The seventh shot is the worst. Sunny hates shots on a good day but her head is all over the place today so she let Fenfen talk her into it, and they did three tequila shots in quick succession until her mouth was on fire and she had to eat three slices of lime to get rid of the foul taste. Then, thanks to Fraser, two shots of some kind of citrusy vodka, followed by a gross mix of coffee liqueur and Irish cream. None of them particularly nice to a girl who hardly drinks, but the seventh – a foul mix of whiskey, rum, vodka and orange – leaves a bitter taste on Sunny's tongue that makes her gag.
"That's fucking disgusting!" she cries as she wipes her mouth, once she's sure she isn't going to vomit all over the bar. Lickety Split is loud and vibrant and the music is eclectic and her heart is full, and she feels as though her blood has been converted into pure electricity thrumming through her veins.
"But it'll get you buzzed!" Fraser yells back, clapping Sunny on the back. His tropical shirt is unbuttoned so low that she can see the scars on his chest, and he has enough product in his hair to make his floppy curls stand up straight despite the heat in the bar, bodies cramming all around them in search of alcohol.
It doesn't take much to get Sunny buzzed. She's pretty sure she was tipsy after the second shot and now her limbs feel loose, her mind more free than it has been all week.
Ravi trips over to them with five glasses sweating on a flimsy tray. All of the drinks are brightly coloured, each with a paper umbrella and a tassel-topped stirrer. "Don't take it yet or I'll drop it! I got you a pink pussy," he says. "I don't know what's in it but it sounded gay."
Everything here sounds gay. Fenfen wasn't wrong – Lickety Split is definitely marketed towards queer women and it's wonderful. All the staff are women, from the bartenders and waitresses to the security and the DJ, and Sunny hasn't spotted a single leery man in the crowd. Everyone here is young and relaxed, drinking with friends or kissing people who want to be kissed. It makes her heart sing to see a couple of girls sharing the same side of a booth, sipping colourful cocktails and holding hands and making each other laugh.
The three of them join Delilah at the booth she has saved, where she's chatting to Fenfen. It's a perfect fit for five, Sunny sandwiched between her four closest friends.
"This is exactly what I needed," she says as she takes a long sip of her fruity drink. It's the dangerous kind of cocktail, so deliciously sweet that she can't even taste the alcohol and it goes down as smooth as juice.
"Bad day?" Ravi asks.
"You have no idea," she says, though she's feeling a lot better now.
She hasn't spoken to any of them since she saw Astrid and Celeste, except to ask them to meet her at the bar. After leaving their house, she went straight home and blasted her Britney CD so loud as she tidied that at one point, the man from the flat next door hammered on the wall and then the front door and threatened to call the police. After that, she listened with her headphones and didn't stop until she had identified every single thing in her room that she didn't recognise. All the books and music are in a pile to be consumed over the coming weeks. Photos and receipts are in a box to be gone through to piece together her own timeline of events.
Ravi gives her a look. The kind of look she calls the concerned best friend, the one that urges her to talk to him, to share what's on her mind. The look she attempts to shoot back is one that says she will, once they're home and sober, but she's not fully in control of her facial expressions at the moment because the alcohol has numbed her lips. All she manages to do is stare Ravi dead in the eyes as she loses control of her straw and dribbles down her chin. His façade cracks, a laugh bursting from a grin.
"You're such a messy bitch," he says, throwing a slightly damp napkin at her. She doesn't question where it's been before she uses it to blot at her face and what passes as a going out outfit for her – a slightly tighter top, slightly fancier shorts. She's even wearing a bandeau bra, but only because her shiny sleeveless top is so thin that it outlines every bump of her areola without extra coverage.
"My life is a messy bitch!" Sunny yells out, far too loud. The alcohol has also stolen her volume control, much to the amusement of her friends, who have almost never seen her like this.
Only Ravi and Delilah have been privy to a tipsy Sunny, when she drank too much as a fresher and ended up crying in the toilets of the university club. When a couple of girls got pissy about Ravi cutting the line to tend to Sunny, he had tried to tell them that his favourite lesbian was having a crisis but the message they'd received was that he was a lesbian in crisis. The girls had apologised sincerely for thinking he was a boy. He had laughed all the way home and dined out on that for months.
Delilah's sitting next to Sunny. She throws an arm around her and Sunny breathes in deep to fill her lungs with the sweet floral scent of her friend. Paired with the coconut oil in her hair, she smells like summer on the beach and in her bright yellow dress, she looks like it too. She's a vision of pure beauty to match her sunny smile.
"I'm glad I came out tonight," she says. Delilah is a homebody: her idea of a good night out is a night spent trawling the twenty-four-hour library on the university campus to the west of Black Sands, or a night spent with her telescope and a takeaway.
"I'm glad you came," Sunny says. "I've got all my favourite people right here." She tries to stretch her arms around all four of her friends and almost knocks over at least three drinks in the process.
"I'm honoured that you like me more than your own girlfriend," Fenfen says, laughing, and Sunny remembers that while she did technically tell Fenfen the truth, she doesn't know the half of what has happened.
"Okay, four of my favourite people," she amends.
"Did she not want to come out with us?"
Ah, shit. Sunny's mouth stretches into an exaggerated grimace as she tries to think of an excuse for forgetting to ask her girlfriend to a lesbian bar. The truth is that Viv never crossed her mind. She doesn't know Viv's number, didn't even consider her in the midst of her existential crisis when she called Ravi and Delilah and told them to meet her and Fenfen at eight.
"Just friends tonight," she says at last, and she's glad Fenfen is the only one in the dark, because she's the only one of her friends who wouldn't dig. The little voice in the back of her head tells her that she has done something wrong, that she is somehow betraying Viv, but how can she betray someone she barely knows? It's not like she's run away again without telling anyone. She's just having fun with her friends. It's fine. Everything's fine.
*
There's dancing. Sunny is not a dancer. Her coordination is akin to that of a newborn giraffe, but too many drinks have stripped her of her inhibitions and when Fenfen drags her onto the floor, she laughs and brings out her best moves.
They are not good. But they are funny, and it's worth embarrassing herself to see her friends laugh so hard that they risk wetting themselves. She moves so violently that her top shimmies down until she's wearing it as a belt, and she doesn't even realise until Fenfen cackles and grabs her, holding her still so she can tug it back up.
"You little whore, I love it," she says, holding Sunny's hands and trying to dance with her. But Sunny's all elbows and knees and bobbing head, and she needs a two-metre radius around her to keep other people safe. Fenfen has already twice dodged a flailing hand that could have broken her nose. "Have you ever drunk this much?"
"I don't drink," Sunny says, and it sounds so silly when she's so drunk that she can't stop laughing, and Fenfen has to drag her back to the booth.
"This one's a liability," she says. Sunny's still going, boogying in her seat and nearly impaling herself with her straw as she tries to finish off her drink.
"This is so good," she groans. "What's in it? I want another one."
"You're gonna regret it in the morning," Delilah warns. She has been sensible and stuck to the same drink, slowly sipping her third mojito because she knows better than to mix. Sunny hasn't thought twice about what she's drinking and to be quite honest, she doesn't give a fuck because she is feeling impermanent. If the world as she knows it can be whipped out from under her feet at any moment, why not enjoy the moments she has?
"I need a new one but I can't get out," she says, pouting. Pressing a ten-pound note into Fenfen's hand, she bats her eyelashes and asks for another drink, and Fenfen is all too happy to oblige.
Once she's gone, Ravi switches places with Delilah and scoots close to Sunny, his thigh pressed to hers. "Did something happen today?" he asks, his lips brushing her ear. "You don't seem yourself."
"I'm not myself!" She laughs. "That's the whole problem, right? But it's fine! Everything's fine!"
He can't get much out of her and it's too loud in here. When Fenfen comes back with a couple of drinks and a few more shots to be shared out amongst the table, Ravi catches her and asks, "Were you with Sunny today?"
"Nope." She pulls her hair out of her lip gloss. "We met here just before you guys got here."
"Do you know where she was? Did something happen?"
"No ide—oh, yeah, she was being really weird this morning! But, like, funny weird. You know how she is." She chuckles to herself and says, "Something about going to see some lesbians about a black hole, I think it was? I figured it was, like, a gynae problem but she didn't want me to take a look."
Ravi has not had that much to drink. He still has enough active brain cells to decipher what Fenfen's said and apply it to Sunny, and figure out that she's been back to where it started. But even if she wanted to talk to him about it, she's pretty far gone and he wants her to enjoy the night, so he takes one of the shots and clinks it against her glass.
"Cheers!" they say in unison. He downs the shot. She takes a clumsy sip of her drink and inhales an ice cube that lodges itself in her throat, stopping her in her tracks. Delilah and Fenfen are chatting and Ravi is recovering from his shot and it isn't until Fraser notices her stricken expression that he cries out and whacks her back so hard that it will definitely leave a bruise.
Sunny coughs the ice onto the table and once she has processed her momentary shock (while Fraser surreptitiously scoops every piece of ice out of her glass), she laughs as though nothing funnier has ever happened than almost choking to death on an ice cube that would've melted right after killing her.
"She's gonna feel it tomorrow," Fenfen says as she throws back a shot with a gasp, smacking her lips before she licks the inside of the glass. Not a drop of tequila goes to waste.
"Tomorrow isn't a guarantee," Sunny says, only half listening to her friend as she sips her drink more carefully this time, the straw delicately pinched between two fingers.
"No, honey, it certainly isn't. Not if you drink like that," Delilah says, gently moving the glass away from Sunny. "Take it easy, Sunshine."
Not many people call her Sunshine even though it's an obvious leap from Sunny, and even in her drunken state, she remembers the last time someone called her that. Viv, only yesterday, as they parted ways and she urged Sunny not to be a stranger.
Yet here she is, acting totally out of character because she's lost sight of who she is and it's terrifying, and she isn't sure how best to deal with it. In that moment, she makes the switch from the kind of drunk where everything is hilarious and nothing feels serious, to the kind of drunk where everything is too serious and everything's the end of the world.
*
when having an existential crisis, alcohol is the answer, right?