It's Not You It's Me (18 page)

What a man—what a tour guide, I think, hoping Jas has seen his efforts.

Finally we reach the end of the song and everyone claps. Jas and I clamber off the stage. ‘That’s it for me,’ he says. ‘Never again. Come on, I’ll buy you another drink after all your hard work.’

I decide not to tell him about the relaxing on stage thing. After all, it’s over and done with, and if I tell him now he’s only going to worry he’s given himself away.

We pass Sharon and Shane on our way to the bar. ‘Hope you liked it,’ Jas simpers, and I pull him away from her. He’s drunker than I thought and seems to be looking for trouble now. When I turn back Sharon’s still watching us, not quite knowing what to make of it all, especially the comment. Shane winks.

‘How much have you had?’ I ask Jas as we sit down at the bar.

‘Not enough,’ he answers. ‘Hey, look.’ He points to a row of about fifteen bottles on the bar. ‘Schnapps. And lots of it. Let’s do it.’

‘Do what?’ I eye him warily, trying for the life of me to forget all the things I’d thought of doing
to
Jas only minutes ago.

‘Them all, baby!’

That’s what I thought he meant. I feel drunk just looking at the bottles. ‘Maybe one.’ I feel his arm brush mine and my hormones kick in again. Down, hormones, down. ‘Maybe a couple…’

‘Great!’ Jas says, and calls the barman over. A minute or so later I have five shot glasses placed in front of me.

Pineapple, cinnamon, peppermint, butterscotch and tropical.

We try each schnapps shot at the same time, starting with the pineapple and working our way through. We use as many poncey winemaking terms as we can to describe them.

‘This one’s very…fruity,’ Jas says, after tasting the tropical schnapps—the last shot.

I laugh at that. Really laugh. Tropical. Fruity. Actually, it’s quite hard to stop. Which makes me recognise the fact that I have now missed the turn-off for Really, Really Pissed and have instead taken the Completely Smashed exit ramp.

The party steps up a notch then. A group of guys get up and attempt the Beatles’ ‘Twist and Shout’ which everyone sings along to. Next is ‘Love Shack’ by the B52s and then ‘YMCA’ by the Village People.

I swivel around on my seat to watch them, and when I glance back a few minutes later Jas has a whole new line-up of shot glasses in front of him. He sees me looking.

‘Thought we should move onto singles,’ he says. ‘Got a lot of flavours to cover.’

I shake my head. ‘Not me. You’re going to have to do this round by yourself, unless you want to be picking me up off the floor in the next ten minutes or so.’

Jas opens his mouth to argue, but then shuts it again and shrugs. He picks up one shot glass and downs it in one go.

Then the next one.

And the next one.

And the next one.

One more and he’s done.

‘What are you trying to do? Put yourself on the liver transplant waiting list?’

‘Nah, just makes her look better.’ Jas points out Sharon, who happens to be staring at him. She waves. ‘Man, she’s thick,’ Jas says, and immediately orders a couple of beers. ‘Doesn’t she know? Doesn’t she get it?’

I begin to say there’s a lot of things I’m not getting either this trip, when the barman places Jas’s beers on the bar. ‘That’s enough, then,’ I say in a motherly ‘don’t mess with me’ tone, worrying about the number of drinks he’s downed. He must be ninety per cent proof by now.

Group after group take the stage, and the evening starts to become a blur. The same songs appear over and over again but nobody seems to care—not now that they’ve got more than a few drinks under their belts. When there’s a bit of a break, Jas taps me on the arm.

‘What?’ I lean in so I can hear him.

‘Thanks for inviting me, Charlie,’ he says. ‘To Oktoberfest.’

‘That’s, um, OK.’

‘I’m really, really happy,’ he continues.

‘I can see that.’

‘Really, really, really happy.’

‘That’s great.’ I pat him on the arm. ‘Really, really, really great.’

He goes to stand up then. ‘Where’re you off to?’ I say.

‘Got to go…’ he says, heading in the direction of the men’s. He seems reasonably focused on getting there, and when Shane stops him halfway and starts talking to him I
don’t worry. He’ll be fine. Shane will look after him. I turn back to the bar and order a glass of water.

I’m just sucking on a piece of ice from the bottom of the glass, thinking Jas is taking his time, when I hear it.

Hear him, that is. Jas.

I get up off the bar stool and turn around. He’s up on the stage.

I walk down the few steps from the bar so I can see properly. Shane’s still there. A few steps away. I make my way over to him.

‘Where’s Sharon?’ My eyes search for her as I ask. She’s not where she was before, at a table with a few of her friends.

‘It’s OK. I sent her off with a few of the Beer-drinking Society kids for some fags.’

I pause, thinking this over. ‘Are you telling me you put him up to this?’

‘But he
wanted
to sing.’ Shane grins. ‘Couldn’t stop the man.’

Oh, no. At least Sharon’s gone, I think, quickly checking the door before I turn back to watch Jas. He’s as drunk as a skunk and I can only hope Sharon and co stay away for a few more minutes. Jas was so worried about it before—about being found out. The only reason he isn’t now, and is cavorting around on stage as if he lives there, is because he’s completely and utterly plastered.

‘A command performance,’ Shane says to me. ‘I can’t wait.’

The sad thing is, neither can I. I know I should go up there and wrench Jas from the stage, but I can’t. I can’t do anything but stand here and stare. My feet are glued to the floor and my eyes to Jas.

And then he starts.

I know the song as soon as I hear the first few bars. Violent Femmes, ‘Add it Up.’

Jas begins right on cue, sounding way, way too good to be in some karaoke bar. Funky or not. Don’t hurry back, Sharon. Don’t hurry back…

He moves through the first verse expertly. It’s halfway through the second verse, when he starts singing about why he can’t get a screw, that I start to forget about Sharon.

Bugger Sharon.

And I forget about the little talk I had with myself in the room this evening too. The one about thinking I could resist this man if I wanted to.

Bugger the little talk.

Because. Jas. Looks. Fabulous.

He’s really enjoying himself up there. And, just like before, he has that presence again. I watch, entranced. But then all of a sudden Jas starts to seem a bit taken aback. He’s scanning the crowd, his eyes flitting from one face to the other. He looks back at the bar again—he’s searching for me, I realise. A few more passes over the crowd and he spots me.

And that’s when he moves into the third verse.

He gives it all he’s got. Right at me. My knees go weak as the lyrics come flooding back to me. And then, right when I’m least expecting it, he does the stare. The Zamiel stare.

I am rooted to the spot, for want of a better word.

Shane leans over. ‘So much for our date. My bets are on you getting some tonight…’

I unfreeze then. ‘Hey, don’t give me that crap. I know, remember? About the Fine Arts.’ In my drunken state, I don’t care who hears.

He nods. ‘I know. It doesn’t matter. I’d still bet on you getting some tonight.’

I start to argue. ‘I told you, we’re not…we don’t…it’s—’ before I give up. And we both turn back to watch the rest of the performance.

When Jas finishes there’s an almighty cheer. He makes his way off the stage—missing a few stairs here and there—and over to where Shane and I are standing. He flings one arm around my shoulders and I almost collapse under his weight as he leans on me for support.

‘What happened to never again?’ I ask him.

He laughs. ‘Couldn’t help myself.’

I give Shane a look. Sure.

Sharon arrives then, pushing her way in beside us and Shane. ‘What’s going on? Did I miss anything?’

Shane winks at us. ‘Nothing, darling. Just some drunken old hack on stage.’

‘I’d better sit you down,’ I say to the wavering Jas, and, seeing there are no seats left at the tables down here, pull him off in the direction of the bar and decide I’ll just have to pay the bartender
not
to serve him this time. When he’s back on his stool, I order another few glasses of water.

‘Here, drink this,’ I say, pushing one over to him when they arrive.

He does as he’s told, and has another one besides.

‘Bit better?’ I ask.

He nods. ‘Needed that. But now I’m really going to have to do the FFP.’

‘The what?’

‘The first fatal piss. Of the evening. You watch. Be going every ten minutes after this.’

‘I really didn’t need to know that,’ I say.

‘You asked!’

I don’t argue. I asked, true. I just didn’t want to
know
. ‘Go on—go.’ I wave one hand at him.

He goes. This time, though, I watch him walk the whole way, not wanting any more accidental sing-alongs.

Which reminds me of what has just happened. The song. The stare thing. And it’s then, watching him walk away, that I know I’m going to have to tell him what’s going on. I can’t just say ‘bugger the little talk’—dismiss it like that. I’m going to have to lay down some rules. Because I really can’t do this any more. It has to stop.

So that’s it, I think. And right then and there, on the bar stool, I start to form my plan. I’m going to tell him. I’m going to tell him tonight, while I’m still drunk and have the guts to do it. I’m going to sit him down when we get back to the hotel and tell him I lied that night at Brown’s—the night I told him I don’t feel that way about him any more.

I only said that because I didn’t know what else to say, and I think I was scared of endangering our friendship again. The truth is, I still have feelings for him. All kinds of feelings and most of them not very ladylike. In fact most of them could be attributed to the goddess Hussy, and she and I don’t know how to stop them. Even knowing they’re unrequited isn’t enough to turn me off. Which means there’s nothing left to do to make it stop but explain the way things are…

And then tell him that we shouldn’t see each other any more.

It’s the only solution. The only workable solution. I may have fooled myself for a good forty-eight hours or so back there, but when it comes down to it I can’t just be friends. I’ve tried that this trip and it hasn’t worked. Thus, it has to end.

I take a deep breath and swivel back around on my chair.

‘You look serious,’ Jas says, coming over to lean on the bar.

The bartender places a shot glass in front of me. When did he order that? ‘What’s this?’ I ask.

‘Cherry. You like cherry.’

‘I don’t know if I can…’

Jas moves in closer to me. So close I can feel his leg hot against mine. Oh, God. He puts the glass up to my lips and stares right into the back of my eyes. ‘You can.’

I down the shot and ask the bartender for another two glasses of water.

As Jas and I drink them I sneak a look at him from time to time, wondering if I should just tell him now—get my little speech over and done with. But, no, I decide in the end, the hotel’s better. We can talk there. Properly.

I drink two more glasses of water before my bladder tells me it’s really time to hit the bathroom.

As I start to get up Sharon gets onto the stage and the first few bars of Bette Midler’s ‘The Rose’ start up.

Everyone boos. And rightly so.

I knew I wouldn’t have fitted in with those girls.

‘Coming with you,’ Jas says, as Sharon keeps singing, regardless of what the crowd thinks. ‘Going to have to go again in a few minutes anyway. And who knows? Mightn’t be able to hear her from back there.’

I stumble, and I mean
stumble
, my way across the floor in the direction of the ladies’. That one cherry schnapps has taken me way beyond completely smashed territory now. So far beyond it, in fact, that I’m starting to get the sinking feeling that I’ve had far, far too much to drink and that the stumbling is going to get much worse before it gets better.

I trip over one of the three steps that leads up to the corridor where the bathrooms are situated, and Jas grabs me by the waist to steady me. Then he moves in front and starts pulling me along with one hand, steering the way.

We walk down the corridor in silence. The ladies’ is first, and Jas slows down to let me go in and then continues down the hall himself. Except that I forget to let go of his hand for some reason…

And me forgetting to let go of Jas’s hand pulls him back.

He turns around, surprised, and moves back closer to me. It’s then that I know I have to put my plan into action. I have to tell him. I have to tell him now. It can’t wait any longer.

As he enters my personal space, I revise the plan quickly in my head:

1. Tell him I still have feelings for him (leaving out the part about them not being very ladylike).
   
2. Tell him I’ve tried, but I can’t stop these feelings.
   
3. Tell him I know the feelings are unrequited.
   
4. Tell him that being friends isn’t enough for me.
   
5. Tell him the only solution to the problem is to not see each other any more.
   

Right. That’s it. Good one, Charlie. It’s perfectly simple. A perfectly simple five-step plan. And, now that it’s all straight in my mind I open my mouth and get ready to put the perfectly simple five-step plan into action.

But somehow things go a little bit astray.

Instead of moving into my carefully thought out speech, I push Jas up against the wall, grab his head to bring him down to my height and start kissing him.

He kisses me back. Really kisses me back.

And I don’t think I’ve kissed like this since high school. Not with this kind of fervour.

As we keep going, people start to push past us in the not so wide hallway. But we don’t care. We can’t seem to keep our hands off each other.

It’s disgraceful.

A pash-off. A drunken pash-off.

And it’s good.

Fantastically, smashingly, lip-smackingly good.

Eventually, after what seems like hours, we break off. ‘I have to go,’ I say, nodding towards the ladies’. ‘Desperately.’ I start towards the door, but Jas grabs me before I get far and we’re at it all over again. I break off once more. ‘Really. I really, really have to go now.’