that you said that. It was super exciting to be a part of #Maclan’s HEA and it was basically the most fun we’ve had together all year. I guess I’ve missed hanging out with you.
Hopefully Aunt Maddie will get there in time for the rehearsal dinner.
But seriously—you have to stop reading my diary.
Thirty-Six
Declan
TRY HARD. TRY HARDER. TRY HARD WITH A VENGEANCE.
Everything is terrible, and I’m an idiot.
When I wake up, I am fully dressed in the bathtub of my hotel suite.
That’s the good news—that I wake up and that I’m in my hotel suite in Cleveland.
The other news is I’m wearing Nolan’s clothes, which are a couple of sizes too big for me, and a bachelorette party novelty trucker hat. I carefully remove it from my head and see that it says Shot Queen. Which makes sense. My brain has been replaced with a pulsating lead boulder, I’m pretty sure I got run over by an SUV at some point, and it feels like somebody put a cigar out on my tongue. Ghosts are trying to pull my hair follicles out one by one, and I think I see those twin girls from The Shining over by the toilet.
My Irish ancestors clearly hate me.
Everything hurts, including my heart, and the first thought that emerges from the quicksand of my mind is, “Maddie. I have to call Maddie.”
The desire to see Maddie and hear her voice again is the only thing stronger than my desire to sleep for another week or two. As long as she doesn’t yell at me. And as long as I don’t have to keep my eyelids open for more than a second at a time. Or lift my head up.
I promise myself that if I am, in fact, alive—and I’m not entirely sure that I am yet—that I will live each day of the rest of my god-forsaken life doing whatever it takes to make things up to Maddie.
I will be the best man that anyone could be for her.
Or I will try to be the best man that I can be for her, anyway.
I will try really hard.
As soon as the nausea passes.
I feel around for my phone and find it in one of the pockets of Nolan’s leather jacket, along with a bunch of condom packets and paper napkins with women’s names and numbers on them. I am confident that Nolan was the one who was wearing this jacket and collecting phone numbers for most of the night, and I want to murder him because he must have had my phone on him for most of last night too.
At least I hope it was last night that we went out. It had better still be December 30th.
My phone is dead, of course. So I crawl out of the bathtub in search of my charger and the nearest outlet that is as close to the ground as possible. Because I will be staying as close to the ground as possible for as long as possible.
The clock by the bed tells me it’s 2:47 pm, but it doesn’t tell me what day it is because it’s an asshole.
Nolan is passed out on the floor right beside the bed, with a hat that says Designated Drunk. Surprisingly, he is not wearing my clothes. He is wearing my cousin Billy’s clothes. Billy is sprawled out on the bed. It looks like he had fallen asleep while he was in the middle of either putting my clothes on or taking them off. His trucker hat says Dancing Diva, and to my understated delight, someone has drawn a penis on his forehead in black ink. I hope it was me.
I pull the hotel phone down off the desk, randomly press a button, and ask whoever answers to send all the coffee to my room immediately. I also ask them to call Maddie for me, but they don’t know her number, and neither do I. I ask them to call my ma, and they fail me again. That’s why I have to rip the phone cord from the wall and close my eyes for just a few minutes.
When I open my eyes again, the clock says 4:01 pm. We’re supposed to be at the church for the rehearsal at five. That is, if it’s still today.
I reach for a nearby shoe and hurl it at Nolan. It hits him in the face, but he doesn’t even twitch. I find another shoe, toss it in Billy’s general direction. It hits the wall