The days without seeing Riley went by in a blurred mash. There was no beginning or end to them; they just were a long, continuous whirlwind of frustration and longing.
Work dragged by torturously slow during the afternoons, which didn't help. The customers were rude and the employees I had to work with this week were all pretentious pricks who knew nothing about music. They would quote inaccurate facts they found on the internet about bands like they were canon. Listening to extraordinarily stupid people commenting about music like they knew what they were talking about was excruciating.
I hated my job. I wanted to walk out and never look back.
There was no relief when I got home, either. The house was a revolving door of people and was always too noisy. Between tone-deaf band practices, the constant bickering between the guys over the most trivial bullshit, and Anna's yapping, I found myself drinking every chance I could to drown it all out.
The nights were the worst.
Every second that would tick by would stall and move backwards. Time refused to move forward in a logical progression. I would lay down in my bed when I had enough of the people around me. Listening to the clicking and clacking of the muted house noises made me feel restless and isolated. No matter how many people surrounded me or what I tried, I felt empty inside.
I was so fucking lonely without her.
The only time I ever felt any relief was when Riley would send me little messages randomly. Sometimes it would just be something as simple as a "Hi!" or a "What are you doing?" text. One time she even sent me an unprompted winking emoji with its tongue hanging out.
I found myself chewing up the edges of all my guitar picks while holding my phone in my hand for hours, waiting to see if she would send me another one. My stomach would twist and knot itself up like I hadn't eaten in days. The pain was so bad that I could barely pull myself up to stand.
I felt like I was going through withdrawal from her and it was agonizing. There was a difference between a detox pushed on you and one born out of sheer willpower. The forced ones were always debilitating because they were never your choice. How could a person persevere through so much suffering when they never wanted to let go in the first place?
I had done both kinds before, but this time was threatening to break me.
I had been able to limp myself through all of my pain until about an hour ago, when it all came crashing down around me.
Riley went silent and disappeared on me.
It had been almost three hours since I sent her the last text and she hadn't responded with anything, not even one of those stupid yellow smiling faces. I knew my phone was working because I had been dodging Mia's messages most of the night. She kept trying to invite herself over to the house, and I hoped she would go away if I ignored her long enough.
I had far bigger things to worry about than Mia.
Something was wrong with Riley and I knew it. I could feel it inside every cell in my body. I began typing her a new message to make sure she was alright. I had no idea what she was doing to keep her from messaging back.
Me: Where are you? Why haven't you texted me back yet?
I was spinning a marbled pick around in my mouth and typing my desperate message to her when I heard a female clear her throat at my bedroom door. I raised my eyes to check out the noise and found Brynn watching me from just inside my door with an open liquor bottle in her hand.
She was twirling her foot in a point as she danced in the doorway. She had on another one of her trademark attention-seeking outfits. This one was a black and red one-piece with most of the cloth missing. Her hair was in a sleek, high ponytail on top of her head and she was wearing way too much makeup.
Her bright red thin lips were pulled back in a nauseating smirk.
"What are you doing here?" I spat out my pick onto the bed and mumbled in disgust.
"Aiden called me and I had nothing better to do. I saw you sitting here, moping in the dark by yourself. You looked like you needed this." She walked in and offered me the bottle in her hand.
I sat up from my pillow and moved to the edge of the bed. I took the bottle out of her hand and held it as I looked down at my phone again. I had to make sure I hadn't missed a message from Riley in the four seconds I was distracted by the dumpster fire that walked into my bedroom.
I scrolled through and read the old messages to see if there was something I had overlooked.
Brynn invited herself to sit down on the bed next to me and placed her hand on my thigh. She leaned over and peered over my shoulder to look at my phone too.
"Something more interesting on there than me?" She asked.
"Waiting on Riley to text me. Do you know where she is? She hasn't responded to any of my messages since this afternoon." I sighed. I was feeling absolutely insane. It was to the point that I was about to get in my car to go find her.
Brynn might be able to help me. She probably already knew where Riley was.
"Ehhh... not sure how to tell you this." Brynn pulled her mouth into a hard line, giving me an apologetic look. "I just talked to her about twenty minutes ago and asked her to come over to the house to hang out with us tonight. She said she was busy and already had plans to go out with some of the guys from work."
"Guys?" My head felt heavy at the mention of the word.
"Yeah, there are a few guys she has a regular thing with." Brynn shrugged.
"She's been seeing other guys?" My hands were shaking with the pressurized anger stabbing my insides.
"Well, when I asked her about it, she said you two aren't exclusive. Did you think you were?" Brynn grimaced and patted my knee.
"We never talked about it." I gnashed my teeth together. I had never done the relationship thing before and didn't realize that was something that actually needed to be said out loud. I had just assumed she knew it.
Why did I always fuck everything up?
"You didn't really think she was going to be your girlfriend, did you? Think about it, Ezra. She won't even tell JD about the two of you hooking up. She doesn't look at you when he is around or let you touch her. She obviously doesn't want anything serious with you or she would have said something by now." Brynn rubbed salt into my fresh, gaping wounds.
"There is a reason she hasn't told him yet." I tried to rationalize the situation, more for myself than for Brynn.
"Is there? And why is that?" Brynn turned her head, questioning me.
"You are her friend. You know why. You know what happened to her." I spun the bottle around in my hands. The slightly cloudy liquid swirled inside, creating a tiny funnel like a tornado. If anyone took an x-ray of my insides right now, they would find the same storm raging inside of me.
"Oh, she told you her little story." Brynn framed the word 'story' in quotation marks with her bony fingers. "God, I can't believe you fell for that shit. Men will believe anything for a little bit of pussy."
"You are saying what she told me isn't true?"
"Well, don't tell her you heard this from me, but Riley likes to play the damsel in distress card around guys. It gives her an advantage over them. She can pull it out and use it whenever she wants to get what she wants."
"You're a shit friend," I said, pulling at the rings in my eyebrows until they hurt.
"No, Ezra. I am a great friend. That is why I am telling you to be careful around her. I don't want to see you get hurt." She patted my back to comfort me.
I didn't want to believe Brynn. She wasn't the most trustworthy person based on everything I had seen so far, but it didn't matter. I couldn't help but latch onto the seed of doubt she planted about what was happening between Riley and me. My brain had to be paranoid over Riley for a reason. She was so hesitant to be with me from the start. I have always known everything wasn't what it seemed with her.
Brynn got up off the bed and walked to the door. She paused at the last second and looked down sympathetically at my pitiful face.
"You know you should really drink that bottle and forget about her tonight because she's definitely not thinking about you." She pulled her mouth tight and walked out the door.
I pressed the glass to my lips and guzzled the liquid down. It tasted like shit. There was a grainy feel like it had playground sand mixed in it.
What the hell was in the bottle?
I pulled it away from my lips to see what kind Brynn brought to me. It had to be either really cheap or old.
I examined the shiny silver label with some foreign language scribbled on it. It was neither inexpensive nor bad. It was from Mark's private imported stash that he kept hidden in his room for special occasions. He barely ever let anyone else drink it with him, including me.
I pressed the bottle back up to my mouth and chugged it down, thinking I imagined it in my head. I kept a little of the texture on my tongue and swirled it around. It still tasted off and had a slightly medicinal aftertaste, like a bitter acid-eaten pill on its way back up after a binge.
Fuck me. I was an idiot.
The bottle was laced with something. I should have realized it right away.
My cousin Jake used to do this shit all the time for fun. He liked to slip extras in drinks to cause chaos and get a better buzz going. He enjoyed manipulating people into their worst version of themselves and exploiting them for his entertainment.
But Mark wasn't Jake. He wasn't even close. Mark wouldn't purposefully put something in someone's drink or hurt anyone. That could only mean it was in there for his own personal use.
Damnit Mark.
Little shadowed lines started creeping in front of my eyes after only about fifteen minutes. Whatever he had put in the bottle was potent. I was going to be falling on my ass in no time.
I stood up and my head was a zeppelin floating on a string in the air. I was fucked up and it felt incredible. It had been so long since I had taken the plunge that I forgot how euphoric it was when it first hit. Now all I needed was my filthy little blonde to play with. I couldn't even imagine how good sex with her would feel while I was high.
Brynn didn't know shit about Riley and me. She had to be wrong about us and I was going to find a way to prove it to her.
I drank out of the bottle again as I walked by Mark in the hallway. He was walking out of his room to go downstairs.
"Hey, that's mine," Mark yelled, looking at my drink.
"I don't know what this is, but you should call your guy to get more."
"What are you talking about?" Mark scratched his head at me.
"Here, have some." I shoved it in his face.
"Well, since you already opened it, asshole, I can't let it go to waste. You know it took me six months to find a way to get a case of this shipped here. It's a special blend they only made once." Mark took the bottle from me and took a sip. He spit it out immediately and held the bottle up to look at the liquid in the light. "What the hell is wrong with this? It's disgusting. It looks like something is floating in it."
I yanked it back from him and chugged it down before he wasted any more of it.
"I can't believe you are drinking that. That is not how I remember it tasting at all. I need to go smoke to wash that shit out of my mouth." Four images of Mark made a face and stuck their tongues out like a bunch of little bullfrogs trying to catch a fly.
"What are you smoking?" I sniffed at the air around me, finding a hint of something a little more green and pungent sticking to Mark's clothes.
All the Marks stood with their arms up like a desert cactus performing a rain dance. I slapped at my unfocused eyes to set them straight again.
"A cigarette." Mark looked at me suspiciously.
"Got anything else?" One of my eyes decided to blur over as I motioned towards the glass dragon bong that Mark tried to disguise as a piece of art next to the action figures and Legos he proudly displayed on his desk.
Mark turned to his head to check out where I was looking and chuckled.
"I just might."