"How you holding up?"
It was Ian.
I practically knocked Morgan over hugging him. "You're already here! I didn't think I'd see you."
He looked at me a little warily. He'd changed clothes; he'd probably showered. He was wearing his Army hoodie. He glanced at Bryce, then back at me.
"How you holding up?" he asked again.
"Fine!" I yelled over the bar's noise. "Fine! Totally fine. Drunk off my ass, but fine!"
Bryce Tripp held out his hand. "Hey I'm Bryce," he said, charmingly.
Ian shook his hand. He was polite, but wary. "Ian."
I was actually pretty drunk at that point, but I could see right away that Ian was the only person in the bar who recognized Bryce Tripp from the posters.
"Buy you a drink?" Bryce asked him.
"Nate!" Morgan yelled to the bartender before Ian could respond. "Four more!"
Ian grinned at me for the first time since he'd said hello.
"I did say I might have just one."
Bryce raised his shot glass. "Well, then, to—where'd you say we are? Muldoon! Prettiest little place I've ever avoided getting my ass kicked. So far."
Morgan laughed, we all clinked Bryce's glass with ours, and I drank down yet another whiskey—who knows how many by that point.
After that point, things start to get hazy.
I remember Morgan talking to Ian about bear hunting with her dad, and Ian just nodding and listening to her drunken blather because he was too nice to tell her just to shut up. I remember actually grabbing Bryce Tripp's arm and peeling him away from Tuck Schroep—something I never would have done if I hadn't been so totally wasted—and staggering with him in tow onto the insanely crowded dance floor. I think I remember Shawn watching us dancing, but I can't say for certain.
Next, I remember—just barely—asking Bryce if he smoked, and then I remember him buying cigarettes from the vending machine. I think I remember having one more shot at the bar and going outside to smoke, and I'm pretty sure I remember that Morgan actually talked Ian into having another shot with us. There was another moment outside—this one very hazy—when Bryce bummed someone's last match, and he laughed when I told him he'd have to monkeykiss me, which meant, I explained, lighting my cigarette from his. But I can barely remember this at all, and I can't really say if it was before or after that round of shots with Morgan and Ian.
And that's it, really.
The rest is totally gone. Anything else that happened that night is completely blacked out from my memory.
The next thing I remember is waking up alone in the Starlight Motel, without a phone, or a car, and, now, with night coming on.
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