Drunk

"Jimmy Buffett called. He wants his shirt back."

That was the very first thing Kingsley said to me when she spotted me on the beach for her and Cammi's Fourth of July party. She was in American flag print shorts and had a baggy white t shirt that exclaimed 'Murica! tucked into them.

"It's festive!" I told her in mock offence. "How drunk are you already?"

"How drunk are you not?" She countered shooting me a wicked grin. She was adorable even half sloshed in her best attempt at ”American white trash chic” as Cammi had referred to it. It occurred to me then that she could probably wear trash bags and I would still find her gorgeous.
I gave her a look and she reached up to pinch my cheek. "Awh! Babe, it's the Fourth of July! Let's get you half way to my level, yeah?"

I tried ignore how my stomach moved in a strange way when the pet name fell so carelessly from her mouth, but Kingsley had been acting slightly different the past week. She texted me first Wednesday and stopped complaining when I came to The Chop Shop to eat lunch with her. Her hands shook a little less and she was a little less put off when I tried cuddle with her. Part of me was screaming I was getting somewhere while the other part was telling me to calm down, she was probably just naturally becoming more comfortable with me.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me to a set of towels she had laid out on the sand with a bottle of Jack and handed it to me. We sat there for a few moments making fun of just about everyone who passed us in various levels of intoxication when I noticed someone take a seat next to us.
Kingsley hardly took notice as she threw her head back and laughed at a comment I'd made. He sat there for a moment hoping she'd look his way or acknowledge him but after a moment, it seemed as if she was making a conscious effort not to. Finally the guy lost his patience and tapped her on the shoulder.

"Yes?" She asked, only half turning in his direction.

"You look so familiar. Have I seen you somewhere?" He asked, flipping his long straight hair out of his eyes. Maybe I was biased, but he looked like a wanker.

Kingsley took a deep breath and shot him sickeningly sweet smile. "How often do you watch porn?"
I snorted mid sip and she shot me a smirk.

"Kingsley! I knew I knew you from somewhere. Come on, we all know you aren't into porn. Come let me get you a drink!" He said excitedly, grabbing her hand and standing up before Kingsley even had a chance to accept or deny but she all but ripped her hand from his and brought it to her lap, scratching at the wrist.

"Actually, I'm here with my boyfriend and you should try asking rather than demanding or assuming next time. It tends to work better." She shot him.

"Boyfriend?" was all he responded to.

"Yes." She said with the same sickeningly sweet smile she used when she told him she was involved in the porn industry. "I'm with Jimmy Buffett here."

I tried to ignore that my stomach was moving weird even being mentioned as her boyfriend in a lie, so I brought the bottle to my lips and looked down muttering "If you keep insulting my clothes you'll be back on the market."

Who was Jimmy Buffett anyway?

I made a mental note to google him later. I was sure it was an insult either way.

I felt her hand come up to smack on the back of the head. "I like em feisty." I offered with a cheeky grin.

He looked at us like we were aliens before shaking his head slowly and walking away. Kingsley and I both watched him go with wide grins before dissolving into hard laughter as soon as he was a good distance away.

Seconds later, Caleb all but fell down into the spot next to Kingsley the boy had previously occupied. "How'd you manage to scare him off?"

Kingsley turned her head in his direction her hair falling in her face a little as she did so and she never even bothered to move it. "He was a total creep. Made me feel a bit uncomfortable so I told him I was a porn star and when that didn't work, I told him I was dating Harry. That scared him right off."

"Harry scared him off? Must've been the dimples." He chided.

"It was def the hair." She quipped throwing me a smile.

"I'm right here you know!" I fake pouted. "Is this pick on Harry night?"

"No, it’s the Fourth of July." Caleb shot with a drunken smile. "You're so British."

"And you two aren't fair."

Cammi and Zayn showed a few minutes later and we carried on like that for a while. Kingsley and I passed the bottle back and forth until it was almost gone and I was substantially drunk and she would lean into me a little when she laughed and her hand, at some point, found its way to rest on my knee.
The thought occurred to me at that point that we weren't in a relationship and what she had told that guy might have been, in some ways a lie, but I was hers and she might not have been mine or maybe she was and she just hadn't had the same epiphany yet or maybe she knew it and didn't want to admit or maybe she didn't want me in that way at all but I was hers completely.

The realization was like going to sit in a chair and missing or walking down stairs in the middle of the night and miscalculating a step or getting somewhere only to remember you forgot something imperative. It was a terrifying moment where your heart stops, splutters, and then starts again.

I hadn't realized I had completely checked out of the conversation until Kingsley was waving her hand in my face. When I came back to focus Zayn and Cammi had left and Caleb had apparently asked me a question but he just shook his head at me smiling devilishly. "Never mind, I'm gonna go get a drink."

He walked off and Kingsley kept her eyes on me not even acknowledging him.

"What are you thinking so hard about, mister?" She asked, tilting her head to the side. I glanced down and noticed she was scratching at her wrist.

"Why do you do that?" I asked, taking her hands and separating them.

"Nervous habit." She tried to shrug pulling her hands out of mine.

"What are you nervous about?"

She took a deep breath and laid back into the towel. I laid down next to her and turned my head to face her but her gaze was set on the sky.

"Life." She said slowly. "Sometimes it's hard for me to get a deep breath and I feel like I need to just take a step back and pause for a minute to catch my breath. Like I need to just sit in my room and stare at a wall for twenty four hours until I calm down but it feels like right in those moments, life speeds up and demands more and people just keep wanting to talk to me and I just can't breathe to get words out."

I knew she was drunk and I could sense this wasn't something she meant to give me, but I felt like I could understand her a little better. I felt like maybe I didn't have a foot in yet, but at least I had the door cracked open.

I reached my hand over to grabbed hers and opened my mouth to say something when she shot up, most likely without even realizing I was gonna say anything.

"Oh, I have sparklers!" Her brown eyes were excited and her cheeks were flushed and she was so damn gorgeous and alive and I was drunk but I thought in that moment, I would've given anything to breath the air she was always missing right into her lungs but she was up and already walking away before I even got my arse off the ground.

She had four in each hand when I caught up and the thought occurred to me, it probably wasn't the best idea to mix a drunk Kingsley and fireworks but she was already lighting them and she looked so excited. I grabbed one and lit it but mostly watched her as she fought to light the sparklers in one hand with the already lit ones in the other and she was so frustrated it was adorable, but after a minute I was worried she'd burn herself so I tossed mine and bent down and picked up the lighter out of the sand and walked a bit closer to help her.

I took a step closer just as Kingsley turned, planting the sparklers on my shirt leaving an impressive hole in the ”Jimmy Buffet” shirt and a slight sting on my stomach.

When I looked up, Kingsley's eyes were set on the hole in my shirt and her mouth was set in a perfect O.

She dragged her eyes up to meet mine. "You really hated this shirt that bad, didn't you?" I smiled, raising a brow at her.

She bit her lip, trying to hide her smile and just like that, she was off she was running through the sand in the dark with the fireworks in her hands trailing smoke and sparks behind her and I was after her stumbling and falling half-drunk behind her.

By the time I caught her, the sparklers had burned out and been abandoned and I tackled her to the ground.

"You dick! I've got sand in my mouth." She tried to sound mad, but she was laughing between words.
"And I've got a hole in my shirt."

In a bold move, I moved to lay next to her and grabbed her hand in mine, lacing our fingers.

We laid there for a moment on the bare sand with our tangled hands laying in the space between us before Kingsley spoke.

"What's the worst thing you've ever done?"

I mulled it over for a minute but only one thing came to mind.

"This one time when I was about fourteen my mum was having this Christmas party deal and well, most of her friends had kids my age that I was already friends with. Basically, the adults were in the living room and kitchen and us kids were down in the basement. Zayn had snuck in some alcohol and we were all pretty drunk and decided to play truth or dare and while everyone else got like 'take that shot' or 'snog that girl' my sister, Gemma, dared me to streak from the basement all the way to out the front door. Naturally, I couldn’t turn down a dare. So, I ran naked past all my mum’s friends, into the front yard and back."

She laughed at me. Hard. "That's the worst?"

"The problem was after that, every girl wanted to jump on the love boat but nobody wanted me to date their daughter."

She laughed even harder at that. "Just when I thought you couldn't get any more adorable."

"What about you, Ms. Badass?"

She thought hard for a while.

"There's just so much shit." She let out a breathy laugh. "I got drunk and broke Cammi's parents Christmas tree once and I helped temporarily steal her dad’s car."

Then it seemed to hit her. "I've got it." She decided nodding her head slowly to herself. "Once, when I was a senior this girl wrote "slut” on my locker, so I started texting her boyfriend. He was known to cheat, but I didn't sleep with him or anything. I just made him think I was going to and then, when he was in the bathroom, I took his phone and texted myself the naked pictures of her on his phone and left before he came out then I sent the pictures to everyone. She blamed him because he was the one she sent the pictures to and finally dumped him." She took a deep breath and looked at me.

"You don't seem like the type to let someone calling you a slut bother you." It was true. Kingsley didn't seem like the type to let anything anyone said bother her. Hell, the first time I met her she was in her panties and a t-shirt entering a full blown party.

"Don't tell anyone, but I’m not half as big as I pretend to be Styles." She said with a wink and smile squeezing my hand.

And I knew exactly what she meant. Kingsley's personality, her hair, her voice were all huge but she was small in more ways. In the ways her hands use to shake when I'd get to close or push too far or in the way she scratched at her wrist whenever she talked to people she didn't have sure footing with. She tried harder than anyone I'd ever met to seem so sure of herself. Like she didn't have a care in the world but I knew now she was probably the exact opposite.

"But why would she call you that?"

She thought for a moment licking her lips and digging in her pockets for a cigarette.

"Because people are mean. You just gotta be meaner."

---

I was undeniably drunk but at just the right amount. I was coherent and could walk without stumbling to much but there was a warm feeling in the pit of stomach and everything that was said was just a little funnier and when I laughed it came out with a bit more enthusiasm and when I was on a mission I was a little more dedicated.

The current mission was to locate Cammi but there were so many girls that were the same height with that same hair and I was a bit dizzy and I might have forgotten why I was looking for her in the first place, but now I was sure I'd found her.

I walked up and tapped her on the shoulder. "Hey-"

Except it wasn't Cammi.

"Oh, I'm sorry I thought you were someone else." I apologized.

The girl shot me an unimpressed look. "That's the single most annoying pick up line ever."

And in retrospect, the fact this girl thought I was hitting on her probably wasn't funny but all the same I let out an unattractive snort-laugh hybrid sound and about this point a rather large guy stepped up behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist and this probably should have been scary but all I could think about was how odd it looked. How I wondered if he got asked if he was her dad in the doctor’s office and how he could probably step on her if he wasn't looking where he was going, so I laughed harder.

"I'm sorry. He's had a bit much." I heard Cammi excuse from behind me as Kingsley grabbed me by the upper arm. I guess she found Cammi.

She pulled me back as Cammi continued a conversation with two. She looked at me for a minute and smiled bringing her hand up to push my curls out of my face.

"Should have worn one of those stupid scarfs." She commented, smiling up at me and sliding her hand down to rest at the nape of my neck while her other sat on my hip.

I set both of my hands on her waist and brought my forehead to rest against hers. "You hate those things." I reminded her.

She shrugged a little. "Maybe not so much."

I smirked back at her my heart doing the same weird movement it had been at all night. "Knew it."

She shook her head a little and looked down at her feet. "We should get you inside before you get beat up."

"I coulda took em." I pouted but she already had my hand firmly in hers, pulling me behind her.

She shot me a glance over her shoulder. "I'm sure you could have, babe."