“I’m going to take a shower,” I mumble, swallowing the rest of my drink without thinking of the consequences.
“Won’t the water be cold?” Mary asks as I stand up, not daring to look Emery sitting on the couch. I won’t even look at Mary, either, in fear of her seeing my glassy eyes.
“I don’t care,” I mutter, exiting the room and climbing up the wooden stairs. As long as I can escape the awkwardness of the living room, and cry without anyone hearing me, I really don’t care. The tears are already falling as I dig in my closet, retrieving warm pajamas. In the shower, I allow myself to sob. I had already guessed Emery didn’t feel the same way, after he didn’t say anything. However what he pulled downstairs, and actually hearing him tell the truth crushed me into a million pieces.
I wince as the cold water rushes over me, making me actually physically numb rather than the emotional one I had been feeling. I stay in the shower for a long time, wondering if my lips are turning blue. It’s almost pitch black except for the small candle I had lit earlier on the counter, giving off a soft glow.
“River?” My eyes grow wide at the slurring of my name. I can’t decide whether I imagined it or not, so with shaky hands, I pull the shower curtain against me. Carefully peeking out, I see the dark figure of Emery standing in my bathroom. While I’m showering. While I’m naked.
“What the hell!” I scream, my voice hoarse from all the crying I had done. Emery steps back, surprised at my yelling voice. “Get the hell out!” I tighten my grip on the shower curtain as Emery stares at me dumbfounded.
“Y-You’re in the shower still?” My face scrunches at his awful speech. He sounds like a child who’s just learned to speak.
“Uh, yeah, I am. How much did you drink?” He thinks for a minute before responding.
“I drank an hour and a half, and you were in the shower for seven beers.” I roll my eyes as he is oblivious to how little sense that made, and he switched his answers around.
“Can you get out?” The water against my back chills me to the bone, and I want to get out of the shower as quickly as possible, although that is hard when Emery is standing two feet away.
“Why?” He tries to lean against the bathroom door but stumbles instead.
Grunting in annoyance, I glare at him. “Just get out now.”
Emery grins at me, and grabs the fluffy white towel beside him. He throws it towards me, and it lands on the edge of the bathtub. Rolling my eyes, I take a step backwards so I’m out of his view. After I’ve turned off the water, I pull the shower curtain so it covers every inch of the bathtub.
“If you look, I will kill you,” I snap, no longer having patience with him anymore. I wrap the towel around me while I hear Emery Hastings giggle. “Turn around,” I order, and peak around the shower curtain. When I see him watching the wall, I clutch the grip on my towel tightly and step out of the bathtub and onto the cold tile. I’m warmer than when I was in the cold water, but I’m still freezing as I shiver to regain my warmth.
I blow out the candle, and let the towel fall to the floor. The sound it makes as it hits the tile sounds much too loud, but I push the thought away. As quickly as I can, I pull on my pajamas, trying to see Emery in the darkness. It’s almost impossible, so I try not to think about whether he can see me or not as I ring my hair out in the sink.
“You’re really pretty, River,” murmurs Emery in my left ear, and I jump away, surprised. Holding my hand over my heart, I take a deep breath to calm myself down.
“Save your breath,” I mutter, trying to find the door in the darkness. My hands press against the walls in the darkness, searching for the doorknob.
“I mean it,” he says sincerely, or at least as sincere as a drunken bad boy slurring his words can.
“Just like you mean that you don’t love me,” I snap, shoving past him unexpectedly as I continue to look for my exit. I might as well blurt out my angry and upset feelings right now, why he’s wasted and won’t remember.
“You don’t understand,” whines Emery, grabbing my shoulder. He spins me around and before I can object his lips are pressed gently against mine. “I had to say that,” he murmurs, parting from my mouth for only a moment. His arms wrap around me, and his hands pull me close, right into his chest. As much as I know this is pointless, and I will just end up getting more hurt, I go with it. I might as well make the best of the situation while I can, considering I will never see him again in only a week or two.
“Why?” I mumble after a few moments of being tangled up in the moment. “Why did you have to say that?” His alcohol smelling breath doesn’t aggravate me as I feel it against my face when he pulls away from my lips.
“Because I don’t want to hurt you when I leave,” he says softly, tightening his grip around my waist. I begin to struggle to get out of it but he doesn’t let me.
“You’ve already hurt me,” I snap, upset rather than angry. “It will make no difference. It will hurt me when you leave regardless,” I whisper into the dark. It feels like a dream, as I stare towards the face I cannot see. When we don’t speak, I can hear the thunder booming around us, and the sound of the rain falling against the roof.
“I don’t want to hurt myself.” Drunken Emery makes me feel like I’m talking to a completely different person. One who is Emery’s best friend, if that’s even possible, that tells me all of his deep thoughts and feelings. “I’ve been hurt too much, River,” he whispers sadly, letting me go. I feel his body move away from mine as he takes a step back. “If hating me will ease your pain, and mine, I’m willing to ruin our relationship for the sake of that.”
I feel a single tear leave my eye and roll down my cheek. My hands search the wall behind me, and clasp over the door knob. Quietly, I twist it, open it, and escape into the dimly lit hall. Leaving Emery to himself, I rush down the stairs to Mary, whose sitting drunk on the floor, staring into her cup as if it’s a TV screen.
“Mary?” I laugh quietly as I startle her, and her head snaps towards me.
“Oh, hey River,” she slurs, meeting my eyes. “Why were you gone for so long?”
I don’t want to explain at this time, so I change the subject, knowing she won’t notice. “I’m heading to bed, are you ready?”
She nods and sets her almost empty cup on the table. Staggering to her feet, she looks around at the mess of empty beer bottles and liquor. “What about the mess?”
Shrugging, I nudge an empty beer bottle with my foot. “We’ll clean it up in the morning.”
Mary follows me through the dimly lit house, grabbing one candle each, and blowing out the rest. I set mine in my room, where Emery lies stretched out on my bed, fast asleep.
“I need to get changed,” Mary says, grabbing her backpack and heading into the bathroom with the candle. Once the door is closed, I grab a pillow off my bed, take a step back, and throw it at Emery once I’m a safe distance away.
On contact, he jumps up, gasps, and looks around. When his eyes land on my smugly smirking face, they narrow, but his lips curl in a happy smile.
“I was asleep,” he tells me, reaching forward to grab me. I try to resist, but he pulls me towards him by my waist. In one swift moment, he yanks me until I’m lying on top of him, staring down at his face lit in the candle’s glow.
“Go sleep in the loft,” I whine, trying to struggle free. “Or downstairs on the couch.”
“Can’t I sleep with you?” His eyes are pleading, but I push the thought of allowing him away and glare down at him. “Fine, but only if I can ask you something.” After I roll my eyes and tell him fine, he continues. “Why do you love me, River?”
Still shivering from the cold shower, I roll off of him and stare up at the ceiling. “You mean besides the obvious charm of your arrogant, rude and angry personality?” Emery smacks my arm with the back of his hand and laughs quietly. “To be honest, I don’t know how this happened or why. I thought I hated you…” I trail off, remembering the fighting, yelling and screaming. How did we end up here after going through that? “But I guess,” I murmur, smiling sadly to myself that I only can really open up to the person I’m in love with while he’s drunk. “You can be a real sweetheart when you want to.”
“Shh”, Emery whispers, rolling over to face me. I lean my head to the left and giggle when he raises a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell anybody.”
I smack his hand away from his mouth and decide that now is the time to ask my question that I’m mulling over. “Emery, why aren’t you in love with me?”
Emery raises his eyebrows as a small smile spreads across his lips. “I never said I’m not.”
My eyes narrow. “You kind of did.”
He smiles smugly, and puts his elbow under the right side of his head to use as a pillow. “No, I kind of didn’t.” I give him one of the famous Snow family looks that says what I’m thinking and he rolls his eyes. “I said I’ve never been in love.” He says it like it’s obvious. “I used past tense.”
“You say it like that’s supposed to clear things up,” I state, still glaring at him through the discussion of this fragile topic.
“I mean,” he sighs, grabbing my right hand within his left. He intertwines our fingers and places out merged hands in the small space between us. “That I haven’t been in love before, and that I am now.” He squeezes my hand. “With you.”