Frenemies

22

I woke up the next morning barely able to open my eyes. Once I get to open them, I sit up and immediately regret it, my head is way too heavy for it to be on my body.

I groan and hear a laugh from the other side of the room to see my friend walking toward me with a glass of water and something else in her hand. Once she reaches me, she presses the item in her hand which turns out to be a pill to my hand and waits for me to put it in my mouth. I do and she hands me the glass of water which after I swallow the pill, I down the whole glass of water. 

"What happened last night?", I say trying to piece together my foggy memory and my friend cringes. I lay back down and she asks,"What was the last thing you remember?"

"Uh", and then it hits me so hard that when I sit up, I fall back down again. "I remember Hailey or was it Heather telling me that Grayson was back." His name is soft on my tongue, I don't want to think about him. Not yet, not when my head feels like it weighs twenty pounds and my brain cannot seem to remember it all fully.

My friend stays quiet and says,"What else do you remember?" 

"Needing to puke and then you took me home", I say not entirely sure and my friend shakes her head, confirming that I am missing out a few details.

"Not quiet, there's a bit you are missing", she says and I cringe at her tone. 

"What happened?", I ask not wanting to know. The unknown sounds a lot better right now.

My friend is silent for a few moments and then says,"Grayson didn't only come back. He came back to find you." 

I scratch my head, confused and yet trying to remember it, and she continues, "Which he did. He found you and wanted to speak to you. But you were drunk so he didn't say anything and you just sort of…"

"Sort of what?", I ask scared to know.

"You blew up on him….in front of a crowd", she says and I press a hand to my face. Maybe I shouldn't have asked.

"Kill me now", I say burying my face in the pillow and my friend rubs my back, but her comfort isn't going to help my humiliation.

"Did I do anything else?", I ask cautious of the question and my friend shakes her head. 

"Are you sure?" 

"Yeah", she says and gets up from the bed. "My parents are out so we have the whole day to get you back to yourself." 

"Thank you for rescuing me yesterday", I say to her and she nods. 

"You'd do the same to me", she says and I nod. "You're the best, Katie." 

••••

Katie and I spend the rest of the weekend sobering up and by Sunday night I am feeling rested and ready for the day, physically but not mentally. Mentally, I am stressing out over the fact that I don't remember the conversation I had with Grayson. I don't want to remeber and I'm not ready to see him. 

Moreover, I'm not ready for the hurt I'm going to experience again when I do see him. A whole week of ghosting me and now he was back? I don't want to face him, don't want to face my feelings.

I almost skip school on Monday but after realizing I have two tests in my classes, I do go. I don't see Grayson the whole morning which is normal so my anxiety doesn't start until after lunch. After lunch, I delay going to my next class as late as possible but as soon as the bell rings, I walk into the class, my head low and walk to my seat. 

I give myself a pat on the back for successfully making it this far but when I glance to my left, I regret it. I find Grayson looking at me, his eyes trained on me and for a second I can't look away. But I do, and feel my cheeks heat up, not in a good way, in a hurtful way. All the emotions I had experienced the past week come back to me five times worse and my heart starts beating so fast that I can't breathe. I inhale a long breath but when I try to exhale only a tear slips out of my right eye.