You're the One That I Want(59)

I was already fairly smashed when I got a call from Roger, a guy on my course, reminding me about a house party he was having that night and wondering where I was. In my inebriated state, going along sounded like a top idea.

When I turned up at his place, which was only meant to be a fifteen-minute walk away but took me half an hour to get to because I couldn’t quite walk in a straight line – plus I got lost twice – it was rammed full of people, most of whom I didn’t recognize. They cluttered up the narrow hallway, the stairs and the kitchen, making it difficult to find Roger. I gave up looking for him fairly quickly, actually, and instead looked around the room and wondered where to place myself.

I decided to join a group of about ten people who were passionately playing drinking games around a dining-room table, boisterously cheering as their friends were made to neck various combinations of alcohol. I watched them finish their game of ‘Arrogance’, essentially a dangerous game of heads or tails, before joining them to play ‘Finger in the middle’ – a game where players pour a hefty amount of their own drink into the central cup, then have to guess how many people are going to leave their fingers on the rim of the cup after the count of three. It sounds boring but it becomes fascinatingly funny when you’re drunk – which we all were.

Luckily for me, I won the first round – no idea how – and so just had to watch the others battle it out.

It was the loser of the game that caught my eye – a cute little thing with an enormous smile. I’d seen her around campus before and at a few parties. She was hard to miss with her elfin features and petite little body. I had no idea who she was, we’d never spoken, but in that moment she had my attention hooked on her.

I’d watched her as she giggled her way through the game, laughing playfully and covering her face with her hands every time she guessed wrong. Her joy quickly turned to dismay, though, as she lost and realized she’d have to down the entire contents of the half-full pint glass. She grimaced at its grey-coloured liquid, which had curdled thanks to somebody adding Bailey’s into the mix of beer, wine and spirits. Every time she went to drink it she burst out laughing as the gathered crowd cheered in encouragement, ‘Down it, down it, down it.’

‘Do I have to?’ she laughed.

‘Yes,’ shouted back the excitable crowd, not giving her any allowances for being a girl – if you were in to play, you were in for the forfeit. That was the rule.

She looked over at me and I winked at her, the alcohol giving me more confidence than normal.

In return she flashed me a massively beautiful smile.

She pushed her long blonde hair back behind her ears and lifted the cup to her mouth, her hazel eyes flicking back in my direction before she downed the lot – causing the gathered crowd to cheer in approval before dispersing in search of more alcohol for their next game.

‘Argh, that was awful,’ she said to me seconds afterwards as she stumbled towards me, wiping her mouth in disgust. ‘I promised myself I wouldn’t do that tonight.’

‘Oh really?’

‘I’m a sucker for peer pressure,’ she giggled, grabbing my bottle of beer from me and taking a mouthful. ‘Sorry – trying to get rid of the taste.’

‘More alcohol is definitely what you need after that,’ I grinned.

‘Tell me about it,’ she grimaced, handing me back my drink.

‘So, what brings you here?’ I asked.

‘It’s my house,’ she smiled.

‘Ah …’

‘You?’

‘Doing Graphic Arts with Roger.’

‘Oh, I see. You’re …?’

‘Ben.’

‘Ben,’ she smiled with a nod. ‘I’m Alice.’

We laughed as we took hold of each other’s hand and gave a formal business-like handshake.

At that point the drinking-game group had come back into the room with new supplies. One of them, a short skinny guy with bushy hair that covered his eyes, had a row of drinks cradled in his arms, clearly stocking up for more than the one game. As he passed us he got pushed by one of his more robust mates, causing him to trip, knock into another mate and spill his drinks over everyone standing around him. I was fairly unscathed, but Alice received the majority of the beer-based tidal wave.

‘Sorry,’ the guy said evasively without looking at anyone in particular, picking up the now empty plastic cups from the floor before tottering off to the kitchen to refill them, the loss of alcohol causing him more concern than anyone’s wet clothes.

‘Oh crap,’ Alice moaned, wiping some of the foamy beer off her orange dress with the back of her hand, flicking the drips onto the floor.