for some flaw, some issue that would dampen her perfection in my eyes, but I only found myself liking her more. I was drinking heavily and my memory of that time is rather hazy, yet I can recall that behind my joyful exterior I was uneasy. It was Joe; he had fixed his intense war veteran stare on me. He was angry, clearly judging me, and I didn’t know why. Time passed in a drunken swirl of movement. There was Joe, always isolated, muttering ‘phoneys’ under his breath and barely concealing his contempt for us all. Then there was Jane introducing me to all her friends, none of whom seemed to like me, perhaps because my opening gambit to them was ‘you girls all look the same,’ which in my intoxicated state seemed like a humorous remark. He eventually found solace in a drunken girl called Beatrice, who I called Sunny for reasons I can no longer remember.The pair spent around half an hour conversing in hushed excited tones, sporadically throwing in a clumsy innuendo, before fervently dashing upstairs. Little did Joe know that Sunny’s boyfriend, a leering carbuncle of a man named Maurice, had slimed his way into an invitation, and was lurching through the house looking for blood. I would have rushed to Joe’s aid, had it not been that Jane had tasked me with her friends, but I heard the fight that ensued, the shouts and the screams, and the tears that fell in the aftermath. Joe disappeared, as did a bottle of wine. I found, in my drunken stupor, ceasing to care about Gillis and his shenanigans, the gorgeous Jane wanted a dance and I could have sworn that I was a little bit in love with her, though it may have just been the alcohol playing with my mind. Substances were being passed round, nothing harmful, just stuff to further heighten our mood. I was a bright young thing with a girl whom I adored; I couldn’t refuse. I kept on dancing as the effects took hold.Things became more colourful, and I saw myself on a raised plinth above the rest of humanity with Jane by my side,manically cackling, intoxicated
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