Fake Tales

Chapter 11- Party time part 2

"Dom we should take him upstairs. Mel?" Maddy's voice was sharp to my ears, I turned my head towards her like a shot. 

"Can you help us?" I nodded, my face a picture of concern. Dom wrapped an arm underneath Joe's supporting his weight and Maddy copied him. Joe had his head down, breathing heavily. 

I followed them out of the room, noticing as I did, Maddy's hand slip into Joe' s and the two of them exchange a long glance. When I looked back she had released his hand. Was I missing something here? I thought I had at least followed everything happening with my friends recently, but perhaps something had slipped under the radar. Maybe I'd been acting like more of a zombie than I'd originally believed. We stumbled under Joe's deadweight across the hallway, I had a feeling Maddy wasn't doing as much as she could to support his weight. Lazy girl. Thankfully, Joe's room was downstairs so the obstacle of stairs wasn't an issue. That would have been too much effort. 

"I'm just going to get him some water, Mel would you take my place" I nodded and positioned myself on Joe's right side,  though I would much rather have gone instead. Not only was I much shorter than the two boys (I made our trio uneven), but being alone with Dom and a drunken Joe wasn't much different to being completely alone with him. The old me would have been completely at ease, but no. The new me was sweating bullets from anxiety . 

We set him on the bed in silence, and my heart constricted slightly that we could not act normally around each other anymore, beating faster, knowing that it was utterly and completely my fault. Joe, got up from the bed with surprisingly agility and headed for the door. 

"Bathroom!" He excused himself. Great, now we really were alone. I looked around at Dom to find him studying me intently- trying to figure me out probably. I didn't know who I was anymore, so how could he expect to? A glint of light from Joe's ensuite toilet caught my eye. Wait.... Joe had an ensuite, so why didn't he just stumble there instead? 

Suddenly there was a loud clunk as the door was closed from the outside. Our eyebrows pulled together in confusion and I walked towards the door with the full intention of leaving as  quickly as possible. Before my fingers had even touched the handle, I heard the unmistakable click as a key turned in the lock, holding us in the room. 

"Hey! What are you doing?" I yelled through the door. 

"Making sure Joe doesn't drink anymore" Maddy's voice replied, muffled by the music blaring from the lounge. 

"Joe's not in here you idiot!" I shouted back at her, feeling the old fire return. Dom just glared at the door, concentrating hard on something. 

"What do you mean? Where is he?" her tone was coloured with concern and something else that I didn't recognize. 

"He went to the toilet to be sick I think" I returned, my mouth set into a hard line. If anyone else was imprisoned with me, I would have found this slightly amusing, but not in present company. 

"I better go and see if he's OK" her voice sounded fainter, as if she were moving away from the door. I looked at Dom in disbelief, but all I got back was a look of resignation. 

"Oi! Let us out first Mad" I shouted, no patience left anymore. No reply. She had already walked away. I opened my mouth to call her back, a stream of unfriendly words ready to colour my tone. 

"Don't bother. She'll be back soon" Dom mumbled. I studied his face with uncertainty; how long was 'soon'? I nodded and sunk down on the bad next to him, leaving a large space between us. The silence screamed at us. We sat there for a long time, every minute seemed like a millenia. In reality, probably about 10 minutes passed.