Boy Parts(15)

He’s holding a bottle of prosecco, which I loathe. Flo immediately pops it open, firing the cork out of her front door, into the garden.

‘You look nice,’ Finch says, Flo dangling on him.

‘Oh my God, he is such a ladies’ man,’ says Flo, to me. Finch gives her an uncomfortable smile, his lips rolling back into his mouth.

‘I’ll grab some glasses,’ he says, plucking the bottle from Flo’s hand and slinking into the kitchen. Flo mouths, So cute. ‘Have you picked up?’ he calls.

‘About a month ago. Hang on, I’ll go and ask the old ball and chain what we’ve got—’

I cut Flo off. ‘I’ll ask, I’m going for a drink anyway.’ I cut through the kitchen and bump past Finch on the way. I pluck a glass of bubbly piss from his little hands.

‘I like your top,’ he says.

‘It’s a bra,’ I say. It’s longline and sits just above my waist. I didn’t want to get makeup on my top. I’m heading to Michael’s ‘man cave’, a small room off the kitchen where Flo keeps him. There’s a recliner, a huge desk and this big, loud gaming PC with a three-monitor setup. He’s playing some crunchy looking medieval RPG on the centre screen, with football and Archer on either side.

The PVC of my skirt squeaks slightly as I nudge open the door to his room.

‘Hey.’

‘What,’ he says, pulling off his headphones. There’s no need to perform pleasantries without Flo here. He gives me a look, sullen and lascivious. Scowling at me, sneering, while he looks at my thighs, my tits, the bare sliver of stomach between my bra and the waistband of my skirt.

‘Flo wants the drug box,’ I say. He sighs, and begins digging through his desk drawer. Michael is not unattractive, but his urban-lumberjack look is very 2015. He’s heavy set: fat but solid, you know? I like his arms, but he always wears long sleeves. He holds out a Tupperware box for me to take, opens his mouth to speak, then doesn’t.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

I wink when I take the box off him. I’ll get Flo to do a slightly suggestive snapchat to send to him later, when she’s getting sloppy. Cry-wank and a Pot Noodle for Mikey tonight.

Flo labels her drugs with little stickers, which is dorky, but it is a massive time saver. Michael’s weed lives in a separate Tupperware box, so we have here only powders, and a few scattered dud pills rattling around beneath the baggies. I knock back my drink and return to the living room where Finch tops me up. Flo has removed her curlers and is combing her hair out with her fingers.

‘Doesn’t she look just like Marilyn Monroe with her hair like this?’ says Finch. She doesn’t. She looks up at me, expectant, like a dog after fetching. I hum, non-committal, and perch on the sofa, cracking open the Tupperware with my thumbs.

‘You have, about—’ I begin lifting each baggie, holding it to the light, giving them a shake so the powder settles at the bottom. ‘—like, two grams of coke? A gram of MDMA, and a mostly empty thing of ketamine. Like, less than a third of a gram?’ There’s also a small, unlabelled wad of tinfoil in a bag, which I hold out for her. ‘What’s this?’

‘Acid. We bulk-bought the last time we picked up,’ Flo says. ‘We have, like, ten tabs if anyone’s interested in going halfsies with me on one tonight?’ Acid is Flo’s new thing. Acid and ketamine. She keeps banging on about how she’s gone off uppers, and she’s into dissociatives now, even though she can’t physically say no to coke when it’s stuck under her now highly unfashionable septum piercing. Tomorrow, she’ll be picking dried-up coke off it, I’d put money on it.

‘No thanks. Acid isn’t a club drug, IMO,’ says Finch. Flo protests – she thinks it can be. Finch shakes his head. ‘I just feel like I’m three when I’m on it, like everyone’s scary but I fucking love shapes and textures? Like, no thanks.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Flo says. Flo and Finch bicker for a moment about whether or not Flo should take half a tab. He tells her it’s antisocial, I say I agree with Finch and point out how unpredictable her little trips can be, so she pouts and says, ‘Fine. I’ll just stick with MD.’

‘Good lass,’ I say. About eighty per cent of the time she’s fine on LSD. She says it’s a way she can be up without a comedown, without a risk she’ll throw up, conveniently forgetting the occasions I’ve had to put her in a taxi because she’s gotten paranoid over nowt.

I drink my shitey prosecco, and I tuck the cocaine and ketamine into my bra, in the slit where my chicken fillets are currently stuffed.

‘Is that a push-up bra?’ asks Finch. ‘Your tits look cracking.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘So you know, I’m holding the coke and ket. We should be fine.’

‘Should we make some bombs?’ asks Flo. I shrug.

‘I’m just going to stick with coke,’ I say. Flo makes a face.

‘I’ve gone well off coke.’

‘No you haven’t.’

‘I mean, like, morally,’ says Flo, smugly. I sneer at her and tell her to shut the fuck up.

‘I’ll make bombs,’ says Finch, ‘Better to have them and not need them.’ I throw Flo’s MD at him, and he starts making up a few little bombs with cigarette skins. I’m not into MDMA – I always end up with a harsh comedown, the kind they report on anti-drug sites for teenagers, full-on everything’s-shit-I-might-as-well-just-top-myself comedowns. ‘Do you want one?’ Finch asks, looking at me.