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“Oh-!” Grace stumbles, grabbing for Eva’s hand.
She misses, but Bibi catches her arm, just enough that she can turn her weight to sit down heavily on the steps instead of going for a tumble. “Oop, there we go.”
Ursula laughs. She leans her back against the wall.
Eva raises a hand to her mouth. “You okay, honey?”
“Yeah,” Grace says, blithe and smiling. “Fantastic, actually. Only, one second the floor was there, and the next, it wasn’t.” She looks into Bibi’s eyes. “That’s pretty crazy, isn’t it?”
Bibi grins. “How many did you say you’d had, Gracie?”
“Mm. I didn’t.” She lifts her hand and pats Bibi’s cheek. “It’s none of your business.”
“You tell her.”
Bibi flips Ursula off without looking at her.
“I think you,” Eva drops down beside Grace on the rough stone steps, “have the right idea. Oh, shit, this is hard.”
“It’s stone.”
“Yeah, well, it’s hard!”
They’re all laughing then, peals echoing off the walls of the dark, empty street. Lampposts, tall honey-dippers, drizzle light over the sidewalk. Grace goes red in the face from wheezing, tears on her cheeks, rocking back and forth.
“It wasn’t that funny,” Bibi says, once she’s regained her breath. She sits on the step below Grace now, not quite leaning into her knees.
“Fuck you,” Eva says, nudging her with no malice. “I’m hilarious.”
“No,” Grace says, “it’s–“ She brings her hands to her forehead. Her shoulders hitch.
Bibi and Ursula, now on Grace’s other side, look at each other.
“It’s hard,” Grace tries, helplessly. “It’s–” She dissolves.
“That’s what she said?” guesses Ursula.
“It’s hard…on Eva’s arse?” adds Bibi.
Grace nods, unable to lift her head. “And– Like–”
Eva shakes her head at the other two over Grace’s bent form, mouth open wonderingly.
“Like a statue!” Grace manages.
Ursula chokes.
“A statue?” Bibi frowns.
“Oh, you perv,” Eva protests, laughing again. “That’s what I would say if I were getting it from behind from a statue, is that it?”
Grace nods.
“Oh my god.”
“Grace!”
“Sorry,” she offers, bright eyes liquid in the dim light, mouth split in a cheek-aching smile.
“Oh, sure you are, you cow.”
Grace sighs, gusty, pleased with herself. She leans into Eva’s side.
“Aw.” Eva rests her cheek on her messy blonde curls.
“It’s beautiful tonight, isn’t it?”
Ursula looks around. The clouds have been stripped from the sky like a blanket from a bed—stars are out, streaky pinpricks against the lavender-charcoal sky. The trees shift, black, in a light breeze. With the alcohol pounding through them and the coats thrown over their clothes, it’s practically warm. “Yeah.”
“Let’s sleep here, then,” Bibi decides.
“Are you mad?”
“Here, on the statue-dick steps?”
“I’m comfortable.”
“Loony,” Grace musses her hair.
“Sorry, no.” Ursula shifts her weight. “I’m going back to a mattress. I think that was a pretty good invention, personally.”
Eva snorts. “Sorry, Bibi, I’m with Urs on this one.”
“Alright, alright.”
“You are sweet, though.”
“What you mean?”
“You can’t hide it. You wanted to stay with us out here.”
“Awwww,” Ursula jeers.
“No. Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, you do." Eva makes knowing eye-contact with Grace. "Softie.”
“Can’t hear ya.” Bibi lifts her hands, plugs her ears with her palms.
Grace tugs them away. “There are sober men aplenty–”
“Not that song, no!”
“And drunkards barely twenty!” Eva and Ursula join in, pointing at Bibi.
Bibi can’t keep from laughing.
“There are men of over ninety who have never yet kissed a girl.”
“Uncle Desmond, alright.”
“Bibi!”
“What, have you smelt his breath?”
Ursula wrinkles her nose. “She’s right, you know.”
“We’ll rove the country over–” Grace has kept singing, in her sweet, wine-warbled way. She pauses now, looks intentionally at all of them. She starts again, “We’ll rove the country over-“
All of them, even Bibi, join in: “ And together we’ll face the world!”
“Whoo!” they holler, clapping and pounding at their thighs.
“Encore!” Eva shouts.
“Absolutely no encore!”
“Shut up!” shouts a new voice, deeper and far more vehement than Bibi’s, from a surrounding house.
Their heads whip around to stare at each other. They freeze. Then they collapse into each other, cackling.
“I suppose we should go back,” Eva says eventually, with regret. She wipes a sobering hand across her eyes.
“Why?” Ursula says.
“Well, Becka–”
“Becka’s at Nicola Ferris’s. She’s probably getting as shit-faced as we are.”
“She is not!”
“She’s twelve, Bibi.”
“She’s nearly fourteen, are you serious?”
The other two look at Ursula, who frowns. “When did she turn thirteen?”
“Last year!”
“Jesus Christ. She just has so many of them. The birthdays.”
“One a year, I’d say.”
Ursula makes a face at Bibi, but neither of them hold enough tension for barbs. They grin.
“Anyway," Eva says, "you’re right, Becka’s looked after. Though in my head, she’s just playing some innocent spin the bottle and that’s it.”
“Sure.”
“Oh, in that case, could we stay a little longer?” Grace looks at Eva with big eyes. “We hardly get to see this one anymore.” She reaches out and pulls Ursula to her.
"Oh, yes, with her sexy paramedic.”
Ursula scoffs. She points at Grace. “And how about her? Last time I had to hear so much about Johns and Pauls was in catechism.”
“You’re all disgusting. Don’t look at me like that, Eva, you’re the same about bloody Ciaran.”
“How awful of us, to be happy and in love.”
“Exactly.” Bibi mimes throwing up.
The others grin.
“I suppose we can stay longer,” Eva says.
“Yay.” Grace beams.
“Provided that guy,” she gestures in the direction, “doesn’t try to come over here and properly evict us.”
“Ah,” Bibi says. She leans back on her hands. “We could take him.”