To Caress My Day

Seth’s weary eyes lowered to the short glass table between the million-dollar view of Las Vegas at night and the lush couch in his hotel room. Among the appealing miniature clear vase with its seasonal flowers in the center, a sparse stack of mixed genres of magazines, and a card with all the hotel information he would need stood a lone bottle of Champagne. Rifling through his drunk mind, Seth couldn’t recall if he had set the large bottle there earlier or not. Either way, his desire was to chug what remained inside…until he was reminded of his current attire.

Seth wasn’t exactly swathed in a thousand-dollar suit, but the Hawaiian shirt he'd worn under a white tank top had a more sentimental significance to it. Both Mike and Seth Green purchased it for him on his first Bachelor party invite and the fact that they went out of their way to gift him with it made it unique. Also, it was the theme of Frederick’s Bachelor dress code because he was the type of guy who ALWAYS sported Hawaiian shirts no matter the season or occasion. It was his thing. The group thought it would be fantastic if they all dressed in the same manner for his Bachelor party trip to Las Vegas.

And so the shirt Seth wore was more than just a shirt to him. In his drunken state, he’d only end up dribbling whatever he got his hands on all over the pristine material. And that possibility reminded him of the woman presently sitting on the other end of the couch from him, his ex, Avery. Man, that woman abhorred when he ate or drank while he was drunk because he couldn’t keep anything from getting onto him. He was such a slob!

“Goddamn, I want a drink.” Seth complained, eyeing the Champagne bottle like it had been molded in the form of his naked girlfriend. He felt saliva flooding in his mouth in the form of drool.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough already?” Avery inquired, observing him eye the bottle in front of him that she’d left after pouring herself a drink. Instead of vacating his hotel room after assisting his drunk arse safely inside, she’d stuck around, wanting to be sure he’d be fine and alive the next morning before she took off. That was probably more than an hour ago. Now they were sitting on opposite ends of the couch gazing out at the glittering lights of the Las Vegas strip together in a comfy stillness.

Seth shrugged her concerns off and reached for the bottle, curling his fingers around the neck. He didn’t swipe it off the table though, merely sat there with his hand clutching it under his parched stare.

“Watch yourself, MacFarlane. You don't wanna get alcohol poisoning on Frederick’s Bachelor trip.” Avery cautioned him, pointing a manicured nail at him in a warning. “It’s not every day a guy gets married for the first time, you know.”

Avery had a point, and so Seth decided he wouldn't chug the bottle down. Instead, he would remove the deterrent plaguing his mind from following through with his craving. With his available hand, he began to unbutton his cherished Hawaiian shirt as best as he could in his state of drunk.

Brow furrowing in curiosity, Avery quietly watched him, wondering what he was up to now.

Eventually, Seth managed to free all the buttons from their holes. His next step was to extract said shirt from his body so it would be well away from the splash zone. Luckily for him, this wasn’t the hardest step, and after doing some shrugging under Avery's attentive eyes he swept the material off of him and up over his shoulder where it landed safely...somewhere. With a triumphant smile on his face, he popped the lid of the Champagne bottle and heaved it up to chug it down in his white tank top.

Having silently witnessed Seth in his many endeavors to remove his Hawaiian shirt without any assistance, Avery finally responded the moment she saw him chugging down the Champagne like it was apple juice. Sitting forward, she scolded him. “Hey hey! Don’t hog that all to yourself! Even if it’s in your hotel that doesn’t mean you can drink it all down.”

Having gotten enough of his fill so far, Seth pulls his lips back from the bottle…and accidentally does what he’d feared doing before. He got a heap of Champagne running down his white tank top due to his brain’s delay and quickly righted the bottle as soon as it dawned on him what was going on. It wasn’t the Hawaiian shirt that got stained with alcohol, but still. What just happened only ascertained how right Avery always was in their relationship.

“See, look what you just did, drinking carelessly like that!” Avery scolded him again, this time with a look of disgust as she motioned to his condition with a sweep of her hand. “You got it all over you like a child!”

“Oh no.” Seth mumbled drunkenly in a tone that sounded very mellow about the position he was in. Not wishing to sit here on the couch coated in Champagne, he tried to find a place to set the bottle down. For some reason the short glass table directly in front of him within reach never registered in his mind. His ex-fiance on the opposite end of the couch did though, and so he leaned himself to the right across the couch as far as he could to give her the bottle instead. “Here, h-hold this.”

“Oh, now I can have it?” Avery grumbled with a bad attitude as she seized the bottle from him and began to pat it down with the Kleenexes sitting on the side table next to her. “Thank god that wasn’t all of the bottle.”

Disregarding Avery, Seth unhurriedly pulled the white soil tank top up his torso and then over his head. This garment he especially didn’t care where he flung off to. Now topless, Seth glanced down to find his khaki shorts had also been a casualty of war against the Champagne. It looked like now he’d have to find a way to remove those too.

Because there was a vast amount of shuffling going on at the corner of her eye from the other end of the couch, Avery had to break on drying the Champagne bottle with Kleenexes to see what was going on. Her eyes widened at the sight of Seth trying to remove his shorts from where he sat on the couch. “Excuse me? What do you think you’re doing, Seth?”

So far for the level of drunk Seth was, his shorts were proving to be the most challenging. So challenging in fact, that he went from upright to falling over to yank the garment off, to flopping around on the couch like a fish. The task would be much simpler if he only got up from the couch to remove them, but he was drunk and also lazy, so he’d rather do it sitting down.

“Are you being serious right now?” Avery asked him, turning in her seat to watch this lunatic try to pull his shorts off unsuccessfully. She didn't know why she thought this was absolutely absurd rather than laughable when she’d been drinking too. Perhaps it was because it was her ex-fiance acting the fool. In the beginning, when she first met him she found him to be a total hoot that regularly kept her nearly peeing her pants whenever they were around each other. But years later, she found herself getting more aggravated with him rather than laughing at him. Perhaps that is why she was irritated at all the extra crap he was pulling right now.

Seth’s ears had to have been blocking Avery out because he didn’t catch a single word she said as he resumed to flip around on the couch to the point where his knees were over the armrest. He was positive he was close when all of a sudden he must have taken a tumble because he found himself landing face-first on the carpeted floor of his hotel room. “Fuck!”

“Serves you right for acting like a stupid idiot!” Avery laughed at Seth, having since been a spectator to what now turned out to be a very delightful observation. She had nearly choked on her drink when she saw it all go down and had no choice but to spit it out of her mouth in a spray of Champagne when he hit the floor with a grunt. The old sober Avery would’ve been pissed because she got a few dribbles of her drink on her clothes, but this drunk Avery cackled in resounding laughter. Perhaps Seth still had some comedy in him after all! Because Seth didn't seem to budge from where he landed on his face on the floor, Avery felt the need to get up and check on him. On wobbly legs, she stumbled over. “Seth? Are you still alive down there?”

Letting out a groan, Seth opened his eyes for a few seconds before closing them back up again. His mind was back to deeply fixating on his girlfriend again, not able to recall if she was there in his hotel with him or not. The vision of her in a wedding dress coming down the aisle to him was all he could see now, and all he ever wanted as his fingers dug lightly into the dense carpet. “God. Please let her say yes.”

“I’m sure she will, you stupid buffoon.” Avery whispered back to Seth after he passed out. She stunned herself a little by that remark because she truly meant it. Something in her gut told her this secret girlfriend of his would say yes to his proposal of marriage the moment he asked her. It could’ve been women’s intuition, or perhaps the alcohol. Choosing to take a seat on the couch before she too suffered her own accident by capsizing over, Avery lowered herself unsteadily back down onto the luxuriant cushion and began to tidy her hair and clothes out. Once she felt presentable enough, she helped herself to fill up her Champagne flute again in utter silence. She wasn’t worried about Seth or the state he’ll find himself in tomorrow morning, he’s been in worse scenarios than being topless and lying on a hotel floor. Instead, she let her mind roam to the love of her life, Clinton, until the alcohol began to overpower her and eventually sent her to sleep.