No chance of that now.
We trailed back to the house that Ches shared with a couple of guys from his Business and Economics classes. Gareth had already got the party started with a couple of kegs, three crates of beer, and a baggie of weed that he was using to roll joints. I looked longingly at the joint that was being passed around, but I knew I couldn’t risk it. I only had another four day’s leave and I’d be tested as soon as I got back. I didn’t know for sure how long that shit stayed in your blood.
“Sorry, man,” said Ches, following my gaze.
“No worries, I’ll just stick to beer and my good friend, Jack,” I said, showing him the bottle of Jack Daniel’s that I’d brought with me in my duffel bag.
He smiled, and then looked nervously over his shoulder, shuffling from foot to foot.
“’Sup man?”
“Ah, shit, Seb. I wasn’t planning on seeing Amy tonight, what with it being your birthday an’ all, but now that she’s here…”
Yeah, I got what he was saying.
“Nah, it’s cool. Go make your girl happy. I’ll be fine. Just tell me you’ll still be up for a surf tomorrow morning.”
“Deal, my friend.”
He grinned at me, then grabbed Amy’s hand and pulled her up the stairs.
Well, fuck. I checked my phone pointlessly. No messages. This was turning out to be a real bastard of a birthday.
“Hey,” said Stacey, walking towards me with a couple of beers, “looks like we’ve both been abandoned. D’you wanna go sit outside? It’s not so smoky out there.”
I shrugged. I didn’t really have a choice. I was supposed to be sleeping on the couch, but right now it was occupied by a bunch of strangers smoking weed. Fucking great.
We sat down under a large mulberry tree and leaned against its broad trunk. I passed her my bottle of Jack and she took a large gulp and followed it up with a beer chaser. I smiled when she coughed slightly.
“You okay?”
“Sure, it just went down the wrong way,” she lied.
“If you say so,” I agreed.
She was quiet for a moment.
“Seb, can I ask you something?”
I nodded silently, wondering what she was going to say.
“This girl you might or might not be waiting for—is she your girlfriend?”
Oh, right. Pretty damn obvious question now that I thought about it.
I sighed. “She was. I’m … hoping she will be again. I don’t know. We haven’t spoken for a while—I just thought she’d be here tonight.”
She looked at me, her expression serious. “Bad break up?”
I snorted, almost amused by her question. Almost.
“Yeah, you could say that—pretty fuckin’ bad.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.
We sat there talking quietly, drinking the Jack. She told me about her brother who’d done two tours in Iraq, and she told me about her classes and how much she liked living in San Diego. She told me about Amy, too, and it was all good stuff. It made me feel a bit less like shit, even though she was a stranger and my best bud had abandoned me on my birthday to get it on with his girl.
Yeah, I know: I was a whiny pussy.
Fuck, Caro—where are you? The question pulsed through my brain.
By 3am, I was feeling kind of out of it, and Stacey’s head had dropped onto my shoulder. The party was winding down so I decided to make it official. I cleared everyone the fuck out of the house, and thanked my lucky stars I’d brought my bedroll with me.
I swept a load of empty beer cans off of the couch onto the floor and kicked them out of the way. I laid out one of my blankets and went back outside to find Stacey. She was passed out under the tree, so I picked her up and carried her inside, placing her carefully on the couch. She was kind of cute and had long, brown hair, a bit like Caro.
I pulled the blanket over her, then left her to sleep it off. It was cooler outside, but it smelled a helluva lot better than Ches’s living room, so I spread my bedroll out under the tree and stared up at the night sky, wondering if my girl was looking at the same sprinkling of stars.
I woke up about four hours later feeling like some bastard had stuffed my head with broken glass. Yup, it was officially no longer my birthday and I was as hung over as fuck.
The first thing I did was to check my phone: no messages. What a freakin’ joke. I felt like throwing the useless piece of shit into the ocean. Instead, I shoved it in my jeans pocket and stumbled into the bathroom to take a long and much needed piss.
When I wandered back into the living room, Stacey hadn’t moved. There were a couple of other bodies lying around the room, and it smelled like ass. My stomach coiled and rolled so I headed for the kitchen and drank some water. A lot of water.