Page 43 of Late Bloomer
“I told him he clearly had good taste and wasn’t too difficult to look at either, and that I thought, just maybe, I’d like to know him too.”
“You’re talking about me,” Alfie says, looping his arm around Evens’s waist and planting a kiss on the swell of his shoulder. “I can tell.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because you look all lovesick and dopey,” Alfie says with a bored shrug.
Evens chuckles, bending to give him a light kiss.
“Wow,” I say, staring at both their glowing smiles as I blink back little pokes of tears. “You’re so into each other it’s almost disgusting.”
“I know!” Alfie cheers, plopping a hand on my shoulder. “Isn’t it marvelous?”
“Can I get you a drink, Opal?” Evens asks, giving his own full wineglass a quick swirl. I watch the deep red liquid slosh around the sides.
I open my mouth, almost saying yes. Damn that looks good.
But instead, I bite my tongue, then shake my head, grabbing a can of sparkling water from the open cooler by the wall near us. I crack it open and chug down half of it in a second, letting the ticklish burn bubble up my head and down my throat. “I’m good with this, thanks.”
“Easy, wild one, we’ll be scraping you up off the floor if you keep that up,” Alfie says with a smirk. “Come on, darling,” he adds, tugging on Evens’s arm. “I’m so close to convincing Diksha to tell you about the time she nearly ran me over with her truck.”
“I have no doubt you deserved it,” Evens says, shooting me a brief wave as they head into the center of the fold. I watch from my safe corner, chugging down more of my drink and wishing it were, in fact, wine.
Wine would help so much right now.
Wine would make my hair less hideous, my attempts at conversation less awkward. It would make me funnier and cuter and interesting and brave enough to walk over to where Peppersits on the couch, a smile plastered on her face while Alfie entertains her and the others with another delightful story.
But, as I chug down the rest of my sparkling water and grab another, I know wine would be a bad choice… and I’m trying to make less of those.
Like most labels in my life, I’m not sure if the termalcoholicfits, but my relationship to drinking is certainly messy. Whatever I may be—autistic or ADHD or some tangled swirl of both—moving through the world often feels like a sensory assault, and blunting the impact with a bunch of drinks is a lovely temptation.
Alcohol isn’t something I crave, necessarily—I don’t even like the taste, and I can go months without thinking about it. A glass of wine here or there at a movie night with my sisters usually is nothing more than that. But a drink at a party like this—with lots of voices and people and energy and this frenetic need in my body to act the right way and connect and make people like me—most often turns into three drinks. Then five. And next thing I know, it’s morning and I hate myself more than ever.
It’s like some amorphous, blobby creature is plopped on top of my brain after the first sip, growing and snuggling between the lobes and dimming the stimuli around me, making the world a little less sharp and the people a little less scary. Like I can’t be hurt if I give the bacchanalian beast enough.
“You’re being very 2011 emo sulking in the corner with your beanie pulled low,” Ophelia says, leaning against the wall next to me, Olivia hovering in front of us with a fresh drink.
“Yeah, well… I peaked in my Tumblr era, what can I say?”
“Something a little less sad, maybe?” Olivia says with a shrug.
“Come on, Opie. Join the party!” Ophelia tugs on my arm, but I stay rooted.
“I’m really embarrassed about my hair,” I squeak out, mortification pinching my voice. “I feel really uncomfortable.”
“No one will notice your hair,” Olivia says, wrapping an arm around my waist.
“Or, if they do, it will make a really funny story.”
Olivia punches Ophelia for me.
“Do you ever get so swamped by the irrational devastation that you’re the ugliest person in the room? And it’s so startling it makes you feel like you’re going to cry?”
“Yes.”
“All the time.”
I glance at my sisters with incredulity. They’re two of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen.
