Toilet Bottoms, Closed Books, and The Epitome of Rock Bottoms.

My knee bones melt as Lukah pulls me away from the scene. He hoists me up, maneuvering my arm around his shoulder while draping his arm on my waist.

"Come here," he commands, my feet dragging.

"Damn it." He pulls me up by my elbows.

"Sunshine, you okay?" Josh asks, confused by Lukah's reaction.

"Asshole," I curse him as my head falls on the arch of Lukah's neck.

"Come on, dude. Join the party. We're just having fun!" Jace claims, his hands up in defense.

Lukah mumbles something under his breath, but he ignores them all. His hands are busy holding me, I guess.

Suffocating, that's what this place feels like. People press against our sides, fronts, and backs, as they pass by us—I forgot how crowded this place was. We can barely walk. Lukah's grasp tightens around me, my t-shirt buckling up as he continues to pull us through the crowd.

"Sunset. Stay awake, please," he grunts, his warm breath crashing against my ear.

My stomach is in knots and I feel bile climbing dangerously up my throat.

Bile climbs dangerously up my throat. "Um- I-- I, n- need a bathroom," I choke and fight back the vomit. I suddenly remember that I took the sertraline before getting in here, and I have drunk so much and now I am realizing that I don't know what I have been drinking or smoking. What if it has side effects?

Lukah speeds up as much as the crowd allows him to.

"I may need a doctor," I whine when the dizziness intensifies.

What have I done?

This is not numbness. This is not what I asked for.

I want to swallow but I can't. My tongue is paralyzed. "Please," my hand clutches a fistful of his black t-shirt and my eyes squeeze shut when I feel the uneasiness in my stomach.

"Why?"

Why? Is he asking me why? Why what?

"What did you take?"

Oh! He is asking me what, not why.

"Just lots of alcohol, I think, and...a joint and umm-" My eyes roll up as the dizziness takes over, my eyelids feathering close.

"Sunset!"

I jolt back to awareness.

"Open, keep your eyes open for me, baby, please," he urges me.

I try. I tried to keep them open. It's just so hard. I just couldn't.

My butt hits a hard surface making me open my eyes again. Lukah has managed to get us in a bathroom.

My eyes squint, adjusting to the light burning them. Everything is white around me. The tiles on the floor, the walls, the windows, and the curtains.

Grabbing my shoulders and kneeling between my legs, he shakes me ever-so-slightly. "What else did you take?" Lukah urges me, his eyes searching for answers in mine.

My face falls on my hands, groaning against my skin. God, this was not my plan. This is so embarrassing.

Pulling my hands out of my face, he utters, "Sunset, I need to know what you took to be able to help you. I'm not here to judge you." His green eyes hold mine.

A shaky breath leaves my lips. "I took Zoloft—two pills or one, or was it three? Oh my God, I don't remember, I know for a fact that I can't mix that with ephedrine, and I'm scared because I don't know what I have been drinking or-"

"Damnit, Sunset!" He cuts me off, removing his jacket and tossing it behind him.

Grabbing my shoulders, he turns me around on my knees, bending me toward the toilet. His chest presses against my back as I feel him placing one of his knees between mine.

"I can't- I- I'm such a mess...I...this is just..." I just can't form sentences.

His hands seize my tangled hair in a big fistful, tucking it all in one hand and leaving my face clear. Without notice, he shoves two fingers from his free hand into the back of my mouth.

I gag—my shoulders slouching forward.

"Lukah, please, just go-" I run out of air.

He ignores my plead, his fingers going deeper this time, but nothing happens.

"Dammit, dammit!" The grip on my hair tightens as he shoves his fingers even deeper until they painfully contact with the back of my throat. The contents of my stomach rush to my mouth and I throw up my whole being into the toilet.

"Jesus." I think something came out through my nose. I inhale sharply, my hands hugging the toilet seat for dear life.

He sighs against the nape of my neck and I feel the turmoil in the pit of my stomach again. This time he doesn't need to make me do it. My palpitations are so loud and tangible through my chest that I know even he can feel them.

I look behind me, finding his face right next to mine but he doesn't move away and he doesn't let go of my hair. He grabs his phone and speaks into it.

"You okay?" he breathes, letting go of my hair.

I nod as he speaks into his phone.

🔉"Just find out what they gave her. Josh, yeah. Upstairs. Second room to the left. Yes. In the bathroom. She doesn't remember how many. No, no. She said sertraline."

Who is he talking to? My eyes travel back to the sight before me: the contents of my stomach float in the bottom of this toilet, in a stranger's house. Behind me, my boy crush has just witnessed the downfall of my life.

This is the basement of rock bottom.

Oh, God. He will never like me after this. Who would want to kiss me after seeing me like this?

"I'm feeling better." I gag again."Just go. This is so embarrassing," I beg him, sliding my hair away from my face.

"I'm not leaving you. We have all been here Sunset." He tucks his phone in his back pocket, holding my hair up in his hand.

Bending forward, I throw up again, my knuckles going white around the white ceramic of the toilet seat. I think my heart lies there—mingled with my vomit. The fact that he is holding my hair up is making this so much easier.

"You have no idea what my life is like..." I trail off as I straighten up, relief washing over my entire system. I don't think there's anything else inside my body.

I crawl next to the toilet seat, sitting on the floor, my back leaning against the flawless white wall. With my eyes closed, my finger presses the button to flush the toilet.

How am I to flush this away from his memory?

"I'm the Hardin of this story," I state, staring blankly in front of me.

He hunches down next to me, holding a small wet towel in his hand. Squinting his eyes at me, he slides it on the side of my face. My eyes flutter close as my perspired skin welcomes the cold, humid fabric.

"Hardin? The Harry Styles stunt? You're insane, Sunset. You're nothing like him." He shakes his head.

"I'm more than him than you can imagine." I chuckle, feeling so disappointed in myself. "And you are never kissing me after this." I blurt out. Did I say that out loud? God, how drunk-high am I?

He laughs. Yes, I said that out loud.

Slipping his hand through my hair, letting the towel side along the arch of my neck. My breath hitches as he leans in until his breath fans against my skin, his free hand landing on my thigh for balance.

His lips part right there on the crook of my neck. My eyes feather close again as I relish the contact of our skins, my stomach clenching but in the best possible way.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" he rasps, smirking at me as he sits on the floor, next to me.

My legs are crossed while his legs are stretched in front of him. Clearing my throat, I ask, "Does my brother know you are here?"

"He would be glad to know I am here," he declares.

"I'm so sorry you had to see this," I admit, turning my torso toward him. He mirrors my position, turning to face me. "I thought you had to study or something." I gulp as his stare holds mine.

"I couldn't let you come here on your own. I'm just sorry we couldn't find you before." His eyes flicker down, then back up to mine. "Why did you do this?" The back of his hand brushes my cheek.

"I... I just needed to escape from everything." I sigh, exhausted.

"And why the self-destruction? Why come here?" Confusion colors his face.

"I don't know. I wanted to forget, or maybe escape." I claim with my eyes lost in the blinding whiteness around me.

"Sunset, once someone told me that I need to learn to find the difference between escaping reality and hurting myself. And for the record, hurting yourself will never help you escape, it will just deepen the hole you are in."

I gulp, letting his words break in through my messy thoughts.

"Now, tell me what happened that made you almost do cocaine. You know there is no way back from that, don't you?"

I nod my head.

"Good. Don't ever do that, promise me."

I nod again in reply. "I promise."

"So, tell me. What happened?" he asks.

"I can't." He already knows about my dad. I don't want him to know about just everything.

"Why?"

"Because you- I mean I-, Ugh. It's just so many things." My eyes focus on the closed doors of a small white cabinet in front of me.

"Start by one," he instructs me. Why does he always know what to tell me?

I sigh, willing my attention skills to focus on one little thing at a time. Organizing my troubled mind, I start, "I feel like I am trapped in my story. I'm a closed book, you know? Caged from cover to cover, repeating and recycling the same mistakes," I say with my eyes trained on the small doors of the cabinet. "I'm never able to reach the peak of the mountain. I always end up rolling down into the deepest rock bottom. And the problem isn't the bottom, the problem is that it's always the same mountain." My cheeks are wet with traces of tears I didn't realize I was shedding.

"Then we are all trapped. We're just different books, different mountains..." he trails off.

I laugh and slide the pads of my fingers under my eyes, wiping my tears away. "I want to be an open book; I want all the books of my life to be open."

He tilts his head, his eyes searching for something in mine.

"Nothing..." I exhale. "I know I don't make any sense, I'm so drunk," I try to dismiss all my babbling. "What I really mean... I- I think that my narrative, my mountain is my anxiety, my mum's absence, her thriving academic life, and me being the opposite of everything that she has ever been. My narrative is messing up my brother's friendships. My narrative is my freaking name, sun-set. My narrative is me burning stuff just because I can. It's always the same text, and I can't escape from it."

He hums but I know I am freaking him out. I always do the same.

"You just need to find a way to alter the narrative, you know?" His green eyes look so clear now—one could say they are almost gray.

What does he mean? My brows furrow in confusion.

"You've got to find a crack so you can leak through," he adds. "Find something different, do something completely unexpected. Something from a different narrative or even a different genre."

I blink my eyes several times—his words feel like lip balm to chapped lips.

"Yeah, my friends from the library also deserve a leak from their stories. I wish I could do something for them to escape," I fume.

"What friends? Who else is in that library with you?" he asks, his tone tinted with curiosity.

I feel bile rising to my throat again. Just in time, my hands reach for the toilet, and I throw up. 

My heart aches, my throat burns, and my eyes are tired. I look down. My clothes are all wet with the history of my eventful night. My soul, somehow, feels unburdened.

The bathroom door flies open.

"Sunset, thank God he found you. Are you okay?"

My eyes look up from the toilet.

Raiden.

My eyes flicker to Lukah, then, back to Raiden, and I notice Dean behind him.

I look back at Lukah—anger cursing through my veins. "You told my brother?"

This is the epitome of Rock Bottoms.