Marc had abandoned his glass along with the Coke and was drinking whisky straight from the bottle, openly watching me between gulps. I’d never seen him drink like that, and the binge worried me until after my second refill. By then, I didn’t care. He was just as upset as I was, and we both seriously needed to relax.
At some point, I switched over to screwdrivers. I’d tried straight vodka but just couldn’t swallow it. When I spit the first mouthful all over the floor, Parker sent Ethan to the main house for a carton of orange juice. The juice made all the difference.
Jace stuck to tequila and lime slices, and for a while I watched him, waiting to see the familiar grin he usually wore. But he never smiled, only opening his mouth to take another drink. If he was drinking to forget about Sara, he was doing a very poor job of it; I’d never seen him look sadder. He tried to match Marc gulp for gulp but couldn’t do it. He passed out slumped over the bar, with the bottle still clenched in his right hand.
I giggled, thinking it served Jace right for calling Kyle a lightweight. Then I laughed at myself for giggling, and that was when I realized I was drunk. There was no other logical explanation for why I might find that funny. But at least I was a happy drunk. Marc was just plain moody.
Eventually, Parker and Ethan carried Jace up to his room to sleep off the tequila, but by then, very little of what I saw was actually sinking in. And even less of what I heard was.
Alone in the living room with Marc, I became uncomfortably aware of his eyes on me. Intentionally ignoring him, I concentrated on what I could hear upstairs. Parker and Ethan were talking, but my concentration was shot, so I only picked up a phrase here and there.
“…if we don’t get her back?” Ethan asked. Metal springs groaned as they lowered Jace onto his bed.
“We will,” Parker said, his voice followed by two thunks, which I assumed to be Jace’s shoes hitting the floor. “And they’ll all pay…”
A door closed somewhere overhead. “…we’re too late?”
“…another drink?” That was Parker. Definitely Parker.
“…on’t want another drink. I want to pound the shit out of someone.”
“…have an idea…”
I glanced away from the stairs when Parker’s feet came into view. He started to say something else to Ethan, then noticed that my glass was empty and veered in my direction instead. He refilled my drink—again—and by the time I had to use the restroom, I could no longer remember where it was. Or how to walk.
Ethan grudgingly helped me to the bathroom door but said I was on my own from there. I made it, but barely. In front of the toilet, as I did the universally recognized “I have to pee” shuffle, I cursed Levi Strauss for his insanely complicated system of buttons and corresponding holes. What was wrong with a simple drawstring?
When I got back to the living room, Ethan and Parker, who seemed least affected by the liberal flow of alcohol, were taking out their anger vicariously through a video boxing game on the huge television, their digital counterparts pixilated and nearly life-size. And very bloody.
Averting my eyes from the simulated death match, I saw that Marc had taken my seat on the couch. I stopped in the middle of the room, trying to make the floor quit rolling while I waited for him to move. By the time I realized he wasn’t going to, I was past the point of caring where I sat.
“I won’t bite,” he said, staring up at me through half-closed eyes. “This time.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes, which turned out to be a bad idea. When the room stopped pitching like the deck of a ship at sea, I relented. “Fine, scoot over.”
“There’s plenty of room.” He patted the six inches of threadbare cushion between him and the arm of the couch.
“Scoot, before I throw up on you.” That did it.
Marc moved several inches to his right, and I dropped onto the vacated cushion. My empty glass sat on the floor by my foot, and I thought about asking Parker for a refill but decided that if I was too drunk to get it myself, I was too drunk for another. That turned out to be a really good decision. It was the only smart thing I’d done all day. If only I’d done it a little earlier.
My left arm rested on the arm of the couch, my short fingernails scratching back and forth across the rough plaid pattern. The rhythm of my nails skimming over the raised threads echoed through my head like the beat of a hopelessly unimaginative drummer. For some reason, I found the sound fascinating.
“I can hear your heartbeat,” Marc said, dragging me from my drunken rhythmic epiphany.
I glanced at my lap and realized our legs were touching from knee to hip. My shorts ended at midthigh, and I could feel the heat of his skin against mine through the layer of denim covering his leg. It felt so good, so familiar, even after all those years apart.
“I can hear yours, too.” I turned slowly to look at him, and my eyes were only a few inches from his. A few completely insignificant inches. His breath was warm on my cheeks and on my lips. He didn’t look drunk anymore. Maybe he wasn’t. Just because I’d done a fine job of retaining my buzz didn’t mean he had.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered directly into my ear. His chin rested on my shoulder, bare except for the thin strap of green cotton holding my shirt on.“I am?” I could barely speak. My pulse raced in my throat, seeming to say more than my mouth ever had. I blinked, trying to hold my head still as vertigo claimed my attention, surely the result of his declaration rather than of alcohol. Or maybe my head was still, and the room was spinning.
He spoke slowly, as if to make sure I understood, and each word sent a tantalizingly intimate puff of breath against my ear. “Yes, you are. Loud, stubborn, and infuriating at times, but almost too beautiful to look at.”
I heard what he was saying, and some part of my brain even processed it. But at the time, his meaning seemed much less important than the sound of his voice, a deep rumble rolling through me, triggering responses in all the right places, the way the rippling surge of an earthquake will sometimes set off burglar alarms.
“And you came back,” he said, chin stubble scratching my shoulder.
“I came back.” Something was wrong with that. Damn it, something was wrong with that statement, but for my life I couldn’t remember what. And in that moment, I just didn’t care.
“I need to feel something real. I need you, Faythe,” he said, his lips brushing my cheek as his fingers tangled themselves around mine, clinging desperately. I heard the pain in his voice, the raw need for so much more than I had to give, and my chest tightened.
I’d never been needed. Not by anyone, much less by someone whose entire purpose in life was to be strong for everyone else, and I liked the feeling of power that gave me, the feeling of strength. He was asking for my help, and—so help me—I wanted to give it to him. I wanted to make everything okay, and let him do the same for me. I didn’t just want it. I needed it. I needed something familiar, something warm and strong to help me forget and make me feel safe. I needed Marc. And all I had to do was admit it.
“I need you, too.” It was true when I said it, and even drunk I wondered why I hadn’t realized it earlier. Oh, the miracle of alcohol! Everything that had seemed so terribly, hopelessly complicated when I was sober was suddenly so simple. I needed him and the memory of what we’d been, the memory of something safe, and substantial, and good. Something I understood, when life as I knew it was falling apart at my feet. I understood Marc; he wouldn’t fall apart. For me, he’d hold it together. The least I could do was return the favor.
He kissed me, and I didn’t just let him, I kissed him back. We fed from each other with an urgency born of starvation, of desperation. I couldn’t touch enough of him, couldn’t reach deep enough to soothe myself, to bury my pain in memories of pleasure. But I could try.
I hid my face in his neck, drowning in his scent. He smelled like masculinity personified, like musk and unscented soap and something else, something powerful, and dangerous, and exciting. I breathed him in, and the thrilling combination of danger and absolute security tingled through me, igniting every nerve ending in my body. I felt like a kid holding a lit firecracker, wondering if he could handle the charge, and whether or not he’d get burned.
My hands found his chest, and his found my hair. He pulled my head back and kissed the length of my throat, hesitating just a moment over my pulse, flicking his tongue against my skin as if the thin flesh covering my jugular vein tasted just a little sweeter than all the rest.
Ohhh, and it did. It must have, because his did too.
“We’re trying to concentrate here,” Ethan grumbled from the floor, momentarily breaking the spell. I pulled away from Marc long enough to glance at my brother. He looked disappointed for a moment, but then he nodded at me as if something had been decided.
Had something been decided?
Before I could think it through, Ethan turned back to the video game, his thumbs executing a complicated series of movements on the controller even as he spoke. “Get a room.”
A room. That was a great idea. My room was occupied, but Marc’s was empty, and it was right upstairs. We kissed all the way up the steps, and only his grip on the banister and around my waist kept us moving forward instead of tumbling to the hardwood floor.