That Girl in the Diner

17 - Smack

17-smack

It was two in the morning. The night was cool and lonely, quiet, except for some drunk singing in the park. He'd been singing, more on tune than most drunks, for most of the night since about eleven, only occasionally stopping to take a drink out of the now almost empty bottle of vodka dangling from his hand.

"Ooohh nobody knows the trouble I've seeeeeeeen, nobody knows my sorroooooowwwww..." Julian droned on. Yes, indeed, it was Julian. After the fight with Madeline he'd gone straight to the liquor store, found a park bench and had parked himself there for the night without even bothering to go home first. He was hardly recognizable at this stage, any casual acquaintence would never have realized that it was him. His clothes were filthy and so was his face, his expression was goofy and almost unnatural on him and he was so empty of the usual carefree attitude that it really wasn't Julian almost. Just a simple shell of him. It was a miracle that he hadn't passed out yet, he had been hoping to lose conciousness hours ago.

Julian didn't handle fights well or rejection. He had already been in a fairly depressed mood before he'd gone to Maddy's never mind after all she'd said, and all that he'd said to her that he was now regretting. It felt natural to him to do this, though. This was what he had done almost every night of the week before he'd met her. Nobody knew about this side of him, he had hidden it so well. But now he didn't care. In fact, as he was singing he was formulating a plan. A very good plan, so he thought, but just about any plan sounded good after three quarters of a bottle full of booze. Yes, he was going to get up and he was going to march straight over to Maddy's place. He was going to throw stones at her window until she opened up and then he was going to serenade her until she forgave him and pledged to never mention the whole moving in thing again. Never mind the fact that she probably wouldn't appreciate being woken up so early in the morning and that he wasn't really looking or singing his very best at the moment. He wasn't thinking about that. He was just thinking of fixing their little problem as soon as possible. There really was no possible way this could end well from the moment that he had put the bottle to his lips.

He pushed himself up off the bench somehow, and managed to stumble a few paces to the sidewalk. He scratched his head with the bottle, managing to dump the rest of whatever was left in it right on his head. As if he didn't reek of vodka enough already. He didn't really notice though, he just furrowed his brow. Where was he again? He didn't know how far he'd wandered after buying his drink. In reality, he'd only gone a couple blocks but he probably couldn't have found his way out of a straight one way tunnel at that point. He was lost. Oh well. He decided to just start walking one way and hope that it would be right. It actually was the exact opposite way to get to Maddy's or his own place, but that soon became the least of his problems.

The street lights were lit, casting an eerie glow on the city- or at least, that's how it looked from behind his blurry eyelids. He stumbled out onto the road, feeling suddenly sick. He was just going to walk across the street to throw up in that garbage can over there (actually a fire hydrant), but the next thing he knew there were headlights and the screeching of tires and a scream, maybe his own. Then, he felt a sudden pain in his stomach, and he hit the pavement hard. Finally, he was unconcious, just like he'd hoped.

Madeline's phone started buzzing at five thirty in the morning. She groaned as she picked herself up the floor, feeling stiff and wondering what time it was. She had cried herself asleep just inside her bedroom door, where she'd stopped after her fight with Julian. She just wasn't able to find the strength to pick herself up afterwards. She could hear her phone vibrating on the kitchen table. Fluffy was barking and whimpering at the door, wondering why she was locking him out. She had a splitting headache from crying so much. She sighed. Well, she had to get up some time.