fade into you |jordan li|

six. one drink

Ari couldn't help but cry, now alone in her room for no one to see. She knew if she didn't get ahold of her emotions she could lose control of everything, but she didn't care. She wanted to lose control.

Everything seemed unfair: Luke's death, her memory loss, her fathers favoritism for her brother, Jordan Li's wrongful ranking, the guilt she held for leaving her friends at the club, and even worse the guilt she had for refusing to tell the truth about Jordan during the interview.

  "Fuck!" She screamed, sending the microwave in their room smashing down to the ground with her powers, causing a loud noise and a huge dent in the floor. It was the first thing she saw.

  "Everyone okay in here?" Her RA Maverick knocked on the door moments later.

   "Yea, everything's fine." She said with a fake smile, wiping her tears when she got to the door, trying to hide the broken microwave. She was good at faking things.

   "Good, good." He didn't question her any longer, he just left her alone. Alone like she always was.

  She bundled up into a ball in her bed, crying until everything was over, until she felt nothing, not even pain. But maybe it was the alcohol she had stashed in her ottoman, the one that she desperately opened, willing to try anything to ease the overwhelming pain she felt.

She sipped on it until she couldn't even feel the hard liquor running down her throat, until the gross sanitizer tasting vodka tasted like nothing. Nothing. Like her, like how she felt.

   She somehow remembered running to the bathroom to throw up the alcohol, feeling more sober in that instance, enough to fall asleep.

The interview, as well as everything else had slipped her mind completely. It was like she had a blank slate, a do over, until Athena came back to their dorm after the night away.

  "Ari?" She asked concerned when she noticed that the lights were off.

  "What time is it?" Ari asked groggily. Hours had passed and she had slept it off, missing everything she had planned before her interview.

   "Have you gone to your interview?"

   "Shit, no! What time is it?"

   "It's seven thirty."

   "Fuck I have to be there right now so I can get my makeup done, but I need a shower. I think I might have gotten puke on my shirt, and I have a massive ass hangover. I'm not going to make it in time."

  "I'll lay some clothes out for you and get you some aspirin, you go take a shower and come back so we can talk about this. Text your dad afterwards and let him know you won't be able to make it." She said like a mother as she picked up the half empty vodka bottle.

Ari thanked her, knowing that she didn't deserve it and got in the shower. When she came back Athena was ready to hear the full story.

"I fucking messed up. I took a stupid chance. I could have lost complete control over myself, like I did when it got bad before." Ari started, embarrassed at how she used alcohol to cope again.

   "What do you mean?"

    "You can't tell anyone, I mean no one."

    "You can trust me Ari, I won't." Athena promised, making sure she was listening in closely.

    "It was a few months after I found out about compound v, and my mom had died two years before. I wanted answers my mom couldn't give me, and answers my dad wouldn't give me."