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Barrett
My knees slam down against the floor. I grab the toilet seat and barely get my head over the bowl before I’m vomiting.
I know it’s Red Bull, but it smells like liquor. Tastes like liquor. Stings like liquor.
My body’s numb and heavy. Still, I feel a door beside me, bumping my elbow as my body lurches.
Bluebell grabs my arm. As my body heaves and puke splashes on my lap, I feel a heavy arm around my shoulders.
“Fucking hell, man.” Blue’s hand comes under my right arm, holding me against him as the car swerves. “Dove, take the road right there. That one!”
“Is that a road?”
“Yes. Take it!”
“Fuck, we’re gonna track.”
“They’ll be gone in half an hour with snow coming down like this.”
I feel Blue shift back against his seat and hear his voice closer to me. “Shit, Bear. Is it just the liquor?”
Between hurling, I rasp, “Yeah.”
I wrap my hand around one of the metal rods that lock the headrest of the front passenger’s seat into the chair and try to aim toward the floor. Far away, I feel the chaos of anxiety as my teammates buzz and the world riots around me.
“All right,” Breck says roughly. “We’ll get where we’re going and there’ll be a shower.”
Between gasping, I groan, “I don’t care.”
That’s where it ends. I’m always sick until my throat is raw, my eyes and nose are running, neck and jaw are sore. I grip the toilet, moving between then and now, not sure where I’d rather be when I’m aware enough to monitor what’s going on. There with that or here with this.
Breck’s gone.
Re-realizing that prolongs my stomach’s rebellion. Sounds of retching echo in the bathroom, gasping, gagging, panting… Then it’s over and I just want to shower.
With my right arm flung across the toilet seat, I tilt my throbbing head down, looking down at my chest through streaming eyes. The room feels like it’s tilting.
You’re not drunk, you dumb fuck. Get up.
I wipe my right forearm across my mouth and grab onto the partial wall between the toilet and the countertop. My throat and eyes ache. I squint and blink, then step over to one of the sinks to wash my hands and face.
No shirt, I notice as I blink into the mirror. I must have torn it off while I was dreaming. Sometimes I do that, thinking that there’s blood on me.
I look from the shower to the bedroom door. I dry my hands and face with a towel I find under the countertop, then I brush my teeth. Then, with one last look at the shower, I walk into the bedroom.
My gaze rolls over the bed and side tables. Nothing broken. That’s good. The first time I fell asleep at this place, right after I came in from trying out one of the bows I found in the gun cabinet, I shattered a porcelain lamp on one of the nightstands.
I look down to the floor beside the bed. All the covers are in a ball, including the blanket I was lying on. I don’t see my pillow at all. I look from the pallet to the bathroom door, trying to remember getting up.
I can’t. I never can.
I go to the dresser and pull open the top drawer. It’s the only one with any contents. The Haywoods left some clothes in their closet, but nothing in the dressers. I pull out a soft, thick, camo button-up my brother’s fiancé bought me. If it weren’t for her—a sweet, Georgia girl named Cleo, who insisted I needed some camo for my civvie wardrobe—I wouldn’t have anything to wear. All my shit is still in the apartment in Fort Bragg—a place I still pay rent for. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back in it.
A glance at one of the windows shows me it’s still mostly dark outside, but the sky has a tinge of color to it.
I peel my sweat-soaked boxer-briefs off, replacing them with clean ones despite the lack of shower, then tug on some dark pants and socks.
