Page 17 of Bene

Way too fucking much, Bene.

Again.

It took him another twenty minutes of being prone on the bed, ignoring the raging headache, and occasionally opening his eyes to test the waters—he really didn’t want to puke—before he felt even close to well enough to get up. And it was then, just as he swung his legs over the bed with another bout of nausea washing through him, that his phone decided to start ringing again. He had a good mind to ignore it, but the name lighting up the screen had him reaching for the damn thing out of habit, and very little else.

Beni.

He should have known better than to take the call because his brother would know simply by the sound of his voice, and very little else, that Bene was fucked up. And yet, he was still too hungover to even realize that when he picked up the call with a, “What?”

“Bene?”

“Who else answers this number?”

His twin inhaled a sharp breath.

Fuck.

Did he sound as bad as he felt?

Probably.

Bene wished he cared.

That was part of the problem.

He’d sober up in a few hours—still feel like shit, though, undoubtedly—and wish he hadn’t went out the night before, in the middle of the goddamn week, when he knew the morning after would be like this. When he wasn’t acting crazy to keep his mind off everything else going wrong in his life, he could think clearly.

Right now, he wasn’t doing that at all.

Thinking, that was.

Hell.

He couldn’t see clearly.

Thinking was a joke.

Where had he partied last night?

The new club he liked?

Or the old bar down the street with pool tables?

“Are you listening to me?”

Bene blinked, coming back to the present, and realizing his phone was still on speakerphone, and resting in his hand. The emoji that he’d picked to represent his twin stared up at him from the contact with its funny face—something that used to make him laugh.

Now, he just … what was he even doing?

“Bene?”

“What?” he asked.

“Are you drunk?”

“Not anymore.”

Or … mostly.