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23. Jade

23

JADE

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” Act III, Scene II

I despise gin. For some reason, all this frat party has tonight is gin, and I don’t want to be sober, so that’s what I’m drinking.

I weave through the crowd, a cup in each hand, and head to the basement to lose myself in the music and movement of a sea of bodies. It takes me as long to find someone to dance with as it does for the first drink to hit me, which is to say, not long at all. I try to flip through the mental menu of what I’ve eaten today, but all I come up with is a Pop-Tart, a bag of cheddar popcorn, a couple waffles, and at least two Diet Cokes.

It’s not like I’m avoiding meals, but a lot of things fell to the wayside the past two weeks with my mom and catching up, so I had a lot going on today. Food was the least important thing on my mind.

I slug back my second Solo cup of gin and lemonade and ditch the guy I’m dancing with in search of more alcohol. I trip going up the stairs, and someone coming down the stairs helps me back up.

“You okay there, gorgeous?”

I look up and into Ian’s eyes. Startled, I straighten and blink a few times, but Ian disappears and some guy I don’t know is standing in front of me, reaching out to steady me.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry, I’m . . . Yeah, thank you.”

The guy, tall like Ian but more muscular and tanned, helps me up the stairs, walking backward, holding one of my hands as I clutch the railing with the other. Upon closer inspection, this guy has almost black hair and bright green eyes, and he doesn’t look a thing like Ian. Obviously.

Ian was never here.

I clearly need more to drink.

The muscly guy leads me to a couch in the living room, and I follow him. Sitting does sound nice. The room is considerably less crowded than the basement, with just a handful of people standing in a small group, chatting. There’s a pair of people making out in the far corner of the room. No one really seems to notice us as we come in and sit.

“I haven’t seen you around here before,” the guy says, not really asking anything.

I don’t care. I’m a girl on a mission, and I’m not leaving until I can successfully say “mission accomplished.”

I want to get Ian out of my system, because the only way to get over someone is to get under someone else. Or on top of someone else. I’m not picky.

“I’ve been once or twice,” I say, scooting closer to him. The leather is already sticky against my skin, but I try to make the transition as smooth as possible. “But I can’t believe I haven’t noticed you before. Surely if I’d met you, I’d remember.”

I bat my eyelashes and cross my arms, pushing my cleavage up even higher out of my corset top. Looking between his lips and his eyes, I hope he picks up what I’m putting down, but Muscles doesn’t seem like the sharpest tool in the shed.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Does it matter?” I say and finish what he won’t start.

We kiss, but it’s not a satisfying kiss. It’s too much tongue and not enough coordination. We can’t seem to find a rhythm, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. It probably wouldn’t have bothered me before Ian.

Just one more thing that green bean ruined.

I shove Ian out of my mind and grab the fabric of this guy’s shirt, pulling him against me. He reaches around me, aggressively taking my ass in his hands. I’m practically on top of him, and it feels so awkward that it’s all I can do to kiss him for another few seconds before pulling away.

He looks ravenous and goes in for another kiss, but my hand is on his chest faster than his lips can get to mine. I try to play it off like I’m teasing him, like I’m the one in control, and I lean in, my lips next to his ear.

“Let’s go somewhere more private.” I try to sound as sexy as I can, like I actually want to do this with him and I’m not thinking about another pair of hands or another person I’d rather be doing this with.

And even if there was, it wouldn’t matter because my heart doesn’t know what’s best for me, and what’s best for me is not being in a relationship with someone like Ian. Right now, what’s best for me is escaping reality.

Muscles nods enthusiastically at my suggestion and takes me by the hand, leading me up two flights of stairs to one of the bedrooms in the frat house.

“You live here?” I ask.

“Yep,” he says.

“Without a roommate?” I ask, skeptical that we’re actually going to get some private space.

“He’s out of town this weekend.”

Convenient.

Muscles locks the door and wastes no time in stripping off his shirt. Strictly speaking, he’s hot. He’s got an eight- or twelve-pack of abs that a few months ago might have gotten me excited for the activities we’re about to engage in. But tonight, I wish he were a little leaner, a little sharper at the joints . . .

Knock it off, Jade.

I grab Muscles by his wrist and plant his hands firmly on my ass, wrapping my arms around his neck for another kiss.

It’s just as average as the last one, all tongue and teeth in a bad way with no cadence. Definitely no chemistry. It takes every bit of my concentration not to focus on the taste of the gin we’ve both been drinking, the intoxicating fumes of Axe body spray, and the stench of laundry that’s long overdue for washing. I tell myself I’m enjoying this. I’m not kissing Muscles because I’m avoiding Ian. I’m not running away from my feelings. I’m not trying to fuck away the memory of someone else’s hands on my body.

Muscles and I stumble our way over to his futon-couch-thing, which I’m not sold on the cleanliness of, but it can’t be any more offensive than the beds in the room—neither of which has sheets attached. He sits, pulling me onto his lap, and we kiss this way for what feels like an eternity, except it’s in The Bad Place. He squeezes my breasts through my shirt like they’re stress toys, and I can only take so much of that.

“Why don’t we . . . do something else?” I suggest, fighting to keep my tone kind of sexy as I gently push on his biceps to get his paws away from my chest. My skin is crawling, and I know I should leave, but there’s just enough alcohol in me to convince me to see this out.

“Hell yeah,” he practically growls, and he goes for the zipper on his pants. “You wanna get me first?”

Before I can blink, Muscles has his dick out and is holding it, waiting for me to do something. There’s an eagerness in his eyes, and my stomach turns, acid burning the back of my throat. I bolt from the room, covering my mouth so I don’t turn out my insides on anyone, and make it to a communal bathroom just in time to get rid of all the gin I consumed to make this evening tolerable.

“ You spend so much energy taking care of yourself, and now it’s my turn. ”

I press my cold, damp hands to my cheeks after I wash them and exhale a sigh straight from my soul, steeling myself for whatever awaits me in the hallway. But Muscles isn’t anywhere to be seen, and thank god, because I have no interest in explaining why the sight of his . . . face might send me back to the bathroom.

Mission not accomplished.

The cold November air hits me like a slap in the face as I leave the frat house, which is actually what I need—to be slapped in the face. I start the walk back to my apartment only to remember that I drove over here, and it’s too cold to walk in my leather miniskirt and corset top. I head to my car, rubbing my arms to warm myself and kicking myself for acting so ridiculous tonight.

It’s not like any of it helped. I’m haunted by Ian. I could spend the rest of my life trying to forget him and he’d be lurking in the corners of my mind, hiding in the shadows of my heart.

My traitorous heart.

I tried so hard not to fall for that green bean, and look at me now. Behaving like a heartsick teenager because he fought for me and I ran away, like I always do. It actually annoys me how right he was about everything.

“ These are real feelings . . . You feel them too, and it scares the fuck out of you. ”

If I were a stronger person, I would have told him he was right. That I was scared, and I am scared. I would have apologized for not being the person he wants me to be, because he deserves better than me. He deserves a kind of love I’m not capable of giving him.

Ian needs someone who doesn’t behave like this when things get too hard. Someone who doesn’t run. Someone who is more steady, like him. Someone who isn’t anything like me.

When my eyes fill with tears, I let them flow. No reason to hold back now—it doesn’t get any fucking lower than this. I don’t even recognize myself after tonight. Drinking shitty gin just to get drunk? Throwing myself at someone I didn’t even want? Who the hell?—?

With crashing clarity, I realize I do recognize myself. I know exactly who I’m behaving like.

“Fuck.”

I’m behaving like my mom.

I climb in the car, turning on the heat and laying the seat all the way back. I need to sober up before I drive, but even if I were sober, I’m not sure I’m ready to face Jessie and Mac yet.

Have I always been like this?

“ Well, level one is, like, she gets rip-roaring drunk . . . ” Jessie’s words echo around in my head.

Oh god.

I’ve spent my whole life trying not to be anything like my mother, avoiding love to avoid heartbreak to avoid being like her. And here I am, spending my Saturday night the way she would spend hers in my shoes.

When I was sixteen, there was this stretch of time where my mom was single. She’d been single for three months, sober for about a month, and we were watching Pride and Prejudice , the 2005 version. It’s one of our favorites. I remember turning to my mom, mid-grab for the popcorn.

“Why do you drink so much, Mom? After a breakup.”

At the time, I just thought alcohol was fun for a party. It made everyone have more fun, but my mom never had fun when she drank. She was fun when she wasn’t drinking. So why do it?

“Because sometimes it’s all too much, Jade-bear. I just feel too many things, and it’s too much. And sometimes a drink makes it a little easier.”

I nodded, but I didn’t fully understand. Sometimes I felt a lot of things too, but I just shoved them back into my brain and they disappeared. Why the alcohol then? Could she not do that? At the time, I slumped back on the couch and stuffed popcorn into my mouth. She ran a hand over my head affectionately, giving me a soft “you’ll understand when you’re older” kind of smile.

I hate that she was right.

I do understand now. I understand what it’s like to feel too much. Every time sadness or disappointment or grief or anger comes to visit, it feels like too much. But not because it’s too heavy. It’s like looking into the ocean and realizing that even if I swam down as far as I could go, I’d still never see the bottom of it. It’s the terror of thinking I’ve gone too far and I might not be able to resurface and gasp for air.

My mom and I have been avoiding the ocean altogether, scared of its endlessness, but there’s more to the ocean than its depth. What about the rush of the wave as it passes over me? The power of its force knocking my feet out from under me. What about the salty taste of the earth on my tongue and its residue on my sun-warmed skin? What about the joy of discovery when I see the life teeming underneath it? Crabs scurrying away, fish gliding to their next destination, shells hiding life underneath, and the darkness of the water concealing a predator from its prey. It’s overwhelming, but what if that’s the point?

What if the ocean is supposed to terrify and delight you? What if all of life is supposed to do that? What if I’m supposed to get lost for a while in my sadness?

And what if I get lost for a while in my joy?

My mom believed I would understand her when I got older because she saw herself in me. She saw my self-destructive tendencies, and instead of guiding me away from them, she just sat back and let me become exactly who she was. My belly roils. What should I have expected, though, from someone who can’t even see her own patterns and behaviors? This is a woman who won’t look in the metaphorical mirror and see what she’s doing to her own life.

Instead, she’s looking in the mirror and seeing my life.

And I’m looking in the mirror and seeing her.

But I don’t want to be this person anymore. I want to look in the mirror and see me, and I want to be proud of the person staring back at me. I don’t want to be the Jade who gets rip-roaring drunk when she’s sad, and I don’t want to be the kind of person who decides not to explore the ocean because someone else told her it was too scary.

I’m sick of walking miles in my mother’s shoes. My feet are tired, and her shoes don’t fit me anymore.

I’m buying my own shoes, and they won’t look anything like hers.