Perhaps too comfortable.

The wine Candace ordered is good. Very good in fact. Far better than anything I or Piya are used to. It soon becomes apparent that Piya has absolutely no head for wine when by the end of her second glass she is nearly as tipsy as the night that started practically everything between us at The Loft.

“Piya and I used to share of a box of wine at parties back when she was just an undergrad,” Candace tells me as a way of conversation over our **** friend.

“Not the only thing you wanted us to share!” Piya tells the table dramatically as I realise I am perhaps in for some very good gossip about my otherwise very private and tight-lipped girlfriend.

“We never shared any men!” Candace counters, “you said Professor Green was too old for you.”

“I said he’s balls would be too old and wrinkly more like it. I’m amazed he could get it up anyway,” Piya says with a drunken giggle.

“Anything is possible when you’re a pharmacology professor after all,” Candace takes a sip of her wine before eyeing me off, “so, shall we correct our mistakes and share this handsome young stud you’ve caught instead?”

“Nope,” Piya says quickly shutting down Candace’s idea before it had even started, “I have to share him enough already.”

“Oh really?” her eyebrows raised as Piya drops that little titbit on her.

“Yes,” Piya stonewalls Candace, absolutely refusing to go into her and Yui’s private life with me. “I was talking about you sharing my apartment and my bed back then,” Piya turns to give me the full story on her and Candace. “Whenever Professor Green would cast little Miss Xi here out for his wife, Candy would come crawling to me with her box of wine and not leave my room until the wife was out of the picture again.”

Candace blushes a bright shade of crimson at Piya’s teasing of her.

“I just let her stay because she had such skilled fingers. Could tell she’d make a great surgeon!”

Laughing Candace threw her linen napkin at Piya uttering, “such a bitch,” as a way of a comeback.

“To Candace’s finger skills!” I raise my glass in a toast drawing a round of laughter from the pair of them, my mind recalling her talented hands and her efforts at collecting my sample the morning of Piya’s talk.

Our waitress came over then to collect the empty bowls of our first soup course and asked us what we would like for our seafood appetiser. Piya answered before any of us could, well healed by the wine and showing her intention to be the centre of attention. “Oysters. For all of us,” she told the waitress, her fingering signalling the entire table should have them in a big circular motion, “And salt. And lemon. And tequila!”

“You’re in for it now,” Candace says to me, “Oysters drive Piya crazy. They are her ultimate aphrodisiac.”

“You haven’t tried the Women’s Secret Friend I’ve been working on in its refined form,” Piya counters Candace, her hands straying to both mine and her thigh as she rubbed our legs under the table.

The restaurant Candace had chosen was extremely generous with its **** policy when our waitress returned moments later with a whole bottle of Patron tequila and three shot glasses plus the lemon and salt. That set the scene for some heavy drinking as we made our way through the next three courses. The food was outstanding in every dish and worked to barely keep us from switching over in full-blown drunkenness. Being much heavier built that the two girls I was perhaps in the best state of the three of us by the time our desserts were due to arrive.

The amazing delicate confections were served to just me as Piya and Candace had excused themselves at that moment to go to the bathroom and freshen up before the end of the evening. I had my suspicions that were not all they been up together in the ladies when they returned arms around each other for support and both of them rubbing their noses when they sat down at the table.