Falling From the Sky (23 page)

“Ahh, that’s good,” she announces. “You drink?”

I glance at the glass of watery Dr. Pepper next to me and slide it away.

“Tonight I do,” I tell her

She hands me a shot glass. “About time Micah picked a flavor of the season who knew how to party.”

I don’t know how many shots I’ve taken or what’s in that martini glass Brittany had me sipping out of. The drunk guys behind us sound like they’re a hundred feet above me, and I’m trapped in a well. Brittany places another shot glass in front of me and then throws her own head back to down another. My shot glass count is low compared to hers. I’m amazed that she’s still going. All I can do is shake my head in refusal, and even that takes Herculean strength.

I regret looking up to answer her. The look on Micah’s face when he sees us makes my stomach twist. Maybe it’s partially the alcohol, but I know that look of disappointment, even if I’m drunk.

He tears into Brittany with accusations as soon as he gets to the table. I bury my face into my folded arms in front of our collection of shot glasses. Their yelling goes back and forth, still one hundred feet above me it seems, before I glance up at Zoey.

“Micah, stop! He’s going to be sick. Let’s go,” she orders him, snapping back into mom-mode.

She grabs my arm and pulls me up, and I realize how numb my legs are. I feel like I’ve sat with them under me too long and have lost all circulation, and that makes it a hell of a hard job to walk. She lets go of me once Micah has a hold of me on the other side. It feels like he’s dragging me toward the steps instead of putting one foot in front of the other. Through all of this, the techno music hasn’t stopped.

“One step at a time,” Micah says to me, wrapping both arms around me to steady my balance. He places my hand on the stair’s railing, and we move in slow motion down the never-ending steps.

Zoey waits by Micah’s truck once we finally get outside. She shakes her head, but I can’t form any words in my own defense.

“Give him the window seat,” she tells Micah.

She crawls into his truck, and Micah guides me to the passenger side door. I lean in toward the seat, and the slight change in elevation is all it takes. I jerk around to avoid Zoey, and my timing is perfect. I manage to puke all over the back tire of the freshly waxed blue Mustang beside us. Micah waits outside of the truck with me while I paint the parking lot with vomit.

“Here.” He hands me napkin from inside his truck. I try my best to wash the taste of puke away from my mouth. It’s probably the most impossible task in the world.

I keep my head plastered to the window in Micah’s truck, and I hear Zoey tell Micah that she’s freezing, but he keeps the air on full blast for me. Micah lets Zoey out on his side when we get to her house, and from the bottom of the well, I hear him tell her that it’s going to be a long night.

The flushing of the toilet just makes the headache worse. Hell, the sound of my footsteps from Micah’s bedroom to the toilet even makes the headache worse. I don’t know how the guys at camp do this all the time or how Aaron can actually sleep some nights. I’m sure they’ve never laid on a beach towel in their summer fling’s bathroom being forced to drink Gatorade and keep wet bath cloths on their foreheads.

“You want to go back to the bed or stay in here a while longer?” Micah asks.

He sits on the counter next to the sink, but I can barely make out his face because of the bright lights above the bathroom mirror. He yawns for the thousandth time tonight, which makes me want to yawn as well, but I’m afraid to open my mouth that big because I might throw up again.

“Bed,” I say. I’d really rather stay right here in the floor, but Micah swears he’s heard that a drunk person can throw up during sleep and drown in puke. Because of that, he hasn’t left my side all night. He hasn’t slept either.

He hops off the counter and bends down to help pry me up from the floor. He forces me to lie down on my side when we reach the bed – so I don’t drown and so I can aim for the plastic trash can he’s placed next to the bed – and he crawls over the foot of the bed to the window side. He rarely sleeps next to the window, but he thought I needed the edge of the bed more than he did tonight.

“A few more sips,” he says, pulling my shoulder back. “I don’t want you to get dehydrated.”

I don’t want any more Gatorade. I just want to sleep, but Micah isn’t going to let me sleep until he’s satisfied that I’m okay. I take only a few sips, as he demanded, and then fall back onto the pillow. Micah places a cold, wet bath cloth over my forehead and then kisses my cheek.

“You’re an idiot, Ridge,” he says. “But it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left you alone tonight. I should’ve been with you or taken you with me and Zoey. I was a bad boyfriend.”

Those words sting my body worse than all the drinks from hours ago. Everything Brittany said plays back through my head, and I remember why I ever got drunk in the first place. But alcohol can’t erase two things – my broken heart and those stupid thoughts of Taylor.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I’ve never had a hangover before now, and it’s as bad as everyone’s ever made it out to be. It burns to swallow. I shouldn’t be surprised considering I probably puked up the entire lining of my throat last night. The headache isn’t any better, and I’ve never felt so disgusting in my life.

Micah isn’t in the bed with me either. I trip over the empty plastic trash can he left next to the bed and nearly face-plant into his bedroom door. Thankfully the wall catches my fall. Micah runs down the hallway, and his door swings open a few inches from my face.

“Are you okay?” Micah asks, grabbing hold of my arm.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “Just clumsy.”

Micah runs his hand through my hair, and I wish he wouldn’t. I seriously need to shower. “How do you feel?” he asks, still as concerned as last night.

“Bad,” I say.

I think that’s obvious, though. He just nods in response. I manage to steady myself much more easily than before, and I follow Micah into the living room.

“Is your mouth dry? Are you dehydrated? Do you need anything?” Micah interrogates me as I find my way to the couch.

“I’m okay,” I say. It won’t matter what I say. He enters the kitchen, rummages through the fridge, and emerges with a bottle of Gatorade.

“I know you don’t want this, but…” his voice calls from the kitchen. He walks into the living room, Gatorade in hand, before finishing. “I’d really feel better if you drank this.”

I lean my head back on the couch and hold the bottle against my forehead. It’s cold, and it feels great. I sit up just enough to twist the cap and sip from the bottle.

“I don’t think you’re going to puke anymore,” Micah says from the chair to my right. “You were dry heaving for a while, so I think it’s all out of your system.”

“When?” I ask.

“Around four this morning. You don’t remember?” He looks confused.

And I’m as confused as he looks. “No,” I admit.

It’s good news, though. It means there’s a very slim chance that I’ll lose any more throat lining today, and once the headache subsides and I shower, I should start getting back to normal.

“I don’t think you should play today,” Micah says.

Basketball. How in the hell did I forget I have a game today? I can’t not play. I can’t skip, and I can’t go in and say,
“Hey Coach Bennett, I’m hung over really fucking bad, and if I get out on that court, I’ll throw up on the other team, so I can just sit this one out?”

“Fuck. I have to go,” I say, standing up much too quickly for a hangover. I grab the bottle of Gatorade and force myself back to Micah’s bedroom to find my keys and cell phone and all those other personal belongings I probably lost between Toxic and his house.

“Wait,” Micah calls out, following behind me. “Are you okay to drive? Do you want me to take you? I really think this is a bad idea. You don’t need to play. Say you’re sick. Tell them it’s food poisoning or something.”

He rambles on and on from the hallway to his bedroom and then back down the hallway and outside all the way to my car.

“Ridge, wait. I’m sorry. I know this is my fault. I screwed up. I should’ve stayed there with you last night instead of running off with Zoey. I know you only did it because you were mad at me. What can I do to make it up to you?” His puppy dog eyes would normally get the best of me, but Brittany’s words play in my head like a song stuck on repeat, and I refuse to give in.

“I have to go.
Now
,” I insist.

I slam my door shut and leave Micah standing next to the tree of skulls. I watch him until he’s a dot in my rearview mirror. I know him well enough to know he’s still standing there, watching me until my car is a dot in the dust at the edge of the reservation.

“Dude, you reek!” Aaron says while I dig through my dirty clothes pile for my basketball uniform. “That’s some hardcore alcohol for someone who doesn’t drink.”

I want to ignore him, but I’m pissed and I need to mouth off to someone. It’s just hard to sound off when everything you’ve said all summer has been a lie.

“Just a bad night,” I say. I pull my T-shirt over my head and pull the jersey on.

“Girl problems?” Aaron assumes.

In a way, saying ‘yes’ wouldn’t be a lie. Brittany is a girl, and Brittany started the problem. She was the one who told me about Micah’s hetero boy experiments. She was the one who told me about Taylor being straight. She was the one who called me “Micah’s flavor of the season.”

“Yeah, girl problems,” I confirm for Aaron. My summer of half-truths continues.

“Summer’s almost over,” Aaron says, like he heard that reference to the summer in my own head. “You’ll be home, and Zoey won’t matter then. Life will go back to normal.”

That’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t want my life to go back to what it was before camp – before Micah. I take a few more sips of Gatorade before going into the bathroom to finish changing. I give myself the best quickie sponge bath as possible from our sink and brush my teeth to try and rid myself of the taste of vomit. I’ll never admit to anyone else that Micah is right about how I shouldn’t play in this game.

“Hey Aaron,” I say before he walks out the door. “Don’t pass me the ball today.”

In the locker room, I give Terrence a rundown of my bad night, my hangover, and the fact that I don’t need the ball today. This time, I explain the Brittany-Taylor-Micah issue, though. Terrence’s lecture of disappointment is actually worse than Coach Bennett’s would’ve been, probably because I give a damn what Terrence thinks, and I hate knowing I’ve let him down.

“You knew better,” he says again as we walk toward the court. “You should’ve texted me or called me. I’d have used a fake ID to get in or at least met you outside.”

“Don’t pass me the ball today,” I tell him for the tenth time.

“Make sure you’re never open,” he says. “And if you get too sick to play, take up Micah’s lie and say it’s food poisoning. Coach knows you’re not like these other guys. Next game, it’ll all be better.”

The next game
will
be better. Without puking. Without a hangover. Without thoughts of Brittany and Taylor. Without fighting with Micah. Without…

My heart, lungs, and ability to think all drop into my empty stomach. My eyes zone in on that black and gold T-shirt, the one moving through the stands, the one with that stupid Markham Wildcats emblem on the front. Those short shorts and tan legs confirm that things just went from the worst to hell.
Samantha
.

She stakes out an empty spot in the bleachers and waves to me with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen from her. She might as well hold up a sign that has “SURPRISE!” painted in gold glitter because this moment would definitely call for it.

Smile back, Ridge. Smile back. Wave back. Look happy. I echo the words in my head like a tribal chant so I won’t screw up and stare at her with a look of panic. But panic is all I feel when I see Micah walk through the double doors and stop to wait in line to pay his way in.

I duck back into the locker room and unlock the door that leads outside. My head pounds like the bass from Mutilated Arteries’s last number as I run as fast as a hung over basketball player can toward the front entrance. I fall through the double doors and catch Micah’s arm before the woman with the oversized purse ahead of him ever finds her money.

“Hey,” Micah says. He doesn’t even seem upset with me about last night.

“Samantha’s here.”

The little bit of an optimistic smile he had vanishes upon my saying her name. “Here? At your game?” he questions.

I nod my head, and even though I don’t know how I feel right now, I know what he’s feeling – most likely the same thing I felt when Brittany said I was nothing to Micah.

“Okay,” he whispers, breaking eye contact and staring at the grass. “Okay then.”

Every time the whistle blows or that damned buzzer roars, I want to stab the person behind it for making my hangover more miserable. I don’t know what part of “Don’t give me the ball” people don’t understand, but after two missed three-pointers, three missed lay ups, and too many missed free throws, they haven’t stopped. I think the other team’s coach told them to foul me on purpose just to make me look even more ridiculous.

Coach Bennett benches me halfway through the third quarter, and I use Micah’s suggestion of possible food poisoning when he asks if I’m feeling okay. He buys it only because he knows I’ve been one of the good kids all summer. From the bench, I have a great view of Samantha, who plays with her cell phone, and Micah, whose sad eyes are glued on me. I decide to rotate my eyes between the ceiling and floor, and every once in a while, I glance at the court to see how we’re playing. Any distraction is good at this point.

“Think you can get a jump shot?” Coach Bennett asks in the last few minutes of the fourth.

We’re up by seven, and we just have to hold the lead. Aaron fouled out, and Terrence seems to swear that he needs me in, despite my excuses not to play. On top of that, Coach is asking for the only two words in basketball that make me think of Micah – jump shot.