Right Next Door

Chapter Two

        "Holy shit, Axel! What the hell are you doing?" I yell all of this at him as I use all of my strength to drag him, head first, through my bedroom window. He reeks of alcohol and other substances that I'd rather not think about. I groan under his weight as he drops to the floor. When we were little, I never would have guessed that Axel would turn out to be this way. But despite his glowing popularity in middle school and freshmen year, Axel was now the head of a different clique: the drunks and stoners. He had an angry streak and constantly red eyes. If you knew what was good for you, you didn't mess with him. Apparently, I didn't know what was good for me. 

        "God. You reek. What were you doing? What were you thinking?" Axel tries to stand up. Bad idea. He wobbles and falls face first onto my bed. Gross. 

        "I ddddon't need a lectuurree, Mom." Even when the guy's pissed drunk he manages to come off as threatening. Jesus. 

        "Ugh. Okay. Obviously there's no way that you're going home tonight. I don't know why you came over and why you didn't just crash with one of your friends but you're here now and you're not going anywhere. And if you're going to stay the night then you cannot smell like that." I stalk out into the hallway to retrieve a fresh towel from the linen closet. I do this quickly in the hope that Axel won't fall asleep in the time it takes me to do this. 

        It's a close call. I have to shake him a couple times to get him moving but he eventually does. He puts most of his weight on me as I lead the way to the bathroom. I make him shower in his boxers, teling him that I can get him a dry pair from my brother's room--he had to have left at least one pair before he left for college. I start the shower off warm at first, to get the smell off of his skin, but then I decide that that's not giong to work in the  sobering department and I switch the water to painfully cold. Axel screams when it hits his skin. I almost feel bad. Almost. 

        When the shower is done and he's in my brother's underwear and he's wrapped in a towel, I almost consider sending him home. He doesn't seem incredibly out of his mind drunk anymore and he doesn't smell like a bar bathroom. Just as I'm about to help him back through the window and back out of  my life, Axel collapses onto my bed and begins to drool. 

Great. 

~        ~        ~

          I never thought that I'd be in this position... Okay, well, maybe once upon a time I had. I will admit that I had indeed pictured Axel Tucker sprawled across my bed, a lazy smirk on his red lips, asking me to put down the pen and come join him. It's not like I hadn't thought about it. But that was then and this is now. Then, we were friends. We saw each other every day, talked every day, bounced on the trampoline in his backyard until our limbs were sore. Now we didn't make eye contact. The most I saw of him was the back of his head in Biology. And that was enough for me. 

        Now here he is. Sprawled across my bed, just as I'd pictured when I was younger. But he isn't lazily smirking at me. He isn't beckoning me towards him. He's drooling on my nice comforter and muttering incoherent, drunken thoughts in his sleep. And I'm stuck with him. Without a fucking clue of what to do. 

        I pace the confines of my room, crossing and uncrossing my arms. Running my fingers through my messy hair. Why is he here? Why couldn't he crash with a friend? We haven't talked in ages. He's honestly the last person that I had expected to see at my window at one a.m. on an October Saturday night. Axel grumbles in his sleep and the front door slams shut. Fuckfuckfuckfuck. Ohhhh fuck. 

        "Sloan?" My dad calls into the mostly empty house. I can hear him flipping off lights as he walks to my room. His footsteps are getting louder, closer. So I do the only thing that makes sense. I fling myself into the hallway and slam my door shut behind me.