Page 33 of I Blame the Alcohol

Chest aching with a pain I’ve never felt before, I open up my arms and she steps into the embrace. I pull her close, blinking against the burning sensation building in my own eyes.

“I’m sorry, Stel. That’s not a risk I’m willing to make.”

We stand like that, protecting each other from the outside world for seconds or minutes, I couldn’t tell you.

What I can tell you is it felt like the beginning of the end of something that never truly started.

Eventually, Stella pulls far enough away to rest her chin on my chest. Her tilted face and our close proximity makes it easy to read her expression, but instead of seeing bitter sorrow reflected back at me, I’m met with a calm stare.

A calm stare that makes me think the undertow is about to pull me under.

“So, here’s the thing.”

Here we go.

“When you say you aren’twillingyou mean you are choosing not to fight for us, right?”

“Did you not listen to a thing I just said?”

“No, I did.” She ducks out from my embrace, pacing through her argument two feet in front of me.

I try not to notice the way her black leggings cling to her backside, but the thin material leaves little room for the imagination.

“But you basically admitted to taking the easy way out.”

Is she joking?

“Did you miss the part where I saidI want to kiss you?” My voice is slowly getting louder, drawing looks from the only person to walk down this corridor in the last ten minutes.

Naturally.

“Mm, I did like that part.” She licks her lips and smiles at me in a way that has me looking at those leggings again, except this time I’m picturing them on my bedroom floor.

Focus, Ellsworth. This is what got you in trouble in the first place.

“BUT that doesn’t change the fact that you’re taking the coward’s way out.”

I cross my arms, our defensive positions reversed from minutes earlier, “How do you figure?”

“Well…” Stella holds up three fingers and starts ticking them off, “First, you are too much of a coward to simplyaskmy brother if he would be okay with us dating. Second, if you didn’t want to involve the great Mighty Mo, you could have grown a backbone and fought against any objections he might have.”

She rolls her eyes at the mention of her brother’s title but still manages to check off her final finger with a flourish, “And last but not least, you didn’t even ask how I felt or took into consideration what I want.”

Leave it to me to find the only girl who aggravates me as much as she amazes me.

I think I hate her.

Stella

If I took a shot every time Cody clenched his jaw, I would be comatose by now.

Watching him get more and more riled up every time I say the word “coward” has quickly become my new favourite past time.

Sadistic? Maybe.

Truthful? Absolutely.

I’m embarrassed to admit Cody’s little monologue got me to the point of tears – more like tear, singular – but witnessing the honesty being ripped from his body did something to me. It broke a damn inside that I didn’t know existed until a tear slid out from the hard shell I created when I found out my mother was never coming home.

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