Again Page 20

  “Three dollars for a cup,” the guy at the door said, not glancing from his wad of bills.

  “You got change for a twenty?” Veronica asked.

  He lifted his head, putting the cash he’d been holding in his back pocket. His gaze slid from her jet-black hair, to her high-heeled pointy black boots, stopping long enough to admire her curves in between. “You’re not a cop are you?”

  To her credit Veronica laughed. I guess someone Veronica’s age hanging out on a college campus could be three things : a professor, staff, or a cop.

  “Why, are you breaking the law?” She sucked on her pinkie, typical Veronica. She always left the accountant at home on weekends except for her ability to make any problem her bitch.

  He shook his head. His eyes were far away, maybe fantasizing about if a certain part of him was her finger.

  I’m pretty sure that was the whole point.

  “Good,” she purred, handing him the twenty. “I’ll take seven.”

  He passed Veronica a stack of red plastic cups and we left him speechless on the porch, not even bothering to request the extra dollar.

  “You want one?” she asked, as we continued through the commotion of the party.

  I shook my head, opened my diet Pepsi, and sucked down a long swallow because there was no way I could come out and say the word no.

  “More for me I guess.” She shrugged.

  She wouldn’t ask again. Veronica wasn’t like some high school bully trying to get me to do drugs for the first time. She was letting me fight my own battles.

  I just hoped I could keep winning in the middle of a college house party.

  “Who needs a cup?” she yelled above the music, holding them high like a torch. “I have six for the six hottest guys here.”

  I closed my eyes and pressed my lips together in embarrassment. I wasn’t drunk enough to handle “party Veronica,” but three guys ambled over to where we stood.

  I assessed them quickly: cute enough and fresh faced in the way freshman are. I mean, I figured they were freshman. I’d been here long enough to know their look, almost like they’d been hatched—wet hair, smooth skin that hadn’t already been weathered by three years of heavy drinking and studying. The kind of guys who would appear when someone said something like Veronica had because they never said no to anything.

  Freshman year was all about yes, until you realized that sometimes changed into why? How? What now?

  “So, you’re the hottest guys at the party?” Veronica asked, her head tipped diagonally in a flirt.

  Like I said, they were cute enough, but it was hard for me to view them as hot even as college-take-two Kate. It was one thing to be with Carter, who was twenty-two. It was another to be with someone whose pubes had probably come in two years ago.

  “Well,” said the one with hazel eyes and red T-shirt that read LIFEGUARD in white, “We think you’re the hottest girls at the party and your hotness averages ours up.”

  It was brazen for someone so young to say that to Veronica, but college was all about that too. Saying things and doing things considered totally wrong outside were accepted here—encouraged like a petri dish of debauchery.

  Also he’d spoken to her in math language, which meant that, regardless of his age, her brain would respond.

  “The last time I was a girl,” Veronica said with a light laugh and an even lighter hand on his shoulder, “you were probably in fifth grade.”

  “Good thing I’m a man now,” he replied, not missing a beat.

  Veronica handed him a cup, “For both of us.” Her eyes traveled to his friends, “What about them, are they men, too?”

  “They’re shitheads,” Lifeguard-shirt said, pointing his thumb behind him, “but if you get them drunk enough, they’re pretty cool.”

  “In that case,” Veronica said, handing over two more cups.

  His friends took them, but were a little confused about what was happening.

  I knew. Veronica was a beautiful, poisonous spider and this “man” she was talking to was a very willing and horny fly.

  “Anyone else?” Veronica yelled, holding up the rest of her cups.

  The little voice in my head went into overdrive. If she’s giving them away, you want one. What if you get thirsty later?

  The thing was, there was no what if. I’d want one later. I wanted one now.

  My hands were shaking, my stomach knotted. It’s easy not to drink when you’re locked in the humane society with a guy who makes you feel drunk just looking at him. Not so much at the ground zero for drinking, a college party.

  I held out my hand, my body operating completely involuntarily.

  She tried to give me two, so we would both be double fisting, but one was all my guilty conscience would allow.

  Honestly, it was more than my guilty conscience should have allowed. Before I could change my mind, I dropped my diet Pepsi to the floor. It bounced and rolled away as if it had been carried by a wave.

  She shrugged and kept the extra for safekeeping. Maybe figuring if I got drunk enough I would take it eventually. The sad thing was, if I did, I probably would.

  Lady Temptation had nothing to do with hanging out with Steph and Alex. It had everything to do with me.

  We fought our way to the keg, the “hottest guys at the party” leading the way.

  I couldn’t help checking the corners of the room for Carter, wondering if, even after pushing him away, he still felt like he needed to take care of me. Clearly he did, or at least I did. Regardless of the fight raging in my brain, I passed my cup to the keg with no hesitation.

  Beers full and party-ready, we moved back into the center of the fray. The other guys and I hung back while Veronica and the “lifeguard” flirted. If she’d met this guy at a bar in the city, and he was out of college with a cushy New York job, she would have gone home with him. Here, I guessed, even if she did, she might lose her nerve once she got into his dorm room and noticed his Vampire Weekend poster and care package from his mom half unloaded.

  I sipped at my beer, trying not to wonder about the why too much. For, as slowly as I was drinking, it might as well have been water. I was doing my best not to get wasted. I might have a drink, but I didn’t need to slam it.

  Like Veronica had said, I just needed to learn how to drink better. Be more careful.

  Sip. Count to one hundred. Sip. Count to one hundred.

  I’d told so many lies already, why not force myself to believe another?

  Veronica and her “man” weren’t counting between sips. They’d finished their beers while I still had more than half of mine.

  I was controlling myself, but I was still drinking, so was I really?

  Would I ever be able to?

  The guys went to fill the beers again, leaving us in the tumult of the party.

  “This is turning out better than I expected,” she said.

  I nodded, more a reflex than a reaction. “Are you going to sleep with him?”

  “Wow,” she laughed, “non sequitur much?”

  “Guess I’m moving a little fast.” I took a longer sip of my drink. “But, I mean, that’s where this is headed.”

  I needed to know if she was as bad as I was. If she was as bad as me, I couldn’t have been that bad. Because right now, beer in hand, even with my silly sipping game, I was pretty damn unstable.

  Her lip gloss shone in the half-light of the party like a wink. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “I’m sure he has.” I mean, I had.

  “Well, why wouldn’t he? Look at me.” She was the darkest kind of radiant in her tight black sweater, as dark as her hair. Her pale white skin glowed like moonlight.

  “If you want to go home with him I’m cool with that. You can text me in the morning to come get you.”

  “What are you, my pimp?” she asked with a nervous laugh, “Let’s slow down for a minute. It’s a lot easier to fantasize about than to actually do.”

  I knew better than anyone.
The fantasy was easy, realizing you still cared the morning after was when everything got complicated.

  “I do like the living-in-the-moment vibe of this place, though,” she said.

  It was hard not to. That vibe was what appealed to me about drinking in the first place. With alcohol and meaningless sex there was only what was right in front of me. I never had to worry about consequences.

  Usually, I was too drunk to worry about anything.

  Now I was starting to care, and I remembered why I’d avoided it for so long—because being accountable scared the shit out of me.

  But I couldn’t say all that to Veronica, so I nodded and noted my beer was already half empty.

  An alcoholic always views a glass as half-empty rather than half-full. It’s not about optimism, it’s about demanding more.

  If I couldn’t stop thinking like an alcoholic, how the hell could I hope to stop acting like one?

  “Hmmm,” I heard Veronica muse, “Maybe I should go have some fun with him.”

  I stared at my beer, stuck on the word fun. This wasn’t fun anymore. It hadn’t been for a long time. Sure, getting wasted felt fun. Who was I kidding—it felt amazing, but…

  “Am I keeping you awake?” Veronica asked, snapping her fingers in front of me.

  “Sorry,” I replied. Honestly, I was starting to put myself to sleep. It was exhausting having the same guilty thoughts again and again with nothing to drown them out. Well, the thing in my hand could drown them out, but…ah shit, here we go again.

  “So you think I should take him on a magic Veronica ride?” she asked, twirling a piece of hair around her finger.

  “You won’t go through with it—he’s too young,” I said, though I’m not sure why. Maybe I wanted her to have some internal struggles of her own to deal with.

  “Are you seriously daring me, right now?” she asked with a wicked smile.

  “No,” I said, but maybe something in the deepest part of my brain was. I’d forgotten one clear difference between Veronica and me: a struggle to me was a challenge to her.

  “Because if you are…” She paused. “…you know I’ll do it.”

  “You’re thirty. Daring you to do something shouldn’t make you want to do anything.”

  “It doesn’t,” she replied, her mouth falling into a pout. She ignored my comment about her being thirty because who the hell wants to admit to that?

  “Do what you want,” I said, taking another sip. It had definitely been longer than a hundred seconds.

  “Honey,” Veronica said, with wild, eyes, “I always do.”

  It was true—she did, and until I stopped drinking and started questioning everything, I had too. When I had alcohol to hide inside, I’d viewed struggles as challenges too.

  “Let the games begin,” Veronica said, indicating the “lifeguard” and his friends working their way back through the bodies and noise between us, holding beers high so they didn’t spill.

  I took another sip of my own.

  “That a girl,” Veronica said, like a mother spoon-feeding disgusting cough medicine to her child.

  The thing was, my medicine was keeping me sick.

  So why couldn’t I stop taking it?

  Lifeguard reached us and handed Veronica her beers. She turned to me and held one out.

  I took it.

  She clinked glasses with me and drank her beer down in a quick gulp, her throat tightening with each huge swallow like a boa constrictor downing a rat. She finished and wiped her mouth.

  “Your turn,” she said.

  It was so cold in my hand, so familiar. I could have just given it back to her. I should have just given it back to her, but I didn’t. I brought it to my lips and gulped down the whole glass in one take, stacked it under the half-empty beer I was still holding.

  Veronica smiled and fixed her focus on the “lifeguard.” “It’s hot down here. Are you ready to go upstairs or something, Baywatch?”

  I guess she was going to go through with it, and why not? This guy didn’t mean anything. I was the one who was stupid enough to be with someone who had fooled me into believing he meant everything.

  The “lifeguard” was silent for a moment, his eyes wide. He was probably in shock.

  “Think for too long and I’ll ask one of your friends instead.”

  He grabbed Veronica’s arm and started pulling her away so quickly that if someone was taking a picture they might have missed it.

  “If I’m not back in thirty minutes,” she turned to me and mouthed, “send more lifeguards.”

  This wasn’t a rare move for Veronica, but with only me and alcohol for who knew how long, my body flooded with blinding fear. What would I do? What would I not be able to control?

  Clearly, I was already having trouble, considering I’d just slammed a beer without even a moment’s reluctance.

  I stood there, the “lifeguard’s” friends quickly realizing I wasn’t anywhere near as interesting as Veronica started to ignore me. I stared at my half-empty beer, wondering if I could make it last until Veronica got back or if I’d end up refilling it.

  I took another sip, hoping it might bring things into focus, then another, and another. Alcohol, my friend, my enemy, my nemesis, keeping me company.

  I drank the last sip. The little voice in my head said, more, just one more.

  The keg was a few feet away. I considered it. My skin flushed, and I blinked at it, my lips pressed together.

  Just one more.

  You’ve already had two.

  You’ve already lost.

  Instead of dealing with it I went to find the bathroom. When someone pounded on the door and yelled hurry the hell up, I would figure out what to do next.

  Luckily there wasn’t a line when I reached it. I let myself in and locked the door, sat down on the rim of the bathtub, and took out my phone.

  My finger hovered over Carter’s contact.

  He’d said he would always come and take care of me.

  I stiffened and shoved my phone back in my pocket.

  What was I doing? He wasn’t my boyfriend. He wasn’t my savior; locked in a bathroom with only a door between me and a house party raging outside, that was never clearer.

  Only I could be my savior.

  My mouth thick with beer breath, I wondered when I would finally be strong enough.

  We headed back to the dorm. Veronica might have requested the full college experience but, when she was faced with going further than kissing a guy who would have no idea there used to only be one CSI on television, she took a pass. She did however drink all of the fifth of rum he had in his back pocket.

  “Flirting is one thing, even making out a little,” she said, stumbling over the frozen quad, “picturing him sucking on his momma’s breast while he’s going down on me is another.”

  “You’re gross.”

  “No,” she said, enunciating her loud, slurred words in the way only someone who is wasted can, “if I would have slept with him I would be.”

  I’d slept with Carter, but he was a senior, twenty-two, not much younger than me really, but he was younger. He still didn’t know I was older.

  He still had a secret he couldn’t tell me.

  Even being older, I still couldn’t stop myself from having a couple of beers.

  I wasn’t as drunk as Veronica, but I had to lock myself away to ensure that.

  Maybe she wasn’t as bad as me. Maybe I was worse than ever.

  “He gave me some nice memories, though,” she laughed.

  She’d had the night she wanted to have, but I had failed—again.

  “I’m glad you had fun,” I huffed, the words I couldn’t say to her making those words empty.

  “Who pissed in your beer?”

  I didn’t respond, I kept walking against the cold, whipping wind.

  “You should be glad. It was why I came here. It’s not like you were helping, standing there mumbling to yourself.”

  I guess I’d been counting to a
hundred aloud. “I was just trying not to drink too much.”

  “You mean like me,” she slurred.

  I bit my lip. I was definitely not in the mood to get into a competition with her.

  “You said you weren’t drinking at all,” she said with a look I knew. You might think you’ve changed, but you’re still just like me, even with your new life and your new clothes and your new start, you’re still just like me.

  “I wasn’t supposed to.”

  “Supposed to,” she replied, fully morphing into her Mr. Hyde. “If I lived my life on ‘supposed to’, I’d never do anything.”

  I sucked in a breath. She was right. I wasn’t supposed to be with Carter. If I was smart I would have stayed the hell away, but I couldn’t picture my life without him. Even with all our lies between us, his kiss, his touch, were the truest things I’d ever known.

  The only lie that mattered was the one I kept telling myself.

  “Even here,” I said, my voice shaking, gray breath coming out in puffs, “I’m exactly who I am.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I walked faster.

  “Seriously.” She reached out for me. “I’m the one who is wasted and almost had sex with a minor.”

  I shook her off, not because I was angry at her, but because her words were no consolation. She’d done all that, but she’d stopped. I was the one who never could.

  “Hey,” she said, forcing me to turn, her eyes black diamonds in the moonlight. “I don’t understand why that’s such a bad thing. I love who you are, Kate.”

  “I don’t,” I admitted, gulping in cold air to keep myself from crying.

  “Jeez. Maybe you should have gone to rehab,” she replied quickly.

  I tensed and clenched my jaw. I guess talking about my messed up life wasn’t the real college experience she’d come to visit me for.

  “Sorry,” she said, looking down.

  “It’s okay,” I said. Veronica wasn’t my therapist, she wasn’t even Carter. She was my partner in crime. What was your partner supposed to do when you tried to go straight?

  What were you supposed to do when going straight seemed impossible?

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Carter