From the 5th Floor

Three

R E U T H E R

There's a drink in my hand but I'm not entirely sure how it got there. 

Friday night and I'm at some frat house with Jake like I'm twenty-one again. I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to get drunk. I didn't want to watch Claire make out with Ivan Hayes across the room on some black leather couch that reeks of cigarette smoke and cologne.

But here I am. Eye-fucking my ex-girlfriend and her fling for tonight. Do I blame her for breaking up with me? Not really. I couldn't tell you what I have to offer a girl like her. A girl like anyone, actually. I work at a family-owned diner that's not owned by my own family. I have no savings account and my honest to Christ assumption of what my parents would say about me, at my best, is, "He means well."

Do I blame her for choosing one the sexiest guys from our graduating class days after our breakup? No way in hell. I would've left her for Ivan too, if he was into guys and wanted me on his lap.

What I blame her for is choosing to hook up with one of the only friends I still had from high school. Apart from Jake of course, not that Jake is a friend with a capital F to me. Ivan and I still hung out semi-regularly. Still got drinks some weekends and crashed at his place when I've been too drunk to drive back home to my parents.

There's got to be at least eighty other guys here, some really good looking ones too, why did it have to be Ivan? Now every time I'm with him after tonight I'll smell her perfume on him. There have been so many nights that I've thought about kissing his liquor flavored lips just to see if he would let me.

Never again. I'd only ever taste Claire on those lips. The illusion is dead.

"You have got to stop with the Claire bullshit, Ruthie," Jake says poking at my stomach. I lurch forward sick from the music and lights. "Get over it."

We broke up four fucking days ago, I want to say. But I don't. I just throw my head back with my drink and wince as it flows down my throat.

"Let's grab another drink for you," he shouts over the bass of the music. I shake my head, already dizzy and nauseous from that last bit of vodka, but Jake pays no attention. He never pays attention.

He grabs my arm and drags me to the kitchen where the drinks flow and the snacks are smeared across the floor. Another cup is thrust into my hand before my eyes can really adjust to the LED lighting in the room.

I drink a little more and start laughing to myself.

Why did I come here? I think to myself.

"For shots and bitches!" Jake responds over the noise. I realize my inner thoughts are not staying inside of me the way I want them to and I'm a sip away from telling Jake how I really feel about him and this party. So, I break away from him and wander down the hallway.

In the bathroom there's someone puking in the toilet. Someone's puking in the shower too. My stomach makes slow, warm circles with food and drink. I retch into my hand, but swallow down the impulse to throw up in the sink.

I stumble on and fall halfway into a bedroom far away from the stereo and laughter. There might be two crouched figures in the corner doing coke, but that also might be my imagination, I'm not entirely sure right now. Either way, I manage to get myself flat against the bed, body swimming and twirling all while laying completely still.

I blink four times in slow succession before the lights go out and so do I.

I'm awake in a flash, though, the birds outside singing their songs and the sound of a blender somewhere in the house whirring like an airplane.

My head pounds, my eyes are almost crusted shut, and I feel my large intestine threatening to betray me all at the same time, but I lay still for just a few more moments while I try to keep whatever's in my stomach in my stomach. Every single time, without fail, I regret drinking. Yet, every single time without fail, I drink and drink. I could blame Jake, but it's me. Instead of just walking away from him, I drink until I can stand him. Even then, I still try to avoid him at all possible corners. Why?

He's my best friend. My only friend really.

The choices I've made, they make my parents upset, I know they do. Not Jake. Jake couldn't care less even if you severed his anterior insular cortex. I'm fun to hangout with, and I'll never try to show him up. Hanging out with me actually makes him look better. I was always, always the lowly kid in school wearing the same four T-shirts and winter hoodie from the year prior.

Jake had everything I could not afford. That made me the most nonthreatening friend he could have. And I wasn't an idiot, I've known this from the beginning, but I also knew that dinners in a seven bedroom house with an asshole like Jake would fill my stomach up better than dinner at my one bedroom house with my mom and dad.

Is that opportunistic of me? Was it opportunistic of Jake to pin me as "his poor friend who his family feeds every other night?"

We're not better than each other. He's generally unlikeable, and I'm generally unimpressive. We've taken what was given to us and fed off each other in our own selfish ways. No one needs to understand it except us.

And we do.

What I can't understand for the life of me is how last night, while I was passed out on some stained frat bed, Jake thought it was good idea to steal my car keys from me and drive it straight into a fucking fire hydrant thirty miles away.

Make that make sense to me, because all I can see is red, red, red.