Maybe the girl will loosen up now.
Continuing my makeout session with Gabby, my hands roam through her wavy hair, raking my nails gently over Gabby's scalp, eliciting a moan from the darker woman.
Breaking away gently, I come up for air, smiling seductively towards Lincoln.
"We should go back to my place," I yell out towards him.
He barely comes back to himself.
He's drunk too. Not as drunk as Gabrielle, apparently.
Now the real fun begins.
-??-
Chapter 27
Gabrielle's POV
I don't even understand how I ended up on Sarah's couch in her apartment, and the fog of the alcohol is still grabbing my brain, refusing to let go.
Lincoln is sitting to my right on the big fluffy couch.
"You guys look so cute together. Oh my God," Sarah says, smiling. "Oh, hold up. Wait, wait," she says excitedly, too frenetic for my liking.
I do not like this girl, but right now I'm too tired to care. I tolerate her. It is New Year's, after all.
Maybe I'll regret it later, but right now, honestly, I'm choosing to be at peace, even though none of what's happening makes sense, and I'm wondering if it's all a dream. Sarah gets her phone and begins snapping pictures of Lincoln and me together.
I remember this apartment all too well. This is the one I walked into that day. Oh yeah, that's right. This was Ground Zero.
It looks a little different because I'm sitting in another part of it now, in the living room, on a couch. I had walked right past all of this to go to the bedroom where Lincoln and Sarah were.
All of a sudden, all the pain of that hurt comes flying back, as if trying to remind me that there's a reason why I shouldn't trust Lincoln and why I shouldn't trust Sarah. It's funny how alcohol can just remove all of that, make you realize that the people that you hated aren't so bad after all, and you're all just human, trying to survive. I choose not to think about the hurt right now.
I choose to think about early on in our life together. When we started dating and how awkward it was for us when we started having sex regularly. How Lincoln couldn't be satiated enough.
How we were always stealing away to be with each other.
How Lincoln, as a birthday gift, took me to go get a contraceptive.
I remember how much I was laughing, telling him that this was more so his gift than mine.
And it was, to the moon and back since then.
When exactly did it start to go wrong?
When did he start to feel the pressure of bearing everybody's financial burden?
I almost lost him before, when we went hiking.
When he had that sepsis fever, and suddenly all the other things that I thought annoyed me about him, or that really broke myheart, seem so trivial now, knowing that he could have died. Maybe it's just the way I feel in this moment.
Who is that?
Oh, that's Sarah.
Why is she smiling at us like… ?
