Riley
I slammed the front door to let my dad know that I was home, but when I passed his office, he was talking on the phone, again.
With his phone held between his shoulder and ear, he waved at me quickly before resuming typing on his laptop. I waved back, knowing that he wouldn't be off for a while, before trudging dejectedly to my room. I shut my bedroom door behind me, threw my bag to the floor, and grabbed a bottle from my closet. I collapsed on my bed, closed my eyes, and tried to push away the thought of the shoebox behind the bottle I had grabbed. Pictures of... I gripped the bottle in my hand tighter and took a blind swig, not caring what it was.
I opened my eyes and let out a shaky breath as the sharp taste of straight vodka warmed my throat and left a disgusting, but not unwelcome, taste on my tongue.
I dropped to the floor and crawled on my hands and knees to my closet to swap out the vodka for something, anything else. My hands found a small, half empty bottle of something cherry-flavored, and I settled for mixing a quarter of the vodka with it. I drank from it greedily, savoring the warmth that pooled in my stomach.
In my half-drunken state, I just managed to kick the closet door closed and crawl back over to my bed. I climbed back up onto the cold mattress and pulled the thick blue comforter over my head, settling into a loose ball and sipping shakily from the bottle.
My mind was glazing over and a comforting numbness was replacing the cold, dead memories threatening to break free from the dam I had built. The nostalgia in my veins froze in its tracks. I didn't feel happy, but I didn't feel sad, either. I wasn't angry or hurt. And when I woke, hours later, to a pounding headache and nausea, I couldn't remember a thing.