"Cait?" A voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I blinked a few times as my best friend and manager stared at me. "You okay?"

I nodded, throwing up a sarcastic thumbs up, "Peachy."

Peter snorted, shaking his head as he exited the break room. It was a busy shift, and this was the first time I'd been able to sit down in over six hours. My legs were aching, the muscles throbbing from overuse...and poor choice of footwear...and I still had at least 3 hours to go, since we're currently understaffed. In times like these, I couldn't help but regret my life goals. It would be so much easier to be a slacker, but no. I just had to have ambition.

Val stared at me, her brown eyes taking in every aspect of my appearance from my frizzy braid to my - yes - mismatched shoes. The dark circles are so prominent under my eyes that I've given up trying to mask them with makeup. What's the point? Are people really gonna say, 'Oh, she looks awful, but at least it's not that awful.'

Damn, I'm so pathetic.

"Cait," Val sat down next to me, staring at the bagel she picked up for lunch, and sighed. "Cait, we need to talk about this."

I groaned, rocking forward as I pushed myself out of the uncomfortable metal chair and back onto my feet. My body screamed in protest, but I shrugged it off and headed toward the door of the breakroom. I still had twenty minutes left of my break, and I had zero intention of spending it sitting in that room having a conversation I didn't want to have.

Sure, I might have been a shitty friend. Sue me. Val kept trying to bring it up, and I told her over and over again that I had zero interest in talking about it. She refused to give up though, being a great friend and all, and it was starting to piss me off. Our relationship was strained, we hardly spent any time together, and I avoided the apartment like the plague. I picked up extra shifts at Starbucks, I went on hour-long runs every single day without exception, and I spent most of my spare time filling out scholarship applications for school. We'd learned to pretend everything was okay, but I was not. I was not okay.

Every time she cornered me, it only made things worse. It wasn't going to help to talk about something I couldn't change, so why bother?

Why fucking bother?

Allowing the door to close behind me, I nodded to Peter as I stepped out of the coffee shop and onto the busy street. I knew that I shouldn't have acted like that to Val, but she wouldn't understand even if I wanted to tell her. Even if I could tell her. That's the thing about being blackmailed, however, you can't exactly tell someone that it's happening. Kinda defeats the point.

I knew it wasn't my problem. I knew I could've told that girl to go to hell. I probably should've. After all, I'm just Cait, right? I'm the good girl with the perfect grades. The good girl with two ex-boyfriends, who can't bring herself to hate either one. The girl who had so much potential, the girl without any demons, the girl with the whole world ahead of her.

I'm not the girl who should have to deal with this shit, but here I am. Being blackmailed for someone else's secrets, for someone else's mistakes. Fucked up, isn't it?

All of those things that made me who I am - the good girl - are the things that are keeping me from being who I could be. If I didn't care, I wouldn't let this destroy my life.

In return, however, I'd be destroying someone else's. I can't let that happen though, since I'm the good girl.

After that first message, I stopped crying about it. It wasn't that I became resigned to it or that it didn't impact me - it did - but I simply couldn't bring myself to tears. Inside, I felt like I was dying. Suffocating from a lack of oxygen, I felt like an angel whose wings had been brutally clipped. It was all I could do to keep moving, to force myself to stay busy, so the demons wouldn't find me again. So they wouldn't beat me down once more. So they wouldn't tear my scars back open.

Outside? Outside I pretended that no one could see through my brave face, that no one noticed the fact that I'd been losing weight, that I was over-exercising. I did everything I could to make it seem like I was okay, but - in reality - the only person I was fooling was myself.

I took a deep breath and jogged across the street, weaving through traffic instead of waiting at the crosswalk, until I stopped in front of Sharlene's. Checking over my shoulder to make sure no one from work was nearby, I ducked into the tiny bar nestled off Flatbush Avenue and collapsed into one of the black vinyl barstools.

"Want a pretzel?" The bartender, Kyle, asked me while smirking at my slumped posture.

I nodded, "No mustard. You know I hate mustard."

"I know," Kyle responded, turning around to face the rows of liquor bottles stacked in front of the mirrored wall behind the bar.

He grabbed a glass, flipping it upside right, and grabbed a bottle of Kahlua. Expertly pouring in an ounce of the coffee liquer, he tossed in twice that amount of milk before finishing it off with club soda and depositing it in front of me. Raising my head from where it rested on my forearms, I lifted an eyebrow at him.

"What's this?" I asked.

Kyle scoffed, "You know you love these."

"I do," I confirmed, twirling the tiny black straw he dropped in the drink before taking a sip. "But I didn't order one."

"You weren't going to order one?" Kyle stared at me, surprised.

I shook my head, "I didn't say that. I just said I didn't order this one. Maybe I didn't want one yet."

"Cait," he replied with a disapproving tone, which meant a lecture was coming. "I don't know everything that's happened. You haven't told me a single thing. However, I do know that life dealt you a shit hand. Accept a free drink as a positive, smile a little bit, and relax."

Forcing a fake smile, I curled my fingers around the cold glass and lifted the drink into the air in a mock toast. I sipped it slowly, savoring the creamy flavor as it hit my palette. There was enough sugar in the Kahlua to mask the kick of alcohol, but I'd come to recognize and appreciate the undercurrent of bitterness even in the most watered-down drinks. Kyle smiled as I placed the glass back on the bar, a fourth of the cocktail gone, and turned his attention to his other customers.

I knew that I shouldn't be drinking, but it was a habit that was hard to break. If Peter found out, I'd certainly lose my job - especially since I had to go back to work after this - and Val would pitch a fit. There was a line, she always told me, between enjoying the taste of alcohol and partaking with friends versus drinking on your own to drown your problems. She firmly believed you should never rely on anything - alcohol, drugs, or prescription medications - to solve your problems, and usually I agreed with her.

Her brother was an alcoholic, so I knew that made it closer to home for Val. She was terrified of developing that same addiction, the need for alcohol to make the day bearable, which was ironic considering how casually she interacted with it. It was probably a desire to prove that alcohol couldn't control her - either by abstaining out of fear or drinking and losing herself - that allowed her to drink regularly, but I knew that she wouldn't be pleased to find that I was drinking more and more on my own.

The problems I was facing were temporary, I told myself. I didn't need to drink, I chose to drink. I needed to relax, like Kyle said, and alcohol allowed me to forget - if only for a moment - and take the edge off. I could stop, and I would, if I had a problem.

Right?

Unfortunately, I wasn't certain anymore.

I mean, I didn't want to drink. If anything, I hated myself more with every sip of alcohol that trickled down my throat. I hated the fact that Kyle recognized me and knew my name, that he knew what I was going to order before I said it, because that in itself was a sign that a problem was developing. A problem I didn't have the capacity to solve.

Everything in my life was going to pieces, bit by bit, and it was all I could do to keep my head above water. Each day was a battle, and I could feel myself slipping. Sure, it was easy to pretend that I was just following my life plan. That I'd start school, graduate, achieve all of my goals, and make all of this shit go away. 

In reality, however, I was starting to worry whether or not I'd be able to handle my coursework. I was so distracted I could barely make it through a shift at Starbucks without a minimum of three messed up drinks. Instead of being late by five or ten minutes once in awhile, I was consistently showing up more than twenty minutes late to every shift. I couldn't even function properly to dress myself in matching shoes, so how the hell was I going to make it through two and a half years of college before I even get to grad school?

I wish I could say otherwise, but deep down I knew the truth. Alcohol wasn't the cause. It was an effect. An effect of the downward spiral my life had taken while I scrambled to find a solution to the problem that I refused to admit I had.

That, for the last six months, I was falling apart.