The Night I Drank

(Note: All comments and constructive criticisms are welcome and appreciated. If you wish for a response but don't want your contact info appearing in the comments everyone can see, feel free to e-mail me through my profile.)

I was three years old when my parents died in a car crash. A subsequent investigation revealed that both of them had been drunk and that was why my father lost control and smashed into that building. As a result, I inherited a sizable amount of money and a strong aversion to alcoholic beverages. Only once in my life have I ever drank alcohol, and this is the story of that night.

Let me begin by explaining that I am going to leave some details of this story purposefully vague. Last names and locations, specifically. Although there is nothing illegal about what happened, there are those who would consider it somewhat scandalous. Since I don't want to deal with those who would throw shade at what I did or what the reaction to it was, I'd rather leave it so that I cannot be identified.

The same goes for the Forest family. "Forest" is not their actual family name, but it is the alias I will use going forward. The family is comprised of Neil, his wife Kate and their daughter Annie. I met them after seeing a story about them on the news. Annie, then 12 years old, was suffering from lymphangioleiomyomatosis, a chronic lung infection . The medication and treatment she needed was so expensive that it was becoming difficult for the family to afford. This, despite the fact that meal was a successful real estate developer and Kate a well connected lawyer in the state prosecutor's office.

I was in my mid 20s at the time and something about their story moved me. To this day, I couldn't tell you exactly what. Maybe it was just fate. It's not that I'm a heartless man, but I'd never been an overtly charitable one either. But after I saw the distraught parents being interviewed by the local TV news crew, and footage of the little girl who spent most of her days with a breathing tube down her throat, I decided to do something about it. I was not the only person to anonymously donate money to the family, but because of the size of my donation, I became the primary source of funds for Annie's care. And despite wanting to remain anonymous, Kate was able to ferret out my identity. This led to the grateful Forests more or less adopting me as a member of the family. I accepted many an invitation to dinner and family functions. Neil and I also bonded over a shared love of old movies and I visited the Forest home for Movie Night almost every week.

Neil also help set me up in a very nice house in the suburban community the family lived in. I actually worked in the big city an hours train ride away from where I lived. Other people might have preferred to live in a large metropolitan area, but not me. It didn't help that the particular city in question had a bad crime problem and a crumbling municipal infrastructure to boot. This was in the mid-1980s and things have gotten better since then, thank goodness. But at the time, I much preferred the quieter life of living in the suburbs. Although I owned my own car, of course, I didn't drive to the city because the building where I ran the chain of electronics retail outlets I had inherited was only a few blocks away from the train station and the commute was a fairly pleasant one.

Eventually, Annie's lung infection was taken care of and she was able to enter high school.. However, because of her lengthy time in the hospital, she was a full two years behind the other kids her age. Her parents decided to not send her to the local public school but instead to a prestigious private school in the same city where I worked. So Annie and I ended up taking the same commuter train into the city every day. After we would arrive in the city, I would walk her to her nearby school and then head to my office building. In the late afternoon, I would pick her up after her classes were done and we would ride the train home together. Sometimes, if her parents were otherwise engaged, I would even drive her from the train station to her house before heading to my own home.

Finally, I should explain that the commuter train we used was an old-fashioned one. The train cars were comprised of Several enclosed Compartments with 2 upolstered benches facing each other. Two people could sit very comfortably on one of the benches, or three people if they didn't mind squeezing in a little. It was only during the holidays that the compartments were ever that crowded, though. The sliding doors to the compartments could not be locked, but there were shades upon them that you could draw down for privacy if you needed it.

Annie and I shared a compartment every morning and late afternoon for years, usually having it to ourselves. Because up the age difference between her and the other students in her grade, she had problems making friends at school. So I ended up being her best friend. I never grew tired of talking to her, despite the fact that I was almost old enough to be her father, with 14 years separating us age wise. But in some ways, she was more advanced than I was at certain things. I had had a morose, somber childhood being passed around relatives to care for me an not popular at the prep school I attended. Annie, meanwhile, was far more outgoing and friendly. And certainly smarter than I was at her age.

Even when school was out in the summer, Annie and I still went into the city together every weekday. I had given her a job in the mailroom of my company at her parents' request. She got along well with the regular employees there, though I couldn't help but think that, had she had a chance to run around with her vacationing peers from school, it might have improved her social life a little. But, i couldn't deny that, on a purely selfish level, I still liked our time on the train together. We talked about anything and everything under the sun. When she would get into arguments with her mother, as all teenagers do with their parents, I was often able to act as the voice of reason to smooth over the rough waters. Both Annie and Kate appreciated this.

There was one time, however, that it was Kate who had to smooth over some ruffled feathers between Annie and I. I had come over to watch a movie with the family and, for a change, it had been a more recent film. I had noticed, at the end of the evening, that Annie had gone to her room abruptly and neglected to say goodbye to me. When I was leaving, Kate took me aside so that Neil wouldn't hear her tell me that I should be careful What I said about other women in front of Annie. Kate told me her daughter was upset because I had said the actress we had watched that evening, Michelle Pfeiffer I think it was, was very beautiful. When I asked Kate why this would upset her daughter, she looked at me like I was the stupidest man in the world Ann informed me her daughter had a crush on me. I was very embarrassed and I think she found my reaction charmingly amusing. She advised me to be more sensitive to her daughter's feelings in the future or else I'd have to deal with An angry mother along with a jealous daughter.

I didn't see Annie for the next few days as it was the weekend. When we shared a compartment on the train the following Monday morning, i noticed her demeanor to me was still on the chilly side. So I apologized for my crass remark from the previous Friday and told her that she was prettier than any Hollywood bimbo anyway. Annie tried to shrug it off like the incident had been no big deal, but I could tell I'd made her feel better. And although Annie was only 16 years old at the time, I have to admit I wasn't upset knowing the girl had a crush on me. I wasn't planning on making any moves on her, of course. I still looked at her as a kid, even though she was starting to blossom into a very pretty young woman. I just assumed she would eventually find a boy her age to become interested in and her infatuation with me would be a thing of the past. I had assured her mother as such a few days before.

I was wrong, of course, and I'll bet you've already guessed that.

Allow me to jump forward three years after that incident. Annie was 19 now And her beauty was in full bloom. She only stood a smidge over 5 feet tall and tipped the scales at somewhere between a hundred fifteen or a hundred twenty pounds. Her figure was still on the slender side. In particular, she was disappointed that her breasts hadn't developed past A32A bra size. I had assured her that many men prefer a smaller, firmer set of breasts and that she had the beautiful body of a ballerina. She had long curly blonde hair that came down to the midpoint of her back, past her shoulders. Her bangs framed an angelic face with clear blue eyes that looked like a pool of water a man would want to swim in forever. she had high cheekbones and a little nose, slightly upturned above a beautiful set of lips. Her hands were small, as were her feet, still size 7 1/2 and never getting any bigger.. And having seen her in a swimsuit several times during my visits over the years, I knew her behind was nice and well-rounded.

Despite my efforts to reassure her, she was still convinced that her classmates, two years younger than she was, looked more like women than she did. She was about to finish her last year of high school before going to State College in the city, which meant our daily shared commute would continue. However, she would not be working in my mailroom that summer before starting her collegiate studies. Instead, she would be working as an office clerk in her Father's company.

She and Neil were out of town on the night that I took my first drink of alcohol. Niels mother was succumbing to a long illness and wasn't expected to last much longer. Annie's problematic lungs, it turned out, were a hereditary condition from Neil's side of the family. The two had flown out of state to be with the old woman when she passed. Kate had not gone along because of some bad blood between neil's mother and her. Even on her deathbed, neil's mother had not wanted Kate around.

It was a Thursday night in May around 10:00. I was reading the latest in a series of mystery novels about a burglar who had once again ended up in broiled in a murder investigation. My reading was interrupted when my doorbell rang and I opened the front door to find Kate there.

"Kate?" I said in surprise. "What are you doing here so late? Has there been bad news about Harriet?" Harriet, as you might have guessed, Bing kate's mother-in-law.

"No" she answered. "No news on that front. The doctors said it might take a few days before she finally lets go. She always was a stubborn old bitch. Are you going to invite me in? I need to talk to you.'

"Of course. Come in and make yourself at home" I told her. "can I get you something to eat or drink?"

She moved inside and stepped past me. Without taking her boots off, she went up the short stairs to the upper floor of my bi-level house and made her way into my living room. I followed along and watched her sit down on one of my brown leather couches. "Í've already had dinner tonight" she said as she looked over to my small bar. "Got any scotch?"

"I think so." I said as I moved to where I kept my liquor. I don't drink, but I sometimes have people over who do. As the only bachelor in a group of married friends, I often host poker night at my house, for example. "Alan Barstow gave me a bottle of Glenlivit last Christmas. That's scotch, right?" I asked as I drew the bottle in question.

"Yes it is" she answered from her position on the couch behind me. Pour me a glass of that on the rocks. And make one for yourself too."

"You know I don't drink" I said as I took a whisky glass and turned around to ask her if this was the right size for the drink she wanted. The words died in my throat as I saw she was now holding a pistol in her hand and it was aimed right at me.

Now, while her daughter may be a small young woman, she does not get her stature from Kate's genes. Kate stands 5'9' with a strong yet still very feminine build. She attended college on an athletic scholarship and made the all state volleyball team. Even a few decades later, she was still in very good shape and by no means a small woman. But she seemed dwarfed buy the 9mm Beretta that she held in her hand.

It was a pistol I had seen before. In one of my visits to the Forest home, Neil had shown me his collection of firearms. Like I mentioned before, Neal and I are fans of old movies and the James Bond series in particular. Unbidden, a line from the first film in the series, "Dr. No", entered my mind. There's a scene early in the film when bond is taken to task by his boss for carrying a Beretta. The spy agency's armourer describes the gun as being nice and light, dismissing it as belonging in a ladies handbag. I can certainly vouch for the latter, as it had been a warm night and Kate hadn't worn a jacket, so she must have pulled the gun from her purse. However, it didn't look nice or light to me. It looked like a gODDAMNcannon.

I couldn't read her expression as she told me "You're gonna want a drink to steady your nerves. Because you and I are going to talk about how long you've been fucking my daughter. So make those drinks. And then bring the bottle too."

In old movies, or even modern ones for that matter, when characters have a gun pointed at them, they often ask what this is about or tell the person threatening them not to do anything foolish. I didn't do any of those things. I just stared at the gun and struggled to maintain my composure. From the dozen feet that separated me from Kate, I couldn't tell if she had disengaged the gun's safety catch or not. But i decided to just assume she had, that i was in mortal danger, and just react with the appropriate level of pants-shitting terror. I silently turned back to the bar and made her drink as instructed. Her suggestion that I make one for myself suddenly seemed like the best idea in the history of the world and so I did that too.

I slowly turned around again with a drink and a small napkin in each hand. As ordered , I also had the bottle squeezed under my armpit. Carefully, I walked to the coffee table and put her drink down about a foot away from where she was sitting. With my one hand now free, I placed the bottle next to her drink. I stepped backwards into an easy chair, sat down and took a sip of my drink. Even with the ice cubes I'd put in the glass, the liquid burned my throat as I imbibed it. I made a face of disgust but then turned my attention back to Kate.

"How long?" she asked me pointedly. I had a passing thought that she was using a tone of voice she must save for grilling a witness in the courtroom. If I had any notions of lying to her, that voice dispelled them immediately. If I hoped to survive this interrogation, i knew my only choice was to tell her the truth.

"Since January" I answered. "That was when we first slept together."

"Not before?" she asked

"Well," I began before my nervousness started to rise up and I swallowed hard. I took another sip of my drink to steady my nerves, as she had suggested it might. It still tasted awful, but I was expecting it a little more this time and I managed to control my face better. I continued my explanation with ",,,before that, we did... other things."

I listened for the sound of a gunshot but it didn't come. She simply nodded as she took in what I had said. "Before you slept with her, you worked up to it" she said, articulating her thought. "Why don't you start at the beginning and tell me how things started getting sexual between you two."

I winced at her use of the word "sexual" as I thought back to how to answer her question. I put my thoughts in order as best I could and looked at the ice cubes floating in my glass of Scotch whiskey.

"It was on the train" I began. "You know we ride the train together every weekday. And you've seen the size of the compartments in the train."

"Yes" she agreed. "When all of us went to that Hitchcock film festival last year. We all sat in that compartment. Cozy way to travel. Me, I like to drive, but I can see the appeal."

"Right" I said before continuing. "Well, most of the time she and I had a compartment to ourselves. When it would get crowded, she would sit on the bench with me and we could talk in a lower voice without really disturbing the other passengers sitting with us. If anyone was there with us, it was only usually one person on the other bench anyway. And a lot of the time, they'd be listening to a Walkman or reading a paper or otherwise not paying attention to us. But when someone else was there with us, she always sat next to me and snuggled up. It was a totally innocent thing, not sexual at all. She does the same thing when I come over for movie night."

"I know" Kate said to encourage me to keep going.

"Well," I continued, "she took to snuggling up even when it was just the two of us. It didn't bother me, and even after you told me she had a crush on me, I didn't try to stop her. I just thought it was cute. And, well, you know how lonely I was when I was growing up. We've talked about that. Annie's kind of comfortable affection just isn't something I got a lot of growing up."

"I noticed" Kate acknowledged. "I remember when you first started coming over and I would give you a welcoming hug. You always stiffened up. Didn't take me long to figure out you were just not used to being touched like that. But you eventually loosened up a little."

"Thanks to you and your family" I agreed. "So part of that is why I never told Annie not too get so close. I figured it was good for me to let people get close. And since she did it in front of you and Neil when we got together and you never mentioned it, I figured you were OK with it as well."

"And so you figured it would be OK to fuck her too?" Kate suggested with her voice starting to rise in anger.

"Jesus Kate!" I said and took another sip of my drink. "I'm just trying to say that it didn't start off like that at all. We were just... comfortable with each other. We would cuddle up on the train and talk and there was nothing bad about what was happening. Even when someone was in the compartment with us, we'd still be as close and nobody ever raised an eyebrow at us. She was just a young girl talking to her older buddy."

"Yes, you were always close" Kate agreed. "Ann I thought you were a good man. How can you take advantage of her affection like that then? When did you decide you wanted to fuck her.?"

"Kate" I said as I took a breath. I chose my next words very carefully as I knew the wrong ones were going to get me shot. "If you want me to tell this story, let me tell it. And let me tell it my way. If you think I'm lying, you can shoot me then. But if you want to understand what happened, please sit and listen. And if it's possible, try to keep an open mind."

"An open mind?" she asked in disbelief. "I'm supposed to keep an open mind about you fucking Annie?

"it's not fucking" I blurted out. "I mean, not always. If you mean fucking in the sense that I use her and then ignore her and don't think about her until I get horny again, then you've got it all wrong. Yes, she and I have had sex. I won't deny that. I don't know how you figured it out, but you did and you're right about it. And I won't insult your intelligence by trying to deny something that you already know is true. But please don't call it fucking. It's an insult to what Annie and I have between us."

"Oh dear Lord, Stanley" she exclaimed. "What you have between you? You're 33 for God's sakes! You expect me to believe that this is a grand romance between you and my teenage daughter?"

I wasn't particularly fond of her tone, midway between mocking and angry. But it was still better than getting shot. So I answered with "I know how that sounds Kate. Ever since she first kissed me, I've been fighting with my feelings of guilt about it. I must have decided a thousand times to end it. But every time I try to tell her we can't be together, I take one look at her and I forget all about it. Because when I'm with her, all I feel is love. Look at me Kate. Look at my face. I'm telling you I am in love with your daughter. Do I look like I'm lying to you? You've broken down criminals in court for years now. You know what a liar looks like. When I tell you I'm in love with Annie, can't you see that I'm telling the truth?"