I was going to be sick, and I couldn’t blame it on the mojitos or Katy. I lifted the toilet seat lid and sat on the cold marble floor beside it.
James: Mom and Dad are arguing. Dad slept on the couch last night. I’ve been outside working on this fucking deck all afternoon while they’ve been inside fighting.
Well, that confirmed my worst fear. In my twenty-four years, not once could I remember my dad sleeping on the couch. And while they argued growing up, it was never enough that I’d worried the way James was worrying. The only exception being a few years ago, when I’d caught my dad and had to tell my mom.
Had Dad confessed this time? Or had she figured it out on her own? I didn’t know which was better, honestly.
One thing was for fucking sure: I was not in a hurry to get back home, to be in the middle of that shit show.
I’ll be here for a while
It was the cowardly way out. I could admit it. As someone with more bravery than sense sometimes, I could see my own cowardice and call myself on it.
Instead of texting me back, James called me. I nearly sent it to voicemail but knew he wouldn’t stop calling until I answered.
“Seriously, Tori?” He practically spit it into the phone.
“Hello to you too,” I said, tracing the box weave pattern on the plush shower curtain.
“It’s not a fucking joke, Tori. They’re fighting. Like, actually yelling in there.”
I closed my eyes, remembering the world war that had erupted the first time my dad had been caught cheating. “Well, I’ll be here a bit longer,” I said, fishing for an excuse to not return home.
“Why? What’s more important than coming home?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, but he didn’t wait long enough for me to give him one anyway.
“So, you’re gonna leave me here to play referee while you get drunk day in and day out? Big fucking surprise.”
“Got me,” I said, though that wasn’t my plan at all.
“You’re so fucking selfish, I swear. Leaving me to be the responsible one. Yet again. Thanks a fucking lot, Tori, you selfish bitch.”
I let him yell at me. I didn’t envy his position, and I knew it was a shitty thing to leave him to be the one to intervene if need be. But I’d been there before, done that. And I’d found myself in it again and the last place I wanted to be was home, with my parents. It was bad enough to hear the door slamming in the background of James’s end of the phone. But James didn’t know I’d already done this before, on my own. I wasn’t dying to get home and do it again, even with his help this time.
“You don’t have to stay there,” I said gently, more gently than I might’ve spoken to anyone else who spoke to me the way he was. “Go back home. The deck can wait.”
“That’s fucking rich. You want me to run away from our problems? That’s what you’re good at. Well, newsflash, Tori. The rest of us have to face our shit. Grow up.”
The line went dead and I dropped the phone to the floor, not caring if the screen cracked. In fact, I wanted it to crack, to shatter into a thousand pieces. Without a working phone, I’d be off the grid, unreachable. Maybe then I could forget that James had ever texted me. And forget that my parents’ marriage was imploding because my dad treated his commitment to my mom like it was disposable.
I picked the phone back up, saddened that it wasn’t even the least bit marred.
A soft knock came from the other side of the door. “Tori?” Bekka asked in a whisper.
Scooting across the floor, I tossed my phone aside and opened the door. Bekka crawled on her hands and knees to the toilet. “I’m going to be sick,” she said through a groan.
Seconds later, the contents of her stomach spilled into the toilet. A revolting mix of cinnamon whiskey and jalapeno poppers scented the air and I pushed past my own bile to pull her hair away from her face. This was my out. Bekka was sick. We’d spend the last night of her bachelorette nursing ourselves and relaxing.
“You’re tapped out like I am, aren’t you?” I asked. I wet a washcloth and dragged it over the back of her neck and