I started laughing all over again and clinked my glass against his, and after a moment Dec laughed loudest of all and clashed his glass against both of ours, and we went back to arguing over where to go for our holiday.
I’d gone right off the idea of bringing them home with me, though. When Dec was in this mode he got unpredictable as well as aggressive—he wasn’t brave enough to do anything really disastrous, but still, I wasn’t in the mood. Things still felt a bit precarious, wobbly at the joints, as if they shouldn’t be prodded too hard. I wanted to lie back on my sofa and smoke my hash and melt nicely into a giggly puddle, not keep an eye on Dec while he buzzed around my living room collecting things to use in a makeshift game of bowling and I tried not to glance at anything fragile in case it gave him ideas. Deep down I still hold this against him: twenty-eight is old enough to have outgrown that particular brand of stupid crap, and if Dec had managed to do that, he and Sean would have come home with me and and and.
After that things go fuzzy again. The next thing I remember with any clarity is saying good-bye to the guys outside the pub, closing time, loose noisy clumps of people arguing over where to go next, heads bending to cigarette lighters, girls teetering on their heels, yellow-lit taxi signs cruising past—“Listen,” Dec was telling me, with hyperfocused drunken sincerity, “no, listen. Joking aside. I’m delighted that it all worked out for you. I am. You’re a good person. Toby, I’m serious, I’m over the moon that it—” He would have gone on like that indefinitely, only Sean flagged down a taxi and steered Dec into it with a hand between his shoulder blades, and then gave me a nod and a wave and strolled off towards Portobello and Audrey.
I could have taken a taxi, but it was a nice night, still and cool, with a soft easy edge that promised more spring in the morning. I was drunk but not to the point of unsteadiness; home was less than a half-hour walk away. And I was starving; I wanted a takeaway, something spicy and pungent and enormous. I buttoned my overcoat and started walking.
A flame-juggler at the top of Grafton Street whipping up his straggly crowd to a rhythmic clap, drunk guys roaring unintelligible encouragement or distraction. A homeless guy curled in a doorway, wrapped in a blue sleeping bag, out cold through the whole thing. While I walked I rang Melissa; she wouldn’t go to bed until we’d had our good-night phone call and I didn’t want to keep her up any later, and anyway I couldn’t wait till I got home. “I miss you,” I said, when she answered. “You’re lovely.”
She laughed. “So are you. Where are you?”
The sound of her voice made me press the phone closer to my ear. “Stephen’s Green. I was in Hogan’s with the lads. Now I’m walking home and thinking about how lovely you are.”
“So come over.”
“I can’t. I’m drunk.”
“I don’t care.”
“No. I’ll stink of booze and I’ll snore in your ear, and you’ll dump me and go off with some smooth-talking billionaire who has a pod machine to purify his blood when he comes home from the pub.”
“I don’t know any smooth-talking billionaires. I promise.”
“Oh, you do. They’re always there. They just don’t swoop until they see their chance. Like mosquitoes.”
She laughed again. The sound of it warmed me all over. I had hardly expected her to sulk or pout or hang up on me for neglecting her, but the ready sweetness of her was another reminder that Dec was right, I was a lucky bastard. I remembered listening with slightly self-congratulatory awe to his stories of elaborate drama with exes, people locking themselves or each other into or out of various unlikely places while everyone sobbed and/or yelled and/or pleaded—none of that stuff would even occur to Melissa. “Can I come over tomorrow? As soon as I’m human again?”
“Course! If it’s nice again, we can have lunch out in the garden and fall asleep in the sun and snore together.”
“You don’t snore. You make happy little purry noises.”
“Ew. Attractive.”
“It is. It’s lovely. You’re lovely. Did I mention you’re lovely?”
“You are drunk, silly.”
“I told you.” The real reason I didn’t want to go over to Melissa’s—actually I did want to, very badly, but the reason I wasn’t going to—was, of course, that I was drunk enough that I might find myself telling her about the Gouger episode. I wasn’t worried that she would dump me, or anything extreme like that, but it would have bothered her, and I cared a lot about not bothering Melissa.
I wanted as much of her as I could get before I hung up, though. “Who bought the steampunk armchair?”
“Oh, Toby, I wish you could have seen them! This couple in their forties, all in yacht-club gear, she had one of those stripy Breton tops, you’d never expect—I thought maybe a blanket, if the colors weren’t too wild for them, but they went straight for the armchair. I think it must have reminded them of something; they kept looking at each other and laughing, and after about five minutes they decided they didn’t care whether it went with anything else in their house, they had to have it. I love when people are unexpected.”
“We’ll have to celebrate tomorrow. I’ll bring prosecco.”
“Yes! Bring the one we had last time, the—” A yawn caught her off guard. “Sorry, it’s not the company! I’m just—”
“It’s late. You shouldn’t have waited up for me.”
“I don’t mind. I like saying good night.”
“Me too. Now go to sleep. I love you.”
“I love you too. Night-night.” She blew me a kiss.
“Night-night.”
For some reason this is the mistake—hardly a mistake, really, what’s wrong with having a few pints on a Friday night after a stressful week, what’s wrong with wanting the girl you love to think the best of you?—this is the choice to which I return over and over, picking at it compulsively as if I could somehow peel it off and throw it away: one less shot of whiskey with the lads, one less pint, a sandwich at my desk as I rejigged the exhibition program, and I would have been sober enough that I would have trusted myself to go over to Melissa’s. I’ve thought about that might-have-been night so much that I know every moment of it: spinning her off her feet in a hug when she opened her door, Congratulations! I knew you’d do it!; the soft breathing curl of her in bed, her hair tickling my chin; lazy Saturday brunch in our favorite café, walk by the canal to see the swans, Melissa swinging our clasped hands. I miss it as ferociously as if it were something real and solid and irreplaceable that I somehow managed to mislay and could somehow, if only I knew the trick, salvage and keep safe.
“You didn’t hang up.”
“Neither did you.”
“Night-night. Sleep tight.”
“Safe home. Night-night.” Kisses, more kisses.