cheap rose tastes like juice!' These inanities replace the offers of hugs, and I feel only mildly awkward venturing downstairs with my blotchy face and raw eyes; because pyjamas are on and we’ re wrapped in blankets, pouring half a bottle into a glass at a time, simply because we cannot be bothered to keep getting up for more, but we’ re a couple too many years past sixteen to forgo the glass at all.
As the wine flows down our throats, and our lips and eyes grow darker in an attempt to match its shade, I retreat back to the thoughts that triggered that first glass … But I’ m actually not sad anymore. I have slightly more responsibilities now at twentyone, and slightly fewer parents in my life, but perspective seems to have been gained, and we joke about it all. And these things simply don’ t break me the way they did when I was fifteen. I drain my glass, letting the last drops land on the back of my throat like raindrops falling through a child’ s open mouth, in an attempt to drown the concern within me that I’ ve lost my capacity for feeling, my depth, me.
One of the many fairy lights we have strung about the room catches on the thin glass as I tip it backward, and reflects onto my arm.‘ For the hope of it all’ tattooed, just above my elbow. Nineteen and balancing on the perimeter of childhood. Finally on the adventure I had been planning since fourteen; finally living. I was free and a little bit mad. A little bit chancy when I hoisted myself onto the back of a motorbike, bound for the sketchy tattoo shop of the guitarist from the reggae band in the bar the night before. There was a singular cushioned chair wrapped in cling film on the tapioca-tiled floor, and a computer that looked at least ten years old. But Augustus was cool, and let me play songs that felt like the edge of something on his tinny speakers, as I lay, waiting, sweaty skin stuck to the cling film, listening to the sound of beginnings and endings somehow all at once. There was not an echo of fear in my body. With every prick of the needle, I could feel the magic of the place and its people, and of who I was at that moment, being injected under my skin.‘ I’ ll stay like this,’ I’ d promised myself,‘ I’ ll never forget who I was here, at this time, on this trip.’ But two years later, I can feel that girl slipping away, too afraid to give herself to love, nowhere near as wild. Nowhere near as free. I miss her. So, as the bottles start to feel worryingly light, texts go out to more friends as the prospect of going out, dancing, escaping, becomes denser and denser in the fairy light-illuminated room.
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