Beer, Spaghetti, and Pharmaceuticals ||COMPLETED||

Fifteen

A/N: Hey guys, not sure if you saw on my page saying I wasn't going to be updating until next week. Well, I guess I lied! I ended up having tonight free so I spent all night writing away! However, this chapter is getting posted before sent to my editor, so pleeeease if you notice any typos point them out to me! :) I've read it over a million times but I'm so bad at catching typos right after writing something.

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The sound of the clock ticking in sync with Alice's dripping kitchen tap drilled through her skull. The cup of coffee that sat on the table in front of her grew cold when Alice couldn't bring herself to take a sip. A homemade tinfoil ashtray sat beside the mug, nearly overflowing with cigarette butts. She glanced at Blaise's package of smokes and slid out the second last cigarette. After a quick apology to her precious lungs for smoking more than she ever had in her life, she lit the cigarette and leaned her neck back, watching the swirling smoke reach her ceiling.

She didn't get a wink of sleep since leaving the bar.

Every time she closed her eyes she would feel Isaac's hands on her skin, his voice in her ears, his stupid ocean-like eyes filled with desire as he tilted her chin upwards, licking his lips...

She let out a loud uncensored scream as she slammed her forehead on the table.

"How did this happen?" she asked herself out loud, her words dripping with agony.

That question plagued every cell in her brain. Was it a slow, gradual progression of feelings? Or was she that desperate for validation that it really only took a guy saying, "I would fuck you" and "I like your smile" to send her whole body in a fritz?

But it didn't matter how it started. All that mattered was that it ended.

Her stomach squirmed, feeling less like butterflies and more like an angry wasp's nest inside. Thankfully, most of the actual alcohol-induced nausea had subsided after spending the rest of the night hanging her head over the toilet. Instead, all that remained in her stomach were the feelings of guilt, shame, and disgust building a nice little nest inside her.

Without thinking, Alice tapped her spoon against the porcelain mug in sync with the ticking clock and dripping tap to create an ear-grating symphony. Perhaps it was the sleep deprivation, but Alice couldn't mentally process how annoying the kitchen sounds were. She felt detached from her body. It was as if instead of sitting at her kitchen table, she was actually permanently trapped in time, floating near the ceiling of the grungy pub, silently judging herself interact with Isaac.

So many brushing knees, tapping of the hands, and that idiotic tattoo.

She pulled her feet on the chair and hugged her legs, driving her eyes into her knees.

She had a boyfriend. A boyfriend whom she cared about dearly. A boyfriend whom she's been waiting half a decade to be with. A boyfriend who predicted this exact thing happening. Thankfully, that boyfriend's boss asked him to work out of town for a couple days so she could mull this shit-show over without his company.

Knock, knock, knock.

Slowly, she turned her neck to face the gentle rapping at the front door, but the rest of her body remained still. If it was anything important, whoever it was would have called or texted me before. Her phone had been dead in the bottom of her purse since she got home.

Turning her neck back to her now ice-cold coffee, she took the last few drags off the cigarette before crushing it in the mountain of the rest. It was when the aggravating dripping and ticking finally registered in her brain that she got a new thought. A thought she hadn't thought about all night and morning.