I had never tasted alcohol before he got his first girlfriend.
She was quite average looking, in my eyes, with long blonde hair and plain brown eyes. She was pretty, I suppose, but she seemed ice cold and her smile never reached her eyes.
She asked him to be her boyfriend in January when clouds had suddenly formed in the sky like a bad omen.
They had been partners for a science project. I was put with Sawyer, who had recently moved into our class, which I thought was good, and I spent a great deal of time giving my sympathy to him for he had been partnered with Jenny Green.
They had been working together for around a month before she apparently fell head over her ridiculously high heels for him, and asked him to be her boyfriend.
He said yes.
He spent a lot of time with her, although he never seemed that enthusiastic about it.
"It's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? Hang around with your girlfriend?" he would say, tiredly.
I still saw him a lot, we saw each other some weekends, but I felt different.
I felt somewhat empty after witnessing 'the asking', like my heart had lost something, and I didn't know what it meant at all.
I was down a lot of the time, and when people are down a lot of the time they sometimes drink, and I thought that would make me feel better.
My dad kept alcohol for special occasions, and I downed the bottle without checking to see what it actually was. The taste was sour and bitter but it made me warm inside, I could feel again.
I threw up a lot and I found out that I'm not a happy drunk, a violent drunk or a sexual predator drunk.
I was a sad drunk. I cried until I fell asleep, woke up because I had thrown up again and then I cried some more.
My dad found me sobbing on the floor, mopped up my sick and tucked me into bed like I was a little kid. I could tell, even while inebriated, that he was disappointed in me, but he cared for me then, and in the morning when an orchestra of drums was echoing through my head.
I didn't tell him about it, I didn't want him to worry about me or my intense dislike for Jenny Green.
Fortunately, they broke up after just four months.
"She was fed up of me wanting to spend time with you," he told me. "She told me I had to decide between her and you. So here I am."
He seemed to not care at all really, and it was almost as if those four months with Jenny Green had never happened.
***
"Did you ever get drunk again after that?" she asked me.
"I did."
"...do you think he actually ever liked that girl, Jenny?"
A second question, that wasn't normal, I didn't like it. "No."
She leaned back in her chair.
