Chapter 7

I couldn't pinpoint the exact time when I went completely off the rails. I remembered dancing and drinking and I remembered betting with a girl that I could do a handstand for one minute. I remembered making out with that girl and drinking more.

I remembered feeling trapped in my own skin and wanting to be anywhere but there. I remembered thinking about my friends with their perfect girlfriends and their perfect wives and their perfect lives and everything figured out. I remembered thinking how pretty fucking easy it was to judge me when you have it so good.

I remembered drinking and drinking more and smoking and dancing and standing over a toilet ready to puke or die.

I remembered glass breaking and blood spilling and I remembered being so fucking tired of everything.

Waking up was pretty freaking brutal. Opening my eyes was absolutely out of the question. I had no idea where I was and who was with me but it was clear that I wasn't alone because my head was resting on someone's lap, and whoever that was they were stroking my hair.

"Guys! I think he's coming around this time," a voice said over me, a voice I recognized and was pretty freaking grateful for.

I heard footsteps coming our way and I tried to move a little and open my eyes to look at who it was but then I just groaned in pain and buried my head on Vanessa's abdomen, clutching her shirt.

"Easy there, if you're feeling sick, we have a bucket right here," she said softly, still stroking my hair.

"Take it easy Nik, you had a rough night," Tyler suddenly said, his hand resting on my shoulder.

I breathed slowly, trying to make sense of what was going on in my head. After a few minutes I finally sat up on the couch and realized I was back in my penthouse. Also, Vanessa and Tyler weren't the only ones here.

Christ, the whole gang was there. Blake and Lexi, Josh and Daphnee, even Alex and Travis.

"Did my invitation to this little get-together got lost in the mail?" I joked, holding on to both sides of my head to try to stop the pounding.

"The invitation was Chloe texting me at three in the morning telling me that you were passed out on the sidewalk beside your own puke with a gash in your arm," Tyler told me, his eyes stern, his arms crossed. That was totally the look he should use if he ever needed to prove he'd be good father material.

What he had said made me look at my arm though. It was all bandaged up. And now that he had mentioned it, I could feel it throbbing. "What happened to my arm?"

"From what we were able to gather you couldn't walk straight and you made a girl drop bottles. They broke on the ground and you fell right on top of them," Blake told me. He looked just has stern as Tyler.

"You know, it's a shame you won't become a doctor anymore. Even almost passed out drunk you were able to explain to me perfectly how to do your stitches," Daphnee told me.

I frowned a little when I looked at her. There was something different about her... I shook my head. It didn't matter for now. For now what matter was that apparently I had needed stitches. "I did?"

I started to lift off the bandage hiding Daphnee's handy work while she told me, "Yeah, even if nurses aren't supposed to do stitches you were kind of extremely pushy about me doing it."

I examined the result. Not bad, not bad at all. "You did a nice job," I told her. Even if a pre-med student had no right to do stitches, it had been one of the first thing my father had thought me. I had never known why. I just remembered stitching bananas and my father's old leather satchels, and anything I could put my hands on that slightly resembled the texture of skin.

She shrugged at me. "You'd have done a better one."

Almost all of my friends, they were always very quiet went it came to talk about my career change, or well studies changes. They were all silently supportive. Or maybe not exactly supportive, more like not publicly objecting. I was a hundred percent sure that not all of them thought I was making the right choice. Sure, Blake and Josh were both artists and planned to have their own gallery, but I wasn't even sure if they thought I was doing the right thing.

Even I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing.

So yeah, almost all of my friend... except for Daphnee. The first time she heard that I was dropping out of pre-med she said "Well that's a stupid idea." She didn't voice her disagreement as obviously afterwards. But I knew what she was thinking. I was thinking it often too.

I looked up at my friends again, just standing around me, arms crossed looking stern and I was just hit with a revelation. I blamed the hangover-ness for not figuring it out sooner.

"Christ, is this some kind of intervention?"

"It didn't start that way. It started up as all of us being scared shitless that you had gone completely off the edge. But yeah, now it's definitely an intervention."

"Can I just go back to sleep with like ten aspirin and five bottles of Gatorade?"

"Here's your Gatorade," Lexi offered me a bottle. I took it like it was a precious treasure. "You're not getting any painkillers though. You used last night and we don't want you to be mixing stuff. You're not getting an overdose on our watch."

"You have to stop the partying Nik," Tyler told me, point blank. Everyone had gone so quiet and he was looking at me with such a serious gaze, but a worried and sad one at the same time that I felt like crying.

"It's killing you."

"I know..."

"Do you want it to kill you?" Alexander asked. He's been quiet so far. I'd kind of dreaded his intervention actually, with him studying to be a psychologist.

I didn't see the point in hiding my answer, the truth. "I want it to make me forget."

"It won't. Trust me on this, it really won't. Sleeping and drinking through your pain is only going to cause you more pain," Blake said. Speaking from experience...

I sighed, elbows resting in my thighs, head hanging low. "So what if it causes more pain. It's not like there's much for me to look forward to. It's not like I have a girl to impress or parents to make proud. I have no one. I'm alone and useless and frankly I just want to curl up and... I just want it all to stop okay."

"What about us then? We're not here?" Tyler asked, looking almost outraged.

I rolled my eyes. "You know what I mean."

"No, I really don't."

"Friends, it's not the same thing," I tried to say, but that was obviously the wrong answer.

"You're right, it's even more important than any floozy out there. We're not just your friends Nik, we're your family now, whether you like it or not," Josh said. He looked annoyed with me too. Alex would probably agree with me that his annoyance with me came from the fact that he had to watch Blake go through a similar kind of routine.

"You need to stop this destructive behaviour," Tyler told me, "I don't want you to be to our children just the guy in a picture who died choking on his own vomit."

I nodded, staring at the ground, not sure what to tell me.

"Go clean yourself up. And then get dressed. We're going on a little trip," Vanessa suddenly told me.

"Where?"

"We're taking you to the Dump Creek," Lexi answered.

I looked around at them. "Y'all's mating camping site?"

"Shut up. Just go take a shower. And for the love of god, brush your teeth," Tyler ordered.

I puked again when I got to the bathroom. Not one of my most glorious moments, I had to admit. I took my sweet time in the shower afterwards, trying to clear my head and remember my night. It was still blurry. I didn't know what I set me off, what had made me lose control that much. I was often drinking too much, but I was never that much of a train wreck.

I leaned against the wall of my shower.

Who was I kidding? I was always a train wreck.

I wanted my mom. I wanted my dad. I needed something to keep me grounded, someone there to reassure me. I just felt alone and hopeless, like a ship with no anchor and no destination. Like I was drowning and there was nothing for me to grasp to help me out of the water.

I felt lost.

I needed someone to figure this shit out for me because I had no idea what I was doing.

After my fingers and toes were entirely pruned, I got out of the shower and got dressed. I took off my ear gauges, because they suddenly felt heavy and annoying. I hadn't stretched my lobes that much because I was still a good boy at heart and knew how ear lobes were kind of useless and I kept thinking that I didn't care about my tattoos aging, but my earlobes shagging, not so much. So, my ears didn't look like a catastrophe.

The rest of me probably did though.

My friends didn't try to give me life lessons as we got out of my penthouse, just a bag with snacks and Gatorade bottles.

We all crammed into two cars. I slept throughout most of the ride, stuck between Blake and Tyler's girlfriends, my head resting against Lexi's shoulder.

When we got there, a car was already parked. The twins were working on the house they were building so they wouldn't have to sleep in tents anymore. It looked more like a house in a tree than an actual cabin in the woods. It was actually quite a nice sight.

Cameron was an architect and Trevor was in construction so they worked well together.

The nap and the snacks had helped and I was feeling a little better. So, I couldn't help myself from yelling, "Hey Twinies, where are the guuuurlfriends?"

They were both dating but they barely if ever brought their girlfriend when I was around so I always said that they were just making them up and that they weren't real.

"WE'LL BRING OUR GIRLFRIENDS WHEN YOU BRING YOUR BOYFRIEND!" one of them yelled back.

I flipped them off. "Son of a bitch! You bastards are betting on that too?"

"Are you kidding me? That's got to be Michael's Grayson greatest bet so far," one of them said.

I was walking towards them at that point so there was no need to yell anymore. "Yeah, Blake and Lexi getting together was rigged from the start. And we all knew that our football team was never going to win any finals," the other twin added.

"And betting on when the snow is going to melt and when Clark is going to get punch in the face has lost its appeal. It's gotten boring over the years."

I shook my head. "Glad to know my sexual life is so entertaining."

"No, no, it's not about your sexual life, it's your sexual preference," Alex informed me. "Big difference there." Him too? And weren't gay guys supposed to spot other ones?

"Yeah, look at Alex, he slept with a girl, didn't make him straight," one of the twin added.

Blake heard that passing through and just said, "How many times do I have to say this, Alex never slept with Lexi," without even stopping to listen to the answer.

"Whatever makes you sleep better at night man," a twin called back, grinning.

"I just want to put this out there, that whoever put money on me being gay is going to lose and obviously Tyler is my only friend," I tried to say. They all laughed at my answer.

"You played touch-the-peepee-hide-it-in-the-poopoo with some dude at the bar last night," Josh said, grinning.

I went still. "I didn't."

Josh cackled. He cackled. Bastard. "You suuuuuuure?"

I glared at him. "I hate you."

"I'm kiiiiidding," he answered in a sing-song voice.

"Chloe did say she saw you have sex with like two girls though," Tyler added, catching up with us.

"At different times or together? That's kind of important for my stats," I asked.

"You're a disgrace for the male specie," my bestfriend stated.

I bowed. "Thank you."

"Whatever. Just please, don't scare us again like that. You weren't just drunk you know," Vanessa told me.

"Yeah, I figured as much," I admitted. I had too many memory lapses and too much of a weird reaction to the alcohol. It wasn't the first time I got drunk. It was the first time I lost it that much.

"I had no idea what you were on," he said.

"I had no idea what I was on," I answered.

"Look, I'm not against recreational drugs from time to time, I'm not asking you to be completely abstinent. I just want you to at the very least know what you take. You were going to be a doctor for Christ's sakes. You know not to mess with that shit."

"I know," I agreed with my bestfriend.

"Good."

The ride here had taken a while and I hadn't exactly woken up at the crack of dawn so it was already getting up late.

Everybody was fussing around, preparing food and I just sat at the picnic table, looking at them.

I envied their friendship. Sure I was friends with them now, but I didn't share the kind of bound they had, the kind that came from years of knowing each other. There were no secrets between them, or barely. They knew all the inside jokes.

They knew each other.

I barely even knew myself.

After everyone was done eating and they were just hanging around, playing cards and catching up together, I got up and walked towards the Dump Creek which was more like a small lake, really.

Daphnee came to sit beside me at the end of the deck.

I looked at her sideways. I smiled when I realized what had changed with her. "You're pregnant aren't you?"

She punched my arm. "How in Paul McCartney's holy name did you know that?"

I shrugged and laughed. "You keep pressing your hand on your stomach and you've got all the telltale signs."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Code for I've got bigger boobs?"

"No just that. It's a variety of little things. And it just makes sense," I told her.

"I haven't told anyone yet, except Josh."

"I bet Blake is going to see that as a race the moment you guys announce it," I said with a chuckle.

"Probably, Josh and Blake are kind of childish like that sometimes. I'd be happy for my kid to have the company though." I kind of wanted to close my eyes while she spoke. She really had a nice voice. I totally understood why Josh always said he was more obsessed with it than any of her physical features.

"Doesn't Josh sister already have like two kids?" I pointed out.

"Yeah, she just gave birth to her second."

"That's going to end in a bloody divorce," I mumbled looking at the water.

"Why would you say that?"

I shrugged again. "They're trying to do everything too fast."

"What about us?"

I took a breath and looked at my friend. "You can't break up, no one's crazy could ever match yours like Josh's does."

She nodded, smiling. "You've got a point."

"What are you guys chatting about here?" Josh asked us from behind, Blake beside him.

"That Daphnee should dump you for me. I looooove the Beatles. I once touched Paul McCartney's hand."

Daphnee grabbed my shoulder, suddenly looking a little hysterical. "I know you're saying this to mess with Josh but are you freaking serious? Did you really touch God's hand?"

I grinned. "Sure did."

She looked back at her boyfriend, and apparently her baby-daddy. "Josh, it was nice knowing you."

"TYLER!" Josh automatically yelled. "Come get your bestfriend. I don't want him hanging around my girlfriend anymore. Or my bestfriend," he added as an afterthought. "He's a bad influence on everybody!"

"Don't worry Josh, I'm not leaving you," Daphnee told him getting up, and then she leaned forward and whispered a little too loudly, "Just say the word and that Rolling Stone loving bastard is ancient history."

I laughed at their antic and let them leave. I'd seen Tyler making is way towards me with Vanessa.

While I was alone for a second, I grabbed my pack of cigarette from my jeans back pocket but before I could even take one out Tyler ripped it out of my hands and threw them in the lake.

"What the fuck Tyler?"

"You're done with those."

"What? You want me to quit smoking too?" One vice at the time please. It wasn't even one at the time. With the smoking that brought the tally to three now. Sex, booze and smokes.

"I would let it slide if it wasn't for the fact that you're really becoming a bad influence," he told me and sat beside me, Vanessa on my other side, "Stop making my girlfriend smoke."

His girlfriend squeaked. Like literally squeaked. I barked a laugh at the ridiculous sound. "You know?" Van asked.

"Oh honey, no amount of gum can truly hide a cigarette breath. Speaking of which," Tyler looked at me for that part, "each and every girl that slept with you need a freaking trophy, you stinking chimney."

I rolled my eyes. "And the compliments just keep coming and coming."

"You know you smell fantastic without second hand smoke sticking in your clothes," Vanessa told me, trying to reassure me.

"Yeah, it's still kind of a shock to associate it with my shy friend who didn't even want to drink a Red Bull to study longer for his midterms because it was a cardiac arrest in a can," Tyler said.

"I've grown more complacent in my old age."

"That's the thing, I'd like you to actual get to old age. Could you do that for us?"

I ran a hand through my hair. "I'll see what I can do."

Tyler shook his head. "That's not enough. I want you to say you're going to stop being a drama queen and you're going to try to enjoy the life you've been given. You parents can't do that anymore. And I'm sure your dad would hate you for wasting yourself away like this. He'd have given anything for more time."

I wanted to tell them that my father had probably been right, that I obviously took from my mother my outlook on life in general. I didn't want to worry them more though, so I kept my mouth shut.

"Fine dad, I'll stop sabotaging my own life. Happy?"

"Barely."

We sat there in silent for a little while. I felt like an unruly child sitting between his disappointed parents.

"Well, it's getting late," Vanessa announced.

"Whenever you want to get some sleep, the twins said we're okay to go in the house. We actually have bunks now," Ty added.

"I'll come in later, when y'all are done sinning with each other," I teased. I tried not to let it show that, the jealousy. They were all here in pairs, except for the twins. Still, all of them were happily dating. They all had a better half. It wasn't like I was desperate for a girlfriend. I didn't even want one. I was just jealous of the intimacy, of the idea of having someone always there beside you.

"Marvelous," Vanessa said and they both got up.

"Don't throw yourself in the Creek!" Tyler told me when they were a few feet away.

"NO PROMISES!" I called back.

Everyone left me alone after that. Maybe they realized I needed time for myself. Maybe they were having too much fun together.

I could hear chatter coming from the open house. I let my back hid the deck, my legs dangling from its edge towards the water. I stared at the stars. The sky was a nice sight here.

I took a deep breath.

I could do it. I could get myself back together.

I didn't have to think like my mother.

She might have given up, but my father never did. He fought till the end for his life. And I was my father's son. I could fight. And today was proof enough that I wasn't alone in this.

I had friends. I wasn't alone.

I wasn't alone...