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You really and truly have nothing against the color green.
It was just that the thought of a sea of sweaty emerald t-shirts and tank tops slipping down the shoulders of people who were either entirely too young or too old to be day drinking the way they were turns your stomach. And, as you had repeated ad nauseam to your pouting, pleading boyfriends in the days leading up to that most alcoholic of holidays:
“Do not get me started on the ‘Kiss me, I’m Irish’ shit. Ninety-five percent of people with those stupid shirts aren’t even Irish. It’s preposterous.”
Coop and Remer, neither Irish, holding brand new shirts saying just that, let out groans of contempt.
“Just come out with us, babe! It’ll be fun,” Coop sighed, beginning to furrow his brows and push out his lower lip in a shameless ploy to win you over.
“Is the stick up your ass Irish? Maybe it will come out with us,” Remer volleyed, significantly less sweetly.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” you sighed, intercepting Coop’s attempted guilt-trip kiss with your palm. “And if you think anyone in their right mind would have fun binge drinking before a respectable 10am brunch, then you two are a lot dumber than I thought. The human liver isn’t meant for such things.”
“And therein lies the appeal,” Remer grinned. “It’s basically free rein to day drink.”
“I don’t know about ‘free rein.’ The police still exist, you know. And alcohol poisoning. And stomach pumps. And hospital bills. Or did those not factor into your genius plans?” you fired back.
“We’ll be careful, baby,” Coop said, and to his credit, he actually did sound a little earnest.
“I’m glad. You’ll just have to be careful without me.”
“Baaaabe—”
“Baaaabe!”
“Final decision.”
“Fine.”
And so here on the couch you sit, waiting for your two idiot boyfriends to come back home — preferably with their livers still intact. You know they’re grown men who can handle their liquor just fine (well, Remer can anyway, despite his wiry frame), and it’s stupid to worry about them, but nevertheless your restlessness persists. Thumbing the edge of your book, you check your phone, a quick, practiced motion, more rote assurance than actual curiosity. 12:24 am. They’ve been out for over fifteen hours now, and the last you’ve heard from them was a selfie Coop sent you at 8:15 pm, toothy and wild, his upturned thumb desperately out of focus.
Maybe you are being a stick in the mud. It’s not like you never go out with them; it’s just the sheer excess of St. Patrick’s Day in particular that turns you off. Seeing college kids yak up unnaturally green fluids on street corners just isn’t your thing. Sue me.
You sort of hate to admit it to yourself, but you miss having your boyfriends chattering away on either side of you while you read. The current oppressive silence in your apartment is making the activity too easy to be enjoyable — ever since you’d started dating, you’d learned that prose was all the sweeter when you had to work for it, stealing paragraphs between such sweet nothings as “Baaaabe, you’re such a nerd! Come hoop it up outside with us!” (Remer), “Well, I think it’s hot that you tend to your intellectual pursuits,” (Coop), and “Yes, you’re super hot. But still boring. Fuck, I’m hungry.” (Remer again.)
Perhaps jolly olde Saint Patrick is in your corner after all, because as you’ve been fondly reminiscing, the voices of your boyfriends in your head have begun to be overtaken by their very real ones outside the front door. Securing your bookmark, you close your novel and try unsuccessfully to wipe a grin from your face as you listen to them struggle with the lock.
“Wanna go any faster, maybe?” Coop chides, no real malice present in his slurred admonition.
“Okay, well I’m the only one with free hands here. So you can calm your ass down,” Remer shoots back.
“Dude! That’s because you threw your borg at that spider and then made me carry everything,” Coop pouts.
Remer merely harrumphs and goes quiet, breaking the silence a moment later with a triumphant cry upon finally turning the key. Your boyfriends burst boisterously through the door, exclaiming with glee as they behold your waiting figure on the couch.
“Honey, we’re home!” Remer exults, lanky arms thrown out scarecrow-style. “And we come bearing gifts! Well, one gift. Spec — specif — spifically.”
“For our beloved,” Coop grins, holding out a fist.
“That is an empty milk gallon,” you say.
“Oh,” Coop says, looking down at the borg. “Fuck. So it is.” He offers you his other hand, fingers clasped around a just-beginning-to-wilt pre-made bouquet (blossoms dyed green, of course, a $10.99 tag stark white against the stems).
“It’s ‘cause we missed you,” Remer purrs, his curls kissing your cheek as he wraps his arms around you from behind. “We wanted to say sorry for being gone all day.”
“Wow, thank you!” you manage, pushing your words through the spaces unoccupied by the fierce twist in your chest. The mere thought of them drunkenly buying flowers for you is so infuriatingly endearing you think you’ve started melting. “I might actually cry.”
“I missed you moreee,” Coop giggles tipsily, casting his empty borg onto the coffee table and curling up into your side. His bleached hair is damp against your arm and you can smell the liquor on him, the alcohol sharp and grating but still shifting just enough for you to catch his regular, familiar scent — shampoo-sweet and comfortable. Sliding down, he rests his head in your lap, eyes fluttering shut with relief.
“Nuh-uh, dude!” Remer protests, unlatching his lips from your neck.
“Yuh-huh.”
“Nuh-uh!” Remer wets a finger with his tongue and bends down, getting dangerously close to Coop’s inner ear.
“Ladies, ladies, please,” you chuckle, lightly smacking Remer’s wrist. By way of comfort, you push Coop’s hair back from his forehead ever so gently, mock-tutting Remer's attempt at a wet willie. Coop sighs into your touch, content and keening. Remer, ever the charmer, sticks his tongue out at you.
“Did you have fun?” you ask. “Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t have to come pick you off some seedy sidewalk.”
“‘Course we did,” Remer grins, nuzzling into your shoulder. Much like Coop, his smell is both inviting and slightly repugnant from the hint of alcohol. “And now we’re home with the sexiest bitch on the planet, so I’d say we had a pretty successful day.”
You can’t help but snort a little. “Okay, bitch. Love you too, bitch.”
“What about me, bitch?” from Cooper.
“You too, bitch,” you affirm, which sends you all into a giggle fit. (Relationship equality is very important to the three of you. Clearly.)
Held between them at last, you can’t help but let out your own sigh of contentment. “I missed you guys.”
“Didja really?” Coop asks, eyes cracking open just a hair.
“Yeah,” you admit, without a hint of shame. “It’s good to have you back.”
They’re both so warm against you — maybe a touch too warm, but altogether yours. Remer kisses you again, on the mouth this time, and Coop watches with stars in his slightly-unfocused eyes.
“You, mister, need to brush your teeth!” you exclaim, breaking away with a giggle.
“What, is Guinness not to your taste?” Remer cracks.
“Not secondhand,” you answer. “You two clean up and maybe — just maybe — you will receive the rare and coveted St. Patrick’s Day Goodnight Kiss.”
Upon hearing this, Remer zings off to the bathroom with almost cartoonish speed. Coop stirs in your lap, less motivated.
“What if I just stay here instead and get it now?” he groans into your thigh.
“All the time in the world for that later,” you answer, pecking his hairline. “But I’m afraid beer breath is not allowed in my lap.”
“Fiiiiiine,” he grumbles, and shuffles unsteadily to his feet to join Remer.
The two of them make a small symphony of sound as they wash up, tap squeaking and brush bristles rustling. You hear them giggle at something, and you can’t help but echo them quietly, smile growing as you see what Coop wrote on the side of his now-empty jug.
BORG ME UP SCOTTY, the writing reads, accompanied by a crude drawing of Captain Kirk, grotesquely large circular eyes stacked atop a triangular smile. An upside-down v serves as the insignia on his shirt. He’s such a fucking nerd, you think, and stand up, grabbing the jug and flowers and making your way to the kitchen, where you wash out the tiny bit of alcohol still pooling at the bottom of the borg and toss it in the recycling.
You unwrap the flowers from their plastic prison, positioning them carefully in a vase. (You love it, thrifted and beautiful as it is — but you continually have to remind Remer that it is not, in fact, meant to be used as an XL beer mug. “Is this your way of telling me you want me to buy you flowers more often?” he’ll huff. “I’ll go out right now and get some,” Coop will say, and you will ever-so-sweetly remind them that your favor cannot be bought with bouquets, thank you very much. But if they're offering...)
On the way back to the living room, you peek into the bathroom, the boys having grown suspiciously silent. They’re making out against the sink, kisses soft and smiling, clumsy and flirtatious from the alcohol still wending its way through their respective systems. Remer’s got his fingers wound tightly into Coop’s hair, who in turn is gripping Remer’s ass like a lifeline. As welcome of a sight as this is, you’re growing tired from waiting up all night.
“Well, well,” you chide. “I see you two have taken the good night kiss into your own hands. Probably don’t even need mine, then.”
They break apart in a flash.
“Me first!” Remer cries, ever the opportunist.
“Okay, but get your ass in bed first,” you answer, and he immediately complies, throwing a wink over his shoulder as he leaves with an alcoholically augmented swagger.
Coop pouts and wraps his arms around you with all the air of a pathetic penitent. “No fair. He distracted me.”
“You and I both know he’s gonna fall asleep with his glasses on if I don’t take them off,” you answer consolingly, stroking his bleached hair back from his forehead. “It’s a matter of safety.”
Coop sighs, concedes, and unglues himself from around you. “See you in a few, then,” he yawns, and begins to shuffle off to his room across the hall.
“Love you!” you call after him, and step through Remer’s doorway.
Your beloved Remer is the kind of person who can fall asleep as soon as he hits the pillow. It’s a feat that manages to impress you every time you witness it, and tonight is no different. In the few seconds you spent consoling Coop in the bathroom, he’s already flung himself haphazardly onto the bed (not even bothering to get under the covers) and begun to doze off. And, just as you said, he’s done all this without bothering to take off his glasses. It’s endearing, really, how predictable he is in this regard.
He shifts sleepily as you sit down next to him, gently rubbing his arm to alert him of your presence.
“Wanna sit up for me, baby?” you ask, slipping an encouraging hand between his neck and the pillow, right in the exciting divot of skin where his wiry curls give way to fuzzy baby hairs.
“Do I haftoo?” he mumbles, eyes cracking open and meeting yours in an admirable show of mock beleaguerment. “You should lay down. With me.”
“C’mon,” you say, and slowly help him sit up. His head lolls a bit (whether more from exhaustion or drunkenness is hard to tell), and you move your hand to softly but firmly cup his chin as you remove his glasses with your other hand. You notice with no small delight that your touch ignites a fierce blush on Remer’s cheeks, and that he’s suddenly very interested in the loose thread on the seam of his basketball shorts. The ruddiness spreads down his neck as you tuck him in, and you can’t help strategically placing a kiss on his strong jaw, right where you know he’s extra sensitive. You’re rewarded with a sweetly strangled whimper and an even deeper flush. Remer’s usually so cocky, always one to play off a sincere moment with swagger, and it gives you no small sense of pride to know you can make him act like this.
“You gettin’ shy on me?” you ask with a smile.
“Maybe. Yeah.” His mouth eases open despite himself, a nervous grin crinkling his nose and exposing the arresting little gap between his front teeth (you really believe that centimeter of dead air is going to kill you one day).
“First you buy me flowers, and now you’re nervous all over. You’re sooo cute—”
He throws a forearm over his eyes, thoroughly humiliated. “Stoooop.”
“Okay, okay! All comfy?”
“Mmm,” he answers eloquently. “You’re lucky ‘m tired, otherwise I’d be jumping your bones right about now.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Your fingers stray to his hair, dreaming up and down through his thick thatch of curls, occasionally dipping down to scratch gently at his scalp. His breathing slows down considerably, face relaxing sweetly as he drifts off. You love him so much like this — the rare serenity, curls ringing his head in a wild halo.
“G’night, sweetheart. Love you,” you murmur against his forehead, and he mutters something under his breath not unlike smellsogood. One final kiss to his curls and then you’re up, turning the lights out and closing the door behind you.
•••
Coop, ever the puppy, is already gazing longingly at the doorway when you arrive and fill it up.
“Hi,” he says, smiling wider than should be allowed (your heart can only take so much).
“Hi yourself.” You make your way over to him, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“You’re soooo pretty.” You know that despite the alcohol he means it, brows earnestly knit together as he gazes wide-eyed at you, doggedly following your minutest movements.
“Could say the same about you,” you say, toying with a strand of his hair. He’s always a sucker for it, and tonight is no different. He chases your smallest movements, leaning into your hand with a needy sigh as if he’s deathly afraid of losing the sensation.
“Have fun today, big guy?” you ask.
“Yeah,” he grins sleepily, bright teeth peeking through ever so slightly. “Really missed you, though.”
“Your flowers were very sweet. I don’t think anyone else would stop in the middle of binge drinking to buy a bouquet.”
“Mmm. Had to. Kept thinkin’ about how I wanted to come home ‘n kiss you. I mean, I kissed Remer, ‘course, but it wasn’t the same without you.”
“Well, are you?”
“Are I what?”
“Gonna kiss me.”
“Can I?” Hushed, like he couldn’t believe it. After all these years.
“Duh.”
So he does. It’s soft and sliding, loose from the booze but singularly focused in its love and intent. You wind your fingers through his hair and he sighs against your mouth, so pliant you think for a moment that perhaps some of the alcohol has been transferred into your own bloodstream from his, making your movements heady and overwarm.
“Dude,” he breathes, resting his forehead on yours. (It’s his highest form of praise.)
“Dude,” you agree, pressing a soft kiss to the cleft in his chin. You know he’s more than a little vain about it, and just as you intended, he lets loose a fluttering, spine-tingling sigh of contentment and embarrassment, sliding down to hide his burning face in your shoulder. Out of instinct, you cradle his head, rocking infinitesimally back and forth.
“You’re gonna make me explode,” he murmurs, words muffled against your collarbone.
“Don’t do that,” you answer. “With all the shit in your system you’re liable to catch on fire, and then you’ll be dead and I’ll have to deal with Remer all by myself.”
“True,” he says. “Then stop doing — all this.”
“You really want me to stop, pretty boy?” You rack up another several hundred pride points as he whimpers at the nickname.
“Yeah. No. I dunno.” He’s beyond words at this point.
“I’m just teasing,” you grin, placing a kiss to the top of his head. “You’re too cute of a drunk not to.”
He merely groans in lieu of a response, and you continue cradling him, a contented silence softly blanketing you both. His breathing slows and you feel him loosen against you, eyelashes sleepily brushing the column of your neck.
“Maybe I’ll come with you two next year,” you concede after a few minutes. “If it means that much to you. Can’t let you have all the fun.”
Coop hums happily, half-asleep. “You gotta wear the shirt.”
“Ohhh, no—”
“Well, how else ‘re we supposed to know to kiss you? ‘r whether you’re Irish?”
“Not a chance in hell!”
But you already know you’ll do it without a fight. Easy as pie, easy as splitting three ways, easy as sleepy I love yous on a stupid, stupid holiday.
They have a funny way of doing that to you. Maybe the luck o’ the Irish has some truth behind it after all.