it all out--and it was apparent she’d have no compunction about flinging it in my teeth. No. For some incomprehensible reason, he hadn’t talked about any of it. This realization sobered me, and I gulped in a deep, shaky breath. Tamara’s grimness had given way to an odd expression, part anger, part puzzlement. “You will tell me that your heroism if all lies?” she asked. “No,” I said. “But it’s--well, different. Look, if you really want to hear my story, we can sit down and I’ll tell you everything, from how I ran about barefoot and illiterate in the mountains joyfully planning our easy takeover, right down to how Galdran knocked me clean out of my saddle after I warded a single blow and nearly lost my arm in doing it. I think he attacked me because I was the weakest--it’s the only reason that makes sense to me. As for the rest--” I shrugged. “Some of it was wrong decisions made for the right reasons, and a little of it was right decisions made for the wrong reasons; but most of what I did was wrong decisions for the wrong reasons. That’s the plain truth.

We strolled to the end of the platform. We came to a man with a signal lamp and I saw that as he passed us he looked at a conductor standing on another platform and made a drinking movement with his hand near his mouth. We stopped past the end of the roof and looked at the sun. "You see the sun, Koekebakker?" The sun was especially clear, right in front of us, close by, bigger and redder than I had ever seen it. It almost touched the rails, it didn't flash brightly on things anymore, there was a dull glow only on the frosted windowpanes of the train shed to the right of the track. "You think I'm drunk?" I did indeed. "It doesn't matter, Koekebakker, when I'm sober I don't understand anything anyway." "Do you understand what the sun wants from me? I have thirty-four setting suns leaning against the wall, one on top of the other, all facing the wall. But every evening it's there again." "Unless it's cloudy," I said. But he wouldn't let himself be distracted. "Koekebakker, you've always been my best friend. I've known you since--how long has it been?" "Thirteen years. That's a long time. You know what you need to do? Do me a favor. You have a hatbox?" I didn't say anything. "Put it in a hatbox, Koekebakker. In a hatbox. I want to be left alone. Put it in a hatbox, a plain old hatbox. That's all it's worth." Bavinck blubbered drunkard's tears. I looked around helplessly. A man in a uniform with a yellow stripe on his cap came up to us and spoke to me. "I think it would be better, sir, if you took the gentleman home.

Mrs. Brown, I hurried over as soon as I heard..." Ollie Clark ducked through the low front door and removed his hat as he noticed Lily sitting in the old rocker she had brought with her from Mississippi. His gaze stopped at the child at her feet. "Come in, Mr. Clark, have a seat. You've had word of Jim?" Lily’s breath caught in her lungs as she waited for the words she didn't want to hear. Ollie took the overlarge wing chair that had once decorated a bedroom parlor and wrung his hat between his hands. "No, ma'am, I didn't mean to get your hopes up none. I was talkin' 'bout Cade. The boys were just funnin' about him the other day. He's a drunken half-breed, Mrs. Brown. You don't want the likes of him about the place. Let me explain things to him and send him on his way. It ain't right for a respectable lady like yourself to have to deal with a man like that." "I can't dismiss a man without giving him a chance, Mr. Clark. Even drunk, he's showed more sense than some sober men I could name. If Colonel Martin could use him, I don't see why I can't." He took a deep breath. "He ain't even white, Lily. You'll give me permission to call you Lily?" When she didn't reply, Ollie hurried on. "He's half-Indian, half-Mexican. You'd be better off hiring one of your father's slaves. At least they listen when you whip them. Cade's more likely to turn and kill you. He's done it before. You've got to get him out of here." Ollie was speaking sense from his own point of view. Beneath his placid exterior. Cade undoubtedly had a violent temper. Lily had seen evidence of that already. And Ralph had told her he'd been in prison for killing another man. So Ollie was speaking the truth, but only one side of the truth. Lily knew all about that kind of lie. "I'll give Cade his chance, Mr. Clark. Jim would want it that way." Lily watched gleefully as she used this two-edged sword to make Clark squirm. How many times had she resentfully heard those words when the men wouldn't listen to her? Clark scowled and rose. "Jim wouldn't have taken on a drunken Indian. I'll set about finding you a decent man to help out. You'll be needing him soon enough." He gave the child on the floor another glance, one of puzzlement, but he didn't ask the question that obviously was on his mind. And Lily didn't answer it. Sweetly, she held out her hand and offered her best Southern-belle smile. "I'm so grateful for your concern, Mr. Clark. Please do come and visit sometime. Perhaps you could bring Miss Bridgewater. I'd be happy for the company." The name of the young girl whom the town gossip had Clark courting only brought a milder frown to his handsome face. "That's mighty kind of you, Mrs. Brown. I hope you hear from Jim soon." Lily watched him go with a sigh of relief and a small sense of triumph. She didn't know why Ollie Clark was suddenly so all-fired concerned with her welfare, but surely she had set him properly in his place. Now,

Alexander walked around the bed to stand in her line of sight. He wasn’t letting go of his rifle. Tatiana wiped her face. “Tania, please don’t cry,” he said emotionally. “Last night I came here ready to sacrifice everything, you included, to satisfy the burning inside me I’ve had since the day we met. But God was looking out for you, and He stopped us, and more important He stopped me, and I, in the gray of the morning, am less confused…” Alexander paused. “Though only more desperate for you.” He took a long breath, staring at his rifle. Tatiana could not find her voice to speak. Alexander said, “You and I—” then broke off, shaking his head. “But the time is all wrong for us.” She turned onto her back, putting her arm over her face. The time, the place, the life. “Couldn’t you have thought this through before you came here?” she said. “Couldn’t you have had this talk with yourself before last night?” “I cannot stay away from you,” he said. “Last night I was drunk. But tonight I’m sober. And I’m sorry.” Tears choking her throat, Tatiana said nothing. Alexander left without touching her.

Ron: I want to do one of those marriage renewal things I've read about. Marriage renewal. What do you think? Hermione(melting slightly):you want to marry me again? Ron: well, we were only young when we did it the first time and I got very drunk and-well, to be honest, I can't remember much of it and...the truth is-I love you, hermione granger,and whatever time says-I'd like the opportunity to say so in front of lots of people. Again. Sober. Hermione kisses him Hermione: you're sweet Ron: and you taste like toffee

Some words are too sober to be the driver designated to help me, reach the destination of my destiny.

tell me how one soberly hates people—I don’t think I know.’ Oliver: Well, you can’t love a mob, surely to goodness? Because that’s to be one of them, chattering and scolding and snivelling and cheering—maudlin drunk if you like. I learned to be soldier enough to hate a mob. There’s discipline in heaven…

Larry looked away. “I hate this kind of sharing. Men talk to each other, they don’t share. Sharing’s for assholes.” “Yeah,” Cody said, “believe me, I hate this Oprah bullshit. But it is what it is. I’m learning to find out what it’s like to be clean and sober. I’ve been pretty much drunk for twenty years. And you know what?” “What?” “It sucks. I don’t know how you people do it—too much reality. But Hank was good because he understood and didn’t try to act superior. He knew where I am now. He went through it himself, and he was a tough bastard. Marine. Desert Storm, in fact. And he did it all on his own. His wife left him years ago and he had no brothers or sisters. His parents were dead. He did the Twelve Steps on his own.” Moments went by. The rain thrummed on the roof.

today i received a postcard i sent to myself last week from another city when i was nearly too drunk to stand, it read, "find a way to fall in love with life sober. these damn morning headaches are killing me.

The landlady showed up today. Now, there’s an interesting woman.” “She is that.” “She tells me she was the town drunk,” he said. “She was,” Jack confirmed. “She got in treatment and seems to be doing great. She’s a whole new person.” “What was the town drunk like?” Dan asked. Jack looked upward, thinking. Then he brought his gaze down to Dan’s. “Know what? I’m not going to talk about that. Cheryl is a good person who had a mighty big burden with her drinking. I’ll tell you the truth, I never saw any hope. But I see her now and she’s not the same woman. Honest to God, I would’ve thought that even sober, she’d be a little slow-witted, unmotivated. Damaged. But she seems to have beat the odds—she’s just incredible. I want her to make it.” “She’s making it,” Dan said. “That’s nice, that you won’t talk about it. Must’ve been kind of bad.” “Buddy, we’ve all been through bad times we’d like to forget.” And

The first cost of incompetence is always the inability to perceive incompetence. In a room where one person is drunk and everyone else is sober, the drunk person is least aware of his intoxication.

This neighborhood was mine first. I walked each block twice: drunk, then sober. I lived every day with legs and headphones. It had snowed the night I ran down Lorimer and swore I’d stop at nothing. My love, he had died. What was I supposed to do? I regret nothing. Sometimes I feel washed up as paper. You’re three years away. But then I dance down Graham and the trees are the color of champagne and I remember— There are things I like about heartbreak, too, how it needs a good soundtrack. The way I catch a man’s gaze on the L and don’t look away first. Losing something is just revising it. After this love there will be more love. My body rising from a nest of sheets to pick up a stranger’s MetroCard. I regret nothing. Not the bar across the street from my apartment; I was still late. Not the shared bathroom in Barcelona, not the red-eyes, not the songs about black coats and Omaha. I lie about everything but not this. You were every streetlamp that winter. You held the crown of my head and for once I won’t show you what I’ve made. I regret nothing. Your mother and your Maine. Your wet hair in my lap after that first shower. The clinic and how I cried for a week afterwards. How we never chose the language we spoke. You wrote me a single poem and in it you were the dog and I the fire. Remember the courthouse? The anniversary song. Those goddamn Kmart towels. I loved them, when did we throw them away? Tomorrow I’ll write down everything we’ve done to each other and fill the bathtub with water. I’ll burn each piece of paper down to silt. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll do it again. And again and again and— — Hala Alyan, “Object Permanence

More than once I found myself alone with a man who clearly wanted more from me than a business card. I’m incredibly thankful I was never harmed, but research shows how rare that is. When drinking, men perceive a greater level of sexual interest than women intend to communicate. This perception of feeling “led on” by a woman when combined with alcohol, which can increase aggressive behavior, makes a man more likely to commit assault. Drunk men are more likely than sober men to find the use of force to obtain sex acceptable.146 Finally, alcohol affects a woman’s ability to assess and react to risk. We are more likely to take risks that we would normally avoid, such as being alone with an strange man.147

Of course, if like me, you put drugs in the mix too, you may not sleep at all. Instead, you stare at the wall for six hours, desperate to get ANY sleep before the work alarm goes off.

His motto is actually “write drunk and edit sober”—he’s got the words hanging on a plaque in bold black letters behind his desk right above an ever-present bottle of Jack Daniels—but I say nothing. Monday afternoon is not the best time to argue, much like every other day of the week. And unfortunately for me, I don’t have a pregnant wife at home to fall back on.

You’re what I call terminally unique. You think you’re special. Your problems remarkable and singular. People like you die.” So much for easing into things. He continued, “But you’re just a garden-variety alcoholic. Nothing more, nothing less. Just like me.” Garrett told me he’d been quite the drunk back in the day, but had been sober for decades. “What you need is treatment. And until you embrace this fact, you’re never going to get sober.” By “treatment,” Garrett meant rehab. A minimum of thirty days away, with nothing to do but focus on my problems in a highly controlled environment. All I heard was mental institution. And I wasn’t buying.

A lady came up to me one day and said, 'Sir! You are drunk!' To which I replied, 'I am drunk today, madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober— but you will still be ugly.

Glass" In every bar there’s someone sitting alone and absolutely absorbed by whatever he’s seeing in the glass in front of him, a glass that looks ordinary, with something clear or dark inside it, something partially drunk but never completely gone. Everything’s there: all the plans that came to nothing, the stupid love affairs, and the terrifying ones, the ones where actual happiness opened like a hole beneath his feet and he fell in, then lay helpless while the dirt rained down a little at a time to bury him. And his friends are there, cracking open six-packs, raising the bottles, the click of their meeting like the sound of a pool cue nicking a ball, the wrong ball, that now edges, black and shining, toward the waiting pocket. But it stops short, and at the bar the lone drinker signals for another. Now the relatives are floating up with their failures, with cancer, with plateloads of guilt and a little laughter, too, and even beauty—some afternoon from childhood, a lake, a ball game, a book of stories, a few flurries of snow that thicken and gradually cover the earth until the whole world’s gone white and quiet, until there’s hardly a world at all, no traffic, no money or butchery or sex, just a blessed peace that seems final but isn’t. And finally the glass that contains and spills this stuff continually while the drinker hunches before it, while the bartender gathers up empties, gives back the drinker’s own face. Who knows what it looks like; who cares whether or not it was young once, or ever lovely, who gives a shit about some drunk rising to stagger toward the bathroom, some man or woman or even lost angel who recklessly threw it all over—heaven, the ether, the celestial works—and said, Fuck it, I want to be human? Who believes in angels, anyway? Who has time for anything but their own pleasures and sorrows, for the few good people they’ve managed to gather around them against the uncertainty, against afternoons of sitting alone in some bar with a name like the Embers or the Ninth Inning or the Wishing Well? Forget that loser. Just tell me who’s buying, who’s paying; Christ but I’m thirsty, and I want to tell you something, come close I want to whisper it, to pour the words burning into you, the same words for each one of you, listen, it’s simple, I’m saying it now, while I’m still sober, while I’m not about to weep bitterly into my own glass, while you’re still here—don’t go yet, stay, stay, give me your shoulder to lean against, steady me, don’t let me drop, I’m so in love with you I can’t stand up. Kim Addonizio, Tell Me (BOA Editions Ltd.; First Edition (July 1, 2000)

I can take your blood and power from you,” I agreed as I let my gaze wander down her tempting body. This wasn't some game or anything to do with me being an Heir and her being a Princess. I just wanted her. Simple as that and I really wanted her to want me too. “But I desire more than that. And I’m a Taurus; when we set our minds on something it’s not easy to turn us from it.” She scoffed, still giving me that suspicious look, though I was hoping I could convince her to trust me, at least for long enough to let me make her pant my name the way I ached to hear. “You didn’t seem so against the idea the other night,” I urged while she stayed quiet. “That was drunk Tory,” she said firmly. “She’s notorious for making bad decisions so I wouldn’t get too excited about anything you think she might have done with you. You shouldn’t presume anything that happens when I’m wasted will have any bearing on sober Tory.” “And you think I’d be a bad decision?” I teased because she might have been right about that, but I still wanted to be one she made. My lips twitched and I was almost certain I had her convinced. “I’ve been with enough bad decisions to recognise one when I see them,” she said. “How many, exactly?” I asked, leaning in to kiss her neck, my stubble grazing against her skin as I fought against the urge to take a bite. “Enough to let me know that it’s a terrible idea.” Her breath caught as I reached the corner of her lips with my kisses and I paused to hear her decision, though if the way she was pulling me closer again was anything to go by, I was pretty sure I was about to get my wish. “Probably not enough to put me off entirely.” I chuckled darkly, leaning back to gaze into her deep green eyes. I wanted her to say it, beg for it. Though that may have been a little ambitious with this particular princess. The words didn't escape her full lips, but as her gaze darkened with desire, she reached out and unhooked the top button of my shirt, making her decision clear. I held myself still as she worked her way down every single button until she pushed her hands inside my shirt and dragged her hands across the hard lines of my muscles. A shiver raced through my skin and my dick was working really hard to bust right through my fucking fly, so I stopped beating around the damn bush and claimed her mouth with mine once more. (Caleb POV)

A lady came up to me one day and said, 'Sir! You are drunk!' To which I replied, 'I am drunk today, madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober— but you will still be ugly.

Are you sure you don’t want to drink tonight?” She slaps my hand and stuffs it in the middle console. “We can take an Uber home.” “Nah, I’m good.” “Well, if you change your—” “I won’t. I’m gonna fuck your mouth later, and something about me being drunk and you being sober while I do it doesn’t sit right with me.” Jennie doesn’t even miss a beat as she stares out the window. “Whether you’re drunk or sober isn’t gonna stop me from sitting on your face and coming all over your tongue.” She looks my way with a dazzling grin as I leave the car idling on the street, slack jawed, and she squeezes my thigh, right next to my cock. “Ready, big guy?

My mom always told me, a mad motherfucka, always speaks the truth. Just how a drunk speaks a sober mind. I believed that shit.

I used to walk into a room full of people and wonder if they liked me… now I look around and wonder if I like them.

I blink awake the next morning, a little worse for wear—and roll over towards my bedside table praying to the Lord on high that drunk me (understatement) had the good sense to leave sober me (overstatement) a glass of water. She did, bless her.

Her brown eyes fell on mine, and I fell even more for her in that instance. Drunk Holly was adorable. Sober Holly was adorable, too. Holly Jackson was adorable. “Hey, Kai?” “Yes?” “I think you’re going to be a better fake boyfriend to me than my real past boyfriends.” “What makes you say that?” “Because you like me.

That falling in love is a lot like getting drunk. They don't tell me that his laugh will radiate through my veins, and his kisses will leave me light headed, and his touch will make me giddy. That simply being with him will make me inexplicably spontaneous and happy and alive. They don't tell me that I will be irrational and make unreasonable decisions, and stay up all night thinking because my dreams are no longer better than my reality. That in the end, I will be so terribly dizzy that I won't remember what it's like to be sober.

I’D HAD A SLIP from my A.A. program the previous year. The causes aren’t important now, but the consequence was the worst bender I ever went on—a two-day blackout that left me on the edges of delirium tremens and with the very real conviction I had committed a homicide. The damage I did to myself was of the kind that alcoholics sometimes do not recover from—the kind when you burn the cables on your elevator and punch a hole in the basement and keep right on going. But I went back to meetings and pumped iron and ran in the park, and relearned one of the basic tenets of A.A.—that there is no possession more valuable than a sober sunrise, and any drunk who demands more out of life than that will probably not have it. Unfortunately the nocturnal hours were never good to me. In my dreams I would be drunk again, loathsome even unto myself, a public spectacle whom people treated with either pity or contempt. I would wake from the dream, my throat parched, and walk off balance into the kitchen for a glass of water, unable to extract myself from memories about people and places that I had thought no longer belonged to my life. But the feelings released from my unconscious by the dream would not leave me. It’s like blood splatter on the soul. You

I used to walk into a room full of people and wonder if they liked me… now I look around and wonder if I like them.

They're kidding themselves, of course. Our sky can go from lapis to tin in the blink of an eye. Blink again and your latte's diluted. And that's just fine with me. I thrive here on the certainty that no matter how parched my glands, how anhydrous the creek beds, how withered the weeds in the lawn, it's only a matter of time before the rains come home. The rains will steal down from the Sasquatch slopes. They will rise with the geese from the marshes and sloughs. Rain will fall in sweeps, it will fall in drones, it will fall in cascades of cheap Zen jewelry. And it will rain a fever. And it will rain a sacrifice. And it will rain sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem. Rain will primitivize the cities, slowing every wheel, animating every gutter, diffusing commercial neon into smeary blooms of esoteric calligraphy. Rain will dramatize the countryside, sewing pearls into every web, winding silk around every stump, redrawing the horizon line with a badly frayed brush dipped in tea and quicksilver. And it will rain an omen. And it will rain a trance. And it will rain a seizure. And it will rain dangers and pale eggs of the beast. Rain will pour for days unceasing. Flooding will occur. Wells will fill with drowned ants, basements with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics will roam the dripping peninsulas. Moisture will gleam on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their rest in dead tree trunks, will clack their clamshell teeth in the submerged doorways of video parlors. Rivers will swell, sloughs will ferment. Vapors will billow from the troll-infested ditches, challenging windshield wipers, disgusing intentions and golden arches. Water will stream off eaves and umbrellas. It will take on the colors of beer signs and headlamps. It will glisten on the claws of nighttime animals. And it will rain a screaming. And it will rain a rawness. And it will rain a disorder, and hair-raising hisses from the oldest snake in the world. Rain will hiss on the freeways. It will hiss around the prows of fishing boats. It will hiss in the electrical substations, on the tips of lit cigarettes, and in the trash fires of the dispossessed. Legends will wash from desecrated burial grounds, graffiti will run down alley walls. Rain will eat the old warpaths, spill the huckleberries, cause toadstools to rise like loaves. It will make poets drunk and winos sober, and polish the horns of the slugs. And it will rain a miracle. And it will rain a comfort. And it will rain a sense of salvation from the philistinic graspings of the world. Yes, I am here for the weather. And when I am lowered at last into a pit of marvelous mud, a pillow of fern and skunk cabbage beneath my skull, I want my epitaph to read, IT RAINED ON HIS PARADE, AND HE WAS GLAD!

Listen, friend, I’ve known a lot of drunks in my time. You look at four, five months being sober and think it’s eternity. But me, I see a man still brushing the puke from his clothes. A man who could get knocked right back down.

Wanting to thank him for his gifts, she left the tent to find her husband. He was in the middle of the camp, with knights all around him. She paused as she saw him there. He was again garbed as a black-robed monk, but he had taken time to shave this morning. There was no sign of the sword she knew he had strapped to his hips and she could barely catch a glimpse of his mail-covered leggings beneath it. He was handsome, her prince. More so than any man in the group. He, Phantom, Ioan, Lutian, and three men she knew not at all were standing in a circle as they discussed some matter. Her heart light, she approached her husband from behind. Ioan was speaking. “You know, Abbot, I hear wormwood helps with that problem.” He held his hand up and crooked his finger down as if it were suddenly limp. All the men save Christian laughed, while Christian glared murderously at Lutian. “Look to the good of it,” Phantom said as he sobered. He appeared to be imparting grave advice to her husband. “I hear all men have trouble from time to time with their sexual performance. Mind you, I have no personal experience with that, but…” His voice trailed off as he looked past Christian to see Adara glowering at him. Struggling not to strangle the men who mocked him, Christian turned to see what had disturbed Phantom to find Adara standing behind him. His groin jerked awake at the vision she made in her finery. She was beautiful. The gown fit even better than he had hoped. Unlike her peasant garb, this one laced in the front and at the sides, pulling the cloth into a perfect fit that showed every lush curve of her body. The only thing that sparkled more than her jewels were her brown eyes. “Thank you,” she said softly before she kissed his cheek. “I had a most wondrous night.” Christian was too dumbstruck by his lust to even respond. Lutian bristled at her actions and if she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was jealous. “Nay. Tell me this isn’t so. Why are you kissing him, my queen? It was me. Me. I’m the one who told him what to do. He had no idea how to please you. None. He was lost and confused when he sought me out. He didn’t even know how to do the most basic thing. It was me, all me.” Every man there gaped at Lutian’s words. “Christ’s toes, Christian,” Ioan said in disbelief. “Are you a monk in truth? Don’t tell me you had to take advice from the fool on how to please a woman? You should have come to me. At least I know what I’m doing.” “You can’t be a virgin,” Phantom said. “What about that Norman tart in Hexham? Surely you did more than talk to her when the two of you vanished to her room?” “Nay,” another knight said. “I saw him drunk in Calais with two women.” “Aye,” another knight began. “I was with him in London when he vanished for three days with a widowed countess.” Christian ground his teeth as this conversation quickly degenerated, while Lutian continued to take credit for instructing him on how to please Adara. Lutian still held Adara’s attention. “I’m the one who got him—” Enraged, Christian lunged for the source of his current humiliation. “Christian!” Adara snapped as he seized her fool. “Don’t hurt Lutian.” He wanted to do much more than hurt the fool. He wanted to tear the man’s head from his shoulders. Growling in frustration, he let the fool go. “Thank you, my queen.” “’Tis my place to hurt him.” She glared at her fool and smacked him on his arm. “I fully intend to take this up with you later.” She walked over to Ioan. “And for your information, my lord…” She lifted his hand and put his index and middle finger upright. “I assure you that there is nothing wrong with Christian’s technique or prowess.

Kiara rubbed her bruised throat and slid from the table. She jumped in reflex as Pitala moved his weapon toward the pair standing in the doorway. Before he could aim it at either man, two blasters came out of nowhere to balance their sights on his body. Two red targeting lasers hovered without shaking-one between his eyes and one over his grain. "Think," Nykyrian said ominously, clicking back the release of his blaster with his thumb. Pitala gave a nervous laugh, and held up his hands. "I wouldn't actually try to shoot you. I just wanted to see if you were as good as they say." "Better." Syn moved forward to pull Pitala's blaster from his hand. "And that's with me drunk off my ass. Imagine what I'd do to you sober." It was only after he was disarmed and Syn stood between her and Pitala that Nykyrian's red light vanished from Pitala's forehead. With an amazing nonchalance, Nykyrian holstered his weapon. "Apologize to Tara Zamir for ruining her night and you can leave." Angry black eyes focused on Kiara with an unspoken promise he would be back. "My apologies, princess," he rasped. "It was nothing personal." Cold sweat beaded on her body as Pitala bent and slapped his partner awake. Within seconds, the pair of assassins were gone. Her relief at their departure gave way to suspicion over the two of them and their intentions. "What are you doing here?" "Saving you," Nykyrian said absently, looking down the corridor with his back to them. -Nykyrian, Pitala, Syn, & Kiara

Brittany, wait!” a voice calls from behind me. I turn around and am face-to-face with the guy who’s haunting my dreams…daydreams and night dreams. Alex. The guy who I hate. The guy who I can’t get out of my mind, no matter how drunk I am. “Ignore Javier,” Alex says. “Sometimes he gets carried away tryin’ to be a badass.” I’m stunned when he steps closer and wipes away a tear from my cheek. “Don’t cry. I wouldn’t let him hurt you.” Should I tell him I’m not afraid of being hurt? I’m afraid of not being in control. Though I haven’t run far, it’s far enough from Alex’s friends. They can’t see me or hear me. “Why do you like Carmen?” I ask as the world tilts and I stumble in the sand. “She’s mean.” He holds out his hands to help me but I flinch, so he stuffs his hands in his pockets. “What the fuck do you care, anyway? You stood me up.” “I had stuff going on.” “Like washin’ your hair or getting’ a manicure?” Or having my hair ripped out by my sister and getting reamed out by my mom? I jab my finger into his chest. “You’re an asshole.” “And you’re a bitch,” he says. “A bitch with a kick-ass smile and eyes that can seriously screw with a guy’s head.” He winces, as if the words slipped out and he wants to take them back. I was expecting him to say a lot of things, but not that. Especially not that. I notice his bloodshot eyes. “You’re high, Alex.” “Yeah, well you don’t look too sober yourself. Maybe now’s a good time to give me that kiss you owe me.” “No way.” “¿Por qué no? Afraid you’ll like it so much you’ll forget your boyfriend?” Kiss Alex? Never. Although I’ve been thinking about it. A lot. More than I should. His lips are full and inviting. Oh, boy, he’s right. I am drunk. And I’m definitely not feeling right. I’m past numbness and going on delirium, because I’m thinking things I have no business thinking. Like how I want to know what his lips feel like against mine. “Fine. Kiss me, Alex,” I say, stepping forward and leaning into him. “Then we’ll be even.” His hands are braced on my arms. This is it. I’m going to kiss Alex and find out what it’s like. He’s dangerous and he mocks me. But he’s sexy and dark ad beautiful. Being this close to him makes my body shiver with excitement and my head spin. I loop my finger through his belt loop to steady myself. It’s like we’re standing on a Tilt-a-Whirl ride at the carnival.

I know it’s early in the party--the huge wine bottle’s still almost full, and the night is young--but I’m impressed at how good everyone looks. And sober. No one’s pink-faced and stumbling, no one’s slurring their words. The groups of people are all mixed. It’s not like the London parties I’ve been to, with boys at one end of the room getting drunk enough to build up the courage to talk to the girls, who are at the other end giggling and pretending to ignore them. This is impressively grown up. And Luca was bang-on in his assessment of me. I’m standing here alone, no one coming to talk to me. I think I look pretty nice: I did myself up in my best makeup, dark smoky eyes and red lipstick. I wish I could wear white, like Kendra, who looks amazing in it, but I’m a little too body-conscious for that. Kendra has an athlete’s body, and I don’t. I’m okay with not being really thin, but I’d feel like a great white whale if I wore a white outfit. Is it a whale? I wonder. Or a shark? I shrug. These are the kind of questions you find yourself pondering when you’re at a fantastic party, all your girlfriends have been snapped up on sight, and you’re busy propping up the drinks table with your bum because no one wants to talk to you.

You should have heard the first draft. It was a spectacle.” She sniffs me. “Are you drunk?” She looks back at the flushed Howlers and teetering Telemanuses. “Are they all drunk?” “Shhh,” I say and hand her a flask. “You’re too sober.

He told me his father never ate fish because fish, he said, were willing to eat human flesh. If you throw a naked man into the sea, a few months later, there will be nothing but bones left of him. All white. How exactly did he know this? When he was sober, he never said a word, but when he was drunk, he swore up and down that all he ever did was push paper. His hands were clean…His son wanted to believe him, but then why didn’t he eat fish?