Fuck all the men
The world felt as if it was ever so slightly tilted to the side. Millie hiccupped. She was drunk. For the first time in her twenty-six years she was actually inebriated. When she’d arrived at the bar with Mark and discovered that Screaming Orgasms were in fact alcoholic beverages in shot glasses, she’d informed him that she didn’t drink.
He frowned. ‘Ex-alcoholic?’ he’d asked.
She told him no but had explained about the interaction of alcohol with primary and secondary targets within the brain causing alterations in gene expression and synaptic plasticity, leading to long-lasting alteration in neuronal network activity.
After that speech he burst out laughing and slammed a shot down in front of her. ‘I think it’s time to shake up your neuronal network, baby,’ he told her. ‘I’m sure there’ll be enough brain cells up there to take the hit.’
Millie had looked from him to the shot and frowned. Mark’s reasoning was totally devoid of logic. Nobody could afford to ‘shake up’ their neuronal network.
‘Leave her alone, mate,’ Pav said, sliding the shot glass down the bar away from her. He’d managed to extract himself from his male fan club in a surprisingly short space of time. ‘She doesn’t drink. There’s no way she could handle spirits.’
Millie narrowed her eyes at Pav. His arms were crossed over his chest and his mouth was set in a stubborn line. As far as he was concerned that was the end of it: Millie was not going to be drinking. For some reason his arrogant assumption caused an unfamiliar surge of defiance to sweep its way through her.
Screw logic.
Where had logic gotten her anyway? Locked away in her house night after night. Living within her narrow limits. Almost universally disliked by the entire hospital. Slowly she reached forward, leaned across Pav and closed her fingers around the small glass.
‘Millie?’ Pav asked, but before he could react she slid the glass over to her, lifted it to her lips and drank it down in one gulp. Surprisingly it was creamy and sweet, with just the hint of a burn. The last alcohol she’d drunk had been at a wine tasting with her parents when she was sixteen. That had made her wince and turn a little green much to her parents’ disgust (they told her it was a three-hundred-pound bottle and that it was just typical that she couldn’t appreciate the quality).
‘Woah, babe!’ Tara said from Millie’s side. ‘You could have waited for us.’ Millie watched as the rest of the group downed their own shots together, all except Pav who had ordered a beer and was rolling his eyes.
‘Don’t worry,’ Kira said, throwing her arm around Millie and giving her a squeeze. ‘We’ll get another round.’
‘Look,’ Pav objected as another tray of shots appeared in front of them, ‘I really think this isn’t a very –’
‘Here’s to the men we love,’ shouted Kira as everyone raised their glasses. ‘And here’s to the men that love us. But the men we love aren’t the men that love us, so fuck all the men and here’s to us!’
As if on automatic pilot Millie gripped the small glass again and threw back another lot of the sweet-tasting liquid. She blinked when she was done, a warm feeling spreading out from her stomach. For some reason the environment didn’t seem as intimidating. More of Mark’s friends joined the group. They were all gorgeous, they were all loud and they were all very, very gay. None of them gave Millie the chance to be shy.
After her fourth Screaming Orgasm Kira and Tara dragged Millie onto the dance floor. She’d never danced in her life. Not once. For some reason Pav came with them, staying close to her the entire time (this did not seem to deter the majority of the men they passed from giving him the eye, occasionally winking, and more than occasionally squeezing his bottom, which seemed to amuse Kira to an extreme degree). Millie didn’t understand why Pav was still there. She thought he would have left ages ago. Maybe he was enjoying the attention? Although, judging by the scowl on his face, that explanation was unlikely.
Even though Millie had never danced before (and she suspected that without the Screaming Orgasms she wouldn’t have considered it now), it wasn’t as scary as she’d always thought. The dance floor was crowded. They were all pushed together so much that most of her body’s movement was being dictated by other dancers. Pav’s body was right behind hers and his heat was soaking very pleasantly into her back. She felt dizzy a couple of times but there were strong hands on her hips when she started to waver. Kira’s dancing was hilarious. In the restricted space they had available she pulled what she termed as some ‘serious shapes’ including squatting to her knees and doing a kind of Cossack dance, star-jumps and poorly executed head-stands; at one point she even managed a forward roll. With Kira’s antics and the sheer number of people dancing around them, Millie was fairly sure nobody was watching her. She felt free to move, free to laugh, just … free.
*****
Pav pulled her soft body into his when he saw her head start to bob about two minutes into the taxi ride. Within seconds she was fast asleep tucked into his side. Her chest was rising and falling in deep, even breaths and her body was totally relaxed against him. It was weird seeing her that way. She was so tense the entire time when she was fully conscious. Her face looked completely different without that tension. Despite the make-up she looked about twelve years old.
But you could still see the shadows under her eyes, and her cheekbones were still way more hollowed-out than they should be. Just like the usual no-alcohol rule, Pav had only ever seen Millie eat the most disgustingly healthy stuff. No, scratch that: he’d never actually seen her eat. He was guessing she was too nervous for that when he was hanging around her office. But he did see the various salads and green juices she had on her desk at lunchtime. A girl her size should not, in Pav’s opinion, be firing down terrifyingly healthy food like ‘quinoa’ (he wasn’t entirely sure what that was but it was on the label of most of her sad-looking offerings).
She shifted and slung a slim arm over his stomach. A sober Millie would be horrified by the position they were in, but at the moment she was far from sober. If it had just been the shots she did before the dancing, maybe Pav wouldn’t have had to half-carry her out of the club. It was after the dancing and when they settled into one of the booths that things really got hairy.
Kira (who was pretty hyper when sober – drunk, she was bouncing off the walls) declared loudly that they were going to play ‘I Have Never’. As it turned out Millie had never done anything. Between them and the rest of the table, most sexual acts, some of which even Pav hadn’t heard of, were covered, and all manner of other things besides. If you hadn’t done what was described, you drank. If nobody had done it, the speaker drank. Millie drank every time. Pav suspected that if someone had said ‘I have never eaten without cutlery’ she would have drunk. So from being a complete teetotaller, Millie had become the biggest pisshead at the table.
Some of this Pav liked very much. It meant he had the opportunity to see her giggle. She was smiling and giggling most of the evening: Mark and Kira were funny fuckers, Tara and Claire were just plain outrageous and El and Libby were live wires in their own slightly less obvious ways. Millie didn’t say much but when she did speak it was quite often hilarious – whether she intended it to be or not:
‘It was his fault!’ shouted a drunken Tara, referring to the fact she had conceived a boy four years ago. A lovely boy whom Tara adored, although he was a little wild and difficult to contain in her small flat. ‘His balls were full of boy sperm. That’s the problem.’
‘Actually,’ Millie interrupted, slurring a little and with her tiny grin on her face. ‘Your vagina was probably hostile. It’s all to do with the viscosity of your mucus and how easy the male or female sperm can penetrate through it.’
The whole table erupted at that. Eventually Tara managed to ask, through her tears of laughter: ‘Are you really calling my vagina hostile? I’m not sure whether she’s insulted or pleased. Not every day you hear that your fanny’s a badass.’
So yes, hearing Millie laugh and seeing her relax her guard a little was definitely a plus. But Pav was not so keen on the nearly-passing-out-in-the-club section of the evening, or the bouncers looking at him like he was a rapist as he carried her out to a taxi (Kira, El and Libby had managed to convince them that this was not the case, but not before they’d attracted a fair amount of attention on the street outside). And now Millie wasn’t just semi-conscious, she was completely out for the count.
The cab pulled up outside her house and Pav gave her a gentle shake.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Millie, we’re here, love.’ He thought back to the last time he was at her house and remembered the sizable alarm system he saw her programme before they left earlier. He was going to need that code from her. She gave a small groan and then burrowed herself further into his side, her body relaxing deeper into sleep.
Pav sighed and told the driver his address instead.