What is fair in cheese and cake?

Day 7 of the Holiday Log

I have to admit it, I was encumbered. Encased. Shrouded in the very depth of what lust is.

Let me backtrack. 

~

It's not often that someone wholly ethereal crosses your path and for me that was Era. Or Erame. She was the one who made me believe anything was possible and I'd wake up each morning with this intense drive to make anything happen. I was insane.

I wanted to prove that I was just as magical and I wanted her to see and I wanted her to want me because of it.

Silly tricks. Childish games.

But you don't see how absurd it is until you come out of it, and then you cringe at everything you did with disbelief and despair.

Erame was my drug.

I was probably just her lame sidekick that she could call to anytime for the sake of her own amusement or boredom.

But, those days...

Those days were the best of my life. 

~

The day after Era had given me her number, I went over to her apartment on Fourth.

She had rolls of parchment as wide as a man is tall propped up against the wall, dim lanterns on the kitchen counter and hanging from the ceiling, an overflowing ferny pot plant sitting in one corner, a black and white photograph of herself blowing into the camera, and a maroon dress hanging from the bedroom door. 

She smiled dreamily as I stepped inside and said, "This is my apartment. I used to share but they moved out because of drugs."

"Oh, yes," I nodded in agreement wrapped tightly around confusion, "Them drugs..."

"Only the light stuff," she said with big eyes, as if trying to tell me something in a whole new way because the spoken language just wasn't cutting it.

"Of course," I managed to murmur, because I hadn't the faintest idea about drugs or telepathic communication and her mouth was pink today. I felt outraged. I had travelled here by bike and she had changed colour?

"So!" I started in a high-pitched squeal as Era opened the fridge and took out a jug of orange liquid, "colours today just ain't what they used to be!" and I slapped the counter.

She asked, "What are they today?"

I said, "You know, they're changing and moving and designing monoliths."

Era frowned at me as she poured the orange stuff into two round glasses. She slid one over to me. I caught gaze of her lips again and forgot that my hand wasn't already above the counter so it smashed into the chair I was standing behind as I reached for the glass, and I gotta say, I wasn't as smooth as I had planned to be. I was neither graceful or swan-like, and perhaps this was due to my lack of costume. 

I was entirely too human.

I managed to say, "That postman!" loudly, and quite convincingly, as I shook and squeezed my hand, realising that Era had turned her back to put the jug back in the fridge and missed the whole thing.

"Hmmm?" 

I quickly picked up my glass, said ,"Well, he's never on time, is he?" and gulped down the whole glass.

"Cerri, that's vodka."

"FUCK ME!" I yelled. It burned all the way down.

Era's frown was rather deep by now. 

"Why?!" I gasped. "Why give- vodka- why give- to unsuspecting innocent people?"

She laughed. Her face lit up and her teeth on display, head tilted to the side, glass in one hand, positively delighted.

And that is when my world started crumbling.