“Oh shut up.” I take a second slice of pizza from the box on the coffee table. It started with eight slices and is now down to two. “So did you come here by yourself? Why didn't you bring friends or something?”
He thinks about my question for a while before he answers. “I don’t have any friends I could spend a summer with…they would drive me insane after a week.” He looks over at me but doesn't really see me. His eyes are troubled. “Plus I deserve to spend a summer alone.”
“Why would anyone deserve isolation? That's harsh,” I say. He shakes his head.
“I'm gonna need a drink if I'm going to tell you this story,” he says, getting up and taking his glass into the kitchen. I follow him. He pours another coke and drops two shots of Jack Daniels in it. I slide my glass across the counter, next to his.
“Me too,” I say. He glares at me. “You're too young to drink.”
“So are you.”
“So.”
“One shot?”
He sighs. I win. He measures out one shot in a shot glass and then pours it into my drink. We go back to the living room, leaving the bottle of Jack on the counter. I take a few sips and when he's fully immersed in the movie, I excuse myself to go get a paper towel. Once in the kitchen, I guzzle half of my drink and fill the rest with Jack. I've never drank before, so this should be fun. I join him back on the couch, only this time I sit closer.
“So tell me the story,” I say, rubbing shoulders with him. “Why do you deserve a summer of isolation?”
He laughs. “I lied. I'm not telling you.”
I lift an eyebrow. “You're not like a murderer or anything…?”
“If I was, you wouldn't still be alive right now.” His answer doesn't comfort me, but as I take another sip and feel the liquor warming my throat down to my stomach, I stop caring.
A few sips more and I'm rocking side to side in my skull. I'm pretty sure I'm not moving outwardly, but it's getting harder and harder to keep my body still. Jace is slouched in the couch, relaxed and all I want to do is get up and move around. I snuggle closer to him, resting my head on his shoulder.
Images of Ian fade into the background of my mind. “This night is exactly what I needed,” I murmur between quiet parts of the film.
His hand grabs my knee and squeezes. “Me too.”
Chapter 10
I wake up in my bed the next morning to the taste of vomit rushing up my throat. I trip out of bed tangled in my sheets but manage to find the bathroom before making a huge mess on the floor. It's all watery and tastes like sewer but eventually it's gone and I make my way back to bed. My head throbs with the pain of a thousand concussions. With the sun up, it looks to be about nine in the morning.
Covering my head with my comforter, I pass out again in hopes of waking up better. I don't. I wake up a few minutes later to throw up some more. It tastes even worse this time. I try washing out my mouth with water, but every gurgle and swish makes me feel sicker.
Grandma knocks on the bathroom door that is cracked open as I sit on the edge of the tub gripping the sides of my head.
“Are you sick?” she asks. I nod and groan. “Let me see if you have a fever.” I let her press her hand to my forehead although I know it's pointless. I am definitely sick, but it's not a fever type of sick. She rests her hand on me for a minute then shakes her head. “No, you feel fine.”
“I think I just ate something bad,” I say. The perfect excuse. I've used it to skip school a dozen times because there's no way to prove it. She hands me some stomach medicine from the shelf behind the mirror and I gladly swallow the soothing pink liquid. She seems concerned for a moment and then she and tells me a story about when she was a teenager and broke both of her wrists falling out of a tree. I try to smile and pay attention to the story but the second she's done, I bolt back to my room and close the door, preferring to be sick in privacy.
My bed is a comfortable prison for the next several hours. I drift into sleep for a bit and then get jolted awake with the urge to puke. Grandma doesn't check on me, but I can hear her soap operas on the TV so I'm not insulted by her lack of care. Grandma doesn’t leave the couch at all when her shows are on.
Somewhere between a minute and an hour later, I'm not sure because I keep falling in and out of sleep, Grandma comes to my bedside and hands me the phone.
“Hello?” I mumble.
“Bayleigh? Grandma says you're sick, what's wrong?” It's Mom. Just about the last person I want to hear from.
“Yeah, I'm okay,” I say, trying to sound more cheerful than I am. “I think I ate something bad, I just keep throwing up.”
“I'm sorry, I wish I was there to take care of you. Grandma isn't one for nurturing.” She was right about that, and there is a sympathy in her voice that I hope is regret for grounding me.
“I'll be alright. I'm grounded, so I just have to survive, remember?” It was wrong of me to say this, but at the moment I just don't give a damn. She ruined my summer and she deserves to get a guilt trip for it.
“Well maybe this will help you remember how to follow the rules at home. Goodbye, Bayleigh.” She hangs up and I'm left lying in bed, hangover, with a dial tone droning into my ear. What I wouldn’t give to have my computer to Google hangovers and how long they take to recover from.
