My eyes opened, groggily meeting the bright lights that made my current headache even worse, to look at where I had been placed. For a while I struggled to see recognize certain things around the room since everything around me seemed to be spinning. But by the few things I did recognize, like my phone and my bed sheets, I managed to work out that I was in my room.
Once I figured that out, I felt comfortable enough to sit up slowly, and lean back against my headboard for support. That was when the voices from before became clearer to me, echoing through the hallway in some kind of argument.
"If you hadn't been such an arrogant dick, maybe this wouldn't have happened, Aiden!" A girl's voice, familiar and slurred, whispered loudly.
"This was not my fault!" A boy whispered back, also a familiar voice.
"Look at her! She's never been drunk before and one hour with you and she's already passing out and throwing up!"
"Just go home with Lars, I'll take care of this,"
"If I weren't so drunk, I would cut off your balls for what you said to her back at the party!"
"Myra, let it go... we shouldn't have forced her to come in the first place. It's our fault too." Another voice joins in. "But, if something happens to her and you're responsible, I swear, Aiden..." The sentence trailed off.
"She'll be fine." The words came out sharp. "I don't want to be here anymore than I have to."
The next things I heard were a series of footsteps, soft voices and then the loud slam of the front door.
I noticed a pair of footsteps that were gradually thumping closer to my room, walk down the small hallway of the apartment. I pulled up my legs towards my chest and cowered back as far as I could into the headboard, staring intently at the door being pushed open.
One quick look from Aiden was enough to show his distaste. He scoffed and without saying a word, went into my closet, pulling that door open and rummaging through it without care.
"W-what are you doing?" I croaked out.
"You need to change." He said, dryly. "You can't stay in those clothes after you've thrown up on yourself."
I look down at what once was a beautiful dress and sure enough, he was right.
When I looked to see what he was doing again, I saw that in both his hands were a dark blue sweater and in the other were a pair of grey sweatpants. He walked over to my bed and threw them at my feet. "Put those on and throw out the dress." He ordered.
"Why are you here? Why have I got vomit all over myself? What happened?"
"Maybe you should stop asking questions and change." A bitter tone accompanied his words. It was more than clear he wasn't happy to be here.
"If you don't want to be here, then leave. It's not like I need your help. And even if I did, you would be the last person I would ask."
He stared at me and hovered over the edge of the bed. "Hate me all you want, but I'm the only one here so I wouldn't be picky if I were you." I didn't move an inch, and that angered him more. "I won't watch you continuously throw up and hurt yourself because you were too stubborn to actually listen for once. So get changed."
I sighed and flung my legs over the bed, gathering the clothes he had thrown, into my arms. But as soon as I stand on my own two feet, I felt as if the floors were caving underneath me. Every little feature of my room twisted into a black abyss and I stumbled backward, feeling a strong hand grab on to my wrist and keep me from falling.
"Jesus, you're so drunk you can't even walk straight." Aiden huffed from beside me. "Admit it. You need my help."
"Let go of me." I tugged my arm away.
My eyes, as heavy as they were, failed to settle on a single place once the colors returned back to me. They scattered and watched as the walls became a part of something else. My brain tried to comprehend what was going on, to make a first step in the right direction, yet no matter how hard I tried, my legs gave out and swayed the opposite direction, making me even dizzier than I was.
I will not admit I need his help.
I tried to make sense of what was going on, why I was suddenly unable to walk straight or see straight. My throat was dry, my lips chapped, and even though I swallowed many times, they remained that way without change.
"I don't need your help!" I yanked my arm away from him when he saw I was stumbling and reached out to me.
"Pushing me away won't help you, Emma. Just grab onto me." His hand grazed against mine, that mere touch enough to make me want to crawl into a ball and cry.
"I don't want you anywhere near me!" I could already feel the tight ball forming at the bottom of my throat.
He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated with me just as much as I was with him.
I made my way through the hallway on my own, hugging the walls so I could empty my stomach before I would have to clean up vomit from the hardwood floors.
Aiden followed close behind but didn't try to touch me again. Well, at least not until I got on my knees and went through another horrible round of nausea. His hands didn't hesitate to gather my hair in his large hands and hold it away from my face.
It was here that I made a promise to myself to never get drunk again. I could barely understand how people liked doing this every other weekend. Losing control over their movement, their speech, their morals, none of that was me.
Once I thought it was over, I sat back against the tiles and felt his fingers slowly fall through my hair soothingly.
I wiped at the tears that stung at my eyes and shook my head, observing him as he left the bathroom in strides.
When he reappeared, he had come back with a glass of water in his hand and the other established on a semi-closed fist.
"Here." He handed me the glass and a pill. "It'll help with the headache." He added.
When I held my hand open and he placed the pill inside, I inspected the two things curiously. It wasn't the fact I suspected it was poison, but the fact he had cared just enough to offer it to me.
Deciding not to dwell on his intentions too much, I swallowed the pill whole and drank the entirety of the glassful of water in a large gulp. The dryness in my throat from before eased some but not completely.
"How is it that I am over here, throwing up everything I've eaten in the last two days with only a few shots of vodka, while you are over there, just fine?" I asked him.
"It's called a tolerance. You have never been drunk before, which means you have a low tolerance to it."
I raised my brows. "You've drunk a lot, then?"
"Yes."
"With or without the blonde?" I cover my mouth instantly.
"That wouldn't be any of your business, would it?" He leaned back on the sink, looking down at me.
"Oh, really?" I chuckled, removing my hand from my mouth. "I thought, since you were basically having sex with her on the couch in front of anyone, maybe it might be." I shrugged with a smirk. "My bad..."
In the corner of my eye, I noticed part of Aiden's face twitch. No doubt that what I said had efficiently made him mad, and for that fact alone, I savored the moment for a little longer than I probably should have.
"You have your clothes. I'll wait outside." He picked himself off the floor and shut the door of the bathroom a little too hard.
"Did I make Aiden Blackwood run out of insults already?" I muttered to myself with a giggle.
With a lousy smile on my face, I unzipped the back of my dress and stepped outside of the exhausted fabric. I put it in a pile and slipped on the large, comfy clothes Aiden had picked out. I pulled my hair out from being caught under the wool and readjusted the sweat pants around a little.
The next time I looked at my reflection, I was caught off guard. My pale face looked starved and the dark circles under my eyes were the worst they had ever been. My hair was tangled and knotted between itself and it didn't help that trying to brush through it only made me nauseous again.
Thanks to the pill that Aiden had given me however, I was starting to feel like a fraction of myself again. There were no more spinning rooms and curved lines on the straight tiles, my body didn't feel like caving into itself and my eyes were finally able to look at everything in a room without needed to look away.
Even though the feeling of intoxication hadn't subsided all together, it was definitely starting to be a little more tolerable than before.
I pulled the door open and found Aiden leaning against the wall opposite to the bathroom. His head was low, his eyes weary and red from his fair share of alcohol mixed with fatigue.
"Um... thank you." I muttered and walked past him into my room again.
"That was not fair." He raised his head and followed me in.
"What's not fair?" I narrowed by brows on him, confused at what he was talking about.
"What you said about the blonde and the party. That was not fair and you know it."
"Not fair?" I repeat his words sarcastically. "No, Aiden. What wasn't fair was you bringing up my father and using him to humiliate me in front of your friends. That was not fair. You and your little girlfriend was just a small truth." I point my finger at him accusatively.
"Stop acting like a child!"
"You're the child, Aiden! You used me in that game! You embarrassed me in front of everyone just to get off on your self-esteem because you couldn't handle that for once, you were wrong! So don't you dare talk to me about acting like a child!"
"You were the one who chose to come to that party! You knew I was going to be there! You knew I would do something like that, so why the hell did you come?" He yelled back.
"Because I thought I felt something!" I screamed. "When I kissed you, I thought felt something! Forgive me for being so stupid to actually believe that was real!" I turned around but he didn't let me go anywhere. He had already taken a grip on my arm, yet this time I didn't pull away.
"You said it didn't happen! You said you wanted to forget it, and that's what I did! I forgot about it!" His voice rang in my ears. "Not to mention you kissed William! William of all people!"
"I never kissed William!" I shouted, admitting my lie. "I lied! I said any name that wasn't yours so I wouldn't have to admit to everyone that I made the huge mistake of kissing you! Oh, but you are definitely one to talk about kissing other people! You thoroughly enjoyed that blonde dry-humping you!"
I didn't know from where, but all of these words were coming out from a place I didn't even know existed.
"If you are so jealous of her, then tell me, Emma, what the hell did you feel when you kissed me! Please, enlighten me, because maybe then I might know why I didn't just fuck you on the hood of my car that day instead of playing this absurd game of fucking pretend! Maybe then I might just be able to leave you the hell alone like you've wanted all along!"
My stomach turned, twisted, tied in knots, churned at his words but not once did they make me want to vomit. No... this was something else. This was a fluttering feeling in my stomach, like a balloon filled with helium that had exploded with the press of his thumb. It was filled with rage, anger, hatred, but then, under all of those things, there was something else.
"I felt something I wasn't supposed to feel." I muttered silently. Maybe I said it that way as if, in one way or another, thought it would somehow erase everything that happened. "I wasn't supposed to feel any of it..."
My eyes lowered to the ground where I hoped that the feeling of it swallowing me up would return.
Then, his fingers eased on my skin.
"I was wrong..." He began, lowly. "I was wrong to humiliated you and I was wrong to have brought up your father. But you were wrong too."
The look of guilt and despair in his eyes suddenly lit me up and guided me away from my anger, to another place. A place where I could feel my heart beat in my ears, in my chest, in my palm, everywhere. A place where my breath had become shallow and short. A place where, when I looked at him, that feeling I didn't want to feel when I kissed him, surfaced and stared me down in a game of Russian roulette.
His fingers gently traced up both my arms, leading up to the side my face and cupping my cheek and the back of my neck at once.
"I need you to tell me what you felt, Emma." He whispered.
His nose grazed against mine, becoming of every sense I beheld. Our eyes, still measuring one another hadn't looked away in the time we began arguing to now. It was like I was on fire, breathing in the flames and then jumping into a pool of ice water over, and over again in the best way possible.
He had set fire to every purpose, every reason, every moral of mine and burnt it down to ash. And even then, I felt more alive than I ever had.
"I can't... I- I don't know..." I inched my face closer, fighting the urge to kiss him with every bone in my body.
His perfume filled my nostrils, his warmth surrounding every one of my senses, and just as our lips had brushed, just as I had come so close to feeling that unwanted churn return to me, he moved his head away and dropped his hands from my face, sighing.
"You're drunk," He cleared his throat and looked away. "You'll regret it in the morning."
And just like that, the moment fell away and disappointment crawled over me like a bad nightmare.
"Your dressed and you aren't throwing up anymore, that's a good sign. You should get some sleep."
Before I could say anything else, he was already walking out of the apartment and shutting the door behind him in an effort to break away. I followed his trail through the window of my room, pulling back the curtain just enough to see his black shadow stride across the street and flee away in his car.
Meanwhile, I was left wondering what the hell I was actually feeling for the boy who drove the obnoxious loud car.
I could barely admit to myself what it really was I felt... how could I possibly admit it to him?