by Ashley Drew
They say if you drink a little whiskey, you grow a little chest hair.
It must work the same way for tequila—have a shot or two, grow some balls—because I squeeze past a few women waiting for the stalls to free up, tired of tiptoeing around her, and stride toward Tess. I stand beside her in front of the mirror and cross my arms, glaring at her reflection.
“Alright, Tess,” I demand. “Lay it on me.”
With chagrin evident in her raised eyebrow, she eyes me in the mirror. “Lay what on you?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Whatever you’ve wanted to say to me ever since I returned, just say it. Now is your chance.”
Tess rolls her eyes and chuckles. “I have nothing to say to you.” She turns to walk away as the swoosh from a flush echoes off the walls. A foul stench fills the musty air, and I almost gag when it hits my nose.
“Bullshit,” I call her bluff, grabbing her arm before she nears the door. We draw curious glances from a few of the women in line. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
Whipping around, Tess yanks her arm away from my grasp and barely grazes a woman who is stepping behind us to wash her hands at the sink. The woman scoffs and throws us a dirty look, but neither Tess nor I seem to care.
“Bullshit, Corinne? You wanna know what bullshit is? Bullshit is you leaving without saying goodbye!” she yells, her face so close to mine a few drops of her spit reach my eye. All the women in the line are now looking at us. “It’s you not writing back or having the decency to return phone calls! If I have to sum it up, it’s pretty much what our friendship has become. One big pile of bullshit.”
The sting of Tess’s words ache my heart in so many ways, but her accusations aren’t far from the truth. I’m not quite sure how to respond, only because anything I say won’t help my cause.
Plus, I think the tequila is starting to wear off because my balls seem to be shriveling up with it.
“You’re right, Tess,” I reply coolly, taking a step back and hoping to calm the air between us. “I’m sorry, for all of it. I completely sucked at keeping in touch and I—”
“Sucked?” she cuts me off, her sharp tone slicing through the calm as she closes the gap between us, and steps toward me again. “You think you sucked at keeping in touch? Talk about the understatement of the decade!”
I raise my voice an octave, irked by her tone. “What do you want me to say? That I was really shitty at it? Fine! I was shitty at picking up a phone or a pen! It’s pretty much the same damn thing!”
“Both of you suck, so why don’t y’all let us pee and shit in peace!” A voice yells from one of the closed stalls, followed by a few cheers and ‘yeah’s’ from the other women.
I want to tell them all to ‘shove it,’ but when Tess lowers her voice and takes a step away from me, I take it as my cue to do the same.
“This isn’t just about your sucky abilities to keep in touch, Corinne. Forget about that. What about my brother? Did you ever think about how you affected him when you left?”
Without a doubt. He was all I ever thought about.
“Of course I did, and I hate how we fell out of touch like we did, but that’s life, Tess! People fall out of touch all the time.”
“People fall out of touch, but they don’t fall out of an eighteen-year friendship,” she asserts, her voice now calm and steady. “Not between two friends like you. Not like that.”
I allow Tess’s conclusion to settle in the coherent parts of my brain. Not knowing what to make of it, I now wonder if Nick shares the same sentiments. I can’t imagine so. He’d tell me if he did, wouldn’t he?
“Listen, Tess,” I sigh. “Nick understood what I had to do. Besides, he probably didn’t even notice I was ever away,” I attempt at a joke, forcing a smile. “He seems really happy with Riley.”
She smirks and shakes her head, pressing her fingertips against her forehead. With an exasperated breath, she leans her back against the tiled wall across from me. “Do you really believe that, Corinne? Is that what you’ve been telling yourself all of these years? That he’s…happy?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
She pushes herself off the wall and heads toward the door, practically flushing this conversation down the proverbial toilet. “Wow. You still won’t open your eyes,” Tess remarks. “What are you afraid of?”
“What are you talking about?” I face the sink and find Tess’s reflection in the mirror. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Why am I not surprised you’d say something like that?”
“Oh please, Tess. If anyone’s afraid, it’s you. You can’t even tell your brother about Braiden.”
Tess sighs. Opening the door, she turns to me before she exits, a familiar warmth returning to her eyes. “Maybe I am afraid of telling my brother. But at least I’m not afraid of telling Braiden that I love him.”
Before I know it, she’s out the door, leaving the question to stir my thoughts. What am I afraid of? All the while, the pressure in my bladder reminds me of what I came in here to do. I wait in the short line, hauling ass to relieve myself when one of the stalls frees up. Eventually, I make it back to our table, but now a different kind of pressure has taken refuge in my head in the cruelest way possible. What am I afraid of?
I don’t want to think. As soon as I sit down, the redhead is back with three more shots. She doesn’t even place the last one on the table because I pick it up off the tray, shoot it quickly, and place the empty glass back where it was. It goes down like water, and though this is certainly getting easier every time, three shots of tequila in a span of twenty minutes doesn’t seem like the responsible thing to do, considering I drove here. I’ll probably regret this tomorrow, but until then...
“If you could keep them coming, that would be fan-fucking-tastic!”
And that she does. Thanks, Fire-crotch! Five tequila shots (or maybe it was six? Seven? Uh, who knows?) and one karaoke rendition of Baby, One More Time later, I’m being carried piggyback by Braiden out to the parking lot—my head, eyelids, and limbs all feeling the heavy weight of the alcohol as it seizes complete control over my mind and body. The crunching noises of the gravel beneath his feet drown out the fading acoustics from inside the pub, and through the hazy film shrouding my vision, I can see the faintest shimmer of moonlight dancing off each of the millions of pebbles around us.
“Man, I never saw you as a Beemer-kinda chick, Benster,” Braiden says from the driver’s seat. “This car is pretty sweet. How you feeling over there, babe?”
Sitting in the passenger seat, I force my eyelids open and realize we’re already on the road, though I can’t make out exactly where. Hell, I don’t even remember getting in the car. With my head leaning against the back of the seat, I tilt it slowly to the side because I don’t think my body would appreciate any sudden movements right now. In fact, it would hate any sudden movements, mainly because it’s doing everything in its power to keep all six—or seven, or eight, or however many the hell it was—shots down in my stomach.
“You shouldn’t be driving, Braiden,” I slur over my words.
“I haven’t had a drink in over two hours. You drank all of mine, remember?”
Unfortunately, my gag reflex reminds me. “Well, how are you going to get back?”
“I’ll call a cab. Don’t you worry about me, Benster babe. You just keep looking forward. We can’t have you spewing all over these sweet leather seats.”
I pull my legs into my chest and shift in my seat toward him. “Is Nick happy, Braiden?”
Whoa. Now that Tess has paved the way, do I really want to venture down that road with Braiden? I think about the repercussions, how I could possibly regret having this conversation. But this is the sweet thing about being wasted: I can blame all of it on the booze tomorrow.
Despite my eyes feeling more like slits in my head, they’re open wide enough to see Braiden’s confusion.
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, why wouldn’t he be? He runs a s
uccessful business, has amazing friends and family. Shit, his happiness could be based solely on having me around, for fuck’s sake! And he’s got a beautiful fiancée. What more could he ask for? He’s practically living the American-fucking-dream. All he’s missing are the two-point-five kids and the minivan with the bumper sticker stating that his kid is a fucking honor roll student at Santa Cruz Middle School.”
“We would never buy a minivan.”
Did I really just say that? The headlights from the oncoming traffic reflect off of Braiden’s blue eyes, now darker in contrast in this rayless realm of night, growing with curiosity as my thoughts continue to spill uncontrollably out of my mouth. So long as it’s my words and not the tequila.
“What do you mean by we, babe?”
I ignore his question, only to ask an even stupider question. “Does he love Riley? Is he in love with her? Like truly, completely, deeply, madly, crazily, desperately, head-over-heels in love with her?” Nice, Corinne. For being as drunk as I am, that is some pretty impressive adjective-use right there. If only Mrs. Malone, my sixth-grade English teacher, could hear me right now. She’d be proud. Well, at least with the vocabulary part of it. I can’t say she’d be too pleased with my drunken stupor.
“Uh, yeah. Of course he loves Riley. That is the reason why they’re getting married, isn’t it? Because they love each other?”
“People get married because they love each other, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re in love with each other.”
He pauses before asking, “Where is this all coming from, Corinne?”
“I just...I just don’t think she’s the one for him,” I admit, the words tumbling out of my mouth as my subconscious, buried heavily beneath my intoxication, shakes its head in disappointment. In turn, I flip it off.
“Wait a second. From what Nicholas said, it seemed like you and Riley really hit it off at the party. Why are you saying this now?”
“Does he think of me, Braiden?”
Suddenly, we’ve stopped moving, but my head feels as though it has a hundred pounds of brick piled on top of it, so I can’t even turn to see if we’ve reached my house.
“Corinne,” he begins, a rather serious tone ringing in his voice, and shit, Braiden is hardly ever serious. He’s calling me by my first name for Christ’s sake. “Is there something I should know? I mean, I know you’re fucking wasted right now, and you probably won’t remember this conversation tomorrow, but there has to be some underlying reason why you’re asking me these questions about Nicholas. Of course, you’ve come up in conversations in the past, but I get the feeling what you’re asking is something more than your name in a casual conversation. Considering how close you and Nicholas were, I think it’s only natural that you’d be a little jealous of Riley.”
“Oh please!” I interrupt, my lungs forcing a displeased puff of air between my lips, which exerts more energy than my body can handle. “For the record, I am not jealous of Riley. As a person, she’s pretty likable, and I’d say we could even be friends.”
“Good, because she really likes you.”
A loud ‘HA’ shoots out of my throat before I reveal, “I bet she’d feel otherwise if she ever found out my lips were on her fiancé’s long before hers ever were.”
I don’t know what’s worse: word vomit or actual vomit. At least you can clean up actual vomit, and you’d never know it even happened. Word vomit isn’t so easy to clean up, especially if you say something you probably shouldn’t, possibly leaving a bigger mess in the long run.
Well, it looks like the odds are in my favor tonight, because I get both.
Whoever coined the term hangover was a goddamn genius because that word couldn’t be more on point, considering I pretty much spent the entire night hanging over the porcelain throne.
On the other hand, whoever came up with porcelain throne should really reconsider it, for a throne is made for royalty, the distinguished and the dignified, the prim and the proper, and I hardly think my puke-dried hair, bloodshot eyes, and smudged eyeliner constitute as royal.
My body truly hates me right now, and whatever it expelled last night took my memory right along with it because I can’t remember jack-shit. All I know is there was booze—lots of it—and I can only assume I wasn’t stupid enough to drive home, and Braiden got me back here somehow. Images of me heaving over the toilet, the feel of a cold towel pressed to the back of my neck, and someone—Braiden I assume—holding my hair back, flash in my mind. I awoke in my bed, so he must have tucked me in and left a glass of water on my bedside table. I’ll have to thank him later. I also have to thank him for resisting the urge to undress me and put me in my pajamas; this is Braiden we’re talking about.
After a shower, I head to the kitchen for a glass of water, but with all my energy expired from crossing the yard, I plop myself in a chair at the breakfast table instead. I grudgingly lift my head and see Dad staring at me from the opposite end of the table, newspaper in hand.
“How’re you feeling there, kiddo?”
I spread my arms out on the table and rest my head against the cool, flat surface. “Like hell. Remember those spinning rides at the carnival that you always refused to take me on because they made you sick? I feel like I’m on one of those things, only it won’t stop.” I close my eyes in hopes the room will stop spinning, but it doesn’t. When I open them, the room spins in the opposite direction. I’m fucked either way.
“Before I forget, Cooper called while you were out last night. Guess he tried you on your cell phone a few times. He sounded worried, since he hadn’t heard from you, but I assured him you were fine and hanging out with some old friends. We chatted for a bit. Seems like a nice kid.”
So Cooper’s worried because he hasn’t heard from me? Consider it a taste of his own medicine.
“He can worry for a bit,” I respond, every word I speak pounding hard against my head like a hammer.
“Everything alright?” Dad looks up from his newspaper.
“It will be once I have a glass of water and two aspirin.”
He gets up from the table and grabs me the water and aspirin. “Jamie said you were in pretty bad shape when Braiden brought you home. That only means you had a pretty good time, yeah?” He chuckles.
Lifting my head, I look at my dad, confused. I pop the aspirin and wash it down with a gulp of water. “Jamie?”
He crosses to the other side of the table and takes his seat. “He was in the kitchen getting a glass of water when he saw Braiden carrying you to the guest house. Jamie took over and brought you inside. Said he was in the bathroom with you for over an hour because you wouldn’t stop throwing up, and once you said you felt better, he helped you into bed and waited until you fell asleep.”
Wow. Despite all of the insults, the cheap shots, and the disrespect, Jamie took care of me. Most people would look the other way, not giving a shit about someone who treated them poorly. Perhaps Jamie isn’t most people, and I may have been wrong about him.
The sound of the front door swinging shut echoes from down the hall, and the light taps of footsteps grow louder when they near. “Henry, I’m going to put away the fishing equipment, since we’re not going to Monterey anymore,” Jamie yells from the corridor as his footsteps stop in the doorway of the kitchen. “Oh hey, Corinne. You’re up. I don’t dare ask how you’re feeling.”
My body has no room for any sort of happiness, but I manage to surrender an appreciative smile. “You have no idea.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. When you’re ready and up for it, I’m going to whip you up a batch of chocolate-chip pancakes. Best hangover food.”
Growing up, I always looked forward to Saturday mornings because it meant chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast, and I’m pretty sure Jamie must know it’s a favorite of mine.
“Thank you,” I tell Jamie. “For everything.”
He gives a quick nod of his head, a simple gesture by all means and yet full of understanding.
“Did I hear
something about Monterey?”
Jamie strides across the kitchen to get a start on the pancakes. “Your dad and I planned a fishing trip down to Monterey tomorrow.”
“But that was before we knew you would still be here,” Dad continues. He straightens out the newspaper and stacks each section neatly, one on top of the other. “We’ll go another time. No big deal.”
I place my head back down on the table, my cheek resting on the tops of my hands. Closing my eyes, I surprise myself when I say, “Please don’t cancel on my part, but I’m warning you. I’ll have a lot of questions, and someone’s gonna have to show me how to bait a hook.”
My eyes stay shut, and though I can’t see their reactions, the stunned silence speaks volumes. I smile.
“Okay,” Dad finally breaks the silence, his voice jovial. “Fishing it is.”
For a guy who everyone thinks has it together, is successful, loved and trusted by many, and knows exactly what he wants in life, my actions tonight say otherwise. Because the Nicholas Kelley that everyone knows wouldn’t lie to his fiancée, tell her that he needs to tend to an urgent matter at the pub, and ask his father to lie for him. That guy wouldn’t make the seventy-mile trek from San Francisco to the front porch of another woman’s house, and wait for her like a fool in the dark.
The slap of the metal screen door slices through the still evening air, ending the back and forth argument I’ve had with myself for the past hour. Cori’s silhouette crosses the lawn, and when the only trace of moonlight finds her, my heart flies out of my chest. But almost immediately, the guilt jerks it back and tells it to calm the fuck down.
“Nick?” she says my name, halting abruptly halfway across the lawn. “What are you doing here? Is everything alright?”
Concern resonates through her voice, and she starts moving toward me again. When I quickly rise to my feet, I feel lightheaded and lose my balance, managing to catch my footing before I dive face first into the pavement. The blood must’ve rushed straight to my head after sitting in the same position for the past hour. It has absolutely nothing to do with Cori. Nope. Not at all.