“Neither!” I was exhausted, that was all. If I could have lain down on the floor, I would have, except that it was so sticky and I was so tired that I didn’t think I’d be able to get back up. I looked around, and my eyes lit on César.
And Arielle. Her arms were around his neck and as I watched, she pulled his head down to hers. They kissed, deeply.
“What did you say?” Melissa asked me.
I had made some kind of sound, a little “oh.” Or maybe it was “ow.”
“Are you coming?” she urged.
I was too young to sit around this house and watch other people enjoy themselves. I decided to go enjoy myself, too. “Yeah, let’s head out,” I suddenly agreed, and she beamed at me.
“There’s the girl we know and love!” Melissa cheered. “Come on, you have to drive me because I’m so fucked up that I don’t remember who I came here with.”
That meant that I couldn’t cry all the way there in the car, but we turned up the music and I sang as loud as I could instead.
“I don’t remember it taking so long to get to Roy’s before,” she said at one point, and I checked my speedometer and eased off the accelerator a little more. Damn speed limit! We finally made it, at least half an hour behind the rest of our friends, and they had managed both to find a table and to get served. It was lucky that we were locals, because the tourist crowd never even saw a waitress here.
The night wore on and I just got more tired. I kept checking my phone under the table, watching to see if I would hear from anyone. I did, but not the people I was interested in.
“One, two, three!” everyone around me shouted in unison. They slammed their shot glasses on the table as they counted and then tossed back the whiskey.
I had been devising ways to get out of drinking for the whole night, and there was a puddle under my chair where I had been pouring out my beer. Fortunately, Roy’s wasn’t the kind of place where anyone minded a gross puddle of unknown liquid. I slammed down my shot glass along with my friends and tossed it back too, but my shot went over my shoulder instead of down my throat.
“What the fuck?” The guy at the table behind me stood up so fast that his chair fell over. He dripped with whiskey. “Did you just throw something at me?” he yelled at us. “Who the hell did that?”
Shit. He and his friends were probably the owners of the long row of giant motorcycles parked outside the door, and none of them looked happy at the moment. “I’m so sorry, that was me!” I told him. I stood up too, and smiled. “My hand slipped. I’m really sorry. Can I buy you a beer?”
He looked me over. “Your hand slipped?” He wiped some drops off his leather jacket and sniffed his fingers. “Your hand slipped over your shoulder with a glass of whiskey?”
“Totally by mistake,” I assured him. “How about that beer?”
He seemed to calm down some and he perused me. “If you come and sit with us,” he told me. “What’s your name?”
“Camdyn. I’ll sit with you for one round,” I compromised. I was pretty tired of my friends, anyway.
It turned out that Wyatt and the other guys at his table weren’t too bad. They were a lot more sober than my group, who, after round three of the shots and a lot more of beers, were just about falling out of their chairs. I had fun talking to them about their bikes and listening to stories about where they had ridden. It also turned out that the oldest guy there, Lon, had a daughter about my age who was getting married. He and I talked quietly about her wedding and I gave him some tips about local suppliers and vendors. I stayed much longer than one round at their table, and Lon and Wyatt walked me out to my car when I said it was time to go.
“Thanks for the beer,” Wyatt told me.
“No problem. Sorry I poured the whiskey on you.”
He shrugged. “I’ve had worse poured on me at Roy’s. Can I have your number?”
I thought for a moment. Why not? “Sure,” I said. He plugged it into his phone and both of them watched me leave the parking lot. I turned up the music again for the long drive to drown out my thoughts.
It was very, very late by the time I got home. The house was totally quiet, with everyone gone, except that there was a big truck parked on the lawn. As I backed into the garage, I could see by my headlights that the driver had spun doughnuts on the snowy grass and it was pretty torn up. Now, that was a party.
The house was completely dark inside and I snuck as noiselessly as I could up the stairs, listening intently, especially outside of César’s door. There was no light underneath it and no sound behind it, either, like no one was staying over. Or if she was, they were already done with their activities for the night. I went into my own room and gratefully fell into the bed.
The sun woke me up later that morning—or later that day, I realized, as I checked my phone. Morning had come and gone and I needed water. So much water, and I was so hungry I could barely see straight. I stumbled down to the kitchen and put my face directly under the faucet to drink, too thirsty to bother with a glass. Then I shoved food into myself, cold pasta leftovers from the fridge and a container of yogurt that I pounded faster than the whiskey shots my friends had done the night before.
Only after the second yogurt had finally taken the edge off my hunger did
