"Just a few drops," the packet said, but I had been best friends with Eric Hanson since first grade, and with high school graduation in a week and him going away for college in the fall, I only had so much time left to make him more than that. It's an aphrodisiac, I thought, and a shitty aphrodisiac I bought online at that. Who ever heard of anyone OD'ing on an aphrodisiac? The stuff was probably so weak that I could empty the whole packet into the bottle of vodka and it would still be a waste of $49.95 plus tax and shipping.
So that's exactly what I did; I emptied it all—about a sugar packet's worth—into the bottle and watched the white powder sink and dissipate in the clear alcohol like melting snowflakes. I swirled the bottle around, replaced the cap, and set it back up in the alcohol cabinet.
I had planned everything to the last detail. My parents were away for a week on business; they would get back in town the night before my graduation, a week from tomorrow. My brother, Colin, would be coming home after exam week at college was done; I didn't know exactly when his last exams were, but I figured he wouldn't be back until Wednesday at the earliest. Not that I needed all that extra time; I was going to get Eric back here and fuck him tonight.
I was pretty sure Eric liked me, but we'd been friends so long he'd never gather the courage to ask me out, and I certainly couldn't do it. But I saw the way he'd check out my legs when he thought I wasn't looking; he frequently made reference to liking redheads—as if I wasn't one—and as best friends we were comfortable enough to flirt with each other under the pretense that neither of us meant it. We were just going to grab dinner and see a movie, like any Friday night, but tonight he'd have to drive me because I told him my engine had died; I even put myself through the indignity of taking the school bus this morning to make the ruse consistent. Further, the movie we were planning to see was already sold out. He didn't know that but I knew because my best friend, Cassie, worked at the theater and knew tonight was the night I was making my move. She kept me abreast of the ticket sales over the week and when the big new superhero movie pre-sold all its evening shows yesterday, I knew what movie to "suggest" Eric and I see. We would show up at the theater, "discover" the movie was sold out, and then I would tell him my parents were out of town and we should just head back to my place where we could watch a movie on Netflix and drink as well. I would let him choose the movie while I mixed us both a couple drinks heavy on the vodka and aphrodisiac, and with any luck the mystery powder would having him boning me like a wild animal on the couch before the movie's second act.
With the vodka safely stored away I had an hour to get ready before Eric was picking me up. I went upstairs and changed out of my school clothes. Part of me said not to dress too fancy because this wasn't supposed to look like anything beyond our usual hanging out, but the other part of me said fuck it, you always dress nice anyway, so you might as well go all out and plant the seed in his head. That part of me won, and I put on a small black dress that clung like a desperate mountain climber to every millimeter of my tiny frame. Then I pulled on a pair of new, translucent black nylon stockings, one at a time, each of them accentuating my long legs. I stood in front of the mirror; I was tiny, only 5'3", with breasts that just narrowly escaped the A-range, and I was one of those girls who would always be accused of being anorexic even though I couldn't help that I was just naturally slender. I actually wanted to be curvier, but try telling that to anyone and see how quickly they laugh in your face. I did have killer legs, though, and in these stockings with this dress I looked like a sports car. I went into the bathroom and put on my face.
An hour later and I was waiting for Eric. He lived pretty close by so he was usually a few minutes late. By the time he was ten minutes late I still wasn't worried, per se, but I was getting nervous; not so much about him showing up, but about everything I had planned for the evening. This would be a moment of no return for us. I went to the liquor cabinet to get something to steel myself. The vodka was the first thing that screamed out, "Drink me!" but I knew I couldn't tip my hand by touching that before he even arrived. I'm a fan of neither rum nor Coke but we had both of them and it was easy to mix one in a jiffy, slam it down, and see that Eric was now 15 minutes late.
"Where are you?" I texted him. I can't help it, I'm one of those people who insist on using proper grammar and spelling even in text messages. Based on the average intelligence of the rest of my graduating class, this was probably one of the reasons I didn't already have a boyfriend.
20 minutes late and he still hadn't replied to my text. I was getting worried. I mixed and downed another Rum and Coke. 25 minutes. I hated actually talking to anyone on a phone, even my best friend, but I was getting worried. I dialed him up and listened to the ring tone.
It rang.
And rang.
And nothing was happening.
Finally I got his voicemail. I hated voicemail more than I hated just talking on phones, but I was getting worried now. I wasn't just worried that he wasn't coming, I was worried something had happened to him. It wasn't like him to just bail without any excuse at all.
"Eric, it's me, Allie," I told the receiver. "Is everything all right? I'm still at home, waiting for you, and it's been almost half an hour. Let me know you're okay, okay? Bye."
I hung up and sat down at the bar counter in the kitchen. I sat my phone down on the counter and stared at it for probably the next ten minutes. Where was he? Somewhere in this waiting period I made and downed a third Rum and Coke. By the time he was 45 minutes late and he still hadn't called back I was telling myself I was just buzzed, but really I was drunk. In that fluctuating state, though, it seemed like a good idea to investigate for myself what was going on, so I slipped into my high heels and marched out, as straight as I could on three Rum and Cokes, to my car and backed out of the driveway. I pulled out onto the street a bit too fast, like a stunt driver, and sped out of the neighborhood, nearly swiping a black pickup pulling into the allotment.
The first stop sign I hit I knew I shouldn't be driving in high heels and I pulled them off and threw them into the backseat. I shouldn't have been driving at all, of course, but the heels I could control. The lightheaded feeling overtaking me told me I should just turn around, head home, and chalk this night up as a loss, but I still worried that something bad had actually happened to Eric and that he wasn't just standing me up for no good reason.
I pulled into Eric's allotment and down his street and I parked my car on the side of the road and killed the lights with horror at what I saw: Cassie's car was in Eric's driveway, and she was picking him up. She was dressed up, in a nice, slinky dress, just like me, and he was dressed up like he knew it was a date. I couldn't help but let out a small scream in the cramped confines of my car, but I caught it quickly in my throat and held it back. The choked-back scream turned into tears that I couldn't keep from escaping my eyes. My head fell forward and I had just enough presence of mind to avoid slamming my forehead right into the center of the steering wheel and honking the horn. I sobbed as I waited for my traitorous best friend's headlights to drive past and well off into the night before I started my car again and headed home.
I pulled back into my driveway but I couldn't pull all the way in because of the black pickup parked in the drive. Oh, God, I realized, my brother Colin was already home. I was still crying from the betrayal of my two best friends going out together, but now I was worried that my brother may have realized I was the one who nearly ran him off the road when I was leaving the allotment. I just wanted to grab a bottle of anything, crawl into bed, and never wake up.
I slunk back into the house in my stocking feet; I was drunk enough I hadn't realized until I was halfway up the driveway I hadn't put my shoes back on, and by then felt zero motivation to walk back and retrieve them. I closed the door behind me and stepped into the house.
"Colin?" I asked, tentatively.
"Yeah?" I heard him slur from somewhere within the kitchen or living room. I walked deeper into the house and found him lying on one of the couches in the living room with the flatscreen TV on. He had muted it but I quickly realized he was watching porn. God, I just wanted to get up to my room and disappear. I would slip into the kitchen, grab a bottle of anything, and head upstairs and drink until I passed out to forget this terrible night.
"Allie, is that you?" my brother slurred from the couch as I slipped back towards the kitchen.
"Yeah, Colin, it's me," I said as I made my way back to the alcohol cabinet.
"Where you been, baby sis?" God, he sounded so drunk. Colin was 22; if he had started college right after high school he'd be done by now, but he put it off for a few years, thinking he could go out to Hollywood and make it as a screenwriter. It didn't pan out, and while he hadn't given that dream up entirely, he realized he couldn't wait tables forever and went back to school in the hopes he'd find something to fall back on.
He was a sophomore now and I still don't think he'd declared a major yet.
"Out," I responded. Maybe I'd tell him about my disastrous night in the afternoon when he was sober—we weren't exactly close but he always managed to be there for me when I couldn't talk to anyone else—but there was no way I was discussing it now, while the night was still too fresh and he was still too plastered.