Like Real People Do

7. Some Nights (Intro)

TW: Substance Abuse (Alcoholism)

There are some nights I wait for someone to save us, but I never look inward. Try not to look upward. And some nights I pray a sign is gonna come to me but usually, I'm just trying to get some sleep. -Fun

Tuesday, April 20th

Shane awoke to the early morning sunlight with a splitting headache and a gap in his memory. He wasn't even sure what he'd gotten up to last night, let alone how he'd made it home. He remembered the phone call. He remembered seeing her number on the screen, having missed it while he slept by about two hours. He remembered watching it ring again in horror, staring until she was sent to voicemail. He remembered pounding back booze to make the onslaught stop, he remembered the tears, he remembered leaving his phone behind to get some fresh air at the dock by his house-

Jesus fucking Christ, the dock.

He dug his knuckles deep into his temples as his memories trickled back in. The new girl, the shared flask of whiskey, the venom on her tongue, her bloody hand, being caught staring and admitting exactly why. The more that came back to him, the less sense it made. She had been very vocal about her distaste for his attitude ("Asshole," as she'd so eloquently put it) yet still rushed to his side in his moment of need. He assumed that she wouldn't want anything to do with him, but Shane had a reputation for being wrong. Maybe something had changed in her between their encounters, or maybe he'd just failed to notice. He sank further when he recalled the vile shit that had left his mouth on the way out.

Does it matter?

He didn't remember much, but that sentence and the look of horror that fell on her face after she heard it were burned behind his eyes. Those were not thoughts that were ever meant to be spoken out loud, let alone shared. Shane often sat on that dock with a flask in one hand and the desire to end it all in the other. It wasn't that he wanted to kill himself, but the thought of sinking into the lake never filled him with fear. It felt like a period, if anything. The end of a run-on sentence who's meaning was lost in the jumble of words.

Shane had grown comfortable in his own darkness. This was a hole that he crawled into long ago, and he made a bed there to lie in. He didn't need to know what was outside of his cave- the silhouettes on the wall had always been just fine. Now, something was causing that dying fire to sputter and crackle, and the images were becoming warped.

He shook his head and tried not to think about it. Patrick Turner's granddaughter was a problem, nothing more. He'd gotten too close to her too many times, and the embers she left him with needed to be stomped out. How dare she invite him out of that cave with her soft doe eyes and sharp tongue?

Worse yet, she never reminded him of Natalie more, and Shane felt sick.

He rubbed his face hard again, and reluctantly looked at his phone, only to be relieved by a blank screen. She hadn't called again. Thank God or whoever else was listening. maybe she'd finally realized that he wasn't planning on answering. Maybe she just figured that today he deserved a break. He laid back down onto the pillows and pulled the blankets back over his face. He'd need to get up to go to work eventually, no matter how hungover he was. It was the only shred of normalcy he had left, and the only way he could afford the nickels and dimes that his aunt charged him to stay here. Shane reached out groggily for his flask on his nightstand, figuring that a little hair of the dog that bit him should at least be enough to get him out of bed. He felt around in the low light of early morning, only to have his heart sink. The flask was nowhere to be found.

Stupid asshole, you must've lost it at the dock last night.

It wasn't the only thing he left there. Shane could only pray that the new girl was drunk enough to forget all the things he let slip in his own haze.