Rooftop

6.

After somewhere between 5 minutes and 5 hours of just looking up at the night sky, trying to figure out what the hell just happened to me today, I hear footsteps behind me. I lean my head back even further than it already is, because I'm currently in a decently comfortable position and would rather not sit up to see who it is, and find out that the mysterious person with comically loud footsteps is actually just Brad. I'm honestly not surprised though, considering the fact that whenever I have a moment of peace he always seems to barge in and make my life utter chaos once again.

"Hey Columbia." He's holding multiple electric lanterns and a green plastic cup filled with a drink that look a lot like Coke in his hands. He turns on the lanterns and looks at my face, which is a dead giveaway that I've just been crying, and looks like he is about to ask me what happened or if I'm okay but seems to have a moment of human decency and just takes another sip of his drink, which still looks a lot like Coke, but smells nothing like it, again.

He must have noticed how intently I've been looking at his drink, because he offers me a sip of it, which I gladly take, because curiosity was practically eating away at me. The mysterious drink goes down my throat and I just about gag. It is Coke, but it has some sort of alcohol mixed in with it that would explain the strange smell. Brad is clearly amused by my reaction, and takes another sip of his drink.

"I'm assuming you've never had alcohol before." He is still chuckling slightly knowing the answer.

Despite the fact that he already knew this, I tell him that I haven't, and await his relentless teasing that is soon to follow.

"Why not? Doesn't every single high school party have a bunch of beer and just alcohol in general?"

"I wouldn't know. I never went to them. I wasn't exactly the most popular in Arizona. They thought that my views were stupid, and I thought that theirs were the same way."

"Well that's stupid. People shouldn't decide to be friends with other people based purely on their views."

"You'd be surprised as to how much they can affect."

"I'm sure I would. Do you want anymore?" He offers the drink to me, and I'm about to tell him that I'd rather not drink, but it can't be that bad. People do it all the time. And besides I'm curious as to how it feels to be drunk.

"Do you have anything stronger than that?" He pulls out a flask from an inside pocket in his jacket, and hands it to me.

"It's going to taste horrible but, if you're trying to get drunk, this is the thing to drink." I take my first sip and it's even worse than the Coke. But, I power through the burning sensation and take another sip. And another. And another. I keep on sipping the drink until the flask is completely empty.

"Here's the thing I don't understand. If you drink at a party you're fun and interesting, but if you drink alone you're just sad," Brad tells me.

"So I guess I'm just sad."

"But I'm here."

"So what does that make us?"

"Somewhere in between."

"What type of alcohol was that? I ask him, still feeling completely sober, and wanting to break the awkward silence that washed over us.

"Whiskey, aka the official drink of 50 year old men." I laugh at his attempt at a joke, but still don't feel any different.

"How long does it take to kick in?" I ask him, still confused.

"Stand up." I follow his instruction, and suddenly feel completely different. Now I can actually feel the effect of the alcohol, and while I don't think that I'm completely drunk just yet, I feel pretty tipsy. Brad tells me to do the test where you have to touch your finger to the tip of your nose, and I gladly comply, just to show him that I'm not drunk yet. I move my right hand extremely slowly to my nose, and touch it in the very center. Feeling confident I take my left hand and move it twice as fast. This time I hit my lip. I try again at the same speed and hit the bridge of my nose. Brad seems to think that I'm absolutely hilarious, and can't stop laughing at my failed attempts.

"But I'm not drunk yet! Why can't I do this even though I'm only tipsy?" He laughs at this too. That's all he seems to be able to do today. Just laugh at me.

"Don't lie to yourself Columbia, you're drunk."

"No, you're drunk." I bend down and pick up the flask sitting on the black blanket, and look at it. It's engraved with the initials F.T.F. Brad immediately tenses up when he sees that I have it, but I make nothing of his nervous energy, and the way that he's staring at the hand that's holding onto the flask.

"Who's flask is this?" I ask without even a split second of thinking about the possible consequences of my question.

"My dad's. Frank Thomas Flindt," He touches the corresponding letter to his first, middle and last name, making it so that a kindergartener could have understood it. Despite his obvious reluctance towards answering just the first question, I ask him another one.

"What happened to him?" Brad looks away from me for a few seconds and takes a deep breath. This is obviously a sore subject.

"He was killed in Iraq." That shuts me up. His father was killed? I suddenly feel completely terrible about my relentless badgering and prodding.

"So I just told you mine. What's the terrible event in your life? Everyone has one, but everyone also has different definitions of the word 'terrible'."

"Well, my dad and mom got a divorce when I was six and my mom got full custody of me, and my dad didn't want to have me on any days, and hasn't called me once for the past 11 years until this morning when he called me up, and then hung up on me as soon as his girlfriend or wife or prostitute or whomever called him down to go do something." By the end of my sentence the lump in my throat is too big to ignore, and two tears fall down my face, followed by around 50 more. After I'm finally done crying Brad responds to what I just told him.

"That really blows." He doesn't seem to know what else to say.

"Yeah, it really does." I start sobbing again.

"Do you want a hug?" He asks me hesitantly. I shake my head no, and take another sip of his Coke.

"Well you seem to need one, and since the only alternative is you drinking your feelings away, which really isn't healthy, come here." He wraps one arm around my body and I cry into his shoulder. By the time I'm finally done, his t-shirt is completely soaked.

"Sorry."

"Don't worry about it."

"I can buy you a new shirt if you really want me too."

"It's fine. Here, let me help you get back into your room, it's supposed to rain tonight." He climbs down to the bottom on my house and holds his arms out just in case I fall, because I am, despite the fact that I refused to acknowledge it at first, drunk.

I climb into my room, and he climbs back into his, and turns his light out right as I flip off mine. We both climb into our beds, despite the fact that we know for a fact that neither of us will be sleeping tonight.

------

I posted another chapter to celebrate a song that my friend showed me that is essentially about how you shouldn't be thinking or decorating or singing for Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving.

~Fawn