Page 7 of The Beautiful Collision
It’s exhausting being everyone’s good time.
But it’s better than being nobody whatsoever.
The party swirls on, fed by spite and premium liquor. Tomorrow I’ll put on scrubs and be competent and professional and everything they’d approve of if they considered nursing worthy of approval. Tomorrow I’ll handle literal shit with more grace than they handle emotional honesty.
But now, I raise my precisely measured vodka-cranberry in tribute to whatever premium glassware just died for my sins. “To bad decisions,” I toast to no one.
“And the credit cards that enable them,” Sophie adds, appearing with her characteristic ability to be present for my worst moments.
She links her arm through mine, and for just a second, the performance slips.
And, for just a second, I’m just Maya.
The queen of her own beautiful disaster.
I can’t remember his name.
The thought detonates through my hangover, ripping me from the merciful void into a world that smells like regret. My mouth is a graveyard where tequila went to die—metallic and wrong—while I justknowthe morning light is ready to perform laser surgery on my retinas as soon as I open my eyes.
I pry one eye open, immediately regretting every life choice that led to this moment as the room pirouettes. My bedroom looks like CSI: Bad Decisions—clothes scattered like evidence markers, an empty wine bottle standing sentinel on my nightstand like a disappointed parent, and is that…
Yes, that’s definitely someone’s bra helicoptering from my ceiling fan.
Not mine, which means someone stumbled home with tits playing Marco Polo.
As the percussion section in my skull keeps time with my pulse, I haul myself vertical, my stomach protesting. The full-length mirror across from my bed reflects a masterpiece of poor choices: mascara smeared under my eyes, hair that could qualify for federal disaster relief, and?—
“What theactualfuck?” I say.
There’s a hickey blooming on my collarbone like a participation award.
“Whothe actual fuck?”
Him. Right.
Tyler? Taylor? Tanner?
Absolutely started with a T. Or maybe a D.
The apartment beyond my bedroom door maintains an eerie silence, and I just hope everyone made their way home, becausethe only thing worse than this hangover would be this hangover with company. I shuffle out into the living room and freeze so hard I could moonlight as a med-school cadaver.
Whoa.
It looks like several frat houses had an orgy, got pregnant, and gave birth to this disaster right in my living room. There are red cups everywhere, the coffee table has a glaze of dried… something, and as I step out to take it all in, my bare foot discovers something wet and viscous.
The smell hits next—a complex bouquet of stale beer, vapes, and body spray. On top of that, someone definitely offered the porcelain god a sacrifice somewhere, because I can smell it lurking beneath everything else like a predator waiting to pounce when my gag reflex least expects it.
This is your rebellion, I remind myself, snatching a garbage bag from under the sink.Your giant middle finger to Chestnut Hills champagne brunches.
I start cleaning—collecting cups, wiping surfaces, opening windows—content in the knowledge that my parents would flatline if they witnessed this, which was partly the point. My efforts to maximize the negative ROI I represent on their parental investment portfolio paid dividends.
When the worst of the trash is bagged, I decide my head is clear enough to get the bra down from my fan. I drag a kitchen chair into my room and ascend, the room doing the cha-cha as I wobble, and I’m almost done liberating the bra when my phone starts screaming at me.
The screen lights up like a bomb timer: FATHER.
My blood freezes in my veins. He hardly ever calls, but henevercalls on weekends. Weekends are for golf at the club where memberships cost more than medical school and charity galas where they discuss how to help “the less fortunate” without actually having to see them. Unless?—
He knows.
