Thirteen

By the time it’s ten o’clock, the bar has lost its restaurant-y vibe and now looks more like the drinking hole it was meant to be. My companions have also adhered to the change of atmosphere, and all dishes have been cleared from the table to make way for more drinks.

When I came along, I thought this was going to simply be a dinner with maybe a little more drinking than usual, but as everyone kept asking for more drinks, it’s slowly turned into a drinking party. Nobody seems to be in a hurry to leave, and I wonder whether this is how their dinners go normally.

I usually don’t mind free drinks, but there’s one problem here.

I was hoping to have Ben to myself by now. The longer I sat next to him during dinner, the higher my anticipation got. Having him close to me but not being able to touch him was a stimulation of its own kind.

But once the drinks started pouring in steadily and the place got louder, that spell got broken. Maybe that’s also because for the past ten minutes, he has