Never Been Kissed

Ch.37 ↬ J

I think it was the betrayal that hurt me the most.

The fact that I was left in the dark for weeks while she knew the truth and yet she was selfish enough to not tell me. And there was no relief to matching a name to that face that still haunted me five years later. No relief whatso-fucking-ever.

The first thing I did when I made it into my BMW was call Vincent. Surely he could advise me on what to do. What I really needed was a drink. Several of them. Until I was fucking wasted I could no longer think about Madeline and the girl five years ago. The girl that was Madeline.

"What's up?" Vincent greeted.

"Meet me at a bar," I found myself blurting out. "Right fucking now."

He hesitated. "Has something happened with Madeline?"

"You could say that."

He sighed. "Meet you in the usual bar in fifteen minutes?"

If I gunned it, I could make it to the bar in ten minutes. "Great. I'll be three drinks in by that point."

I hung up before I could receive a lecture from him, and then I was discarding my phone in a small compartment and revving the engine to life. The roads were quite busy as it was a Saturday evening and my plan to gun it through town was thwarted. Regardless, I still managed to down a shot by the time Vincent was entering the bar, his eyes scouring to locate me. I was at the bar, the bartender mainly placed in front of me. Despite the roads being busy, the bar wasn't filled just yet, but it was still early evening.

When he stood next to me, he only ordered a water and I knew why. Clearly if I was going to fuck myself up tonight with the alcohol, he'd have to be the designated driver. Maybe tomorrow if I wasn't nursing a hangover, I could get Madeline to drive me—

Ah. There was a serious problem with that scenario.

The bartender handed Vincent his water and didn't even bother to charge him for it. He nodded his gratitude to him as he stalked to the other end of the bar to serve a middle-aged man who was snapping his fingers impatiently. I rolled my eyes. Those types of people were seriously irritating and obnoxiously rude.

"Talk to me, Josh." Vincent raised his glass to his lips, eyebrows raised as he stared at me inquisitively.

With a sigh, I launched right into the story of kissing that nameless girl five years ago at a party he barely remembered, despite being the designated driver for both of us. I only took breaks to down a few more shots, licensing the burning sensation of the vodka to coax me into not omitting any detail until I reached the climax of confessing that what I believed to always be a nameless girl turned out to be Madeline Taylor, the girl I'd been fucking for weeks because I was seemingly infatuated with her.

"So she's kept it to herself for weeks?"

"Yep," I said, annoyingly popping the "p".

I slammed another empty shot glass onto the bar and felt my body swaying on the stool. Maybe just one more. Or two. Jesus. I needed so much more vodka to forget about Madeline. It seemed like I could never forget about her: a blessing and a curse.

Vincent, incredulous, shook his head as he chugged almost half his glass of water. My gaze roamed from him and surveyed the bar. It had filled out since I commenced the storytelling and the occupants were made up more of the younger population of Riverside than the older. The middle-aged man on the opposite side of the bar seemed to be an anomaly, though he was so blatantly wasted I didn't think he gave a fuck who was stood next to him ordering drinks.

A girl roughly our age eyed me, and I winked at her, the alcohol rocketing through my veins and manipulating my decision-making. She took that as her cue to strut her stuff over to us with legs that seemed impossibly long and tits spilling out of her crop top. She was nothing like the girl I'd left behind in the apartment block. No one else could ever be like her.