Chapter VII

The whole while we were talking and eating we were also drinking. About an hour into our "date" we had ordered a third bottle of wine. This was a cheaper bottle (we decided to take it easy on Kim and Eric because we were having fun) but it was arguably stronger than the first two. By the time we both abandoned attempts to finish eating, we were both pretty well drunk. Riley suggested that, instead of buying a dessert, which we couldn't eat, that we head to the bar and "drink" our dessert. Normally, I would decline such an offer. I never much liked liquor. But I was already drunk and eager to extend my positive mood and Riley's attitude was absolutely contagious. So I agreed and we moved back. I can't remember if I had two or three shots of tequila before, I came to my fateful realization for the night, but I remember how it happened.

Riley and I were sitting on the far left side of the bar, we both had a shot of tequila in our hands, as I remember it, and I was laughing at something that she had said (though I can't recall exactly what it was, she made me laugh a lot that night). I was feeling more loose and uninhibited than I had in years. Maybe ever.

"Okay look," Riley said, "It is a simple sequence. First, the salt. Then the tequila. Then the lime. Last time you did it backwards, and you have to do it right."

"Will I not get drunker if I do it in the wrong order?" I asked playfully.

"No. And you'll prove once and for all that my dream of opening a drinking school is dead as I lack the capacity to teach drunks," she said and I smiled. She was standing up at the time, just barely resting her ass against the bar stool. She sort of towered over me as she instructed.

"Well I'd hate to do that!" I slurred, "Okay, tequila, lime, salt." I said. I can't remember if this was a joke or I really didn't remember.

"No! Salt, tequila, lime. Watch!" Riley said. She quickly licked salt off of her wrist, pounded a shot of tequila, and finished it off with squeeze of lime. Her face contorted in agony. Why do people do this? "See, easy."

"Right," I said, "Lime, Salt, and then Lime,"

"You didn't even remember tequila that time!" Riley laughed and then she pushed away from the bar, "Okay, do not drink that in the wrong order. Just wait for me. I am going to run to the little girl's room, I am going to come back and get another drink, and show you how this is done. Got it?"

"Got it. Get another drink, go to the bathroom, show me how it's done," I said, purposefully mixing the order this time (I promise). Riley laughed and slapped my arm playfully.

"You've got some weird ideas Ash. You figure out the bathroom on your own when the time comes," she said and then turned to walk towards the bathroom. As she walked away I found my eyes follow her. I noted the way her hair cascaded messily down her back, the feminine narrowness of her shoulders, the way her figure sloped down from her armpits to her thin waist, and then ballooned back out in an hourglass shape. The swell of her ass in her tight jeans and the way her legs looked long and delicate in the denim. In short, I was checking her out and found myself...liking what I saw.

I guess I was drunk and normally I wouldn't have put much stock into those thoughts (I figured any woman could objectively respect the beauty of another woman's form, it didn't mean anything), but one idea in particular caused me to pause. As my eyes scanned over Riley's ass as it saw high and first in her pants, I had thought, "she's got an amazing butt, it looks like Kim's when she was in college."

At first, this idea barely registered. Just one thought amongst many. But then I began to think of how strange it was that I had decided to compare physical attributes of my new friend with that of my old friends. And as I thought about that, I realized that it hadn't been the only thing. I realized other thoughts I'd had during the course of the evening, "She has a lilting laugh, like Kim," and "She rubs her lower lip with the back of her thumb, like Kim," or perhaps most damning, "she has a dirty sense of humor, nothing like Kim." Even when Riley was nothing like Kim, I found myself making that the point of comparison. It was like I was using Kim as the measuring stick by which to gauge Riley. And as I thought of that, I realized it wasn't just Riley. I compared everyone to Kim. She was the universal constant.

I felt extremely strange coming to that realization and I placed my elbows on the bar, trying to figure out what it was, exactly, I was grasping at. Thinking about Kim made me remember why I was here, the "prank." But now drunk, and no longer horribly embarrassed, I no longer felt that this explanation for the situation made any sense. Strangely, the drinking had cleared my mind a bit, allowed me to look at the situation clearly. Kim wouldn't do something just to hurt me. She wouldn't have found it funny even if it happened by accident. Eric and Kim hadn't been pulling a prank. Hell, they left money on the table for us. So what were they doing?

Suddenly, my conversation with Kim earlier in the week, when she convinced me to go on this date, flooded back to me. And listening them in my memory, without denial and discomfort I had felt in the initial event, allowed me to hear things that I hadn't heard before.