Vice [h.s]

II

*Three months later*

The past few months have been some of the hardest of my life. I thought I was working through Derek's death, but I guess I was just working around it. Fucking Jahn.

I've been working overtime every single week, drowning myself in work. Lots of early mornings and late nights designing pieces for A-List celebrities who don't give a shit about me, and many of those designs getting rejected. The comedy club has been the same - unfulfilling, Jahn's stale cookies and Henry still being a dick. I guess he wasn't as repelling as I had considered him in the first few weeks of knowing him, but there's something off about him.

Maybe it's just because he's a man. I haven't seen him, or anyone in the group, for upwards of three weeks now, and I'm not complaining.

The light begins to filter through the curtains that honestly do a shitty job at being curtains, and I roll over on the couch, as if there's much room to do so. There's a slight pain in my head, behind my eyes. Probably from the lack of sleep, and this light isn't helping at this point.

"Get your grief-stricken ass off of my couch and get ready," a, sadly, familiar voice taints the air behind me. I play dead.

"I know you're awake, I just saw you roll over a second ago."

I say nothing. There's a quietness and I hear footsteps walking away. After a moment I shift my body to make sure she isn't standing there, I see a pair of small feet alertly walking back into the living room. Fucking hell.

Before I can even process what's happening, she holds up her phone and presses play on the one song I forbid her from playing in the many years of our friendship. She does so, not breaking eye contact at all, a smirk on her face.

The intro to the song begins and I roll over on my back, throwing a pillow over my face.

"WHY," I groan, the awful sound worsening my headache already.

"I gotta feeling," Vanessa sings along, her voice muffled by the pillow I am desperately trying to cover my ears with. I'm exhausted.

"C'mon Tate," she says, forcefully grabbing the pillow from me. She flings it across the room and tries to get me to stand up.

"Nope."

"I know that we'll have a ball-" she continues.

"Jesus fucking christ STOP," I complain, becoming actually very irritated and clinging onto the couch.

"Let's do it, do it, do it," she sings, this time fully grabbing me off of the couch. I scramble to get out of her grasp but fail as she pulls me to my feet.

I can only imagine my disheveled appearance, though I don't want to. The pain behind my eye worsens and I fear a migraine may be in the works today.

"Turn that shit off PLEASE," I beg one more time and she smiles, pushing pause on quite possibly the worst combination of words and sounds to ever exist.

"Okay listen I'm not going to group today, I feel like shit I'll go next week," I plead, desperate to climb back under my covers, "You can even drop me off to make sure."

"Oh we're not."

I look at her in confusion. What the fuck does she mean? Why did she wake me up at the ass crack of dawn then?

"Okay then why am I up?" I ask, running a hand through my hair and becoming more anxious.

"Tate, you're 23 and living on my couch. I love you, you know that, and that's why I'm moving you the hell out," she says, beginning to fold up the bedding laid out on the couch that had been my bed for the past four months.