Page 65 of A Totally Platonic Thing
Sebastian. In Lucas’s bed? A quick spike of jealousy faded just as quickly, followed by total confusion.
“Wha…?” I tried to swallow, tried to moisten my tongue. Everything spun around me. My clothes felt like sandpaper against my skin. Tight, damp sandpaper.
“I stayed overnight to make sure you didn’t die,” Sebastian said. Even his soft voice felt like a hammer to my skull, and when he got up, the springs of the bed squeaking a little, I moaned and nearly puked. “I’m going to make coffee. And get you some water. Do you have Alka-Seltzer? I bet you can’t even keep pills down right now.”
I moaned incoherently. Pills. Oh, God. Water.Water.
Luckily for me, Sebastian had been fluent in not-feeling-well-Chrisese for a long time, and he moved around the apartment smoothly, setting a glass of water followed by a fizzing glass of Alka-Seltzer on my nightstand before starting the coffee.
I rolled over enough that I could drink the water, guzzling the whole glass of it at one go and dripping some of it on my chin and pillow. But it tasted like life itself.
The Alka-Seltzer would come next, but I didn’t have the energy yet.
Ironically, the fizz wasn’t even in the cabinet for me. I kept it around for when Lucas got the occasional migraine that upset his stomach too.
Lucas. God, I wanted Lucas so badly.
But the thought of him had dread and worry pooling in my already roiling stomach.
He’d been…shit. I popped up in bed, instantly grabbing my forehead and groaning. “Oh God, Sebastian,” I managed. “Lucas! He had—this morning—his professor, shit,ow,” I moaned, and fell back again, hands over my face. “I need to call him. What time is it? God, I hope I didn’t miss it! This was so important!”
A heavy silence fell, with only the sound of the coffee pot starting to hiss and spit.
“Sebastian?” My voice quavered.
“It’s after eleven,” he said after a second, sounding strained. And not the typical Sebastian-feeling-panicky strained. Strained, like he had something to tell me. Something bad. “His thing was at ten, I think. It’s over by now. Chris, drink your gross aspirin soda and we’ll talk once you’re more together.”
Over by now. Almost noon.
Oh, shit, Lucas would never forgive me for flaking on him this morning. I should’ve been there early to take him coffee. I should’ve been there to support him, and make sure he had a clean shirt, and tell him he’d do amazing. The dread grew as I frantically scanned through my memories of the night before.
Or rather, scanned over the big black hole where my memories of the night before should’ve been. Instead of a coherent picture of events, I had random flashes of a birthday party, of Aidan.
And then of Lucas.
Lucas, in the parking lot at Aeon.
Was that a memory from another night? I’d gotten confused. Mixed up. Because last night Lucas had been in his lab, frantically working on getting his new project sorted out since his asshole advisor had screwed him over. He couldn’t have been picking me up, wasted drunk, in the parking lot behind Aeon. I’d promised him that wouldn’t happen again, and so no way would I have let that happen last night of all nights…
“Sebastian,” I whispered. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
He grabbed me by the arm and helped me stagger-reel across the room to the bathroom.
I spent the next endless while hunched over the toilet.
I couldn’t think clearly while I spasmed, but every passing fragment of a thought made me sick and terrified all over again. Throwing up was better than what I’d have to deal with once I finished. I was certain of that.
Once I was done I did feel a lot clearer-headed and less dizzy, but weak and hopeless and shaky. A quick rinse of my mouth, and I went back out into the other room. Sebastian had put a cup of coffee next to my “gross aspirin soda,” which sounded freaking amazing, and perched himself on the edge of my bed with his own cup.
And on the counter island, where it’d been out of my field of view from the bed and totally outside my ability to comprehend as I went past on the way to puke, sat a lined piece of paper torn out of a notebook, with a couple of short paragraphs scrawled on it in blue pen.
Lucas’s handwriting.
“Don’t read that yet,” Sebastian said sharply. “Sit down and drink your—”
“Oh, God,” I moaned. Because of course I’d already snatched it up and read more than enough.
Lucas was done with me. Done with us. I’d broken my promise, and he couldn’t do this again. He’d be crashing on Amanda’s couch for now. And he’d talk to me later on about who was going to keep the apartment.
