It was just before finals and Ryan and I were hanging out in our room. He rarely drank, I'd seen him have a beer or two at parties, but that night he'd scored a bottle of vodka. He'd gotten into the honors program and we were having a few drinks to celebrate.
"This is alright." He said looking around the room, pleased with himself.
"Cheers." We clinked coffee mugs. They were the only thing we had in the room to drink out of. The pens and paper clips they normally held were spilled across our desks.
"Where'd you get the vodka?" I asked after a moment.
"I bought it?"
"How'd you buy it?"
"Oh, I have a fake ID. I just don't use it. I got it last summer before I came to school."
"What? Are you insane? Almost every night there are cute girls looking to drink. Why don't you ever buy them alcohol? You'd be a god around here."
"I don't know. I mean, I'd just buy them alcohol and then what, we'd all sit around their dorm room drinking?"
"Yes. That's what people do. They get drunk and hang out. That's what we're doing." I said, flailing my arms and spilling screwdriver everywhere. "Why wouldn't you want to hang out with cute girls?"
He didn't say anything for a moment. His face went from the almost perpetual scowl he had because he worried so much, to disbelief as he looked at the mug in his hand. Then he just started laughing and I couldn't help but laugh too.
There was a night during finals last quarter when he had told me that he wished he had a girlfriend. "You're really lucky to have Sarah," he told me. "I'd love to find a girl that was that cool and into me." And the whole time he'd been sitting on a gold mine, too afraid to use it. We laughed until our sides hurt and mixed screwdrivers until the vodka was gone.
Looking back, I can't say he turned into a party monster after that. He still studied all the time and rarely went to parties but I think getting into the honors program relaxed him and showed him he belonged at school. He gradually started to open up and he got more laid back about his schoolwork. By the end of the year he knew almost everyone on our floor and people knew me as Ryan's roommate.
It must have been five or six in the morning when Sarah crashed into the room. She was crying, almost hysterically, and couldn't catch her breath. I came awake through the vodka and immediately thought I might puke. Ryan and I had just passed out a couple of hours before and luckily she didn't wake him. He was still drunk and snoring away, completely oblivious. I pulled her down next to me and hugged her. She was shaking violently. I held her like that until she calmed down.
"Can we go somewhere?" She asked.
"Yeah, of course. Let me get dressed." I said and stood up. Then I ran for the bathroom and threw up most of the vodka.
There was a twenty-four hour diner in town and we walked down there to get breakfast. She was chain smoking, something I'd never seen her do and I reached out and took the pack. She gave me a look daring me to say something but I just took one and lit it, handing the pack back to her. It made me cough but it calmed my stomach as we walked.
"They've decided to split up." She said after the waitress brought our coffee. She was out of cigarettes and sat bending the tongs of the fork in separate and distinct directions.
"That's ... isn't that good, in some way. I mean ..." I trailed off as she looked at me.
"I don't care if they stay together or split up or whatever. They can do whatever dumb thing they want to. It's that ..." She stopped and looked down at the table. She took a long shaky breath. "They both want me to move out of the dorms and come live with them. Mop is staying in the house and he's getting an apartment." She paused again. "She wants me to live with her because she can't stand to be alone. That's why they fight all the time. She doesn't want to be alone and he doesn't want to be there. He wants me to come live with him because he doesn't want me living with her. It's like the one last thing they can fight over."
"Shit."
"I know."
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"My housing is paid through the end of this quarter so I don't have to decide until then. They both said the same thing, 'I'll pay for your school, your car. Whatever you want honey, if you come live with me.' They tried to be all sweet. 'You know we both love you and we know this is a hard time.' Of course neither of them want to pay for anything if I don't live with them." We drank coffee in silence. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she brushed them away and tried to smile. I didn't know what to say.
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Chapter 14 | Suicide and Keg Stands Index | Chapter 16
Posted by Ben Corman at 7:53 PM