The John Hughes Club

Chapter Thirty Six

Sip after burning sip, the vodka is blurring things. Of all the days to get drunk, today is a rather nice day to do so. Of all the days for my life to shatter, the last day of July is as good as any to do just that. Looking out to the sea, I watch the waves crawling up the distant shoreline. As I fill my mouth with more of the alcohol, I breathe in the fresh coastal air, allowing it to fill my inebriated lungs.
Here, feels better.
Here, it's just me, vodka and the ocean.

This is mine and Chas's favourite beach spot. It's out of the way. Quiet. Picturesque. Ours. Thankfully, it still feels good to be here. But as I take another sip out of the bottle, my sense of loss is beyond tears, for myself and Chas may never get to enjoy this place ever again. At least, not together. With our parents now in a relationship, how can we ever be? Us. Such a small and simple word, that now sounds just like one big complication. Needing more of the vodka, I take another large gulp, pain squeezing my heart as I think of the boy it once happily beat for. Feeling a little numb and giddy, I lie back on the sand, staring up at the blue sky and wanting to feel as light as the clouds that I see high above me. Anais always had a sweet fascination with clouds. On warm days, we would often lay in the garden, saying what we could see in the cloud-filled sky. She also had a fascination with butterflies, so her young face would glow with joy at how many cloud ones she could see slowly passing her by. Remembering her giggle and her joy, I stare up at the sky, wanting a cloud to bring me the same kind of happiness it once gave her. I hate this confusion that I am feeling. I hate the dread it keeps heavily placing in my stomach. I hate everything about this whole situation.

"Mindy?" Standing over me is a concerned Chas, every corner of his face pulled tight with tension. When he sees the vodka, his features become dressed with disappointment. "If you're drinking, then you drink with me." Sitting down on the sand, he does so with an exhalation of the same disappointment. Grabbing the vodka from out of my hand, he takes the largest gulp of it that he possibly can, wincing as it's being resentfully swallowed down. "You should never drink alone. That's how it first began with my dad," he flatly comments, his voice raspy with the alcohol coating his throat.

I know he's angry with me. It's like he's surrounded in an angry aura. "How did you know I was here?" I woefully ask him, having to really concentrate to put a sensible sentence together. The vodka is warming my veins, anaesthetising my tongue, but there's no hope for the cold misery now existing inside of me.

Bending his knees and resting his elbows on them, Chas stares out to the sea. "Your mum rang my dad. She's worried about you. I went to the workshop first, then came here." He still can't look at me. Instead, he has another large swig of the vodka, again wincing as it rushes down his throat. "So this is how we're doing things now, is it?"

My heavy head moves, glancing his blurry way. "What do you mean?" God, I'm drunk. Sad and drunk.

Refusing to gain eye contact with me, he angrily has another swig of the alcohol. "Running away from your problems. Drinking away your problems. Putting yourself in danger to get away from your problems," his annoyance is loud, his bitterness even louder, "before you know it, alcohol will be your only friend in this world. It'll be all you'll be thinking about. It will replace every good thing in your life, just because you wanted to forget. Is that what you want, Mindy? Because if it is, I can't let you go through that. If you're going down that thoughtless path, then I'm not letting you do it alone." Again, he brings the bottle up to his lips, determined to be reckless with me.

"Stop it, Chas!" I ask him to stop drinking, but he ignores me. "Stop it!" With his eyes pinched shut, he takes yet another gulp of the vodka that I'm resenting with everything I numbly have inside of me. "I said, stop it!" Knocking it from out of his hand, the bottle drops, its hazardous contents dribbling out into the sand.