AM I IN LOVE WITH YOU OR AM I JUST LONELY?

six

*Spanish is not my first language. I suck at the grammar, excuse my terrible Spanish.*

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And in the shadows of the Friday night, I can't feel my heart in my chest or the blood in my veins.

The moon shatters the ash of the twilight pouring dim twinkling lights into the sky.

I don't recognize myself in the filthy mirror. Mascara smearing down my eyes and coating my cheeks in a mix of black and tears. And he forgot again.

Because there is a bloody gash on my forehead and my lips are busted and my teeth reopening the fleshy cuts. The yellow-ivory glow of the public bathroom ceiling lights flicker and I feel the stare of someone digging into my back.

It's a familiar face and I sigh.

"Let's go to Ricky's." She tells me and shoves a Dos Equis into my hand. She takes a sip of the beer in her hand. Her raven hair uncombed and freckles dripped on her nose and cheeks. I met her two years back, right before my baby brother was born. She lets me crash at her house sometimes and shares her cigarettes with me. We aren't truly the best of friends, just two girls who help each other out sometimes.

"I can't." The words crack and she doesn't understand. She raises an eyebrow. "I don't want to go out like this." I point to my face as I look down at the beer bottle.

"You won't care after you finish a couple of these." She gestures to her bottle and takes a sip. I copy her and I give in.

Because I want to drink and drink until I cant remember why I'm hurting.

"Okay." I hop off of the counter and follow her into the unprotected night. It sparkles with smoke and glows in the streetlights. It's sticky and hurt, I can feel my swollen feet and bruised knees through my blood stained and ripped jeans.

I think its the first hour of the next day and the air is thick. I can't remember where Rick's house is. But I hope the freckled face girl remembers. She laughs when she kicks a rock and I wonder how many beers she's had. There is less than half left in my bottle and it burns my lips with every sip I take with the blood and alcohol mixing into a devil liquid, but it doesn't really hurt anymore, calming-red.

I can hear fireworks and music. It's the house. I can see an ocean people of people through the windows. And Evelyn looks at me with her drunk eyes. They go wide with her black hair blended into the night. It's like she's just realized that my boyfriend beat the shit out me.

"Boyfriend?" She lazily points to the cut on my forehead still raw with pasty bloody. I just blink at her as we stand in front of the noisy house.

"Again?" She rolls her eyes and her eyes look all over my face and at my stained jeans. She turn and walks on her platform boots to the house playing loud music within and I can hear a girl screaming with laughter in her voice. "FUCK THE LIFE OUT OF ME!"

The house smells like sweat and moldy carpet and alcohol. And people are dancing in the living room, all stuffed into a muggy room and young lovers making out on the leather couches and junk food cloaking the floor. The air is clotted with the stench of cigarettes and drunkenness and the gargoyle tears of the devil. I almost cough. She leads me past them and I notice some people giving me weird looks as I cut through them in the baking cake of bodies.

Then we are in a room with the lights on and dirty counters with the chairs sideways and cups filled with cheap  liquor. It's not as crowded and the ground is still booming with the beat from the annoyingly loud music.

And Ricky is in the kitchen talking to some people I've never seen before. When he notices me and the freckled faced girl he looks like he's seen a ghost. He excuses himself from the conversation. His hair is all fucked up and his bushy eyebrows stringing together.