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James likes beer. It lives in the fridge.
The next closest cabinet is for “the other stuff.”
Tasha owns the Absolut, especially the raspberry and whipped cream. There’s been less of that lately, though, and more straight up.
Everything else belongs to Steve. He’s a taster and a tryer, bringing home the odd bottle of merlot, pint of bourbon. Last week it was pumpkin spice vodka. To be festive, he’d claimed. He’d tucked it into the cabinet to wait for Halloween.
Now that the calendar’s flipped to October 31, the bottle is gone.
Steve takes everything out of the cabinet and sets it in a neat line on the counter. James lounges with his elbow on the kitchen table, watching.
“You know it’s not in there, right?” James says, raising his brows.
“Well, you never know…” Steve pulls out a half-empty bottle of wine with a bulging cork. James thinks he recognizes it from last Thanksgiving. “There is this…”
“Yeah, well.” James sits up and shrugs. “If you find any ant traps, just throw them away. Don’t feel the need to show me.”
“Sure thing.” Steve tries cramming his head between the now bare shelves.
“I’m gonna go look somewhere else.” James checks the time on his phone, then gauges the darkness out of the window. It may be Sunday, but it’s still a day for partying. Not like anyone in their house typically needs an excuse for calling it happy hour.
“Ok…” Steve says into the cabinet.
James stands and loudly pushes in his chair. He starts down the hallway, running his prosthetic fingers across the wall as he goes, hoping to make his impending presence known. Though hallucinations and headphones might override whatever he tries.
“Tash?” he asks, once he’s outside her room. The door’s shut, but light streams out from beneath it. That gives James a little faith, but it really doesn’t provide any information as to whether Tasha’s awake or asleep. Passed out. Drunk. High. OD’d…
James fervently deletes that last thought and knocks on the door. “Hey, Tash? It’s me.” Of course it’s him. Steve doesn’t go wake her up.
“Hm?” James has to press his ear against the door to hear her. He’s about to call out to her again, but the knob turns, and suddenly James is trapped between the door and the wall.
“What?” Tasha sounds slow. Confused.
James pushes the door back the other way, steps around it, and puts a protective arm around his sister before she gets knocked down.
“Yeah.” James spins Tasha around and gives her a little push back inside. “Happy Halloween. Hope you were scared. In, like, you know. A nice way.”
“It was great…”
James wonders if Tasha even heard what he said. She flops down onto her bed and pulls a blanket over her legs. James realizes she’s not wearing pants. He sighs internally. At least they’re not in public.
James climbs onto the bed too, though there’s no invitation. He thinks of it as pulling rank. Tasha turns away from him, her hair falling in front of her face. She feels around under her pillow, probably for her phone. Once she finds it, James extracts it from her limp grip.
“Hey!”
“You’re already way distracted,” James says. “I’m on a mission.”
“I thought you quit the army…”
James has to admit it’s a pretty good refute. “Eh, the army quit me.”
“So..?”
“You thieved something.” James leans forward, looking into Tasha’s bleary eyes, then into the mess of junk atop her nightstand. It doesn’t take more than a second for him to spot the neon orange label on the bottle, but the pungent scent on her breath gives it away first.
“Uh…?” Tasha hesitates. She seems unsure if she should stand her ground or save time and just cave.
“That–” James’s voice cracks as he reaches across to rescue the pumpkin spice bottle, “–is not yours.”
“Oh, good.” Tasha smacks her lips. “Didn’t taste like mine.”
“Come as a shock, now?”
“Eh. Taste is secondary.” Tasha puts on a mildly disgusted face. “What even is it?”
“Pumpkin spice,” James tells her. He cracks the lid, which Tasha miraculously hasn’t lost, and takes a swig for himself. The mouth of the bottle is spitty, and the vodka itself burns with sucrose and artificial cinnamon.
“Ew.”
“I’ll agree with that,” James says, re-capping the bottle. “But to be fair, it wasn’t for you.”
“Who was trying to poison us?” Tasha looks mildly offended.
“Nobody. You did it to yourself.” James can’t keep down a laugh.
“But–”
“Hey,” James starts, meaning to continue his gentle chastisement, but Tasha twists her lip. A greyish tinge spreads above her cheekbones.
“Are you– Does it–” Tasha tries, swallowing, then rubbing at the space between her nose and lip.
A concerned look spreads across James’s face. He reaches for Tasha’s blanket, wondering if they’re going to need to run.
“Does it, like, make you nauseous?”
“Um.” James considers. “Yeah, kind of.” He pushes down the unpleasant taste, though and focuses on Tasha. “You look really bad.”
“Yeah, I think, I’m gonna–” Tasha slides past James and whips across the hall.
James hears the clunk of the toilet seat, then the splash of liquid hitting water. He cringes, then wanders out of Tasha’s bedroom. “Need help?” James asks, though the bathroom door is half closed.
“No…” Tasha replies weakly.
“You gonna hit your head and pass out?”
“No…”
“Should I trust you?” James grins to himself.
“No…” James hears Tasha spitting. “Yes…”
“Check on you in ten minutes?” James rests his hand on the wall outside the bathroom door.
There’s a sigh. Then, “Ok…”
“Ok,” James agrees.
He turns and nips back into Tasha’s room, grabs the bottle, then walks quickly to the kitchen. Steve is arranging the contents of the cabinet in rows by shape, or maybe shortest to tallest. James can’t tell. But he has his back turned, so James proceeds to the sink where he uncapps the pumpkin spice vodka and pours what remains down the drain. The clear liquid bubbles a little and carries a couple of blackened ant traps toward the garbage disposal.
Satisfied, James takes the now empty bottle and uses it to club Steve between the shoulder blades.
“Huh?” Steve turns around.
“Never again, ok?” James says, showing him the bottle, upside down.
“Why? Where’d it go?”
“Where’d you think?”
More retching can be heard from down the hall.
Steve squeezes his eyes shut. “Shit.”
James shrugs and presses his lips together. “Eh. Life, right?” He gently sets the bottle in the recycling bin, then pulls a beer from the fridge. He pops the lid, then mock-toasts Steve, who has a dusty miniature bottle of pink rose wine in his hand. “And to all a good night?”
“Yeah,” Steve sighs, quickly switching it to a dark whiskey far more worth drinking. “To all a good night.”