Everywhere, Everything. ★ STURNIOLO TRIPLETS

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE. - UPDATED!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: PLEASE READ! Hi guys! After receiving several comments/messages from readers saying they were a bit confused as to what was happening in this chapter, I decided to take it down and revise. I didn't want you guys to read something I wasn't happy with, so the updated version is below! Hopefully this time things are clearer. Love you! xoxo N

"Do you seriously have to go again?" Matt tossed me his keys and I sprinted up the cabin's walkway, nearly eating it on a rock.

"Shut up!" I yelled over my shoulder, fumbling with the key ring. Chris and I had already made him stop three times for a bathroom break on the drive, and yet, my bladder was thirty-seconds away from giving out on me. "Come on, come on," I pleaded with the door. When I felt the lock click over I took off down the unlit hall, barreling into the bathroom.

The porcelain bowl was frigid against my bare legs and I shivered as relief washed over me. You'd think the cabin would've kept some heat overnight, but the aged wood and single-pane windows did an awful job at combating the cold. I was lucky my ass didn't freeze to the toilet seat.

After washing my hands, I perched on the edge of the bath. Over the last hundred miles, the boys managed to preoccupy my brain with silly license plate games and "I Spy," but I couldn't outrun my feelings forever. I needed to sit with this.

Whenever I went too long without putting my thoughts down on paper, it felt like my head was going to explode. I wrote because I didn't know where to put things. I didn't have anywhere to keep them inside myself. The voices were too big to stay in my skull, they had to come out. At least on the page, I knew they found their place. But I hadn't given myself the time lately to do that. I'd been so wrapped up in being with the boys and meeting Mark that I neglected myself. And if I didn't get these thoughts out soon, I was going to become catatonic.

My head hung between my legs. Who knew growing up would be so complicated?

My phone vibrated on the sink. Then again. And again.

I reached across the small space to grab it and plopped my butt back onto the bath's ledge. Everything slowed.

Dozens of text messages from unsaved numbers and people I hadn't spoken to since graduation flooded the screen. And they kept coming.

Hey, is this you? Several said.

Damn, Sullivan look at you! Said others.

Almost every single one contained a video link. Without thinking, I clicked it, turning up the volume.

My blood hardened to concrete. No. No no no.

It was a video taken from someone's front porch. Thick white columns snuck into the frame before the person behind the camera zoomed in on me buried in Nick's arms, and then panned over to Matt playing referee between Chris and Mark. The shouting was clear even from that distance.

Clearer because I'd been there.

"Fuck," I breathed, clenching the phone tighter. The video had been uploaded almost immediately after we'd left Maine, and there were already thousands of comments.

I held my breath as I opened Instagram, preparing for the worst.

A garbled cry escaped me as the notifications came streaming in. Hundreds upon hundreds of mentions, tags, and follow requests populated on the screen. But worse than that, every post as far down as you could scroll was about me and the boys. Screenshots of the video were posted with captions like "Sturniolo Triplets Slumming it with Runaway!" or "Caught on Camera: Youtubers in Heated Fight - Girlfriend's Troubling Past with Addiction Crisis Comes to Light!"