“FUCK,” I bark. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
“Maybe you should go grovel, man. Preferably on your knees. From what I’ve heard, Bri likes that,” Theo teases, with what I can only assume is a shit-eating grin on his face. Fucking prick.
“Fuck you,” I hiss before spinning on my heels and marching out of what is now my sister’s flat without landing a punch on either motherfucker who’s watching me with amused eyes.
The door crashes back against the wall as I throw it open and storm through the building with thoughts of what happened today spinning around my head.
The second I’m in my flat, I drag my freezer open and pull out the bottle of vodka chilling in there and twist the top.
“Fuck you for doing this to me, Brianna Andrews.”
23
BRIANNA
Ripping my eyes open yesterday morning and forcing myself to look at the brightness of the phone screen so I could call in sick to both school and uni was almost more than I could handle.
The second I’d hit send on the email to my tutor, I dropped my phone into the sheets and immediately passed back out again.
I’ve had some hellish hangovers in the past, but this one was right up there.
The only saving grace was that Melissa saw the state of me the day before and would never question how legitimate my actual sickness is.
When I woke sometime during the afternoon feeling a little better, guilt for bailing on my job not even a week in because I couldn’t handle my own reality and reached for the bottle—just like my mother did—had me rushing to the bathroom faster than I thought possible before I emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet.
I sat there on my cold bathroom floor, my skin slick with sweat and my veins filled with regrets, for the longest time that I somehow fell back to sleep. And by the time I woke again, I was shivering, curled up on the floor with drool running from my mouth.
If I needed any more evidence about how shit my life is right now, then there it was.
When I eventually discovered my phone buried in the sheets, I found a whole heap of notifications, mostly from Jodie and Calli. I sent them both a message to let them know I was alive, and after stuffing my face with an entire bag of cheesy Doritos, I fell back into bed covered in an orange dusting, hoping that when I woke again everything would be okay.
With everyone believing I’ve got a stomach bug and unable to attend school again for forty-eight hours, I turn my alarm off when it goes off the next morning and flip onto my back.
Staring up at the ceiling, I appreciate that for the first time in a while, it doesn’t spin before me.
Hangovers are not fucking fun in your twenties.
I remember being seventeen and going on weekend binges and being okay for school on a Monday morning as if nothing had happened.
If my recovery is this bad now, I can only imagine what it’ll be like when I hit my thirties. It doesn’t even bear thinking about and is nearly enough to put me off drinking.
I almost allow myself to believe that’s possible. That is until his face flickers through my mind and I realise that while he’s in my life and firmly on his quest to ruin everything I’ve been working toward, or whatever it is he’s doing, then it’s not going to happen.
“You know, you’re not all that much better than your whore of a mother really, are you, Siren?”
Bile burns up the back of my throat as his deep, raspy voice fills my ears.
I’ve spent years trying to ensure I don’t turn into the mess my mother used to be. I barely remember how hard my early life was now, but the memories that do haunt me are enough.
I’m not like her. Not entirely, anyway.
I have qualifications, a future. Hopes, dreams, and desires that don’t revolve around getting wasted and high at every opportunity.
Rolling out of bed, I drag my fluffy onesie from under my bed, grab some clean underwear and pad out through my living room, turning the coffee machine on as I pass the kitchen in favour of the bathroom.
I feel a hell of a lot better once I’ve cleaned my teeth, and after stripping off, I throw myself into a red-hot shower to hopefully burn the scent of the past forty-eight hours from my skin.
I spend time exfoliating, shaving, anything to try and make myself feel better, and by the time I get out, I smell like fresh mangos. It’s just a shame my stomach is still knotted up. Although, I think most of that is probably hunger at this point. Those Doritos didn’t really do it for me last night.