I picked up this picture, it was of some blue pills in someones hand. I turned to Oli. He could already tell I was intrigued by the photograph, so he went on to explain.
"One of the greatest nights of our lives." He smiled. His face was glowing with reminiscence as he paused to start the story. "The first night you took ecstasy. We bought three pills, one for you, me and Alice."

"Why?" I said. "Did you force me to take them?" I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea of trying my first cigarette and then within a few days be trying ecstasy. It sounded way to reckless to even be me.

"No, no. We recommended them to you, because you were feeling guilty about what happened with Mercedes girlfriend. You know, kissing you and all. So you wanted some relief I guess." He itched one of his tattoos. "So essentially Alice and I had decided to take you out for the night because you seemed pretty down in the dumps about the whole thing. You popped one of these pills and I saw for the first time, that you were actually alive."

I laughed. "What does that mean? I'm alive all the time you know. " That was such a weird thing to say. No wonder his band wasn't getting any recognition, especially if he was writing the lyrics.

"No, before you were hesitant and you would think way too much. But when you took that pill, your skin was glowing and you were so nice to be around. You had this joyful tone like you wanted to save the world, and you would not stop talking about the little things that made you happy."

Huh. That did sound kinda nice. Maybe ecstasy was for me after all.

Oli carried on, "So we went out to the night club, bought a tonne of drinks and danced together. And then we ended up at one of my mates flat with a bunch of other friends there, maybe fifteen of us or so, and we started playing drinking games and telling stories all night."

"Was Alice there?" I asked.

"Yeah, I said that, she was with us the whole time. She was the one who had hold your hand all night because you kept saying that if she let go of you, you would get lost and fall off the ground."

"That's stupid." I smiled, although it was a little bit of an embarrassed smile.

Oli took a deep breath. "We had sex on the sofa that night too. Everyone went out for pizza, but you said you weren't hungry enough for pizza. You just wanted to sit on the sofa and talk to me. But we didn't do much talking, once everyone had left. We had the most amazing sex for about an hour, until we could hear everyone marching up the stairs towards the flat, where we had to call it quits and I had to help you get dressed in a hurry so we didn't get caught."

That sounded pretty daring, and way out of my comfort zone. I saw Oli looking at me differently again, but it made me feel sick just thinking about it. Or maybe it was my head? My brain felt like it was pounding against my skull, so I told Oli quickly that I felt nauseous and he helped me to the bathroom. It was this wave of sickness that had come out of nowhere, making me throw up everything I had in my stomach that morning. I had no idea what had caused it, whether or not it was my head or if I had eaten something weird. God only knows.

Notes