56. Simone
Simone
Everyone’s screaming about summer like it’s the finish line, like most of us won’t all be right back here in a couple of months.
The end-of-the-year blowout is the craziest party of the year.
I know people say that about every party, but this one seriously is. All the seniors go a little too insane, knowing they’ve already secured their degrees and won’t be coming back, so they won’t get in trouble for anything that might happen.
I’m standing on the back wall with an untouched cup in my hand, not really listening to the girls around me as I watch Mason from across the room.
He’s currently the center of attention.
Like always.
A group of guys are circled around him, chanting his name as he chugs an entire bottle of Tito’s. Someone slaps his back hard enough to make him stumble forward, and he throws his head back, laughing. They’re all hyping him up like this is normal—this is college.
It’s not.
Not for him.
Drinking for him isn’t the same as drinking for them. Hell, I don’t know if drinking is the same for anyone, honestly. We’re all probably hiding shit deep down that we don’t want to think about or feel on nights like these.
All I know is that from over here, this is just a party to them. But for him…it’s anesthesia.
I watch as he tips back a chaser before grabbing another random cup on the table and chugging it too. His jaw tightens for just a split second before he plasters a grin back on for everyone around.
My chest aches for him. It always does. It hasn’t stopped aching for him since that day I found out he was drinking again.
That was months ago. And nothing has changed.
If anything, it’s gotten a hell of a lot worse.
Every day I’m scared will be the day he goes too far.
And every night I’m left begging him to stop when it gets to be too much.
Half the time, I feel like I’m using my body as a distraction just so he’ll be present with me for a little longer, so I don’t have to watch him drown himself.
I’ve even been staying over at the Sig house more, just so I can be the buffer between him and a bottle.
Every time I spend the night, I wake up, and the first thing on my mind is how long I can get him to go without picking it up from beside his bed.
“Simone!”
I blink and look up to see Mason stumbling across the room toward me, eyes hazed over, smile too wide, face still as handsome as always.
He stops in front of me and leans his forearm against the wall beside my head like he’s trapping me in his orbit.
“There she is,” he says, swaying just slightly. “My favorite person.”
The smell of vodka and cologne wraps around me like a familiar scent that I only associate with him. A scent I both hate and love at the same time.
He leans in and presses a sloppy kiss to my cheek. “You having fun?”
I nod and try to smile. “You?”
“Best night of my life,” he says immediately, then laughs at his own exaggeration.
His weight shifts, and he leans into me fully now, forehead brushing mine. “You’re too sober,” he murmurs.
Maybe I am.
Maybe I’m too everything.
“I’m fine,” I say.
He reaches for my cup and playfully shakes it a little. “That’s criminal.”
The reasons for not getting wasted tonight are slowly drifting farther and farther away.
I never used to drink to escape.
I was always the party girl who just wanted to have fun.
But tonight? With all the thoughts and emotions that won’t let up? I just want to forget a little. I want to live in that delusional bubble too for a while. Pretend everything is okay.
Who cares that I have my last day at the internship tomorrow morning before summer break?
Who cares that I could have been going into my second trimester right now?
Who cares that the boy I’ve loved harder than anyone else in my entire life is barely ever present with me anymore?
Who cares that I feel like I’ve lost him to a bottle?
Who cares that my life is so out of my control lately that I don’t even recognize myself anymore?
Who…cares?
I raise the cup, smiling at him. “You’re right. Fuck it.” I tip it back and then hand him the empty cup.
He winks at me. “You’re so hot.”
For the first time in my life, I understand the urge.
The pull.
The desire to just…not feel it.
To drown in it.
To turn the volume down on grief and jealousy and love and fear.
I pull him closer, twisting my hand in his shirt. “Find me another drink.”
His smirk grows as he pushes off the wall and stands upright. “Yes, ma’am.”
Once he comes back and hands me another cup, I lift it and take a long swallow.
It burns, and I welcome it.
Mason grins. “That’s my girl.”
After several more drinks, he throws an arm around my shoulders and pulls me through the crowd toward the living room, where a couch is barely surviving under the weight of too many bodies.
He drops back first and then tugs me down on top of him without thinking about it, like it’s just muscle memory. And I let him.
His hands settle on my hips, and he looks up at me like I’m the only thing in the room.
He’s the only thing in my room.
Always is.
Regardless of whether that feeling is also accompanied by fear, sadness, and anxiety.
It’s still always just him.
“You know,” he says, brushing a strand of hair from my face clumsily, “we’re gonna look back at this and laugh one day.”
“At what?” I ask.
“At all of it.” He gestures vaguely around us. “This. College. Partying. Being dumb.”
I study his face. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He grins. “We’ll have a house somewhere. You’ll decorate it all cute. I’ll pretend I don’t care but secretly love it.”
My heart stutters at his words, at him painting me in his future.
“Is that so?” I whisper.
“Mm-hmm.” He nods like he’s completely certain. “And we’ll tell our kids about how cool we were.”
The mention of kids hits me right in the chest.
Our kids.
It hurts. And I don’t fucking understand why.
Because if I were pregnant right now, I would be completely freaking the hell out.
I would be terrified; I would feel like my life was over.
Yet the pain for something that was real and then ripped away still feels like a hammer that keeps hitting my heart over and over again.
I want to tell him. I want to lean down and whisper it in his ear—I was pregnant, Mason. I was pregnant with your baby.
But one look at him tells me he wouldn’t even remember the words tomorrow. His pupils are blown wide. His words are loose. He doesn’t even know what he’s promising right now.
“Yeah?” I say softly, leaning over him and looking down at his beautiful face—the one I feel as addicted to as I’d imagine him to be with alcohol. “You think we’re that cool?”
He grins up at me lazily. “We’re iconic.”
I laugh despite myself. “That might be pushing it.”
He shrugs. “I don’t do anything halfway.”
Hmm, yeah. That’s the problem, isn’t it?
The party is loud, and the room around us is packed, and the alcohol is hitting me just right to the point where I don’t care who sees.
I grab Mason’s face and kiss him without a care in the world, wanting to feel all the good parts I’m holding onto about us.
His hands tighten on my hips, and I press into him, intoxicated by this boy who can both make me feel so alive and also scared as hell.
The party blurs around us; people shout, someone falls into the couch, bouncing us slightly, and we both laugh against each other’s mouths.
For a second—just one single second—I’m back in the old version of us.
When it was still fun. When he wasn’t drowning, and I wasn’t grieving, and nothing had gone wrong yet.
He pulls back and smirks at me. “You hit like a drunk cigarette.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m still stuck smiling at him. Then he sits up suddenly, dragging me with him, and pulls me toward the kitchen. “Come on. We’re playing flip cup.”
“I suck at flip cup,” I protest.
“Then you’ll fit right in.”
He shoves me into a circle of sweaty, loud seniors who are way too into this. Someone hands me a cup as everyone is yelling around us. Mason stands behind me, chest to my back, chin on my shoulder.
“Don’t embarrass me,” he whispers playfully.
“I’m about to,” I mutter.
The game starts, and I chug whatever is in the cup without thinking. It tastes like fruit punch, alcohol, and forgetting, making the world tilt pleasantly.
I slam the cup down and attempt to flip it. It misses, and the group groans.
“Come on, Edwards,” Mason laughs, squeezing my waist. “You’ve got it.”
I try again, and it flips.
The circle explodes in cheers as Mason spins me around and kisses me hard like I just won the damn college version of the Olympics.
“There she is,” he says again, eyes glazed over but still bright.
He wouldn’t be able to stop shining, no matter how dull he tried to make things inside his head.
For a while, we’re just stupid college kids. We dance in the living room when someone switches the music to early 2000s throwbacks, and Mason lifts me off the ground at one point, making me scream-laugh, gripping his shoulders while he spins us.
He shouts the lyrics badly in my ear. He pulls me into random conversations. He’s all over me—hands on my waist, fingers laced through mine, lips finding my cheek, then my temple, then my mouth.
People start to make comments, and it doesn’t even freak me out.
“Y’all are disgusting.”
“Just date already.”
We both just smile and laugh and keep going.
And I keep drinking.
One more.
Then another.
Because if I stop, I might feel it all again. Because if I’m sober, I’ll see the way his smile tightens between drinks. Because if I’m sober, I’ll feel how fragile this thing really is.
The alcohol doesn’t make me forget. It just makes the edges softer. It makes me brave enough to laugh. It makes me reckless enough to pretend.
But eventually that all shifts.
He gets louder. Looser. His words slur slightly when he tries to tell a story about something that happened in football practice. He forgets the punchline halfway through and laughs anyway.