It's almost too perfect as I woke to daylight spilling across the backseat, Chandler's leather jacket warm on my skin. I sat up, rubbing my eyes. Peering through the car windows, there were the familiar grungy suburbs of my neighborhood. The sky was awash with a robin-egg blue that casts the streets in a strangely cheery glow.

Chandler was curled up in the driver's seat, keys still looped in his fingers. His hair was mussed from sleep and sex, shirt still unbuttoned. I could see his chest rise up and down as he slept. A smile curled over his lips.

Maybe it was just the peace in his face, or maybe it was something deeper. A pinprick of the future bleeding through my body. But I didn't wake him up, just quietly pulled at the lock of the car door and popped it open. The fabric of my dress clung to my legs, and I looked down to find a small rip inching up to mid-thigh.

I grinned, despite recalling the drawling slurs of my mother. She would probably kill me for having sex with y'ur fuckin' boyfrien'  in the backseat of his car, but for a moment, it didn't even matter. A laugh rose in my throat as I pictured how she'd grumble something in my direction, and I'd flick her the bird.

It'd just feel too good to defy her as she watched. Too good to see her face fall.

I shrugged on Chandler's jacket, and a quiet bloom of his smell drifted up to meet me. I closed the car door ever-so-slowly and ran up to my front door, pushing it open.

What I was met with, I could never defy.

I saw the vomit first. It spread in a greenish, caked on kind of texture, slicking to the corners of my mom's stiff lips. There was a pile of beer cans in her lap. Two big bottles of Jack Daniel's, empty. Her fingers, stale, white-knuckled. Her eyes, closed, greasy knots of hair falling over her face.

And for one, terrifying moment, I saw myself. My spiderwebbed wrists, my sagging shadows half-mooning under my eyes. The silence that peeled me apart, it encapsulated everything.

I didn't need to check for a pulse. And even if I did, I'm not sure I would try to help. She's been so far gone for ages, like that car you watch weave down the street until it's only a dot on the horizon.

My legs were locked, and I took a couple steps back, one two. One. Two. Then I'm running, and I don't know but I don't care, and I feel my stomach flip over and my legs are numb and my fingers are clammy.

I emerge from my house in jeans and a Bowie shirt, gripping the necks of four Coors Lights and a bottle opener. I sit on the swing, trying to make my hands stop shaking, and pop open a bottle, wrapping my fingers around its cold glass. It reeks of piss, and when I gulp down a mouthful, it tastes the same.

The flavor sticks around the rim and to the roof of my mouth. I finish gulping down one bottle, then drop it clumsily on the ground. I pop open another. It tastes better. I know I'm doing it right when the back of my throat stops hurting and the sky begins to flicker.

Chandler came over, and I fumbled for the opener. It took two tries until I could peel up the top of his bottle, then handed it to him. I think he understood, at least enough not to ask.

At least enough to stay here for a while. I think he knows the dark, ugly smear of what I'm feeling, how it feels like my chest will tear apart if I don't finish this bottle. How it's not only the beer that's making my tongue numb, it's a little bit of guilt, and maybe even a little hope for what's to come.

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Holy shiitake mushrooms, this story is already at 610 reads! Thank you lovelies so much, you're the best readers any author could ask for <3

It would be the best Christmas gift ever if we could get this to 1k!! Cheers to 175k on Bite Me as well!! Have a wonderful rest of your day :D

Published 12-9-16
Next chapter 12-12-16