104

Adam

Don't Fall Asleep

The only thing I could think of to push past the pain was to dive into a party. The fun dude, the party guy, the man who knew how to have a good time. I sent out a mass message, looking for anything with bottles, and I collected a list of them. It was time to get shitfaced and forget all about her for the night.

I went to all the parties.

Which ones?

Who fucking knows.

It was a bender unlike anything I ever put myself through before. The more places I went, the more people flocked to me, trying to party too. My mood was supposed to be getting better. But from one party to the next, there was an unbearable weight on me and I was ruining it for everyone.

If the parties couldn't solve it, bars would. I turned my phone off and went to the nearest place for a drink. Maybe I needed something off campus.

Nothing worked. Every place had another bartender who didn't want to serve me and a sympathetic face who took my crumpled money and grabbed shots for me behind security's back.

This wouldn't be a long-term thing. I just wanted one night where I didn't see her face everywhere. It was pathetic. I couldn't hang around the dive bars, the music was too loud and every song was determined to shuffle through memories that I wanted to forget. Every smile on someone's face was a knife through my fucking heart. The color gray? Forget about it.

The trick was, I had to keep my phone off. If I kept my phone off, I wouldn't go digging for the evidence of every way she changed my life. Every way she changed me.

"Goddammit," I muttered, slumping down in a parking lot.

Where am I?

I looked around slowly, running my thumb on the cool glass of a bottle. The bottle was empty but I couldn't remember when I'd gotten it. None of my cars were in the parking lot. I was by myself. It was dark.

Oh, shit.

I held my head in my hands, trying to stop the pounding. "I…I'm too fucked up."

I couldn't even get off the ground. If Piper was there, she would've tried to wrap her arm around my shoulders and haul me up, as if she could. But Piper wasn't there. And I needed to get back to MU.

What time is it?

Blinking slowly, I turned my phone back on and sliced my finger on broken glass. I must've dropped it somewhere and cracked it. I stared blankly at the blood running down my finger.

Ninety-eight missed calls from…I couldn't read the name.

Piper?

No. She blocked me. There were ninety-eight missed calls from…everybody, it looked like. My vision was swimming too bad to read them.

With a grunt, I pushed myself up from the parking bumper. I'd stand up. I'd go back to school. Nobody needed to know about this. I could get home, sleep, and get to football practice with a killer hangover tomorrow. I'd check out and get back into it like I always did.

The stop sign down the street went lopsided and I hit the ground. There was a sharp crack when my head hit the pavement.

"Fuck—shit—damn." I squeezed my eyes shut.

Yep. Too fucked up.

My fingers worked faster than my brain did and I hovered over the text conversation between Piper and me. All of the letters flashed up at me, mocking me. I needed… her . And it was digging out my heart to know I'd never get to have her.

A face popped up on my phone and I frowned, staring at it. It was Kassie, sticking her tongue out, with her arm around my shoulders at the New Year's Eve party.

I answered the phone before I even realized I did. "Hello?"

"What the fuck?! " Kassie shouted through the phone and I had to pull it away to stop the ringing in my ear. "Guys! I got him! Ryan— RYAN! "

"Kassie," I said, my voice dull. I tried to gather up an emotion. Any kind of emotion. I was just empty.

"Oh my god, you scared the living fuck out of us. Where the hell are you?!" she demanded.

Another voice came from the background. "You found him?!"

And a third voice. "I am beating his ass when we—"

Zariah, Ryan, and there was King's disgruntled grunt in the background. I sat there on the parking bumper, my legs stretched out in front of me and thought back to Piper. To Piper, sitting in her bed. Probably alone. I made her alone.

"Adam!" Kassie's voice broke through the fog again. " Adam! "

"I'm…drunk."

There was an audible pause over the phone. "You're just out partying? With who?"

Ryan's voice cut through. "I am going to kill him."

"Do you know how worried we've been?" Kassie demanded. "I'm losing my fucking marbles over here, ripping my hair out. June, Zariah, and I drove back from Oklahoma, feeling great, just to find Ryan and King freaking the fuck out . You disappeared! Why the fuck did you disappear?! Do you know what time it is?!"

I rubbed the back of my head. "I'm not with anybody."

"What do you mean you're not with anybody?"

Zariah sounded mystified. "I can't understand a word he's saying."

"Hold on, guys, give me a second." There was a kind of shuffling over the phone and Kassie's voice came over crystal clear. "Adam, where are you? How drunk are you? Can you give the phone to somebody?" There was another sound over the phone and her voice was muffled. "I think he's hurt. Let's go—come on." The phone shifted up again. "Adam, are you okay?"

Am I okay?

"No."

"Oh." Kassie's surprise disappeared in an instant. "Okay, we're coming. Where are you? We'll pick you up."

I dropped the bottle. "I don't know."

"Adam, give me a street or a neighborhood," Ryan told me over the phone. The anger was gone from him too.

"I don't know where I'm at."

"Ask him where's the last place he went!" Zariah tried to say but I didn't have an answer for her either.

"I don't know."

Staring off to the empty street in front of me, with my cracked phone to my ear, I had a sudden realization.

I didn't want to do this anymore.

Everything I did up to this led to this exact point, alone and drunk on some boulevard, with my friends having to collect me because I couldn't remember where I'd been. I didn't want to be this person anymore.

"Adam!" Kassie's shout jolted me out of my thoughts. "Wake up! "

"What?"

"Don't fall asleep!"

"Stay awake," Zariah snapped. "Give me the phone, I'll find him. Adam tell me anything about where you're at. Marrs Manwhore, give me something!"

"Zariah, I don't want to be this person anymore."

"That's fucking fine! You can be a juggling kangaroo if you want! But after we pick you up!"