ALL THAT I REMEMBER ABOUT DEAN COLA CONT.

We went through the gates at Sandro D’Angelo’s house. People — mostly young men, your football mates, not many girls — were standing around a fire in a forty-four-gallon drum. Gareth Maher was there, but aside from him I didn’t know anybody.

You left me alone while you talked with your mates. I’d started hearing Voices. I believed alcohol and drugs caused them, which was partly true. Voices don’t usually make sense, but that night they were telling me to go home. Or maybe it’s intuition I’m remembering. Either way, I didn’t listen.

The men puffed out their cheeks and rolled up their sleeves, revealing hairy forearms. They talked to each other out the sides of their mouths, eyes yellow in the firelight like wolves’. They vanished momentarily each time the breeze blew a veil of dirty smoke in their direction. I drank more than I should have and shared a joint with a wolf who laughed at his own blonde jokes.

I was relieved when Christos turned up. A familiar face, somebody safe. He kissed me and told me how beautiful I looked in that red dress. He was wearing a brown aviator jacket. I think he let me wear it because I was cold, but that was later in the night. He’d been hanging around me for weeks, months, but I’d thought it was my best friend, Petra, he’d been interested in. That was a lie I’d told myself — I knew it was me he’d wanted all along. Or perhaps everybody (except me) knew that — it’s hard to remember. I’d made the mistake of letting him kiss me one night at Jay Jays when I was drunk, and he’d read more into it. He was sweet and charming, but I only wanted you.

Christos seemed to grow bigger — like a giant bird fluffing up his feathers during mating season — when you came back. You were slurring your words and spilling your beer. You took my hand and said we needed to talk. The wolves whistled and made lewd comments as you led me across the backyard, towards the house. Christos’s gaze burned my back.

There must have been some partygoers inside the D’Angelos’ house, and I would have still been able to hear the music, but, in my mind’s eye, it is empty and quiet. I think the floor was tiled and the walls were beige. I remember a rubber plant in a pot and some white flowers — you would have known what they were called — in a vase on a table. I loved you, Dean Cola, so much.

Contrasting the conservative decor were three primary-coloured bedroom doors: blue, yellow, and red. Green must have been upstairs. There was a scratch, or perhaps a brush-hair trapped, in the paintwork above the brass handle on the red door.

This is where I raised my hand during hypnotherapy, indicating that I didn’t want to go any further. If I were to go through that door, I couldn’t love you anymore.