No.
I’m drowning.
I feel like I’m dying and no one cares.
They all watch me sink underwater, reaching out for a hand, but no help is given.
“What else can I do?” The mutter fades under the growing noise of the door with light creeping around its border.
Serena can’t get another word in, because I’m done with it, the conversation, her, and I push through the door with a rushed, marched step—
It all hits me at once.
Cackling, guffawing, shouts, music, the scraping of chairs over neglected floorboards, the crack of pool cues on hard balls, the fairy lights strung around the rafters, the smell of cheap wine and liquor, spilled beer, a little sick somewhere, smoke from cigars and cigarettes and joints.
I welcome it.
All of it.
Distraction.
Relief.
I slip into the chaos, gaze flinging around the room for my landing spot.
If Serena follows me, I don’t know, I don’t look back as I weave and wind around the students.
Most of them are seniors, blowing off the bottled steam from the first month of the semester.
How they will all get through the rest of the semester without throwing themselves off the tower, I don’t know.
I squeeze by Piper and Delia—and I know the moment I do, I’ve interrupted something.
Piper’s annoyed glare flashes at me for just a moment before my face registers in her boozed mind, and a grin splits her.
But I don’t stick around to chat.
I choose a destination.
The sticky table with a punch bowl, rows of half-empty glass bottles, paper cups, napkins, and no snacks at all.
I’m not here for snacks.
I reach straight for the tequila and lemon juice, bottled, not fresh, and I start pouring myself a margarita. No shaker or ice, but it’ll do, and I down the whole thing before Serena gets through the packed room to join me.
“I didn’t know you could make those,” she says—and the implication lingers. She wants one.
I set out a second paper cup, then stir round two. “I watched your brother make them.”
The go-to cocktail guy at the gatherings of the families.
Serena’s smile is sincere, memories illuminating her eyes. “I forgot about that. It’s all he made when he first married Isabella. And she doesn’t even like them.”
I almost laugh.
A faint choke in my chest, a jolt of the shoulders, but it vanishes the moment Landon comes crashing into the table.
“One for me,” he slurs.
