"I'm never drinking again." Those words were not spoken as a promise, but rather the desperate attempt of a hungover girl clinging onto the hope that she would never feel that awful again. But unlike her, I was not stupid. Millie was going to be back to drinking the second that an alcoholic beverage was offered to her.
"Don't make promises you can't keep." I scolded her as I put some books away into my locker.
She sighed. "Since when are you the voice of reason?"
"Since you decided to drink so damn much last night." I was a little bit upset with her, because it was partially her fault that the night ended up becoming such an unbelievable mess. When it was just Sam and I talking outside, I was easily able to forget about his creepy cousin and the fact that he was technically supposed to be entertaining a girl. However, it didn't take long for everything to fall apart after we returned to the party.
It started with a fight between two completely unexpected people.
After Sam and I came back inside, I went to go find Millie. When I found her dancing with some random girl, I asked where Caden went. At first I thought nothing of her words when she drunkenly explained that he went off to go find Brian. But it only took ten or so minutes before we saw them. Caden was rushing towards the door, and Brian was desperately following.
Sam tried to deescalate whatever argument they were having, but Caden was beyond hellbent on taking it to the grave. He was more pissed off than I thought he was capable of, and Brian was hardly saying anything to try to fix it. I didn't think it was even possible for those two to get angry with each other.
At the time I genuinely couldn't figure out what was going on since there was a lot of incoherent yelling, and a whole lot of silence from Brian's side. But Sam explained it to me after Brian managed to get his seething friend into his Pontiac. Apparently when Caden found Brian, he was in the middle of smoking a cigarette, and while I could understand why he would be worried for his friend's health, I still didn't quite grasp why he was willing to take it that far.
Once that drama seemed to leave with the car disappearing down the road, Millie proceeded to continue to drink and party. Sam dealt with Jocelyn reappearing and wanting to know why he ditched her. When he didn't give her much to work with, Chloe happened to crop back up. She took one look at Sam, sneered, and then dragged her best friend out of there.
Not before glancing at me one last time. What were the chances of that psycho being Sam's own cousin? My luck was ever-evolving.
It was around that time that Dennis and Sydney had Sam call them an Uber. Which just left the three of us to figure out what to do next. Sam and I didn't have much to do in a house full of people and no alcohol in our system. So we pretty much just counted down the minutes until Millie tuckered herself out.
Unfortunately for us, she did a lot more than that. I didn't know how much she drank, but it was far too much. Maybe it was the result of her deranged dancing, or it could have just been her weak immune system. Whatever it was, Millie suddenly stopped dancing, turned to the girl she was dancing with, and threw up all over her blouse.
Sam and I quickly tried to fix the situation, offering her his jacket in place of her shirt and trying to get Millie out of there as soon as possible. The girl was not at all amused nor did she seem like she was going to let it go. So we waited for her to enter the bathroom so that she could change, and then we hightailed it out of there.
In an ideal world, the rest of the night would have been smooth sailing. But after trying to quietly get Millie into her house and then her bedroom, she suddenly looked far too green again. She threw up on her pink carpet before we could maneuver her to a trash can.
Sam and I spent the following thirty minutes trying to clean it up while she passed out on her bed in a matter of seconds. Millie wondered why I didn't like to drink, but she was the poster child for why it was an awful idea. Talk about a romantic way to spend our night.
Thankfully, Sam was more willing to help me clean up after her than I expected him to be. We had to try to do it as silently as possible given that both of her parents were sleeping only a few rooms down the hall, but we managed it fairly well. He didn't complain for the most part, leaving that skill to me.
Afterwards he drove me back to my house, where we sat in the driveway until four in the morning. I was partially regretting that decision to talk for so long, because I was absolutely exhausted from the very long night.
As Millie and I walked towards the cafeteria, she decided to speak up again. "I can't believe Sam stuck around to help you clean up after me."
I did my best to match her shock. Maybe it wasn't that hard because it really was bewildering. "Yeah, I don't know why he did. I guess he might have a soul after all."
"Suppose so." She shrugged. "What kind of stuff do you guys talk about when you're forced to spend all that time together anyway?"
I kept my gaze trained ahead of me. I had to make sure that I didn't seem suspicious. "Not much. We mostly avoid talking at all."
"I didn't think you guys were capable of doing anything other than bickering."
"Oh trust me, there's plenty of that to go around." I replied.
Millie suddenly stopped walking, looking back in the direction we just came from. "Shit, I think I forgot my math homework under my desk. I'll have to run back and get it."
"It's all good. I'll save you a spot in the cafeteria."
"Yeah, I'll see you there!" She called as she was already jogging off down the hall. Sometimes Millie could be a bit absentminded when it came to her personal matters. She had no issues keeping track of others. I suspected that it was probably how she protected herself.
I turned and continued down the hallway. But right as I turned a corner, someone grabbed my arm and pulled me towards them. A gasp escaped my lips as I tried to register what was happening before it was too late.
Was that why Sam tried to show me how to punch people? I lifted my fist before even seeing who the perpetrator was, trying to allow myself to act on instinct rather than fear. But when I turned just enough to finally see who had a hold of me, I quickly pushed away from him. Had I continued the movement mere inches further, it would have been my own fist that helped mar his face. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Nothing." Sam smiled. "I got excited when I saw you all alone."
"You gave me a goddamn heart attack!" I thought about punching him, but I settled for putting space between us. I wanted to punish him for being so careless. Then my eyes scanned the school, searching for someone who could see us. There was no one around since almost everyone was in the courtyard or cafeteria, but that didn't resolve the unease gathering in my gut.
"I'm sorry, sugar." He was leaning against a locker which I presumed to be his own, and I could tell he somewhat meant the words as he spoke. "I didn't mean to scare you."
"Well you did." I crossed my arms over my chest. "So intended or not, I'm still a little pissed at you."
"Yeah, I shouldn't have grabbed you like that. I was just trying to mess with you, I didn't think it was going to be like that." Despite his apologetic tone, his mouth was stretched into his usual heart-shaped grin.
"Then what has you so damn happy?"
"You were going to punch me." Even though words like those should have been spoken regretfully, Sam only seemed more excited.
"Yeah, because I had no idea why the fuck someone would try to grab in the middle of an empty hallway."
He grabbed both of my hands in his and looked me in the eye. "I'm not even remotely mad at you for that, sugar. It shows that you're being attentive. And you clearly listened to what I told you about throwing a punch, because your form was pretty good."
"God, Sam. You have to be the only idiot who would be pissing yourself happy about nearly getting punched by me." I deadpanned. "You are such a masochist."
"It doesn't make me a masochist to worry about you. I'm just glad that you actually pay attention to the things I say."
"When you're teaching me selfdefense in the context of our very fucked up situation, why the hell would I not listen?"
"Because you secretly still hate me and spend all of our conversations dreaming up ways to get away?" He shrugged.
"Please tell me that's a joke."
Sam just looked at me.
"You're implying that I would kiss someone I still hated. On top of laying in bed with you for hours, or talking in your car with you until four in the morning. Or letting you hold my hands like you're doing right now." I couldn't believe that he was being serious. Sam always struck me as the self-assured type, so I wasn't expecting him to be worried that I was really only giving him the time of day for some ridiculous reason that didn't even make sense. Who the hell would make out with their enemy and still claim that they hated him? Okay, I did have that thought sometimes. But I still knew deep down that there wasn't any real hate there.
His hazel eyes fell down to our hands. I could have ripped them away from him and spit in his face if I wanted to, but I never did anything like that. Why? Because despite all of the stress about what our relationship meant, I still fucking liked him. Maybe that was unbelievable every time I thought about it, but it didn't make it any less true. "Sorry. Sometimes I just get in my head about this stuff."
"Leave the worrying to me, Sam. I have plenty of it for the both of us." I was only joking, because I didn't want him to feel like he couldn't tell me the things that bothered him. And by the way his lips twitched back into a smile, I knew that he understood the true meaning behind my words.
"Sorry again." He sighed. "Today has just been kinda shit, so I wanted to come talk to you. It's Tuesday, after all."
That was true. Today I had the luxury of getting to go home and sit through another awkward dinner with my parents. I loved them both, I really did. But my dad was a man of few words, and my mom was a woman of too many. I avoided any at all when it came to those long and painful dinners. There was very little I wanted to share with them, and even less that I actually could.
"What happened?" I asked him.
"It's Cade and Brian. I thought they would make up when Brian drove him home after the party, but it turns out that I was definitely wrong. And Cade being upset with Brian means that he's avoiding all of us." I could tell that he was worried about him, and I was once again reminded of how much Sam prioritized his friends over himself.
"Damn, I didn't think they were even capable of arguing." I said. "They're literally always together."
"Even though Cade has only been a part of our friend group for about a year, it feels like he's always been around, you know? So when Cade isn't there to cheer everyone up, and Brian isn't saying anything at all, it makes things weird for Dennis and me."
That was when I heard footsteps approaching. I quickly drew my hands out of his and stepped at least a foot back. "Do you think they're going to fix things?"
"They never stay angry at each for more than a few minutes, but this one is a bit different. I just hope they figure it out sooner rather than later." Sam clearly wanted to grab me and draw me back towards him, but he didn't dare. A moment later, Millie appeared.
"Soybean, I thought you would have made it to your destination by now." She looked between the two of us, something dying on her lips before she ever let it leave them. "Is everything alright?"
"Yeah, it's fine. We just ran into each other so I was just asking him something, that's all." Sam stopped leaning against his locker and took a step back as though to show that he was trying to get out of there.
"It's all good." She nodded. Millie was showing phenomenal restraint when it came to wanting to ask infinite questions about what was going on with either of us. "By the way, thanks for yesterday. I can't believe you stuck around to help Sawyer out."
"No worries." Sam told her, and it almost felt like he was silently telling her something by the way his eyes studied hers. Was he trying to imply that he did it to help me rather than to speed the process up? I wanted to slap him, because Millie would definitely come to wild conclusions the second that he gave her anything to work with.
Well, were the conclusions really all that wild?
Then Sam left, and Millie hooked her arm through mine. "I won't ask, but just know that I want to."
"Thanks." I breathed.
Lunch was one of my favorite parts of the day, because it meant that I got to actually spend time with my best friend. It seemed that the rest of my time had been completely swallowed up by Sam's gravitational pull, and it was impossible to put the space between us that we probably needed. But at least for a little while every day, I was able to listen to Millie talk about her life. It allowed me a brief period of time to forget about the very extreme problems occurring in mine.
If only those moments weren't so fleeting.
•O•O•