The Great Below

The Holiday - Part 3

The bench bowed with his weight, his shoulder brushing hers. "Cariña," he murmured.

"Because this is a fucking holiday, Alex," Dominic was shouting. "You're supposed to spend it with your family."

"You're not family – not after what you did." Alex braced himself against the corner he'd wiped clear and the men sitting there began to clear their plates from his reach.

"If you want to pick a fight with me," Dominic replied, "this isn't the time."

"He doesn't know. Your golden boy doesn't know. He wouldn't be sitting here with you right now if I told him, you know that, right?"

Dominic tensed. He nodded to Billy, who gathered his kitchen crew to clean up. "I'm done with this. We make a nice meal and try to do something together as a team, and you can't even be bothered to show up."

"Go on," Alex prodded. "Tell him."

Victor lost a bit of his presence; he was no longer as close or as warm. He turned back to Alex and said, "Tell me what?"

"Get out, Alex. Go sleep off whatever you've done and get your senses back." Dominic seized the champagne bottle and barged between the two tables. On his way to the door, he gave Alex a look that could have boiled Octavia's champagne, if she hadn't inhaled it already.

"Tell me what?" Victor asked again. His hand came over Octavia's back in what – from another man – might have been a comforting rub, except that it ended in his dense, heavy hand resting across the back of her neck. If he'd been paying more attention, he would have seen bruises there. As it was, she could feel them coming to life under the weight of his fingers. Octavia set her empty plastic cup on the table.

"Nothing," Alex replied. Octavia could imagine how she and Victor looked to him now, sitting like a couple with Victor's hand firmly claiming her. Alex was breathing heavily, still leaning on the table to stay upright. He drank a cup of someone else's water. "I don't feel so good."

#

He got maybe an hour's respite. It could have been less. Alex was no longer enjoying the confidence brought on by Pabst Blue Ribbon. What planted him in his bed and kept the room twirling was a follow-up sickness brought on too soon by listening to Victor talk. He put a hand over his churning stomach and moaned.

He should have eaten something. That might have helped. But looking out at the table, seeing Octavia just a few feet from his uncle and quietly eating like it was the most normal thing in the world; he couldn't eat after that. He wanted to scream. It wouldn't upset Dominic, though. A bigger outburst would have angered Octavia, to see him not only as a liar but a drunk and a hypocrite, too.

He never drank. Victor had tricked him into drinking.

Alex's cell phone rang from inside his jacket, curled in a pile on the floor. He rolled to the edge of the bed to retrieve it. "Hello?"

"Alex, it's Brian." It would have been nice to see Doctor Townsend at their makeshift Thanksgiving, but he had a lot more freedom than the rest of them and spent holidays with his elderly parents up in Lindenhurst. "I know we're off and everything, but I got a weird visit from Octavia late last night and wanted to give you a head's up."

Alex rubbed at his eyes with his free hand. "What did she want?"

"Well, she wanted painkillers. I told her I could give her Tylenol but she insisted on something prescription. I asked her what the pain was, and could I give her an exam, but she refused. Then she asked for amphetamines. I thought she was mixed up, so I asked if she meant sleeping pills, but she insisted. Said she never wanted to sleep again."