Page 141 of Chaos

“Just relax, okay?” I try to be soft, I try to be reassuring, I fail miserably on both accounts. “It’s not a big deal. I just—”

Finn walks away. I reach for him, and he actually walks away, pushing through the double doors with enough force that they slam shut in his wake.

Every ounce of my being screams in protest as I walk to the car. Stiff with the utter sense ofwronggripping me by the throat, I duck through the door Ricky opens for me and drop with a thud onto a leather seat that smells like smoke and weed and stale beer.

The door closes and that scent surrounds me, suffocates me, takes me back to a different time, what feels like a differentlife. Numbly, I stare out the window at the spot Finn vacated. I wait for him to reappear even though I know he won’t.

In my peripheral, I see Ricky reach into the backseat, something dangling from his fingertips.

A flask, I recognize when I turn to face him.

Without a word, I take it.

I clutch that flask like a baby with a fucking rattle.

I don’t open it. I don’t drink from it. I just hold it so tightly, my fingers hurt. Listen to the sloshing of its contents as I follow the modern interpretation of fucking Cerberus into a bar I don’teven know the name of. Except they’re not guarding hell—they’re leading me into it.

I know the drill. I know to hide that damn flask while I take a seat, while Ricky takes the one beside me, too close to me. I know that when Vic and Ethan sidle to the bar, they won’t order alcohol. I know it’s soda in the four, tall glasses they drop on the sticky table just like I know I’m supposed to stealthily dole out whatever their liquor of choice is.

When I take too long, Ricky clucks his tongue and steals the flask and does it for me.

As clear liquid turns green, my nose wrinkles.Chartreuse?“Seriously?”

“Snob,” Vic snips her favorite insult, and I’d throw her abysmal taste of alcohol in her face if I wasn’t suddenly so distracted by someone wafting it in mine.

“You know you want it,” Ricky croons, pouting like a little fuck when I bat him away.

“I told you.” I swallow, my tongue heavy and reluctant. “I don’t drink anymore.”

“C’mon. You know no one expects you to stay sober.”

It kills me, it fucking splits me wide open, that he can so blatantly, casually voice one of my deepest, most terrifying insecurities. “Shut up.”

“No one thinks you can do it.”

Bang. He hits another nail on the head. “Shut up.”

“No onewantsyou to stay sober.”

I flinch, but I can’t escape the words that bury deep beneath my skin, growing roots that burrow through my bones. I can’t stop my resolve from crumbling, I try so fucking hard, I grip what little I have with both hands and desperately try to piece it all back together, Ifail.

It’s too fuckinghard.

I’m so fuckingtired.

I’ll just have one, I promise myself.I’ll sip it slowly. Make it last the hour.

Except that’s not how it works. That’s never been how it works, and it doesn’t miraculously change now, as the herbal liquor that’s the same shade as the chip I was supposed to get tomorrow, the chip I almost earned, burns a path down my throat.

Belatedly, I remember how unfair sobriety is. How finding it takes some giant intervention, some horrific accident, some great, big slap across the face. How keeping it is such a strenuous task, how it takes everything in you, it takes everythingoutof you. Yet losing it is nothing. It’s so… unspectacular. It’s so easy. It’s so fucking simple, decimating months of effort in a single second. With a single drink.

With another drink because it’s never just one.

It’s never slow.

It was never going to be an hour, and it isn’t.

And the worst part?

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