I stop dead in the middle of the swirl and the room keeps spinning without me, me stalled near the wall like an unclaimed coat on a hook, sleeves dangling, nobody’s hands brave enough to take it, and suddenly the stories hit like hail on tin—bam-bam-bam—no doorbell, no polite cough, just voices unloading fast and sloppy, syllables skidding across wet pavement, words sweating under the low lights, and my head’s already nodding, yes-thing automatic, brain lagging three beats behind like it’s still trying to find the door.

     A guy leans in close—cheap shampoo smell, eyes tired as old tyres—starts every sentence with so basically and never climbs out of the hole, city he fled, city he cursed, city he misses like a phantom limb that still aches when the weather turns, hands carving invisible maps in the smoky air, wrong turns marked with bitter laughs, right regrets underlined twice, and then mid-sentence he’s yanked away—poof—pulled by some shout from across the room, leaving his almost-life hanging in my ears like amplifier feedback, shrill and unfinished.

     No breath. No pause. A woman slides in smooth as spilled wine, mouth the colour of fresh bruises, voice racing itself—job-this boss-that rent-due ambition-laugh money-fear all tumbling out in a sprint, words tripping over their own feet like they’re late for a train that already left, and I catch the fragments, hold them, nod at the correct beats—mm-aye-right-sure—now I’m carrying her half-formed future plans in my jacket pocket like loose change that jingles when I move, heavy with other people’s what-ifs.

     Clink. Sip. Someone tops the glass without asking—refill by osmosis—and another voice jumps the queue, scar-story this time, childhood injury turned funny-now sad-then, shirt lifted quick like courtroom evidence, pale line across ribs, laughter rushing in to plaster over the crack, and I laugh too because that’s the pulse here—laugh or the whole machine jams—so I laugh, drink approves with a low thrum-hum, yes lad this is how it works, makes room by hollowing you out a little more each round.

     Stories stack like wet plates. Overlap. Bleed. Echo. I’m not a person anymore—I’m a hallway, a long dim corridor, footsteps passing through, voices that don’t queue, don’t wait—Glasgow heartbreak, divorce papers signed in blue biro, flatmate nightmare that still wakes him at three a.m., nearly-famous band that dissolved in a van outside Dundee, illness-that’s-fine-now-honestly-I-swear—all of it landing, sticking longer than invited, settling into the furniture of my head, and I feel my own thoughts getting shoved to the edges, pressed against the walls like cheap furniture nobody wants to sit on.

     I open my mouth to speak—finally—and someone else fills the space first, seamless, ruthless. That’s new. The music changes shape—thicker, denser—bass chewing time into smaller and smaller pieces, minutes ground down to gravel, and my memory starts playing tricks, stitching other people’s half-told tales into mine, and I catch myself thinking when that happened to me before I have to stop, rewind, shake the reel—whose life is this again? whose ache is this borrowed one?

     Wine laughs sharp across the room, whiskey nods slow and serious, beer waits its turn in the corner, patient as rust. Across the crowd—blink—Róisín, half-seen through shoulders and smoke, half-lost in someone else’s story now, head tilted the same way mine is, same stillness, same open-door posture, same quiet readiness to receive, and that lands harder than it should, the wanting flaring bright and sudden like a match struck in a damp room, then settling back into its familiar shape—quiet, practiced, almost comfortable, the ache I’ve carried so long it’s grown calluses.

     Another story crashes in without warning, and I take it, of course I do. I’m heavier now, my shoulders sag under invisible luggage, under suitcases of other people’s grief, under carry-ons of their small triumphs, under duffels stuffed with regrets they don’t want to unpack, and the night likes this version of me: useful, quiet, absorbent, a sponge that doesn’t complain when it’s wrung out later. Keeps feeding me fragments, half-lives, un-closed loops, open wounds dressed up as anecdotes, and I realise this is the oldest trick of parties: you walk in one person—whole, more or less—and you leave as a collage, scraps of strangers glued over your own outline, edges fraying.

     Clink. Laugh. Nod. Somewhere a toast starts to form then collapses before the glasses can meet, arms rise, drift apart, liquid sloshes, words dissolve into the general roar. Yet still the stories keep flowing—no ownership, no return address, no polite thank-you note—and I stand there letting them pass through me, jazz-rhythm, stop-start, breath-break, already unsure which parts of my voice are still original, which sentences I actually own, which memories were ever mine to begin with.

     And the music rolls on, low and relentless, and the drink hums inside the chest like a second heartbeat, and I listen—fast, loose, already forgetting what I came in with, already forgetting the shape of the man who hesitated at the door an hour ago, the one who still thought he could walk through a room without becoming the room itself.