Dare Me to Live

Chapter 2

There was a screw driver drilling slowly into my head and a wad of cotton in my mouth when I woke up on Vanessa's couch the next morning. Slivers of light leaking from the blinds sliced into my eyes and the room rocked slightly from side to side.

I swallowed hard to keep from throwing up and shut my eyes tight. The gritty sand of old mascara made them sting and my skin itch.

"Feeling those last three tequila shots?" asked Vanessa.

She shuffled into the room in ratty pink slippers, boxer shorts, and a tank top, stretching her arms over her head. Despite the dark make-up circles under her eyes and a rat's nest of a bun on top of her head, she looked much better than I felt.

"I had tequila last night?" I croaked.

Vanessa laughed and fell onto the couch next to me. The residual bouncing sent another wave of nausea through my body and my throat burned.

"You had enough tequila for the both of us."

"What happened? The last thing I remember was telling Chris off."

"I don't know how he knew you were here," she said, stretching her long, tanned legs out on the coffee table, "And I didn't see you talking to him until you stomped away looking like you were inches from setting him on fire. You grabbed the tequila bottle I hid in the cabinet and started pounding shots like they were water. It was a thing of beauty."

I groaned, throwing an arm over my eyes and trying to ignore the pounding in my head as my brain tried to reconcile Vanessa's words with the bits of memory crumpled up in my mind. I could imagine the parts I failed to recall, but the missing pieces tasted like bad decisions and regret.

"Are you okay?" asked Vanessa gently.

"No, I think I'm going to throw up, but if I stand to go to the bathroom I will throw up before I get there," I said. Instinct and a lifelong aversion to puking too over and I concentrated on breathing slowly and deeply; in through the nose out through the mouth.

There was a thud as Vanessa set a garbage can on the floor beside the couch.

"I'm talking about Chris," she said. "Kevin kicked him out after you walked away."

"I don't give a rat's ass about Chris."

"The rage you took out on that poor tequila bottle would say otherwise."

I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter and took another deep breath. Acid churned in my stomach. Chris's words were, unfortunately, crystal clear in my otherwise murky recollection of the night before. They tugged at my other memories, using the dark spaces as leverage to once more climb to the center of my conscious mind.

It shouldn't be this easy for him to get to you, I chided myself. But my defenses were weak from alcohol and lack of sleep.

"He means less than nothing to me at this point," I said, a little too loudly, and then I threw up over the side of the couch.

Vanessa leaned over to hold my hair back and sighed. "We don't have to talk about him now if you don't want to. But I don't think he's just going to go away."

I coughed and spit, hating the rawness of my throat and the slimy feeling in my mouth. I straightened up and took the paper towel Vanessa held out to me to wipe my face. Tequila was now at the bottom of my list of preferred alcohols, to be rotated back in only once my system had recovered. She looked at me sympathetically, "Feeling better?"

"I'd feel better if I at least got to throw up on him. Then, he'd have physical proof of how I feel."

Vanessa shook her head, tendrils of brown hair escaping her bun and catching in her eyelashes.