In Vino Veritas
Title: In Vino Veritas Rating: PG Word Count: 630 Disclaimer: Nonfiction parading as fiction. Teaser: "We attempt privacy in a room of people vying for attention. It allows me to lean in and speak into his ear while my eyelashes flutter close to his skin."
“I probably wouldn’t be telling you this if I was sober.” He looks at me through eyes partially closed, heavy from a weekend of too much Coors and Viking’s Fjord, making up for all the days before he turned 21. He’s telling the truth, and being truthful about it: “If you ask me about this later, I might talk about it, but I’d change the subject as soon as I could.”
“I know you would,” I smile. Perhaps it’s even a little coy, but the effects are always wasted on him, sober or not. Even so, we sit closer than we ever have, legs almost touching, my bobbing foot beating the rhythm to an internal, nervous song as my toes swing within two centimeters, now three, now one, from his knee. “I’m glad to hear it, though. You’re doing better than I thought. I don’t have to worry about you now.”
He has just told me a few of his convictions, his inner struggles he has hidden so well. Knowing someone else’s problems has a tendency to raise my affinity for him in a type of camaraderie that comes with being the sole proprietor of someone else’s secrets, and this is no different. He talks of weaknesses but I see strengths: his problems shed light on his actions and it helps me forgive his missteps and defects. He seems to think it was all established information, though. “What? You worried about me?” he asks a little too loudly with a bewildered smile. “Maybe I’m worse than I thought.”
We attempt privacy in a room of people vying for attention. It allows me to lean in and speak into his ear while my eyelashes flutter close to his skin. He isn’t aware of space and mirrors my actions—he must know. It’s purposeful, the way he slumps near me and the brush of his hand against my thigh as he gestures, our shoulders glued together. He calculates every motion to the degree at which we can be closest without becoming vulnerable to each other or to our friends who might notice.
In only a few months I will legally be able to take off my robe of timidity, but I can’t—I won’t—drink until then. I begrudgingly hold onto this choice, knowing that if I was half as drunk as he is this would be going farther. If we both had that cushion to fall on: “I didn’t know what I was doing.” Atonement is free when the memory is lost.
Our conversation ends as I fully convince myself the going rate for a kiss is three shots in my system. The hope of what will happen when I can afford it is enough for now. I talk to someone new and the night continues with me on my little cloud—a small one, but just substantial enough to allow me to float.
And now he is up. He is running for the door, and he is sick. Over the railing onto the grass as his body shivers. He loses five dollars, now ten, now twenty, as he concedes with his body that the last game of beer pong was too much. He hangs his head and waits, not ready to return inside while his sense is returning to his head.
I wait a respectable time before taking him his shirt. Goosebumps have risen all along his spine but he is still too unsure of his stomach’s disposition to risk pulling it over his head. He was right to wait, and as he is sick again, I rub his back like I would a child’s. “You okay?” I ask, but he’s unable to answer. And I am coming back to reality while I am losing my confidence, now my mask, now my lies.