Piper watched Quino sink into the slow creeping intoxication like quicksand, pulling him further down than she’d ever seen him before. Yeah, they’d been drinking every Wednesday, it was a thing now, but it had never gotten to this point until now. She was a cheap date, as most liked to call it, only needing a few shots before you could consider her drunk. There was no way she’d admit that to anyone, but it was true. Piper loved to believe she could handle it more than she actually could, but weighing in at just over a hundred points, she was all talk and no follow through when it came to keeping up with alcohol consumption and also being able to function as a human being.
Considering her inability to hold her liquor, Piper was having a really hard time focusing in on what Quino was saying. It was almost as if there was a wall of Plexiglas between them, muffling everything Quino said about aluminium foil on his head, or something, and all she could hear was wah wah wah, like a character from Sesame Street. Was he even making human sounds? She had to at least pretend she was listening. That was their whole thing, listening. Piper showed up to Blackbird, or sometimes another bar, and Quino would complain to her, and she’d complain to him. It was a simple little thing. They’d drink shots or cocktails if they had the money to spare, and if they didn’t, sometimes they’d down beers. Even if Piper thought they tasted and smelled like cold piss, she’d chug a PBR in a heartbeat just to feel a buzz if there were no other monetary options. Usually Wednesdays were $2 well shot days, where they’d make you a shitty Washington Green Apple because it was cheap and had a ‘W’ in the name. She’d take those over beer any day.
“Wait, the government is reading my mind?” Way to go, Piper. That was the only thing she managed to understand from his entire rant, and she was proud of herself for catching that much, considering the circumstances. “Why? What do they want to know?” Piper asked, her voice tight lining on being panicked. There was a teetering moment in her level of intoxication where she could sway a few different ways. She had many layers to her drunken personality, and there was always a moment when her environment or her conversation would blow the wind to one side, sort of choosing which one she’d be for the rest of the night. Balancing on the edge of becoming the paranoid drunk, Piper was happy to receive a distraction, flipping her to a happier personality before it was too late.
“He was such an asshole,” Piper nearly repeated, eyes shifting to the scruff that surrounded Quino’s lips like a body of water around an island. His mouth movements were slow, but she wasn’t sure if it was because she saw them that way, or if he was just moving in slow motion. Either way, it was really messing with her eyes, but she couldn’t stop focusing in on them. Piper always knew Quino was attractive - that was very obvious every time they saw one another (as long as he never got rid of the facial scruff in exchange for a Pablo Escobar mustache). She had no idea why she chose now to blatantly stare at his face, from the way the edge of his mouth dove into his cheek to form the smallest dimple there, to the way he licked his lips when he was done talking. Piper just sat there, like an idiot, looking at him while he talked, and probably for a little while after he was done too.
It took her a minute to recall what they were talking about, her ears almost zoning out entirely, as if quiet was the only way she could study his features. “Everyone complains about Wifi there, honestly. Everyone complains in general.” Piper whined, proud of herself for remembering. “One time this guy came downstairs, hands full of wet towels, and said that he needed clean lips right this second.” Lips? That wasn’t the word. “Towels. He needed clean towels.” There you go, Piper. “He said that with his lips. Can you believe him?” Nice save. “He just plopped them down on the front desk, and I said, ‘sir, we have room service, I can have them come into your room every morning to change them,’ and he was like, ‘I put the ‘do not disturb’ sign up, so can you just give ‘em to me?’” Piper tried to switch up her accent while she was talking as the guy in the story, faking some awful New Yorker tone of voice, her R’s disappearing after her A’s. “But, I charged him for covering my desk in soggy towels, so at least there’s that.”
Piper cleared her throat, feeling her head grow heavy. “Do you think I should get food to soak all of this up?” She asked, hips swiveling in her stool like a child, almost making her dizzy and nauseous. Almost. When she said ‘all of this’, her hand hovered over her navel and moved in a circular motion, proud of herself for not using the word ‘tummy’.
