Glancing around, I find my nearest pair of shorts, fumble my way into them, then take the agonizing walk out to the kitchen, praying Hardy will know where the painkillers are because I need a handful of them.
Smells and sounds assault me as I turn the corner from the hallway into the kitchen, where I find Hardy dancing and singing to…Beautiful Soulby Jesse McCartney. Leaning against the wall because I don’t fully trust my legs to hold me up, I watch Hardy bop around the kitchen while singing along with the lyrics. Only Hardy could make me smile when I feel like rotting garbage.
This is one of those moments where I couldn’t imagine not living with him. He’s my bright spot when everything is dark.
A therapist would probably have a lot to say about that. Something about codependency or that I’m relying on him in unhealthy ways. Which is why I have no intention of everdiscussing this with a therapist. If they told me to stop hanging out with Hardy or put space between us, I’d walk out and never go back. And that’s a thought I’m not touching with a ten-foot-pole, especially while I’m battling the worst hangover of my life.
“Encore,” I say as the song ends. I whistle, then wince because my head is still buzzing and achy.
Hardy spins around and grins at me. “The cave troll lives.”
I groan all the way to the island, then drop onto a stool. “How can you be so upbeat and bounce back from last night so quickly?”
“Because I’m not an eighty-year-old man in a twenty-five-year-old’s body.”
I stick my finger up at him as I rest my head on the kitchen island. “Counter. Cold. Good.”
He ruffles my hair and sets something down next to me. “Drink this. You’ll feel better.”
“If it’s green, I don’t want it.”
He laughs and rubs my shoulder, and it instantly brightens my mood. I shouldn’t get used to this—shouldn’t rely on him to make me feel better. It blurs lines that need to stay crystal clear. But everything else is blurry this morning, so why the fuck not?
“It’s not green. It’s black like the pit you crawled out of.”
I lift my head slightly and look at it.
“It’s a chocolate banana milkshake,” Hardy says, then sets a glass of water and a little white bottle beside it. “With a painkiller chaser.”
I sit all the way up, my head throbbing in protest as I do. “More like an appetizer.”
I dump a couple of pills in my hand, then glug them down with some water before reaching for the smoothie. It’s cold, and as the chocolatey flavor coats my tongue, a bit of relief hits me.
“Thank you.”
“No problem. Plus, I need you semi-functional before we have to be at the stadium this morning.”
I groan again, and he shakes his head.
“Seriously, how are you this”—I gesture in his direction—“youthis morning? We drank the same amount last night.”
“First, it’s okay to accept that you’ll never be as awesome as me. Second, we did not drink the same amount last night. I had twenty gallons of tequila, you had about fifty.”
I lift one shoulder, not particularly wanting to recall that moment. Dancing with that girl between us was as close as I’m ever going to get to dancing with Hardy like that. Then she turned to him, and I knew what was happening. It’s been a while—and my feelings for him have unfortunately grown since the last time I had to witness it—but him hooking up with a random girl isn’t unusual. It had just been long enough that I let myself get comfortable with our friendship being his focus.
Our friends have said Hardy could—or does—have feelings for me too. But all it takes is one night like last night to remind myself how untrue that is.
“What can I say? I was bored, and you took forever getting your dick wet.”
He scrunches his face up, staring at me like I’m an idiot.
“I was gone for fifteen minutes, and I told you when I got back to the bar that I didn’t hook up. Okay, I know you drank more than me, but how much? What got into you? I’ve never seen you drunk like that.”
I blink at him, torn between feeling relieved that he didn’t hook up to being frustrated that my reaction to him hooking up was to drink that much. He’s right. That’s not who I’ve ever been.
I drink to unwind or maybe get a little tipsy. I don’t drink to avoid my problems.
Maybe moving in with him was a mistake. But then I look at the chocolate banana milkshake he made me, and I can’timagine not living with him. My life would be boring—and much emptier—without him.
