Page 56 of Break Your Fall

“Well, yeah.” She gives me a smile, her brow pointed. “Moderation, right?”

I did say that. That is true. Moderation. And at least she’s with me this time. We can do this together.

Banks lifts a beer into the air and says to me, “To my new roomie.”

I chuckle despite myself, then pick up a bottle and twist off the cap. I make like I’m going to clink our bottles, then pull back at the last second, swallowing two gulps through a partial gag.

“This shit is … shit,” I say with a face at the bottle in my hand. I don’t remember alcohol tasting this gross.

“Wineis the shit,” Reyna says after a swallow from her own bottle. “But not the shit,” she clarifies.

“You haven’t had enough,” Banks says to me. “Keep going.” He chugs from his bottle with his eyes on mine, his hand waving me on to tip back my bottle.

But it’s Reyna’s lips as they fold around the mouth of hers that draws my own lips to take another drink.

We’re a couple beers in, still in the kitchen, when Banks, who has migrated to the living room to play video games, announces he’s being attacked by a shit. His exact words, as he races past us to my bathroom.

“Flush,” I shout after him. “And turn the vent on.”

I’m going to have to fumigate this place once he’s gone.

We’re a few more beers in when we start watching him play, my intoxicated head mesmerized as Banks rams the car he’s driving straight into a group of screaming pedestrians, then screams back for them to get off the sidewalk. Because that’s where he drives, he argues. On the sidewalk.

I laugh around a swallow of beer, then try to quit when I feel Reyna’s eyes on me. I catch her stare and she snickers behind her own bottle, the glass hiding half her face, which only makes me laugh more.

“I feel … amazing,” I say as I lumber back to the kitchen.

“Alcohol, dude. That’s all you need,” Banks says before yelling at the television again.

“Andthat’s a good place to stop,” Reyna sings as she joins me, spinning for the fridge. “It’ll just get bad and pukey from here.”

Not for him,I think with a glance at Banks who’s chugging another one. He’s the loudest swallower I’ve ever heard in my life.

Or Valerie,I think next, having to remind myself that those two are a special breed.

I knock on the bar to get Reyna’s attention when I could just use my voice, which is what I do next. “Grab me another.”

She laughs as she reemerges, her arms stuffed with food. “Nope. I’m stopping here, too. So, if you want another, I get to have another.”

I laugh, for no real reason, as she sets the pile of my food she collected in front of me on the bar. “You’re the one who said it’s hard to stop.”

“It is when you’re hollow.”

A pang grips my stomach as I remember the night I stayed with her after she showed up wasted at the beach party. But she’s not hollow here? Now? “You’re not hollow right now?”

“I’m never hollow with you.” She tears the wrapping on one of my chocolate bars. “Try,” she says before raising a bite of whatever she has pinched between her fingers, and I open my mouth without thought, my tongue and lips grazing her skin, her eyes locked with mine as she pulls back. As the chocolate starts to melt to my tongue, I’m thinking,I just had Reyna’s fingers inside my mouth,then I’m spitting it all out into the sink when I taste something else that doesn’t mix well at all.

“What the hell was that?” I sputter to her giggling, then use water straight from the faucet to rinse my mouth.

“Chocolate and cheese,” she says with another laugh, feeding herself a bite of the cursed coupling.

“Whoa, hold on, chocolate andcheese?”

“Who doesn’t like chocolate and cheese?”

“Me,” I say as I swipe a piece of the cheese and fling it at her. She gapes as it smacks against her dress—a dress I can finally soak in, another Halloween aesthetic.

I can wear this anytime you want.

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