“I’m taking it off. Right here.”
At my doorway, Jian’s fingers were already working the buttons of her blouse. The smell of soju stung my nose. Her eyes were half-rolled back, pupils swimming. My key still jangled in the lock.
Is this what you really want?
Or is it just the liquor talking?
Maybe even I can’t tell the difference.
A moment when no one knows who’s drunker
Alcohol strips the filter from desire—and just as ruthlessly strips the filter from responsibility. We comfort ourselves with the alibi, I was drunk, it was a mistake, but behind that excuse lurks a brutal calculation.
If you turn me down, I’ll wake up remembering nothing—so no one has to own this.
Her gaze said it plainly: You decide.
A quieter temptation opened inside me: If she never remembers, maybe I can erase my own weight too.
Two stories at a door
“I walked her home. At the threshold she spun around and pressed her forehead to my chest. ‘I don’t have to go in tonight.’ When I stepped back she laughed, called me a coward. So I followed her inside. At dawn she was someone else—cold, ashamed, asking Did I really invite you in?”
“I once had a boyfriend. After a company dinner I came home sloppy drunk and felt unbearably affectionate, so I seduced him. He said, ‘You’re not in any shape to decide,’ rolled over, and went to sleep. Next morning I found him shivering at the foot of the bed. He’d been afraid I’d think he didn’t want me. If he’d just held me a little, I thought, we might not have ended.”
The two truths alcohol keeps
Liquor splits us into twin selves: the child trying to rinse old wounds in ethanol, and the adult ready to use that child to satisfy an appetite.
What we are truly drawn to is not “the drunk girl,” but the power trip of holding the veto while the other abdicates responsibility.
Why I couldn’t refuse cleanly
I stopped Jian’s hands. Yet the feeling was not pride. My fingertips trembled; my chest felt scooped hollow. Refusal was a deflection of responsibility—the relief of I did nothing wrong. Beneath that relief seeped the quieter shame: I couldn’t have done it anyway.
The next morning, her text
Jian messaged at dawn.
[Jian] Last night… was everything okay?
[Me] Yeah. Just put you to bed.
[Jian] Ah… sorry. And thank you.
Two lines were enough for us to recognize the hollowness we shared.
And I understood. Refusal hadn’t protected Jian; it had protected me.
That night I never let go of the doorknob. The clock read three a.m.; the fluorescent bulb at the end of the hallway flickered, buzzed, and relit. The key in my hand was so cold it branded my palm.
Under the quilt, Jian lay one deliberate step away, breathing slow and steady. But my hand on the knob still shook. If I closed the door, she would be safe; I would remain outside, still holding the weight.
So I never let go.
Even now the corridor sometimes visits my dreams: I stand there, unable to release the knob, listening to the three a.m. buzz of the fluorescent light.