Chocolate and Ouzo

Sonja dragged me to this indie birthday party in an actual kindergarten, which sounds like a setup for a joke but wasn’t. We loaded up on gin and tonics, flatbread, and this chocolate nut cake that wobbled on the plate. The music couldn’t decide between indie and electro-house, so we just split the room between us—my side and hers. At some point we got ambitious about bartending, which lasted about one drink before it became clear we were just drunk and pointing at bottles.

We borrowed a bottle of Ouzo. Stole it, really. The rest of the night got soft around the edges—nachos at my place, a captain’s club that might’ve been a regular thing or just a table, what I decided was the Spanish mafia in the corner getting stranger the drunker I got. Rain on the walk back that felt like the night’s punctuation. Sonja’s expensive Lacoste caught a chocolate stain somewhere between the nachos and home.

We didn’t care about the shirt. That’s the moment you know it was right—when the disaster is just part of the story, not a mark against it.