LUCAS
“Dude, just come out with me.” Zane threw the offer out as he was scooping his keys off the counter. “Trust me, a little hair o’ the dog’ll do you good. Plus, I got a hot chick lined up. I’ll even share her with you.”
I glanced up at him, but only barely. Hardly able to lift my head from my spot on the couch. “I told you. It’s not a hangover.” That was a lie, but the hangover was the least of my problems. “I’ll take a rain check.” Another lie. Being the third wheel on Zane’s date was my own personal version of hell. I’d rather sit here and drink alone all night. I gave him a get the hell outta here wave. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”
Zane beamed at me, and I worried about the female population he was about to unleash himself on. “I always do.”
When the door slammed behind him, I let out a loud groan. I thought he’d never leave.
I liked my roommate and all, but sometimes a guy just needed some alone time. Like now, when my head was being crushed in a vise.
It was all Emerson’s fault.
Scratch that. It was my mother’s fault. Mother, and her fucked-up control issues. If she hadn’t canceled all our deposits, the gala would still be a go, and I wouldn’t have spent the last four nights giving myself acute alcohol poisoning.
But then there was Emerson.
Fuck.
Maybe it really was her fault.
If I hadn’t screwed things up with her . . . if only she’d give me a chance to explain. To fix whatever was broken between us . . .
That was the problem, though. I wasn’t entirely sure where I’d gone wrong. When I’d left her, after our night at her parents’ house, I was sure we’d had a breakthrough. Convinced her I was through playing games, and we’d gotten past our issues. Or at the very least, worked out enough of our shit so we could come home and sort things out.
Then . . .
Then, fuck if I knew what had gone wrong. I got home and every time I tried to get her to talk, tried to reach out to her, she gave me the cold shoulder. Told me, straight up, it was over.
Nothing more to say.
Period.
The end.
She’d left no room for discussion. That was it.
So I guess I had both of them to blame for my sorry state—my mother and Emerson.
I didn’t bother getting off the couch when I heard the knock on the door. “Come in,” I called. I didn’t even raise my voice, because . . . what was the point? I didn’t care whether they heard me or not.
They did, though, and the door opened.
Aster poked her head inside before letting herself in, and then she waved her hand in front of her face. “Ew! What is that smell?”
“The smell of defeat.” It should have been a joke, but I wasn’t laughing.
When she pursed her lips, she looked like one of those Victorian dolls. Stiff and cold. “That’s not a real smell. No. It’s more like . . .” She sniffed the air again. “It’s cold pizza and . . .” She wrinkled her face, looking less stiff. “Stale beer?”
“Sounds about right.” I shrugged. “How do you even know what stale beer smells like, anyway?”
She lifted her chin. “You think I’ve never had beer before?”
“Not stale beer.” When she didn’t give a response, I asked, “What do you want, Aster? You didn’t come here to swap beer stories.”
She lifted a dirty sock off the arm of the couch and held it out like it was radioactive waste before tossing it aside. “No. I didn’t. I came to get the files from the gala.”
At the mention of the gala, I stiffened and sat up. My head throbbed, and it tasted like there was stale beer coating the back of my tongue. “What the hell for?”
Perching on the arm of the couch, and trying to act like she wasn’t completely grossed out by the sock that had just been there contaminating it, she crossed her arms. “The accountant says if the gala isn’t happening, he can take the paperwork and get everything filed early. We might be able to salvage some of the donations we’ve already received.” Her tone had turned nasally, and I realized she was trying to hold her breath.
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever you need.” I waved toward the hallway. “The box is somewhere over there. If you can find it, you can take it.”
She hopped up and started scouring the wreckage that had become my life this past week—discarded takeout boxes, piles of unsorted laundry, empty liquor bottles, and sand I’d carried in from the beach. I’d given up on housework the same way I had on the gala. What was the point in trying?
She kicked a stack of wet towels out of her way and came up holding a cardboard file box. “Got it!” she shouted triumphantly in her stuffy-nosed tenor.
I bent forward, plucking a warm beer off the coffee table and lifted it in a cheers motion. “Go, you,” I replied sarcastically.