It was surprising how long a short high street could feel when you were carrying a drunk girl in your arms. What should have been a ten-minute walk had already stretched to nearly an hour, Adrian staggering through the moonlight and regretting waving away that last taxi outside the club.

“Ade, am I wasted?” the girl in his arms slurred for what felt like the hundredth time. “I feel wasted.”

“No,” he lied. “Just a bit tipsy, that’s all.”

They had not gone another ten yards before she asked again. Adrian sighed. This was where chivalry got him. He really needed to stop answering Tasha’s texts after midnight.

Across the road, four young women in dark clothes stood smoking outside the graffiti-stained shutters of a betting shop. Aside from their hair, they looked almost identical beneath the blur of late-night makeup.

“Are you all right, love?” one of them called.

Suddenly aware of how it must look, Adrian took his arm from Tasha’s waist. “She’s fine. She’s just had one too many.”

The woman looked past him. “We’re asking her.”

“It’s all right, he’s my brother,” Tasha giggled. She had never been a good liar when drunk.

The women crossed the road. As they came closer, they slipped off their heels one by one. Perhaps it was not so gentlemanly, after all, to carry a drunk woman home by yourself down a deserted street at three in the morning.

A redhead tied back her shining hair. “We just want to make sure she’s all right.”

The four of them closed around Adrian, their stilettos hanging from their hands like blades.

“I’m telling you, she’s fine,” Adrian said.

“She will be.”

A pointed heel hovered inches from his face.

After that night, Adrian never answered Tasha’s texts again.

Andrew Gooch

Andrew Gooch is a UK-based writer of poetry, short stories, and scripts. There are few happy endings in his stories. He is fascinated with writing stories about oblivious fools, eternal losers, and pathologically self-destructive characters. He also enjoys using the name Rik.