“That’s not advice. It’s a statement. And an insulting one at that.”
“Dammit, Cassie, woman up!” She stirs the soup aggressively. “He’s treating you like crap because he’s got issues or whatever, but that’s no excuse.” She pours some milk into the saucepan. “Call him on his bullshit or else stencil WELCOME on your boobs and be done with it. It’s your choice.”
I know she’s right, but I can’t help feeling like one wrong move with Ethan could have disastrous results.
“Oh, crap.” Ruby frowns at the saucepan, then picks up the soup can and reads the instructions.
“What?”
“I think I’ve fucked this up.”
“How is that possible? It’s soup. From a can.”
“I put in too much milk. Apparently, I was supposed to measure it or some bullshit.” She dips in her spoon and sips it.
“What’s it taste like?”
She shrugs. “Tomato-flavored milk.”
I sigh and lean against the counter. “Not the weirdest thing you’ve ever made.”
“Nope.”
“Serve it in mugs?”
“Okay. At least we have rolls.”
“Oh, frack!” I open the oven door and smoke wafts out. When I pull out the baking sheet, the rolls are black. “Dammit.”
“Who’s the bad cook now? You were only in charge of reheating, for God’s sake.”
We stand there for a few moments and look at the pathetic remains of our horrible dinner. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I have an urge to call Ethan to see if he’d come over and cook something for us, but I figure if he wanted to talk or spend time with me, he’d let me know.
“Wine?” I ask.
Ruby sighs. “Most definitely. I don’t think I can fuck that up.”
“Word.”
Oh, God. Ow.
I wince as I open my eyes. Sunlight pierces my pounding brain like an ice pick.
I’m on the floor, surrounded by wine bottles and pizza boxes. Judging from the disgusting taste in my mouth, I not only drank way too much last night, I also smoked a crapload of cigarettes. My mouth feels like the floor of a cock-fighting ring.
As I stretch and rake my tongue across my teeth, I see Ruby lying on the couch, her arm thrown over her face.
I really hope she feels this bad when she wakes up. Even though I can’t remember much about last night, I’m almost positive it’s her fault.
My head throbs and my stomach churns, and when I put out an arm to steady myself, something on my hand catches my eye. My knuckles have the word “HOLT” written on them in black eyeliner.
What the…?
My other hand has “SUCKS” scrawled across it.
I hear a groan and glance over at Ruby.
“I didn’t do it,” she says from behind her arm. “Well, okay, I did, but you told me to.”
“You remember last night?”
“You don’t?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I ranted for a couple of hours about how much of a bastard Holt is, until you agreed with me. Then you did this to my face.”
She lifts her arm to reveal the most horrendous makeup job I’ve ever seen. Her eyebrows are thickened, and her jawline has been drawn in, all sharp angles and bad shading.
“You tried to make me look like Holt, because you wanted to punch him in the face for being so closed off.”
“Oh, God, Ruby, did I hit you?” It was hard to tell with all the makeup.
“No, but you did make a particularly yelly phone call to Holt at around two a.m.”
“What?! What did I say?!”
She sits up, then grabs her head and groans. “You said a lot of stuff. I may have been doing drunken cheers in the background. By the end, I felt sorry for him. You really bitched him out. Then you hung up and passed out.”
“Oh, God.” I feel sick, and not from the alcohol. I scramble around the floor and uproot debris as I try to find my phone. “Why didn’t you stop me?!”
“Honey, I was even drunker than you were. Plus, he totally deserved it. For a drunk chick, you were quite eloquent. Except for the part when you cried.”
I stop what I’m doing and look up at her. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Nope. About ten minutes into it, you sobbed something about how he’s your first boyfriend, your first lover, and you’re supposed to feel giddy and in love, but all you feel is confused and lonely, because even when he’s with you, he’s not totally there.”
“Oh, God.”
“Then you said something like, ‘Why don’t you just let yourself love me? Don’t you understand how good we could be?’ And, well, by that point, I was crying, too, so…”
I rub my eyes. “Oh, Ruby, this is bad. Bad, bad, bad.”
“Yeah, we need to never drink that much ever again.”
I shove stuff off the coffee table, desperate to find my phone. At last, I find it under a pizza box. It’s switched off and covered in grease.
When I turn it on, there are eight missed calls and two text messages.
“Crap, crap, crap…”
I read his first text message.
<Call me back. Now.>
I press the phone against my pounding head.