And just as fast as I yanked him to my lips, he pulls away, leaving me gasping, my lips still moving as if missing his kiss. I open my eyes, cheeks flushed, and I see him smirk.
“I-”
And I’m completely out of the trance, completely out of my element, and completely at a loss of what to say next. Instead, I turn, and without another crazy word or insane action, I make a beeline for the bathroom.
I catch my breath by the sink, panting and running cold water over my hands.
I’m drunk.
I’m too drunk actually.
I cup my hand beneath the faucet, bringing the water to my lips and swishing it around before spitting it out. It tastes terrible, like old copper pipes.
I yank my phone out of my purse, squinting with one eye shut as I swipe it open and thumb my contacts.
I should call one of my sisters.
Well, except almost everyone’s gone - off on vacation together. My parents, my sister Ivy and her husband Silas, both my brothers and their respective significant others — Kyle with his fiancée Vivian, and Rowan and his wife, Eva. Everyone’s at the Grand freaking Canyon, like some fucking Chevy Chase movie.
Stella, my oldest sister, is still around, but I can’t bother her with this shit. Actually, I haven’t been able to bother anyone with this shit, which is why I’m in this free fall. I’ve spent two months in a tailspin, panicking about my choices in life, and where I’m going, and wasting my time with Jayson and my bizarre new hobby of Pinterest boarding vacation spots — both of them just time-fillers.
But this is rock bottom.
I mean, I just set a garage on fire.
I laugh out loud, still too drunk to be that embarrassed when a girl comes out of one of the stalls and gives me a strange look. I start to type out a message to Stella but I stop.
She doesn’t need to hear my sob story. I mean, Stella’s the one that dropped out of college and had the kid young, all that shit. I’m the one that stuck to it, made the right choices, picked the right classes, got the right grades, the right friends, the right college, and then the right graduate school. Hell, I still go home on weekends sometimes to have dinner with my parents.
So, there’s a reason Stella’s always saying I’m the “together” one. Hell, everyone says that which is probably half the problem.
But with all the “right choices”, I’ve got nothing to show for it. Nothing except the anxiety of it all weighing me down, the frozen indecision, and the therapist I haven’t called back in two months while I’ve been basically avoiding classes.
I put the phone away, my shoulders slumping.
I should go.
Outside the bathroom, the crowd starts to go nuts, and I cringe as I hear the guitars start to blare.
Shit.
I’m trying not to think about the fact that starting that fire tonight was a crime - like a serious one, I think.
I open the bathroom door a crack and glance out, seeing the tattooed hipsters cheering and jumping around to Jayson and his band’s shitty music. I duck out, but instead of heading back into the bar, I veer down the dark hallway to my left.
No way am I leaving through the bar. I can’t face that music —pun unintended.
Instead, I grip the wall with one hand, stumbling on my heels as I slip down the hallway, figuring there has to be a back door.
I try one that’s locked, past another that says men’s room. I jump out of the way as a bearded guy wearing a Red Sox t-shirt jerks the door open, looking at me quizzically as I whirl and stumble further down the hallway.
I round the corner and spot the final door.
This has to be it.
The walls spin slightly as I stumble down the dark hallway, my stomach churning. I’m getting the hell out of here, getting in a cab, and going home. I’m done with the screaming, and the drinking, and the setting fires, and the kissing gorgeous, dangerously sexy strangers in shitty bars.
Tomorrow, I’ll figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the tornado I’ve just let loose on my life.
I grip the doorknob and twist, sighing with relief as it turns.
Thank God.
I push the hair out of my face as I slam it open, and rush out into the-
Not outside.
I stumble through the door, just in time to see the man across the room double over, his shirt suddenly blooming red.
This is all wrong.
My heart catches, my eyes dart around the room, and my blood freezes.
And then everything happens in slow motion.
The man across the room from me falls, and I turn my head to see two other dangerous looking men staring right at me before they turn and start to run out of a side door.
There’s a popping sound, and one of them splays out in slow motion against the wall, blood spattering over a stack of cardboard boxes.
The room spins.