My heart stuttered. Stopped. Then it started pounding all over again. The room was still spinning. My brain was soft around the edges as I struggled to believe Beau had just said what he’d said.
I gazed up at Beau, and suddenly, he was cut in stark detail, his eyes glittering with something that wasn’t anger or fury.
“What else am I?” I whispered, barely able to breathe.
He was silent for a long time, and I swear, that he leaned forward as if he were going to … kiss me?
“You’re drunk,” he said, as if we both needed reminding. I was painfully aware that I was drunk. I’d probably hallucinated the whole interaction.
“Go to bed, Hannah.” He stepped back. “And next time you need a ride home, fucking call me.”
He turned around and walked in the direction of his room before I could say anything. What else was there to say anyway?
When I woke the next morning, my head pounded, my throat was parched, and my stomach roiled dangerously.
The ceiling was moving. Or my bed was spinning. I wasn’t sure which. All I knew was that I was never drinking again.
Why did people do this? Was the resulting escape from reality, temporarily blurring the edges of life, worth feeling like you were poisoned and wondering if you were a horrible person the next morning?
I put my palm to my forehead as I remembered the afternoon. Laughter. Warmth. A feeling of belonging. Each glass helped loosen the shackles of insecurity and unworthiness until they released. I was able to relax. Be myself without wondering what people thought of me, if anyone really wanted me there.
I hadn’t worried about that at all. After my third glass, I’d even believed that I deserved to be at Avery’s cottage. The food was great, the conversation better. People asked me questions and seemed genuinely interested in the answers. I faintly recalled that Lori and I had made plans for dinner next week.
And not the kind of plans made when both parties knew that they weren’t actually going to happen. Real plans. A budding friendship.
It felt like someone was stabbing my brain as I rolled over, thinking about when I got home. Beau. His nearness. Gentleness. His fury at me … getting in a rideshare?
The fury made vague amounts of sense since it seemed to be his baseline when he was around me.
But last night felt different.
No, last nightIwas different. Drunk.
Beau was his usual self. Mad at me. And I was trying to write a different, more romantic narrative that would never exist between us.
I needed to stop reading romance books. They weren’t my usual genre, but there had been a pulsating need inside me lately. A desire that I didn’t recognize nor know how to sate. Hence, devouring books in which I would envision Beau, of all people, as the hero.
I decided to return all the books I had and go back to biographies. Nursing textbooks. Anything to stop romanticizing being treated poorly.
First, I had to find a way to get out of bed without throwing up, blacking out, or dropping dead.
Medically, I knew I couldn’t die from a hangover. Unless I had alcohol poisoning, which I didn’t. I’d had more than a few glasses of champagne last night. A lot less than everyone else.
My tolerance was in the toilet compared to the other women, and I was glad I at least hadn’t had the insane notion to try to keep up with them. I’d switched to water when the world started feeling very light and when it was hard to stand without swaying. I’d eaten then excused myself without any dramatic or embarrassing incidents.
Analyzing it with a pounding headache, I was pretty sure I did well for my first true drinking experience.
I skirted over what happened with Beau. It was blurry and confusing and would do me no good at this juncture.
When I leaned over to check the time on my phone, I saw a large glass of water beside two pills in a miniature bowl. A Post-it was attached to the water.
Drink. Take the pills.
The scrawl was dramatic, messy. It reminded me of a doctor’s handwriting, barely legible.
I recognized his handwriting, which I’d learned to decipher out of necessity since he labeled all the food he left in the fridge with instructions on how to reheat and prepare it.
Though I knew that Beau wrote this, I couldn’t fathom him putting the glass and pills there.
