it's bittersweet.
The shot pours down my throat. Tastes like soap. Not really worth it. Things are hazy, but when are they not even when I'm sober?
I grimace with the taste, the glass sliding across the table in disregard. Another. One more, maybe. Four shots will get me drunk. I could probably do something I'd regret then, but it's better than doing nothing.
I'm such a stereotype. Drinking alone in my house because I'm just like my mother and there's objectification in being drunk. I could be happier. I can do things with meaning, then.
My door vibrates with a knock or two, and I decide the most respectful thing to do before I answer it is to pour up again. I open it with a sour face - the taste having kicked in - and I'm offered a look of concern from the owner of the knock.
"Are you alright?" He asks.
"Sorry," I wipe my mouth of the residue, "just took a shot."
He looks behind me, brow raised, at my lonely, silent apartment. "Big gathering you got going on back there."
That's fucking embarrassing.
"Yeah, well sometimes it's nice for people to mind their own fucking business, too," I retort, leaning against my door frame indignantly. I can already feel it. I'm saying things I'm not supposed to, even if I know they're wrong.
"Didn't mean to be rude." He pulls a face that tells me he couldn't care less. "My friends and I are having a party down the hall. Come along? We always see you around the dorms and you look like you need a friend."
"Jeez, I'm sold," I drool, sarcasm spilling out of my mouth as if my lips are numb.
"Yeah, well come or not. I could care. Not going to. It's just an invite, you know?" He asks me, his eyes darting to the hall beside him. "No big deal. If you're gonna be a douchebag, I'm gonna go, okay?"
"No, don't- fuck," my hand curls around my door frame for balance, fingers digging into the wood, "let me- let me- uh- let me sober up, give me a sec'."
I pull myself away from the door, his blurry features still burning in the back of my head as I go to my kitchen sink, letting cold water spill from the tap so I can splash it on my face. It should sober me up a bit. A socially acceptable level of drunkenness, rather than crying-on-my-bathroom-floor-because-I'll-never-amount-to-anything drunk. Like all alcoholics in denial, I know how to fake my way through the 'I'm only tipsy' stage. It's a skill only the most pathetic can master.
Pulling myself away from the sink with water dripping from my chin, I wipe it away with my shirt as a metaphor for my depressive drinking episode, completely not caring or even paying any notice to the new wet patch on my shirt. It will dry.
I grab my phone and my keys on the way, messing with my hair before smiling at him from the door.
He pulls a sort of demeaning 'really?' face at me, and then ignores my hopelessness, "I didn't catch your name, by the way."
"Garroth," I answer, belongings shoved into the back pocket of my jeans, "sophomore. Music major."
His lips tug upwards a bit. "Laurance, sophomore, Performing Arts."
