Hot, thick tears rolled steadily down my splotchy cheeks, the intense burn of tension and heat erupting from the depths of my eye sockets. I was hunched over, braced against the women's bathroom counter, tears pouring down my face as I sobbed uncontrollably into a wad of toilet paper when a sudden flush shook the room. Apparently, I wasn't alone. 

I quieted for a moment, my heartbeat drumming louder in my chest, terrified to face whoever had just heard me ugly crying for the last several minutes. It felt like an eternity passed before I heard the clumsy unlatch and uneven creaking of a door being opened by a drunk person. I held my breath.

Rosemary tottered out awkwardly, her right hand gripping the top of the unfinished wooden stall door for balance. She took a brief glance at my face before dropping her wide, darting eyes to the dark tiled floor, unconvincingly pretending that she hadn't seen or heard my crying. It almost made me feel better: watching her drunken self attempt to sell unadulterated nonchalance and obliviousness. Rosemary had many wonderful qualities, but acting was not one of them. 

The only movie she'd get cast in is a porno.

"What the fuck is Nate's problem?" I slurred, my speech betraying an attempt at sounding sober. 

My vision was in-and-out of focus, but I could still see the deer in headlights standing before me, taking the form of a doe-eyed beauty in a velvet mini skirt. Her drunken eyes displayed her discomfort, but she looked to be deep in thought, formulating her reply.

"Oh! Uh..." She swallowed hard, awkwardly leaning against the bathroom counter, stumbling in the process. "Well... I guess I needa... needa know what ya mean by... w-what I mean is... well, what?... like what happened?"

Holy shit someone might actually be drunker than me.

"Girl, what the hell?" I asked, amused, before sharing a surprisingly comfortable laugh with her.

"Dunno man," Rosemary giggled, droopy eyed and throwing both of her hands up into an exaggerated but loose shrug. "But what happened?"

"I tried to like, h-hit on him earlier... and like... and like ever since then he's been such a... jerk!" I was getting heated again, reliving Nate's assault on my character. Tears pricked at my raw and stinging eyes.

"Girl. I'm so-sorry to tell ya this... but he's-a... a lost cause. Or gay. Sam... Sam thinks he's gay," Rosemary said, reaching up and nervously rubbing the back of her neck.

"I wouldn't wanna date someone like... that anyways," I spat, a little too loud. "He just... he didn't have to be rude."

Rosemary was examining my face in a way that made me uncomfortable, just like Sam had earlier in the night. I reflexively closed myself off, pulling my hands to play with my own fingers in front of me. I wished that people would stop looking at me like that.

"What... What is it?" I asked hesitantly.

"Okay... maybe he isn't gay. I mean... h-he did... he did kiss me at last year's Christmas party." Rosemary slurred, eyeing my reaction closely through hooded eyelids. A small smirk played on her full lips, as if she was remembering the instance fondly, and my first impulse was to punch her in the mouth.

I resisted... barely.

Steaming jealousy struck my chest and eyes first before leaching into the rest of my jittery drunken body. My heart beat echoed through my ear canals, and I shook my head slowly, trying to maintain my briefly-found composure. And avoid an aggravated assault charge.

"I don't... I-I don't mean to upset you..." she trailed off.

"No, you're fine," I said stiffly, avoiding eye contact and gnawing on the inside of my cheek, lost in thought.

Why the fuck do I care so much? It's not like he likes me.

It's not like he even tolerates me.

Apparently no one can.

Rosemary was still looking at me with curious eyes, but I wanted to peel all of my skin off and crawl into a ditch somewhere, never to return to civilization again. I clumsily pulled my phone from my back pocket. The screen was fogged over, and a ring of sweat was threatening to slip beneath the borders of my phone case. I wiped it on my slightly-drier thigh before checking the time.

11:04 PM

Time to go home!

I wanted to get as far away from Rosemary as I could but I needed to clean myself up. Looking into the mirror for the first time in too long, I found a sad, sweaty, disheveled girl on a sea of cinder block walls, red and tearful eyes paired with a shelf of exhaustion bags, her lower lashline erupting from the swollen area. She parted her cracked lips before numbly turning her gaze to the other human being in the room.

"Could I have a moment alone?" I asked flatly, staring through Rosemary. She cocked her head to the side, but her strappy silver heels remained firmly planted.

"Please." My voice came out quiet but forceful, pleading words coming from a girl with a vacant expression.

"Oh. Yeah...okay," Rosemary slurred monotonously as she walked, her tan arms crossed over the translucent fabric of her off-white tube top. She leaned her hips into the metal crash bar to open the door while expertly avoiding touching anything with her clean hands on her way out. 

Alone, I was safe to openly feel again. 

My trembling hands gripped the warm tile surface of the bathroom counter, my head hanging down with shame before lifting my chin, entering my own line of sight again.

I just wanna go home.

I made a quick detour to the toilet, grabbing a fresh handful of one-ply toilet paper, before returning to my own gaze. Even to me, my eyes looked empty, expressionless. I didn't understand how that could be when I felt so much. 

I felt everything. 

Everything. From my own Mother texting me to tell Perry that she loved him, with no mention of any love for me. To my best fucking friend ditching me, who she has barely seen in a year. To Nate toying with me, making me think that he was going to kiss me, only to insult me to my face. I felt every bit of it.

I just wanna go home.

I lightly wet one side of the wad of crumpled-up toilet paper, gingerly rubbing the heavy streaks of mascara beneath my puffy eyes. Pulpy pin-sized rolls of disintegrating paper appeared in record time. When the majority of my eye makeup had been successfully removed, I attempted to brush the rolls off my face and into the sink. There was limited success.

I heard the squeal of familiar laughter just before Pearl burst through the bathroom door, running to me with glee.  

We are having two very different nights, it seems.

Before Pearl had the chance to shake me, as she had earlier in the night, I spun to face her, dropping into a lazily crouched fighting stance.

"Pearly girl," I pleaded halfheartedly, holding a hand out in her general direction. She stopped dead in her tracks, playfully dropping her jaw, "If you... shake me... I-I will throw up."

"You promise?" She joked, but kept her distance. Neither of us laughed, but I approached her slowly, turning my head side to side for Pearl to see.

"H-how bad issit?" I asked, referring to my splotchy mess of a face, "Be hon-honest."

I just wanna go home.

"It looks alright... just k-keep your head down... just til we get ousside okay? Perry's rounding up everyone now," she advised. Her red lipstick was smudged, presumably by Johnny. 

I nodded my head solemnly.

"June, do you wanna talk 'bout it now or... or later? I don't know w-hat happened but I'm... I-I'm here for you okay?" Pearl said, reaching up to gently rub my right shoulder for a moment. My bitter sentiments towards her from earlier in the night had already dissipated in her presence.

"Tomorrow would be gr-.. great."

"Okay, w-we can do that. You ready?" Pearl's eyes were full of warmth as she offered me her hand. I reached out, taking her small hand into mine and I nodded.

I just wanna go home.

We exited the women's restroom as a united front. I kept my head down, and Pearl led the way until I was safely buckled into the passenger seat of Sam's car, where those in the rear seats would have a harder time getting a good look at my disheveled appearance.

I played sudoku on my phone in silence for the next hour as we made various stops at the scattered residences where the party-goers lived. To my relief, Nate was dropped off first. As we watched him cross through the threshold of a brick two-story townhouse, Perry and Sam awkwardly announced that they'd drop everyone else off first before returning to Sam's place, together. Perry would return with the rental car in the morning, since there was no one sober enough to drive him to Tipsy.

Gross!

The thought of sweet, wonderful Sam bumping uglies with my abhorrent step brother made bile form in the back of my throat, but that was the least of my problems tonight. There was no mention by anyone of Johnny's home being a stop, so Pearl must be following through with operation v-card, and I would be sleeping on the white leather couch less than fifteen feet from them as she did. I would hear everything. That was, unless Perry was cool with me borrowing his room in his absence, which I knew he wouldn't be.

Lucky me.