FIXATION

9. Lola Nathanial

Raguel woke up to a deafening siren going off, making his body hurt from hearing it. His brain felt bruised and he battled to get his eyelids apart.

Slowly, he started becoming aware of things and realised the blaring sound was coming from his phone.

Through a thick fog of ache and confusion, he strained his eyes on his phone and saw "Lola" flashing on the screen.

He swiped with a fumbling finger over the green button and pressed the phone to his ear.

"Rags, where are you!?" Lola's voice wailed and Raguel pulled the phone from his ear, the loud sound making his head hurt even more.

He sighed and glanced around. Where was he? "I dunno..." He could see that it was still dark, and then figured out he was on a coach with three other people all passed out. He must still have been at Julia's place. He looked at the time on his phone, groaning. "It's quarter to fucking three, Lola."

"I don't care – where the fucking hell are you?"

"Julianne's...Castle... Culia Jastelian...Julia...party, Luca..."

There was a long pause over the phone before he heard a trembling voice. "Are you drunk?"

"Hungover..." he murmured.

"Just..." there was a deep breath. "Come to your dorm, ok?"

The call ended before Raguel could say anything further, and he was left with the mission of getting across the battlefield of bodies. He couldn't see Luca anywhere, so he left, and stumbled through the streets back to campus.

Lola was sitting on his bed with her cell in her hands, her face blurry with tears and smudged makeup.

She stood abruptly when she saw him and he looked absolutely pitiful.

"I've been calling you all night," she said. Her voice was fragile, trying to be stern.

"I was at a party."

"Right. The one Luca invited you to. Did you two have fun?"

"Why are you mad at me?" Raguel frowned up at her, squinting through his headache.

Her bottom lip quivered. "He broke up with me. Thomas."

"I told you he was going to," Raguel murmured indifferently, dropping his phone on the bed and sitting down with a tired sigh.

"Really? That's all you've got?"

"I told you it was going to happen, Lola," he groaned.

"Yeah, fuck me for trying then." She shook her head, running her hands through her short hair. "I can't believe you. I can't believe I actually came to you for help and then you stay away all night and morning and still have the audacity to blame me for a guy being a total dick to me!"

"For fuck's sake, Lola, my life doesn't revolve around you! I can't just be here for you to come running back to every fucking time a guy dumps you! Jesus Christ..." he covers his face with his hands, sighing heavily and closing his eyes. "I have real problems too – I don't have the time to deal with relationship crap."

"You think you have it more difficult than me?" he heard her voice scoff. "So you're working two jobs – boo hoo! So is every other student around here! You think you have it so fucking tough? You don't even have to waste time studying; you just hear something and remember it forever. School's easy for you and it always has been – you have no fucking idea what it's like to actually struggle with something! To feel stupid because your best friend keeps getting A's without even opening a book and while you study your ass off, you can't make it past a C." At this point, Rags had opened his eyes, looking at Lola. "You're so selfish, you know that?" she hissed. "Do you...have you ever thought for a moment what I'm going through? Or even tried to put yourself in my shoes?"