**Amelie**
"UNO," Josh said with a wolfish grin from beside me as he slapped a card down on the pile in the middle of the coffee table. He seemed pretty confident that I didn't have a yellow card or an eight of anything. He was right.
I flipped my wild card onto the pile with a shouted "Ha!" and reached forward to pull the pile of ten Euro notes into a pile. Spreading them out into a fan I stood up and waved them over my head as I did a little bump and grind around the room. The pizzas we'd had for dinner may have been accompanied by several bottles of absolutely delicious Italian wine.
Gray dropped the massive pile of cards in his hand in disgust. "You're a savage competitor aren't you?"
I continued my dance around the room waving my pile of notes in everyone's faces. Bas and Lucy were wearing sunglasses and had refused to sit next to each other so I was not the only one with a competitive streak. "Yup. You try spending two rainy weeks with your cousins on a North Wales caravan holiday and see how it hones your UNO instincts."
"Who even invited her to play?" Ace pouted. A flurry of cards hit him in the face.
"You did you absolute berk. You could have checked she wasn't a ringer first!" Gray flicked one last card at him.
"So," I resumed my place on the sofa, "who's up for another game?" A chorus of groans broke out.
"You've emptied my pockets woman," Van complained, "I'm going to have to sell my child for medical experiments." I grinned at him recognising the Monty Python quote. My dad was obsessed with Monty Python.
Ace emitted an ominous chuckle and steepled his fingers in front of him. "Oh I think another round is very much in order but I know a way we can play where we all come out as winners. Who's in?"
There was a round of enthusiastic whoops and one very definitive, "No fuckin' way," from Van who took a sip of his mineral water and bestowed a bemused look of resignation upon the rest of us. I had no idea of what I was agreeing to but agree I did.
***
May I suggest that if someone ever suggests that you turn an innocent hand of UNO into a drinking game that you think long and hard about it. The reverses are a killer and don't even get me started on the draw fours. Armed with several bottles of limoncello Ace had proceeded to get us utterly obliterated.
Someone had won the game but I can't determine if it was the person who'd finished with no cards or the person who was drunkest. Oh wait. Both of those people were me. My victory dance involved choreography that would have done Beyoncé proud.
"So yeah," Kim slurred. I'd barely beaten her to claim the drunk jersey – apparently she'd been alcohol free since she'd found out she was pregnant with Rhiannon. Her story about the horrors of expressing milk made me glad that babies were at least a decade into my future. "That was how I found out that the love of my life was a cheating cockwomble." She slid sideways to gaze adoringly up at Van, who was not the cockwomble in question. On the contrary he was behaving like a doting father and husband with the way he avoided the booze and slipped off to the interconnecting suite every so often to check on the baby. "And then I found out I was wrong because Van is the love of my life. Now we've heard my dickhead ex story and Lucy and Bas have shared the horror that was Jennessee you have tell us your nightmare ex story!"
I dropped my head down between my knees and huffed out a sigh. When I looked up my hair hung in my face and I needed to grip Gray's leg for support. At some stage after my dance recital I'd slid off the couch to sit with my knees bent on the floor. Gray's leg beside me was acting like the wing on an old-fashioned armchair.
"Don't have one," I mumbled blowing unruly strands of hair from my lips.
"Noooooo," Lucy said with all the slow emphasis of the truly drunk. "Everyone has a horrible ex story. You're single now so there has to be a horrid ex in your past."
"Not mine," I lolled my head on to Gray's knee. He really was pretty. And built. I reached up and gave his thigh an assessing squeeze. Mmmmm. And most definitely firm.
"Ah ha!" Josh crowed. "No horrible ex in Amelie's life. See, not all men are bastards!" he pointed an accusing, and slightly wavering, finger at Lucy and Kim.
"Errrrr, yeah . . ." I groaned wiling to latch on to that explanation for my lack of shady ex-boyfriends but not really sober enough to sell the lie.
Ace was watching me, his elbow propped in a sticky puddle on the coffee table and half his face cradled in his palm. "As much as I want to agree with Josh because he's right – NOT ALL MEN ARE BASTARDS -" he roared at Lucy and Kim, "I don't think Amelie's history is entirely bastard free. Right?" He fixed me with his one visible eye.
I brightened up as a thought hit me, "Oooh, I know! I can tell you some stories about some of the utter wankers I've fancied!" I bobbled excitedly on the spot. When I almost tipped sideways and tattooed hand clamped down on my shoulder to steady me.
"Noooo!" Kim cried out in a way that sounded very much like boo and started flicking UNO cards at me. "We want the exes! We want the exes! We want the exes!" Van's hand clamping down over her mouth silenced her.
"Amelie, you don't have to tell us anything you don't want to," Van said kindly.
"Yes you do!" Lucy shouted before Bas wrestled her into silence.
"Amelie," Josh focused hard on me. "Have you ever had a boyfriend?" His grey-green eyes were alight with curiosity.
Well this was crap. I wanted to firmly and confidently deny the accusation. How embarrassing to admit to these sublimely cool people that at twenty-one years old I'd never had a boyfriend. No way was I ever going to admit that I was still a virgin. Just the thought of it had a flush rising over my chest and up my neck. Unfortunately my strappy sundress, whilst modest by the rock-n-roll standards my companions were used to, did very little to disguise the redness on my skin that had nothing to do with sunburn. I tried to speak but could only manage a strangled gargle.
Clearly my silence was taken as a confirmation because one minute I was studiously avoiding eye contact with Bas on the other side of the coffee table - oh the joy that an A-list celebrity was present to witness my moment of shame – and then the next I was pressed back against the couch as Gray's upside down face hovered in front of me. "You've never had a boyfriend?" he asked incredulous.
Was I about to admit to the man my eyes had been molesting all afternoon as he flaunted –yes Daily Mail men can 'flaunt' their body parts too – his muscles and tattoos by the water? I opened my mouth to deny everything and all that fell out was, "No." If I could have melted through the terrazzo floor into my room below I would have done so. The upside down face in front of me blinked furiously. In my slightly – okay very – inebriated state those ice blue orbs were eerily penetrating. They kind of reminded me of the drawings I'd done during a regrettable pre-teen phase where I was obsessed with drawing the supernatural. My notebooks had been filled with countless images of vampires, elves and werewolves. Gray sat somewhere between the vampires and the elves. It was playing havoc with my resolve to not develop a honking great crush on him.
Lucy had pushed her sunglasses down to perch on the end of her nose and observed me inscrutably over the top of them. Kim, unwilling to be silenced fought her way free of Van's muzzling hand and burst out, "Come on! Not even a hook up that everyone knew was really your boyfriend but who LIKE A BASTARD MAN refused to be 'defined by labels'." She shouted bastard man in Ace's direction and wiggled her fingers on either side of her face to visually emphasise inverted comas around 'defined by labels'.
"Oh my god." If the ground could swallow me up that would be a good thing. Wasn't Mt Vesuvius still an active volcano? A small localised eruption to end my torment would be most welcome.
"What?" Lucy leaned forward, her pretty face filled with open astonishment. "Not even that?"
"Oh, come on!" I threw up my hands barely avoiding taking out one of Gray's lovely eyes. He'd moved slightly out of my personal space but only a fraction. "It's not like I've never been kissed! I have!"
"I don't believe you, when?" Josh said.
"Freshers Week in the student union. Duncan Fowler slipped me the tongue and then thanked me because I was the tenth girl he'd kissed that night so his friend Sean had to buy his drinks for the rest of the week." It wasn't until the verbal diarrhoea finished spilling from my mouth that I realised that Josh had only been teasing, he hadn't genuinely thought I'd never been kissed. Sadly his scepticism had been closer to the truth than he'd thought. Technically Duncan had kissed me but considering it had only been in pursuit of his quest to secure free pints for a week I wasn't sure I wanted to count it as my first, and thus far only, kiss.
Good lord, had I just shared the shame and humiliation of that encounter with all and sundry? I'd vowed never to speak of it and my friend Lisa, who'd been with me that night and was currently busy building her online greeting card empire, had vowed to take it to the grave. Deciding that holding my head up was far too much effort I let it drop forward. I managed a floppy nod of weary acceptance when Lucy exclaimed with drunken over dramatics, "Oh! My! God! OH! EM! GEEEEEE! That was your first kiss?" her voice reached a pitch that would have had me concerned for the sound sleep of the baby if I'd been capable of considering such things.
She and Kim both shrieked, "WHAT A FUCKING BASATRD!" then flopped back against their husbands in stupefied horror.
The hand on my shoulder slid up my neck to tilt my head back. I blinked in an attempt to bring Gray's blurry face into focus. "But your next kiss was way better right?" he encouraged.
"Oh yes, of course. A bazillion times better," I replied throwing as much positivity as I could behind my statement. I hadn't had another kiss yet, strangely enough I'd become slightly wary of blokes trying to pick me up in bars for the remainder of my university career, but surely my second kiss – when it came – would be better than the tongue sandwich of humiliation that was the first.
"That's good," he said and gently swept his thumb along the line of my jaw. I wasn't sure if he believed me or not but I hoped with everything in me that he did because otherwise I might have to face up to the sneaking suspicion that Gray Oliver, he of the abs I'd been admiring all day, felt sorry for me.
"Well!" Kim sat bolt upright and slapped her hand down on the couch with a loud whump. "This insult to womanhood cannot go unavenged!"
Lucy struggled upright and pointed at her. "No it cannot!"
I glanced around at the males in the room. They were watching Lucy and Kim with unabashed wariness and just a touch of fear. They'd realised that any contrary opinions would not go well for them.
"No, it most definitely cannot! So what we're going to do is find a hot guy and Amelie's going to date him."
"Yeah! She's gonna date the shit out of him!"
"And then we're going to take pictures of them together and share them on Insta and Twitter and Facebook and maybe we'll make a cute little video for Tik Tok so all her university friends can see them. And that will show that trouser stain that she's a strong, independent woman who's not to be trifled with!" Kim pronounced arms outflung, just waiting for her applause.
"That is brilliant!" Lucy nodded avidly.
As plans went it was a long way from Bond villain genius and somehow dating some yet to be determined fellow didn't exactly convey independence but I found myself nodding with enthusiasm and exclaiming, "Hell yeah I will!" Never mind that I'd only recently told Gray I was definitely not in the market for a boyfriend. Drunk me was a little bit lonelier than sober me.
Five males in various states of confusion or in the case of Van and Bas, resigned acceptance, watched on as Kim seized yet another limoncello bottle and poured yet another round of shots. "We need to toast to Operation Diva!"
She passed around the glasses and we drank. And then we drank again. And then after that we drank a little bit more.
And then we danced. We danced fabulous interpretive dance to Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. There were rumbles of objection from the males present however we could all see the truth, they loved it. Ace's moves to 'Single Ladies' were impressive, he must have watched that video on repeat for days. Eventually Lucy took control with a playlist that satisfied everyone and Van molested Kim with his mouth after she'd performed a spirited interpretation of 'Rhiannon' by Fleetwood Mac. I couldn't blame him, she gave good Stevie.
That was my last memory before I woke up dressed in my bikini with a splitting headache and a cotton wool mouth. My hair was a bird's nest and I felt grimy all over. Deciding that drunk me had been on to something I rolled out of bed, slipped on my flip flops and my sunglasses and made for the water.
Pausing only to kick off the flip flops and drop the sunnies on a sunlounge I walked to the smooth stone edge over the shallow drop down to to the water and plunged in. When I emerged I was shrieking at the cold of the water but at least I felt fresh and my brain fuzz had receded.
It was only when I clambered up the ladder back on to dry land that I realised I wasn't actually wearing my bikini, I was in my bra and knickers.
And they were completely see through.
And Gray was perched on the end of a sun lounge watching me with open mouthed astonishment.
And still Vesuvius refused to do me a favour and erupt.