Being With You (The Redemption Series) (6 page)

Just fucking kill me now
…

As slowly as he could feign, Tristan scooted back down in the bed and almost cried man tears in relief when the vertigo and nausea eased from his body. His prayers for a quick death weren’t answered, but the relief must have been enough to relax him back into sleep.

“Hey, punk. If you don’t wake up soon, Gabriel’s gonna come over here and kick your ass,” Tristan heard through the fog in his brain. Years must have passed since he’d awoken in a nearly catatonic state and barely made it out of the pain when sleep took over again. Well, not years, but his body certainly felt like he’d been stuck in the same position for far too long. His legs felt like heavy bricks attached to his lower half, his arms were tied down and his head was suddenly way too large for his neck to support. In short, he wasn’t sure if maybe he was in an accident of some kind and was permanently paralyzed.

“Tristan, honey, I need you to wake up. You’re starting to scare me…”

That was enough to make Tristan push his protesting muscles until he could move himself toward the voice. He assumed it was Susy, but right now, Tristan wasn’t sure he was even truly awake, or even
alive
for that matter. Even his scalp hurt, but he could hear the fear in Susy’s voice and made himself move.

“I’m alright, Susy. How long have I been out?” Tristan answered her and slowly opened his eyes; he was absolutely shocked by what he saw. He was still in Susy’s room, on her bare bed with no sheets or blankets, but he was clad only in his boxer briefs. That wasn’t even what freaked him out the most…what got him was that Susy was sitting on the side of her bed, fully dressed in her work uniform and he could smell the grease odor from her clothes. She’d obviously already been to work and he’d been out for quite some time.

“What time is it, Sus?”

“It’s eleven o’clock on Wednesday night. You’ve been out for over twenty-four hours,” she said with a sigh. “Gabriel covered the bar for you tonight, and I told him you had the flu. I think he knew I meant the bottle flu, but he didn’t ask me any questions. But you’re supposed to call him.”

“Ahh, fuck,” Tristan groaned and sank back into the pillows. “Christ, I feel like I was run over by a Mac truck. Did something else happen besides me getting bombed on booze? I swear, I was drugged or something, Susy.”

Tristan had closed his eyes again, but could feel Susy resting her hand against his forehead, probably checking his temperature. “I honestly don’t know, but if you want, I can take you to the ER. A few of my friends crashed here the night of the party, and they explained to me in the morning how you polished off a load of shots to keep Shane from slamming them and then driving home blitzed. I was praying that you were just hung over and exhausted and just needed to sleep it off. Let me get you some clean clothes and I’ll take you in.”

“No!” Tristan nearly screamed as he sat up in bed, making himself flinch in pain. Automatically, he relaxed against the wall and told Susy a bit quieter, “No. I’m sure it was just an overload of alcohol. I’ll survive.”

With as much strength as he could muster, Tristan moved his body slowly until he was sitting on the side of the bed with his legs hanging over the side. It hurt like hell and his head was protesting the whole way, but he needed to pee. And he could smell himself; he reeked so awful and he needed a shower. That was when he noticed that the bed was not only bare of sheets and blankets, but was wet.

Tristan groaned. “Oh, Christ. Did I fucking piss in the bed?”

He moved over so he wasn’t sitting in the wet spot and noticed that Susy was sitting in her chair across the room; nowhere near him at all.

“No, you threw up all over me, and then I threw up, but not until I made it to the bathroom. Your puke was all over you, your clothes and the bed, so I stripped it this morning and put stain remover on some of the spots.”

Tristan was mortified and prayed to every deity there was that this was a new nightmare he’d created, that this wasn’t really happening and he would wake up soon. Closing his eyes and clenching his fists against the sockets, Tristan did his best to wish himself out of this completely embarrassing and horrific situation. He’d passed out in his best friend’s new bed, thrown up on her, and then made her not only throw up, but then she had to clean up his mess before going to work hung over and covering his ass with his boss. Yeah, this was something he could write down as the day he’d spent the least amount of time awake in, but yet the most humiliating by far.

“I’m so sorry, Susy. Thank you for doing all that for me. I’ll trade you mattresses as soon as I can pull my head out of my ass and move them around. You go ahead and sleep in my room. I doubt I’ll be sleeping anymore after all that time being comatose.”

Susy yawned as she stood out of the chair in the corner and walked out of the room, scrunching her nose up the whole time. “I planned on it, punk. Not that I don’t love you, but damn it, that was fucking gross. But I’m glad you’re okay now.”

Tristan gave a humorless laugh and walked out behind her and headed straight for the bathroom. His bladder was screaming at him and he felt like he could shower for days and still not be considered clean.

Susy snuck into the bathroom first and called behind her, “I’ll take a super quick shower and be out in two minutes and then it’s all yours. Please at least text Gabriel to say you’re all right. I’m exhausted and I don’t want to deal with a pissed off Hispanic version of Mr. Clean showing up at our door tonight.”

Tristan sighed, but didn’t say anything because Susy had just gone above and beyond the call of friends/roommates the last twenty-four hours. She always needed a shower before bed, and she deserved to go first, if for no other reason than just finishing her shift at work on her feet for the last eight hours.

“I’ll do it right now, Sus.” He told the closed door before gingerly sitting down on the couch to wait his turn.

Im fine Gabe hung over but fine Sorry I missed my shift

Within seconds, the reply came back,
You fucking scared me!

Tristan was going to apologize for freaking him out, when the next message came through right away,
You scared Susy too, asshole LOL See you in the am

TTYL,
was Tristan’s reply, as well as a loud sigh of relief that Gabe had eased off him quickly.

More so than he expected; he was thinking that Gabriel would send an ambulance over immediately, even if he said he was okay, and that they would rush him to the hospital and lock him up again. Maybe say it was a suicide attempt.

Tristan mentally and physically shook himself.
No…you’re okay. Need to clean up, get something to eat and take your meds. No one is planning to lock you up for an admittedly stupid alcohol poisoning incident. You’re okay,
he repeated to himself a few more times.

“Your turn, punk!” Susy told him as she came out of the bathroom wrapped in her fuzzy robe. “I love you, Tristan Hart, but that was a once in a lifetime deal. If you ever do that again, I will let you choke on your vomit instead of saving your ass,” she told him with a full-fledged belly laugh.

Tristan laughed along with her and got up from the couch to take his own shower. When he finally got to empty his bladder and get clean, things would look a lot better. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore tonight, but he could certainly work out at the gym if he was up to it.

Just thinking about the energy it took to work out made him tired, and he knew that exercising wasn’t going to be on his list of things to do for the next day. Sitting on the couch and maybe watching a movie was probably the most activity he would see.

Shower first, then he knew what the next thing was he would do…figure out what to buy Susy as a
Thank you for cleaning up my puke, and thank you for keeping me from suffocating on it
present.

T
ristan passed the time in the night watching a mindless program on a cable channel and watching YouTube videos until he fell asleep again near dawn. He even did a search on Google to get ideas for gifts for Susy, narrowing the choices down to a gift certificate for her nails somewhere, but that would mean actually going to one of those places to get it. His other choice was more of a joke than anything…a spot cleaner carpet shampooer. That was sure to earn a sharp jab in the ribs from Sus, but damned if it wouldn’t be funny to see the look on her face when she opened that box.

Light was starting to stream through the glass patio door in the living room, and Tristan was feeling cramped on the couch in the living room. He’d basically spent the last thirty hours of his life motionless…first he was passed out and comatose in Susy’s bed, and then lying down or snoozing occasionally on this crumby sofa and it was now Thursday morning. His muscles felt like jelly and he needed to get his ass up and do something before he started to grow moss.

Quietly slipping into the bathroom so he didn’t wake up Susy, he did his business and dressed in his work-out clothes. After how shitty he felt last night, there was no way he thought a trip to the gym would be possible for a while, but he was bored out of his frickin’ mind and it would do him some good to get his blood pumping through his body. If nothing else, he could go for a run to the local gym and back; he could tell his body wasn’t up for a full-fledged session in the gym.

Maybe he could just walk to the bakery around the corner and get a bagel and cream cheese for Susy and maybe a donut for himself instead of his normal Greek yogurt. A raspberry-filled sugar jelly donut with an iced chocolate milk. It was a sugary, carb-loaded crap of a breakfast, and something he would normally never eat, but his body was going to be metabolically fucked up for a while anyway.

Tristan took a deep breath in and couldn’t help but cough back out instead of a slow release. There was a catch in his side that hurt pretty strongly for a few seconds and then would ease away. He’d only been vertical for about fifteen minutes getting dressed, and his head was already starting to throb and both of his sides would hurt off and on. His body must be stiff and sore from the beating it had taken, reminding him how careless he’d been with himself. That was absolutely the last time Tristan would drink booze for any reason, no matter what the quantity.

It had taken Tristan quite a bit of time and hard work and a shit load of carefully controlled supplements to develop his body mass and size; he was a bean pole for most of his years growing up. The number of hours he put in at the gym rivaled the number of hours most people spent watching television. He’d gotten soft for a while this year, but with Peyton pushing him again, he’d been more active in the gym, and was getting back to his core weight and size. He’d just thrown a lot of that work away with his stupidity.

A glutton for punishment as always…a grueling work-out it was.

Tristan and Susy worked the same shift that night at the restaurant, so they rode together in his Jeep. It was a cold Thursday night in January, and they didn’t expect to be that busy, but there was no guarantee. Sometimes people would get a wild hair or have the winter blues and would bring in a group of friends for a good time. Not only a good time, but a cheap meal, a great selection of beers and great service. The restaurant had certainly become popular over the winter months, and the weekends were usually packed. The weekdays were slower, but still decent.