"Whoever coined the term 'High School Sweetheart' never met Collin Ayers."
Paige Thompson, an aspiring singer/songwriter, always felt like the late bloomer of her tight-knit, wild friend group, which included her older sister and music duo partner...
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The sun beaming through the bright, curtained window woke me as I wiped a trail of drool from my face, pooling onto a pillow too soft to be from my room. Looking around at the creme furniture lacking a pile of clothes and other crap from my cave on each surface, I realized I was in Louis' family guest bedroom—a place I found myself a lot since the Browns were a second family to me, sometimes even my first.
Through the times when Ma got a new piece of shit boyfriend to control her and take the little money she had each time, she let them 'stay over.' I'd lay my head at Louis' for the month until she threw the leech out. As we got older, the guest room became where I crashed after getting too plastered.
Lifting off the still-made bed that I knocked out on top of, I grabbed my phone to see a new notification that dropped all the blood from my morning wood to my feet. Unfortunately, it was not from the only girl on the planet actively ignoring me besides my exes but a spam text for 50% off mobile orders at Shake Shack.
"My mom has to stop fucking signing my number in these damn coupons."
Smelling the death that left my mouth when I spoke under my breath, I walked to the attached guest bathroom, opening the bottom cabinet under the sink to grab the spare toothbrush they always left for me. As I brushed my teeth, I opened the same text chat as if there would magically be a new reply from her. Instead, there was a cascade of blue message boxes. One of each turned me pale as I kept scrolling to find the end of my drunken madness.
All the different variations of nicknames for Paige that I sent back to back were most likely a wasted stupor, followed by the most annoying rants I could ever sum up to her. I didn't remember getting this fucked up when we were out; I couldn't even remember the night after grabbing Taco Bell, so Christ only knows when I managed to get this sloppy. I was feeling pretty shitty about the situation, but I had no time to grab booze at the party.
With those messages came various blurry pictures of my stupid plastered face and the occasional sext that looked deeply cringe-worthy without the response on her side. An assortment of "Why don't you want to sit on my cock?" or "A crumb of pussy?" following a dozen sad face emojis, crying emojis, demon emojis, and a robot emoji' sprinkled mysteriously. I didn't understand where the robot emoji came from, but that was the least of my concerns in the practical harassment I was putting her through via text.
I was tweaking last night, but to my advantage, the messages weren't opened on her end. This opportunity bought me some time to figure out how I was gonna deal with the entire 'her avoiding me' shit, but I definitely shot myself in the foot getting so shit face last night.
I wasn't hung up on Paige avoiding me initially; I just assumed it would blow over when we eventually saw each other again. There weren't many places she could hide when we stayed in the same circle. I like to think my irresistibility would just get to her in time, but she was really fucking good at dodging me.
