Fifteen years earlier
Jack had given me a bottle of tequila for my birthday, which was your drink and his, never mine (a gift to himself, in other words), and so I hadn’t got around to opening it.
I’d had a shot of Jose Cuervo once and thought it filthy, the kind of thing my parents used to unblock drains.
And the tequila Jack had forced me to drink at your dinner party hadn’t impressed me either.
I was strictly a wine or vodka girl back then, in the days when I still liked to drink.
‘The thing about tequila, Catherine,’ said Jack, as the three of us sat in your kitchen looking at the unopened bottle, ‘is that you have to persevere. It’s like learning to drive.
’
He cracked the seal and placed it back down on the table with a smile that was irresistible.
‘Look and learn, baby,’ he said.
‘Look and learn.’
This tequila was pale gold and it was being served with quarters of lime, not lemon, and the obligatory saucer of salt.
Jack went first, knocking back his shot glass as if it was water, then you, and finally the glass was handed to me.
‘It’s too full,’ I said, stalling.
‘It will make me gag.’
The truth was, I hated being out of control.
I had serious brakes.
I could drink just enough to feel happily intoxicated and then stop, cruising through the rest of the night on my semi-high.
I didn’t chase obliteration like so many of my fellow students, and with you, more than anything, I wanted to feel present and awake.
Perhaps, even then, I knew we didn’t have much longer; I’d sensed in some way our brutal end.
But here I was on a regular Wednesday night, the exact day scorched into my mind, with the two of you smiling encouragingly as if I was a four-year-old child.
‘All right,’ I said.
‘What the hell.’
I licked salt off the back of my hand and tipped the drink down my throat, quickly sucking the lime you’d handed to me.
‘Not so bad, was it?’ Jack said, and actually he was right.
‘It’s almost delicious,’ I said, surprised.
‘That’s because your birthday present ,’ ironic emphasising of words, ‘cost me a fortune. And it’s your duty to share it with us.
’
I allowed Jack his little half-truth.
I knew that you would have paid for the tequila the way you paid for everything.
My next shot coming straight on the heels of the first was smooth and effortless, and by the third, I didn’t need the salt or lime either.
Here are some things I didn’t realise about quick, fast-paced inebriation.
Laughter so physical and all-encompassing I was poleaxed by it, literally at times unable to stand, instead sinking to my knees, arms wrapped around my ribcage.
Laughter that hurt. Inhibitions?
What were they? After my fourth tequila, I was dancing alone, in love with the music and probably myself, the two of you watching me from the sofa.
You smiling, Jack just watching.
The bottle slowly emptying.