Nothing is certain in life.
Well, except for one thing: I drank too fucking much last night.
Surprisingly, I woke up in my own bedroom, but I hadn't quite made it to the bed. I try to stretch out my limbs, my back tight and knotted from the hardwood floor, but it just causes my head to throb worse, I groan.
Honestly, things got pretty hazy last night. I could remember my conversation with Blondie in the kitchen, I even remembered the half bottle of whiskey I'd downed after she'd spat her insults at me. I remembered her sat with that five foot dick head Max, and I wanted to piss her off, as much as she'd done me.
The last thing I remember was the look on Blondie's face when she discovered me and that girl on the bed.
On her bed.
I tried to tell myself I didn't give a shit. She'd been eye fucking that dude, touching him, and smiling at him, actually smiling at him, so I retaliated. That girl had been desperate for it all night, so I gave in; and from the look on Blondie's face, it was not fucking worth it.
The moment I saw her stood there I just felt like the biggest idiot known to man. For a moment, the impenetrable wall that she'd built within her eyes had dropped, the first time I'd been able to really read them, and she'd looked hurt. It was fleeting, but it'd been there. She was just so god damn frustrating.
"You alive?" Marcus pushes my bedroom door open. The moment he sees me lying on the floor he starts to laugh.
"Fuck off."
"Coffee." He hands it down to me, I pull myself up into a sitting position, leaning against the end of my bed before taking the cup.
"Ok, don't fuck off."
"Carter you look like shit."
"Why don't you?" Marcus leans against my dresser, nursing his own cup of coffee, looking ridiculously fresher than me this morning. Come to think of it, he disappeared pretty early on.
"I stopped drinking, I actually er- I got talking to Ella." He rubs the back of his neck.
"Joe's deli anyone?" Seamus fills the doorway, looking significantly more like I do this morning. In fact, Seamus looks like he didn't sleep at all.
"Fuck yes." I stand up, and once the swirling room finally becomes stationary again, I get dressed for breakfast.
Joe's greasy food and bottomless soda was one of the few things that could drag me off the floor right now and soothe a hangover so severe.
The three of us were dressed and leaving in a matter of minutes. Joe's deli is a sandwich place just a five minute walk from our apartment, which is good because my fucking jeep is still sat outside Blondie's place.
We slide into our regular booth, the red laminate seats worn and cracked, the retro décor dated and comforting. We'd been coming here for the past three years; it was one of the few things besides my mom and sister that I couldn't bear the thought of leaving in Michigan after graduation.
Mandy, our sixty-something server comes over, she doesn't move the pencil from her hair or the small yellow notepad from the front of her apron, she knows what we're having. She greets us, fills up our waters and squeezes Seamus' cheek, reducing him from a gigantic defensive nightmare, to a child, all in the affectionate gesture.
We each get our usual: large soda, side of pancakes and syrup, along with our breakfast subs and large side of hash browns. As usual the food is quick, and our table is completely laden with food. It's silent for a while, we all just shovel our food down, the egg yolk runs down my fingers as I eat, I ignore it and shove more hash brown into my mouth.
"Homeboy tell you he's in love yet?" Seamus manages to say with a mouthful of pancake. "That's all I got last night in the uber; you wouldn't have heard Carter, your head was hanging out the window like a golden retriever. But Ella is different. Ella is so funny, she does this impressio-" Marcus throws his used napkin at Seamus, effectively shutting him up.
"What happened?" I ask him before taking a long drink of Pepsi.
"We talked and I apologised for acting like a prick. So, now we're taking it slow."
Seamus waggles his eyebrows at me, and I study Marcus as he takes a bite of his sub. It's bizarre, these words coming out of his mouth. I'd seen this guy kick girls out of our apartment without a second glance, all before heading off to judge a wet t-shirt contest.
"Is she good in bed? Asking for a friend. That friend is me." The look Marcus shoots Seamus is scalding, I'm surprised the syrup on Seamus's pancakes hasn't started to boil.
"Hang on, you're together?" I ask, saving Seamus from getting his ass kicked.
"Not really. Like I said, she wants to take it slow. Date."
"Date?" I'd never even been on a date. We didn't have to. Fuck, we'd just turn up and get girls.
"Yea, dating. It's possible Carter, I'm not going to forget how to play ball because I'm seeing someone."
"Let's hope you actually improve." Marcus balls up another napkin to launch at Seamus.
"She wants to hang out more, but start off like, in a group or something." Marcus takes another gargantuan bite of his sub, leaving Seamus and I to process what he'd said.
"You mean us?" Seamus asks the question; I decide a mouthful of hash brown is best.
"Yea. Like bowling and shit. She said her roommates and mine would be a big enough group, keep things casual for a while." I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
"I fucking love bowling." Seamus bounces in his seat like he's ten years old, not twenty one and the most aggressive line-backer I've ever seen.
"No." They both look at me.
"What do you mean no?" Marcus asks.
"I mean no. Her roommate's a fucking nightmare."
"Which one? The little one with curly hair is cute, I could put her in my pocket." Seamus pats the pocket of his shorts and I can feel Marcus staring at the side of my head, fuming that I'm sabotaging his plans.
"No, the other one, Lou." Saying her name out loud to them both felt weird, like she'd been some figment of my imagination until now.
"Yea, Ella mentioned she had some... issues." Marcus mutters as he pours more syrup onto his pancakes.
"Issues? Like Charles Manson issues or-" Seamus starts.
"Daddy issues." I finish whilst finally wiping the grease and yolk from my hands, Marcus stops pouring to look at me.
"Dude, her dad died."
My throat seizes up, causing the hash brown I'd been chewing to get lodged at the back of my throat. I launch into a coughing fit, drawing attention from Mandy and the other few people in the deli. I punch my fist into my chest, trying to help my coughing but to also try and beat down the realisation that I'm a total bastard.
"W-what?" I just about manage to get the word out between heaving coughs.
"Yea, beginning of sophomore year he died. Ella said Lou had a breakdown, almost quit school and hasn't really been the same since."
"How did he die?" Seamus asks, for once there's no ounce of a joke or smile on his face.
"Cancer. Said he was diagnosed and died only a couple of months later. They were super close."
"That fucking sucks." Seamus says before taking a drink of his soda, Marcus nods his head in agreement and the most I can do is sit and stare at my food.
I have never felt like a bigger asshole in my entire life. My stomach twists as the memory surfaces, my ego bruised and wanting to do damage, the look on her face after I'd sneered at her. Daddy issues.
Seamus and Marcus talk through the rest of breakfast, mainly about tomorrows game, casting occasional curious glances in my direction. I don't touch the rest of my meal. I feel nauseated. No longer the result of a hangover, instead the result of guilt, regret and realising you're a total piece of shit.
We pay our bill and walk back to our place, thanks to the greasy carbs and sugar, the hangover is subsiding, the guilt not so much.
I need to see Lou. I need to apologise to her.
"Hey, can one of you take me for my car?"
"Sure." Marcus jumps up, undoubtedly keen for the opportunity to see Ella again, he grabs the keys for his pick up and we head out.
"Did something happen last night?" He asks as we stop at a red light.
"Other than me being a total cunt?" Marcus whistles and turns his attention back on the road.
"That's not it."
"What?"
"As your mate I can say this, but Carter, you're usually a dickhead with girls. You just haven't ever seemed to feel bad about it before."
Marcus parks his pickup and I fiddle with my keys in my pocket, anxiously glancing up at the apartment building. I wonder whether I'll burst into flames as soon as I step over the threshold.
"You coming?" I ask him as I get out, he seems to think about it, hesitating.
"No, we're supposed to be going slow. Slow isn't turning up the next day, is it?"
"Just, hang on a sec."
"I'm not your emotional support animal Carter. Pull on your big boy pants and apologise for whatever fucked up thing you did." And with that said, he puts the car in drive and leaves.
I press the button for their apartment and wait as it rings through, it hadn't even occurred to me that Lou could point blank refuse to let me in. Likely she would, and I wouldn't blame her for it. I hoped for Ella or Kate to answer.
"Carter?" Ella's surprised voice rings through the phone system, I look up and spot the small CCTV camera, waving at it sheepishly. A long silence passes.
"Is there a reason you called? Or do you just like pressing buttons?"
"Oh shit, er, yea. Is Blond- Lou there?"
"No, she's not." More silence. Ella's tone is short and clipped, God, Lou probably told her about me hooking up in her room.
"I just want to talk to her."
"Carter, she's really not here." Ella cuts me off, quite frankly I'm glad because I was doing a terrible job. The buzzing intercom system silences, completely cutting dead as Ella put the phone down. I thrust my hand into my hair, brushing it back off my clammy forehead. I press the button again. And again. And again.
"For fuck's sake Carter." Ella's frustrated voice seeps out of the intercom again.
"Do you know where she is?"
"Yes."
"Where is she?"
"She doesn't want to talk to you!" Kate's voice calls from what sounds like the other side of the room Ella's in. The buzzing cuts out, call ended.
***
"Try her Facebook dipshit." Seamus spits out around a mouthful of Oreos.
"Seamus you fucking genius." I grab my phone, typing in Lou, not knowing her last name, I searched. Surely there weren't going to be many Lou's. "Nothing."
"Who doesn't have Facebook?" Seamus shovels more biscuits into his mouth.
"She has Instagram." Marcus comes into the front room, flopping onto the couch and throwing his iPhone at me. The profile lights up from where it landed on the seat. "Ella told me to follow Lou and Kate the other night, she said they needed to get to know me a little better."
"Me thinks Ella has you by the balls." Marcus just rolls his eyes and ignores Seamus.
I ignore the both of them, their bickering faded as I stared at the profile.
The last photo she'd posted was two and a half years ago and instead of a sea of filters and duck face selfies, I was met by bright, weird, and wonderful photographs. It was quite obvious, very quickly, that Lou's Instagram account had only ever been for her.
She'd posted things she'd found funny, or interesting, or beautiful. One photograph was simply of a squirrel sat beside a tree root, she'd captioned it: 'I like big nuts and I cannot lie.'
There was a photograph of Ella and Kate, looking up from the notes compiled on a single bed, the undeniable clutter of a dorm room. They weren't just smiling in the photograph, their grins were wide and carefree, mascara stained their under eyes, they had been laughing. The caption read: 'Is a Les Misérables audition supposed to be this funny?'
Another was a photograph of a dapper old man, sat alone on a bench, unpacking some homemade sandwiches. She'd captioned it: 'Enjoy every sandwich.'
One photo was of a hot chocolate, with a shit ton marshmallows, rich looking chocolate sauce and fresh cream dribbling down the side of the cup. She'd captioned it: 'The ChocoLou-Special, half price if you don't go into a diabetic coma.' She'd tagged the location as Burnt Toast, a coffeehouse not far off campus.
The bright colours that were on her Instagram were the reoccurring hummingbirds that she photographed, after every few posts, there'd be a hummingbird in there somewhere. How she'd managed to capture a photo of the ridiculously fast little birds I'd never know, but there they were.
I kept going, surfing through her posts, analysing every photo, unable to stop from grinning like a dork at the captions she'd written. When I came across a photograph of her sat in the middle of three guys. Three big guys.
They were all the same tone of honey blonde hair, olive skin and wide eyes. They were each looking at her, one of them had his hand in her hair, roughing it up for the photograph. The way they huddled around her, massive, smiling, and proud. She was their centre.
Her brothers.
Lou was holding up her Michigan University acceptance letter, grinning at the camera- no, someone behind the camera.
It was strange, how different she looked in the photo. The sight of her, I mean, she is gorgeous but she looked so unguarded and happy. Breathtakingly beautiful. Her blonde hair glowing in the sunlight, her dimples, the absence of ice in her blue gaze.
Something about being on Lou's private profile, the insight into her mind, her sense of humour and the complete lack of self-serving photos, made my chest tighten.
I was seeing a hidden, deeper part of her, and right now, I didn't deserve to.