“Oh,” I frowned. “I don’t think I can have any more than one—”

“No shit. The other three are for me.”

She tossed the first two back before sliding the final glass toward me, clinking our drinks together before we threw them back in unison. I was still busy squirming from the taste when she grabbed my wrist and tugged me back toward the dance floor before taking a sharp left at the base of the steps, shoving open a door I hadn’t noticed earlier.

“Where are we going?”

“I need a smoke,” she replied, her tone strange. We stepped out into the street and I followed her down the cobbled path toward a completely empty alleyway, pitch black and unsettlingly quiet. The only sound was her heels slapping against the ground. I took in a deep breath of fresh air and waited for it to hit me. I expected the air to pull me back together. My heart was still beating far too fast and my ears were still ringing, every inch of my body feeling more alive than I had ever felt before.

In silence, I handed her the packet of cigarettes from my pocket and she lit one up quickly. I watched her take a long, drawn-out drag, almost as if her very life depended on it. She sat down on the ground and despite my normal reservations about sitting on disgusting alley streets where God knows what happened in the past, I followed suit, settling down next to her. She watched me intently.

“Alex,” she asked, two drags later, “do you like girls?”

I felt my whole body stiffen up, from my toenails right up to my ears. “What?”

Connie inhaled. “Are you gay?”

“Why do you think that? That is just—completely absurd—I mean—completely—”

“I’m not a moron.” I shot her the most incredulous look I could manage. If I hadn’t been so drunk, I’m sure I would have stuttered and stammered my way through an extremely implausible denial but I just sat there, frozen and completely off guard, staring at her blankly. “I’ve seen the way you are with girls. You get all bashful and giddy and you act like a stupid guy sometimes, tryna get them to laugh. But with boys…I don’t think you like them.”

“I um…” My voice trailed off and I lowered my gaze. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She huffed impatiently. “Stop acting so obtuse, dickhead! I’m giving you the perfect opportunity to tell me.”

“I’m not obtuse!”

“Yes, you are!” She turned up her nose. “What’s worse is that you have shit taste, too.”

“I do not! I mean—if I was gay, I’d have good taste. Exceptional taste.”

“Aoife Greene.”

“What’s wrong with Aoife?”

“Her tits are literally microscopic. Jesus.”

“You don’t like someone purely based on their tits,” I scoffed. “You—you don’t like someone with tits, at all. ‘Cause I’m not gay.”

Connie didn’t smile as she placed the cigarette between her lips but there was a softness in her gaze that she rarely showed. A gentle, reassuring glint. “Look. I know you’re gay, Alex. And I know you know. And I think you should know that I know.”