Shit, this was a bad idea.”
He was very clearly drunk, and ended the call with a humorless chuckle without saying goodbye. I listened to the voicemail three more times, and before I could start to process it, my phone buzzed with a new notification. This time, I get a text that reads:
Griffin:I shouldn’t have called you. That was a mistake. Ignore it.
My heart plummeted into my stomach as I read the text over and over and over. An onslaught of a million differentemotions sent me reeling– I still can’t tell if I’m more shocked, sad, or angry.
As I lay next to Jenna on what should be a perfectly lovely day, I decide to hone in on anger, fists clenching so tight I can feel the crescent moon indents from my nails that will probably linger for hours.
The problem is I can’t tell if I’m upset that he called me in the first place, or that he so flippantly said it was a mistake.
Ironic, coming from me.
And even worse, that I should forget it. I haven’t heard from, or spoken to, or even talked about Griffin since I left for college. It pisses me off that he told me to ignore it, even though that’s exactly what I planned to do when I showed up here–ignore and forget everything to do with Larkspur High and the cowboy I left behind. Jenna has badgered me relentlessly about what she refers to as my “mysterious sordid past,” but I know if I talk about it, that means I have to think about it, and I’ve worked painstakingly hard not to do that exact thing. To think about it. To think abouthim.
All it took was a voicemail and a text to crack open the vault in my heart where I shoved everything to do with Griffin Hart the moment I left his house that morning–left, and never looked back.
Chapter 40
Griffin
March, Age 20
Ifucked up. Actually worse than that. I double-fucked up.
The first fuck up happened last month. I was dragged to a frat party by David–simultaneously my best friend and bane of my existence.
When he convinced me to come to Texas Tech after Eleanor ripped me to shreds, I regretted the decision the moment we crossed the county line. I’ve already decided that I’m not coming back next semester, despite David’s attempts to convince me that he might die if I leave.
You know what, maybe I’ve actually hit some sort of unholy trinity of mistakes.
The first mistake was going to the party in the first place. The second was getting so belligerently hammered that I hooked up with a random sorority girl in the bathroom without even asking her name.
And this isn’t a Cinderella “oops, I fell in love and forgot her name” type of disaster. This is a “the girl I hookedup with while blacked out texted me that she might be pregnant, except I never saved her name in my phone and can’t really confirm if the text was even meant for me” type of disaster.
Which brings me to the third–and probably not final–problem.
I thought that college was supposed to make you smarter, but David decided that the best way to cope with my drunken disaster was to get even drunker this weekend, which, admittedly, I didn’t think was even possible.
When I woke up this morning with the hangover to end all hangovers, I wracked my brain trying to remember the events of the night before. Flashes of fireball shots, mechanical bulls, Crunchwrap Supremes, and even more fireball shots were making my head spin until one very clear flashback stopped me cold.
There’s no way I did that, I thought to myself as I pulled up my call history log. I’m not that dumb. When I see the most recent outgoing call, I realize that I am, in fact, that dumb.
??Eleanor Turner - 1:37 AM
Fuck. Of all the people in the world I could have called, I picked the worst possible option.
Before I can think better of it, I fire off a text.
Griffin: I shouldn’t have called you. That was a mistake. Ignore it.
I stumble out of bed, and pull on the first pair of sweatpants I can find before heading straight to David’s room. After pounding on the door for a solid two minutes, he finally opens it.
“Uhhh I’m sorry, did the world end? Is there a reason you’re yelling at the ass crack of dawn?” he groans, looking nearly as bad as I feel.
Pushing past him into the dorm, I say “It’s 12:30, it’s not early–you’re just hungover.” He mumbles something under his breath that I can’t hear, and then lets out a strangled yell when I open the blinds. I turn toward him and bark out, “What did you let me do last night?”
It comes out more accusatory than I intended, but I’m too pissed that this whole semester has been spent with a David-shaped devil on my shoulder convincing me to make bad decisions to care.
