S.M. ✦ Gin & Juice

II.

You couldn't believe how open you were being with him. Usually, new people, especially men, made you nervous. When Caroline had attacked you about talking to people other than your mom, it hadn't been a totally baseless accusation. The thought of letting your guard down and letting people in made your skin crawl.

But somehow you weren't nervous around him. Maybe it was because you had found him completely vulnerable and that levels a person. Maybe it was because underneath that Adonis exterior, he was hiding something that was festering. Maybe it was because he blushed when he looked at you. Whatever it was, it made you brave.

"So, what is a football god doing on a solo date with a bottle of gin?" you asked, deciding to ask the hardest question first—no holding back. You rested your head on your palm and looked sideways at him expectantly.

"Jesus, you're not pulling any punches are you?" he exhaled a long, slow breath. "I guess..." he paused, deciding how much he was going to tell you and how much of it was going to be truth. He sighed deeply, tension slowly melting from his body.

"Fuck it," he whispered, steeling himself for his next sentence. "I like the blackout," he said, matter-of-fact, "it's the only time that I don't feel like Shawn Mendes, Heisman-hopeful and 'football god,' as you so delicately put it."

You held yourself very still, not wanting to spook him. He seemed to be consumed in his own thoughts. If you had to guess, he'd never spoken these thoughts aloud before.

"I mean, I love football. Everything about it. The aggression, the skill, the crowd, the energy of it all. When I'm out there on the field, I feel invincible. No one can keep me from getting the ball to the end zone. Whether I'm throwing it to a teammate I can depend on to score or carrying it there myself, I cannot, will not, lose." His eyes had glazed over, no longer speaking to you, but to himself–the version of himself who needed to hear it, who needed to be reminded why he played the game.

"But when I'm off the field—when coaches attend to my every need, when professors give me preferential treatment, when girls follow me around and then start sobbing when I ask them their names—it's exhausting," his shoulders visibly slumped, as if feeling the exhaustion weighing him down, "I feel like my every move is being watched and analyzed all the time.

"It's a lot of pressure. The team needs me, my coach needs me, my parents need me...do you know how much I stand to make life better for everyone if I continue to do well? Win a Heisman? Get drafted?" he spewed, eyeing you wildly as if you had answers to those rhetorical questions. When you stayed silent, his eyes softened and slowly filled with remorse.

"And so, I drink. I drink to get away from it. To become someone else. Anyone else. A normal college kid who binge drinks on weekends and can't remember their own name because that's the kind of stupid shit you do in college," he stopped then, a humorless smile coloring his face, "but the funny part is, no matter how much I drink, no matter how black the blackness gets, I can still hear them cheering my name."

He was silent then, a profound silence filling the air.

"I'm sorry for pushing that shit on you. You don't even know me and I don't know you." He picked at the seam of his skinny jeans with his giant hands.

"I think that's what makes it easier," your voice croaked from disuse. You folded your hands under your legs pressed against your chest and laid your head on your knees. He smiled down at you, "I think you're right. Thank you."

You both settled into a slightly awkward silence, which you took as an opportunity to evaluate your current situation. He was still leaning on you, pressure points burning the memory of his weight into your skin. He smelled like the bottom of a gin bottle, but knowing how he clung to that feeling, the blackness that took him away from all the overwhelming pressure in his life, you understood it.

You wondered if it would ever get better for him. He seemed to stand on opposite sides of a vast ocean, on one side was his obvious passion for football, and on the other his crippling anxiety. He hadn't called it anxiety, but you saw it for what it was. You chalked it up to that macho athletic bullshit exterior that he must have to maintain to not appear weak.

Suddenly, he jerked his head up and widened his eyes, "oh my God, I just realized. I never asked you your name."

The tension of the moment fractured and you burst out laughing, a string of giggles so alien to your own ears that you wanted to record it to remind yourself of it later. Your amusement was so infectious that he started laughing too, the both of you holding in your sides and hopelessly trying to stifle the bubbling mirth.

"I hadn't even thought about it!" you gasped. Wiping a tear from your eye, you introduced yourself. He repeated your name and you tried to ignore the jolt you felt in your stomach hearing it coming from his lips. "It's nice to meet you," he smiled in earnest and God it was beautiful, "it's actually really nice to meet people who don't already know four hundred things about you, though now you might know the one thing about me that no one else does."

"Nice to meet you too," you hiccuped, still getting over your fit of giggles. "This is what people do, right? Tell you their deepest, darkest secrets before you introduce yourself? I'm not very good at making friends so I'm not familiar with the industry standard."

"Yep," he agreed, keeping up the farce, "generally people bare their souls and then exchange names. This has been a textbook meeting between two strangers." He knocked his shoulder with yours, "you did great."

Your cheeks flamed again, causing you to turn your head and hide your face from him. Cursing your easy blush, you wondered if he knew the effect he had on people. He was charming, a highly effective cover up considering the darkness he had shared with you. You wondered how long he'd been hiding behind that charm, and how long he'd been abusing alcohol to cope.

The silence stretched from seconds into minutes. You still hadn't looked back at him when you heard a soft snore coming from your shoulder. Slowly, you turned your head back in his direction to find him sleeping, mouth agape and head resting against the side of the bathtub, finally having passed out.

If you moved, you were going to send him sprawling onto the floor, so you adjusted your sitting position on the bathroom rug and took a deep, focused breath. 3...2...1. Some of the tension you were carrying left with an exhale. Trying not to move as little as possible, you turned yourself into the side of his body, still propping him up. You leaned your head on his massive shoulder and closed your eyes, confused and yet comforted by this complicated boy beside you. When sleep finally came, honey-colored eyes and rosy cheeks filled your dreams.

* * * * * * * * * *

Shawn's head was pounding. His mouth felt like sand had been poured down his throat. He moved his hand across the rug...wait, rug? He opened one eye and was immediately confused. Where was he? Why was he asleep in a bathroom? Why was the window open? At this last question, his teeth involuntarily chattered.

He supported himself against the bathtub and gingerly rose to his feet. He discovered this was a terrible idea, having to use every available surface in the bathroom to brace himself and close the window, putting a barrier between him and the chill outside. Turning around, the tell-tale sound of glass sliding across tile graced his ears as he kicked an empty green bottle across the floor.

Ah, Tanqueray. He had blacked out again. He remembered picking up the mostly-full bottle in the kitchen after beer just wasn't getting him there fast enough. He remembered nursing it while he made the required rounds at the party. He remembered climbing the stairs, polishing off the bottle just as he reached the bathroom door.

Then nothing.

The sweet blackness that he craved. The stuff that felt like sleep but wasn't. It would come back in flashes eventually, but it was this moment—when he knew he lived a whole night as himself, his true uninhibited self, but couldn't be bothered to remember that he loved the most.

He leaned against the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like shit. His skin was splotchy and his eyes were bloodshot. He scrubbed his face, feeling stubble from two days growth, when a flash of black caught his eye in the mirror. He stopped moving and saw that there were words written in black marker on the back of his hand.

Text if you ever want to talk. 202-555-0150.

Feeling an abrupt sense of dread, his stomach roiled with fresh nausea that had nothing to do with his hangover. What the fuck happened in this bathroom?