by Rachel Shane
“Never have I ever?” Erin recrossed her legs, a lock falling out of place into her eyes. She quickly reached up and smoothed it back down. “Provided whatever we say here stays here. Like Vegas.”
“You start.” Corey nodded at her. The rules were simple: someone would say something they’d never done and everyone who’d done it had to chug.
“Never have I ever…” Erin thought for a moment. “Cheated on a test.”
A few people in the room—Bianca, Nate, Fallon—lifted their cups but Corey shook his head. “Nope. Doesn’t count. No lame confessions allowed.”
Erin sighed and squirmed in her seat. “Um. Never have I ever…had someone go down on me.”
“Now we’re talking.” Corey clinked cups with me. Almost everyone in the room chugged, including Erin. Except Bianca.
Corey’s eyes widened at that. “Really? Never?”
“Don’t give her a hard time, man,” Nate said.
Redness bloomed over Bianca’s cheeks. “Fine. From now on I won’t answer honestly.”
Corey lifted his hands in surrender. “Sorry. No judgements. Answer honestly or the game isn’t fun.” He patted my leg. “Your turn.”
All eyes settled on me. My pulse beat hard as I considered my options. “Never have I ever…done it in the wrong entrance,” I said.
Two people in the room chugged. Nate. And Fallon.
I screamed at Fallon’s confession. Corey clapped for her. She shrugged. “Liam wanted to try it.”
“Did you like it?” I asked.
“Well, let’s just say it wasn’t a one time thing.”
“Nice!” Corey and Nate slapped each other five, which was dumb, because they weren’t involved at all in Fallon’s sex life. “Now I need to see what you haven’t done,” Corey told Fallon.
“I may look innocent but I’m not.” She swung her blond hair behind her shoulders. “Never have I ever…slept with two people in the same night.”
Our heads swiveled around, waiting for someone to take the drinking plunge. Bianca fiddled with the cup in her lap but otherwise no one spoke. Not surprising, since I was pretty sure Bianca was still a virgin despite the way she flaunted sex appeal.
Corey made an incorrect buzzer noise. “That one was boring. Try again.”
Fallon scoffed. “Not my fault that no one’s done it. I think it’s Nate’s turn.”
He cracked his knuckles as if he were about to say something good. Then, looking right at Corey and me, he said, “Never have I ever…had sex while someone else was in the room.”
My stomach lurched. Corey proudly chugged. I lifted my glass with shaking hands to my mouth and sipped. The alcohol, while strong at first, was going down easy. I had to forcibly remind myself not to intake too much at once.
“Ew. Gross.” Bianca threw a pillow at Corey.
I bit my lip. “We thought he was asleep.”
“Okay, my turn.” Bianca studied her cup, purposefully avoiding eyes. “Never have I ever…told my best friend I was in love with him.”
Silence fell, except for my sucked in gasp. Everyone paused, no drinking. Until someone did. All heads swiveled in Nate’s direction as he lifted the cup to his mouth. But apparently he didn’t pick up on Bianca’s announcement—her confession—because he chugged his beer proudly. Then, I joined.
Corey cocked his head to the side and raised a brow.
“My ex,” I whispered. He’d been my best friend for years before I’d finally told him how I felt and turned our friendship into something more.
Corey nodded, turning away from me. My stomach flipped at his reaction and I squeezed his hand in reassurance. Bianca continued to stare at her cup. The world kept turning, universe still existing.
“I’ll go,” Corey said after a moment. I straightened, eager to hear what he was going to say. “Never have I ever…told someone I loved them.”
His words burrowed into my heart and stabbed it at the same time. It was a clear jab at me and my confession about Ryan, but I couldn’t help latch onto the other part of his words: He’d never said it to his ex-girlfriend, the one who cheated on him.
He’d also never said it to me.
Sure, he’d told me he was falling for me, but falling in love was still one step below in love. I wasn’t sure if he was looking at me or not. With shaky fingers, I lifted my cup to my mouth and chugged again. Stupid Ryan.
After several rounds of the game, we were all pretty intoxicated. Even me, despite my decree to take it easy. I wasn’t even sure how it happened. After all, I thought I’d been pacing myself. When the room started spinning, I put down my cup.
At least for a little while.
The rest of the night was a blur, small fragments of scenes remaining, the rest dropping away into the oblivion of forgotten memory. A hazy image of Corey’s face in the Rho Sig bathroom mirror and my hand steadying my body against the shower as I tried to exit. But the details of the scene remained unclear: was he helping me go? Did I throw up? Were we hooking up in there for some weird reason?
Making out with Corey on the dance floor at Beta Chi Afterhours while freshman recruits took bets on how long we could go without breaking apart.
More vodka. Some beers. Maybe even a rum and coke.
Me, breaking the promise I’d made to myself.
The feeling of blacking out was one of the worst feelings in the world. You experienced something, you were there, except you had no recollection of it, like a letter sent but never received. I mailed a part of myself away. Only a few hours earlier, the colors were bright and the scene undulated with vivacity, but now only stark blackness remained. The world was a shirt with stitches missing, a gaping hole in the fabric.
When I first felt the soft pillow beneath my cheek, I assumed I was in Corey’s bed. The heavy object weighing down my arm must be his elbow resting on top of me. Deep in my gut, my stomach convulsed, throbbing with a dull ache. My head pounded as loudly as my heartbeat, both of which were audible to me. A faint beeping sound echoed somewhere in the room. I tried to scream for Corey to turn off his alarm, but no sound came out of my hoarse, burning throat.
My eyes popped open. A long clear wire flowed from my arm to a metal IV stand, a bag filled with clear liquid dangling from the hook. Blinking green lights marked the incessant beep beep beep on a large monitor. Sunlight streamed through the parted white curtains, forcing me to squint. The heavy antiseptic smell made me gag.
Oh God. Panic sluiced through the heavy fog in my brain. The beeps on the monitor increased in insistency as my heart amped. How did I get here? My mind only supplied a blank space as an answer, a fill-in-the-blank question on a test. A scream built in my lungs but died at the edge of my dry, scratchy throat. I kicked my legs hard, testing to make sure they still worked. The thin white blanket slid off my calves, revealing bare legs. I reached down beneath the ugly flowered hospital gown and found nothing but sweaty skin.
I fought a battle against my sluggish body and used the wrist of my free hand to push myself upright into a sitting position. Panting breaths escaped from my lungs before gravity forced me downward once again. I squinted at the enemy, the IV keeping me prisoner to the bed. Without a second thought, I ripped the white tape off and tore the needle out of my vein. A muted scream forced its way out of my mouth as my arm throbbed with pain. Blood formed a dome at the hole, but I wiped it on the white sheet, marking my territory. My legs felt heavy, lethargic, as I twisted them off the bed. I summoned all the superhero strength to keep moving.
As my feet touched the cool linoleum floor, I steadied myself on the bed guard. I pulled back the curtain to my room and a nurse, whose back was turned to me, immediately swung around.
“What are you doing up?” Her curls bobbed when she eyed me up and down. “Where is your IV?”
I squeaked something of a reply, but again, my voice had betrayed me. I pointed to my crotch, the universal sign for I have to pee. She grabbed my hand and escorted me police-style to the bathroom where she lectured me for not
calling the nurses. My throbbing head helped tune her out and the bathroom door slammed in her face did the rest. I had to pee, sure, but I twisted the knob on the faucet, bent my face under the stream, and lapped up water like a dog drinking out of a toilet.
I cleared my throat and this time made an actual sound, but more like a raspy whisper, as if I had the flu.
When I opened the door, the nurse stood there, arms crossed. I cowered under her disapproval. She led me back to my room, checked my vitals, and told me she’d get the release forms started. When she left, she kept the curtain open and I caught sight of the waiting room alcove and the lone boy slumped over in one of the uncomfortable gray chairs, eyes closed, face blotchy.
I didn’t have full mobility yet but I slid off the bed and wobbled the twenty feet past the other curtains toward him. His eyes popped open as my shadow hovered over him. Just before I collapsed, he bolted upright and steadied me with firm hands on my shoulders. I settled my head into his chest, which smelled of vodka and salt, both of which made my stomach gurgle. “You’re okay,” he said, his words starting out as breathy relief before shifting in octave into a question.
I nodded, then shook my head. I was okay. I wasn’t okay.
I scratched my head, hoping pieces of the previous night would wash over me, like a tidal wave delivering a stranded surfboard back to the beach. “Wh—what happened?” I spoke each word slowly, as if I were learning to speak for the first time.
“You gave me one hell of a scare, that’s what happened.” His arms slid down and wrapped around me until he earned a sharp glare from the nurse. His fingers latched in mine and he led me gently back to my bed. There, he called Fallon and arranged a ride home for us from her boyfriend, clearly something they’d previously set up given the lack of details spit from Corey’s end of the conversation.
When he hung up, he avoided my eyes, but pulled me into another embrace while the nurses bumbled around us, filling out my exit papers.
“What happened?” I whispered again. My eyes widened when I spotted the clock. Four P.M.
My mind raced a thousand miles, but I couldn’t come up with a solid reason why he’d be pissed at me. The last thing I remembered was Corey’s fraternity basement, swirling lights, loud music, and a chaotic sea of people. I felt like a fraud. I had lived my life for the last sixteen hours, yet I couldn’t remember one minute of it. A lie by omission is still a lie.
Corey sighed, dropping a kiss on my forehead. “You got really drunk, had your stomach pumped. They gave you medicine to knock you out and an IV to sober you up.”
“Oh God…” A sob clawed its way out of my raw throat.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. Happens to the best of us.” He let out his raspy laugh, a clear attempt to lighten the situation by injecting humor. The laughter sounded dissonant to my ears, and probably his too, because he cleared his throat and added, “The important thing is you’re okay.”
But was I?
Normal college drinking involved waking up with a raging hangover. Normal college drinking did not involve hospital excursions or tubes shoved down your throat.
I crawled out of his embrace and sat up, steadying my hand on the bed rail to prevent keeling over. Before this year—before Corey—I’d only been a casual drinker. A weak vodka cranberry at my Bat Mitzvah, traded to me by my dad in exchange for a father daughter dance. A single glass of Riesling clinked with Ryan on the night of graduation. Rum and diets slipped to me in the bathroom by older sisters at Rho Sigma pledge events where new members weren’t allowed to drink. Each of those times though I’d had a single drink or maybe two spread out over the course of several hours. Even that first night with Corey at Beta Chi, I’d nursed a cup of beer all night.
But that second night with Corey at Quigley’s, I’d downed three shots in five minutes, a gateway drug to the hard stuff. The excess. Soon two drinks wasn’t enough, I needed four, five, countless. At formal, Corey had enough responsibility to stop drinking early in the night while I kept going, downing one shot of vodka to every can of coke he drank. And last night, I’d gone into the evening with a game plan: to pace myself. I thought I had, but clearly I didn’t know my limits. Clearly I couldn’t say no when someone thrust a drink into my hands.
I had a problem. With alcohol.
With Corey.
I didn’t trust myself when I was with him. I’d wanted to find the gray area between the Kenzie of the past and the Mac of now but in Corey’s vicinity, the scales tipped too far and I lost my balance. He’d said he was falling for me, but how could he be when I was the wrong person, a conglomerate that melded all the bad parts of me into one whole? How could I be with him when I didn’t even know who I was?
He reached out to bring me back to his chest, and it took all my will power to scoot an inch away. My throat was on fire, but it was welcome punishment for the words that fled my lips. “I get it now. What you meant back in October.”
His hand hovered in mid-air as his brow creased. “October?”
Tears pricked against the back of my eyes but I kept them locked inside. I needed to be strong now, prove to myself that I could be. “When you told me you needed space.”
His mouth parted and he snapped his hand back. “Are you saying…?”
I cleared my throat, resisting the urge to wince. “I need space.” He opened his mouth to speak, or maybe protest, but I rushed on before he could. “I can’t be with you until I can be the right version of me. And I need time to figure out who that is.”
His face softened, as if this was something he could deal with, talk me out of, ignore. “I like this version of you.” The corners of his lips lifted in a smile.
I kept my face stoic, so my words would sink in. “I don’t.”
The smile dropped with the force of an anchor hitting the ocean. He slipped off the bed and hovered there for a moment, giving me a chance to change my mind. When I didn’t, he shoved his hands in his pockets and walked out of my life.
WHEN FALLON ARRIVED, SHE spun around the curtain as if she might discover Corey hiding somewhere and popping out while yelling, “Surprise!” She pursed her lips. “Where’s Corey?”
“I broke up with him.”
I expected her to argue, maybe gasp, instead she nodded. “Good. I think he’s a bad influence on you.”
I’d already come to the same conclusion.
When we got back to the room, she deposited me on my bed with a pint of soothing vanilla ice cream and a bottle of water. Netflix was already queued to a curated array of cheesy chick flicks. “What happened?” I was the same question I had asked Corey, but this time I wanted the details, not the facts listed on my medical chart.
Fallon’s face softened. “You were so drunk when we left Rho Sigma, you could barely walk.”
I sucked in a breath. “Did anyone see?”
“Mackenzie…everyone saw. Corey even picked you up and carried you over to his fraternity’s party.” She turned off the TV. “He brought you upstairs, so you could sleep it off, but I guess you insisted on coming to the party anyway because the next time I saw you, you were in the midst of a huge fight with Corey.”
My mouth gaped. “Did you hear what we were fighting about?”
“Yeah.” There was somberness in her voice. Her eyelashes fluttered closed. “Ryan. You hung out with him over break?”
She cocked her head to the side, the same way that Corey always did. I’d never told her. I’d never told anyone. Except I must have told someone last night. “Nothing happened though.” Corey didn’t even seem upset about it this morning.
“Oh, I’m well aware. You said that about a thousand times to everyone. But he was pissed you didn’t tell him immediately. You stormed off and…” She twisted her comforter around her hands. “That’s when you lost it.”
My stomach lurched. I felt like I might lose it right now.
“You fled so fast, the crowd swallowed you up. When I found you again, you were downing several shots in a ro
w as some Beta Chi brothers cheered you on. Your words were incoherent. All I could make out were curses like you were possessed or something.” She cringed at some memory of me from last night. “A few minutes later you passed out on a bench.”
I brought the blanket up to my chest. “Oh my God!”
Fallon covered her face with her hands. “Mackenzie, you don’t understand how scary the situation was.”
I was starting to understand though. The low pulse beating at the base of my skull was hard to ignore.
“One of your sisters came by and offered to sit with you while I went to find someone sober enough to drive us to the hospital.”
My stomach lurched into my throat. “Please say that sister was either Bianca or Erin.”
Fallon shook her head. “I don’t know her name but she was nice. She helped you. I found Corey and to his credit, he immediately shed his anger and found us a ride to the hospital from one of his sober brothers. The nurses told him us leave, but we refused. The only reason I wasn’t there when you woke up is because the nurse said you’d have a sore throat so I ran home to buy ice cream.”
I fell back onto my pillow with the force of a hurricane. A sob swelled in my chest, gaining momentum. “Thank you,” I scuttled out. “For being such a good friend.”
“Which is why I’m going to be blunt with you,” she said, sucking in a big breath. “I think you should make an appointment with the school counselor. Talk to them about what’s going on.”
“Fallon, I don’t know…”
“Just think about it.”
My tongue hung in my mouth, thick and heavy like concrete bricks. A war waged inside my chest as my heart switched allegiances back and forth like a double agent. He was a good guy. He’d tried to do the right thing and I’d broken up with him.
My eyes closed and another few hours of my life slipped away. The hospital seemed like a dream to me, which made sense. From my perspective, I was only there for an hour. Well, an hour in which I was awake. Pain was a fleeting sensation. As soon as it subsided, it was hard to remember the feeling of it.
Like a fight. Or a relationship.