Page 68 of Wicked Minds
I shove my way past them, ignoring Royce as he calls after me. “Come on, Gray. It’s not like that. We ran into her there.”
Yeah, and theychoseto hang out with her instead of agreeing to the planshemade.
“Gray!” he calls again as I reach the top of the stairs, thankful when I can block out their murmuring with the shutting of my bedroom door. With the bottle still in hand, I collapse on my bed and stare absently at the ceiling as I drown my sorrows in top-shelf whiskey and pretend everything isn’t crumbling around me.
I’m three sheets to the wind by the time I stumble out of the house later that night—or maybe it’s early morning now. Who the fuck cares? I haven’t the first fucking clue where I’m going; I just know I need to get out of my room. Away from the swirling whirlpool of my ever-depressing thoughts. Away from the rage coiling through me. The bitter loneliness. The hostility. The doubt. The anger.
Away from fuckingeverything.
I stagger drunkenly through the deserted streets of Halston, my bottle of nearly empty whiskey clutched like a lifeline in my hand. My surroundings are a blur, though at least the cool night air is a calming balm to the storm raging inside.
Tripping over a curb, I lose my grip on the bottle, and it hits the ground, smashing on impact. “Nooo,” I moan. “Wilson!” I cackle at my joke before leaving the shattered remains on the sidewalk. Looking up, I blink blearily as a familiar red-brick building comes into focus.
It takes me a moment to recall where I am. However, once I do, I stumble toward the door and yank it open. If I weresober, I’d probably scoff at the lack of security in this place, but since I’m not, I simply smile at my good fortune. A smile that is abruptly wiped from my face when I catch my foot on the step and nearly fall flat on my face in the grimy tiled lobby.
What is with everything trying to trip me up tonight? Fuckin rude!
I catch myself at the last minute, eyes squinting on the rows of boxes until I find one with her last name. Apartment 7.
I spin around, the whole world going fuzzy and black at the edges, before my eyes narrow on the stairs. “Ughhh,” I groan. “Stairs.” I conduct a thorough search of the lobby—if you could call it that—for an elevator but of course this shitty apartment building doesn’t have one. What apartment block doesn’t have an elevator these days? Who could live in such a state?
Guess there’s nothing else for it.
Shaking my head in abhorrence, I glower at the flight of stairs. “Don’t trip me up,” I slur, before I begin conquering the stairway to hell. Another burst of laughter escapes me. “More accurately, the stairway to the devil herself.”
With a death grip on the handrail, I grunt and groan my way up the two flights. By the time I reach Riley’s floor, I pump both fists in the air like I just won gold at the Olympics, before squinting at the door numbers in search of apartment seven.
I find it at the end of the hall, swaying on my feet as I stare at the mundane door.What am I doing here again?Oh yes, I wanted to give the bitch on the other side of the door a piece of my mind.
Slumping forward, I peer through the eyehole, but nothing comes into focus, and I can’t work out if it’s me or the shitty doors in this place.
“Riley!” I bellow, banging my fist against the wood. “Riley!” Pausing, I squint at the red-chipped painted door. “Ry-lee,” I tryagain since her name came out as more of a slur the first two times.
“What do you want, Grayson?” comes her sharp voice through the door. My heart picks up speed as my molars grind. How can that voice simultaneously perk me up and piss me off?
“You,” I slur.
No, wait. What?I shake it off. That’s not what I meant.
“You’re drunk. Go away, Grayson.”
Instead of listening to her, I press my back against the door and slide down it until I hit the floor. Breathing heavily, my eyes feel like they have two-ton weights attached to them as I rest my head against the wooden door.
I swear I can hear her moving around inside before there’s a soft thud. Is she sitting on the other side? I’m going to pretend she is, ‘cause otherwise, I’m having a conversation with a door, and that’s just too pathetic to comprehend.
“I have your scrunchie,” I tell the door. “It doesn’t smell like you anymore, though,” I continue when my words are met with silence. “It used to smell of that body spray stuff you’d use, but it doesn’t anymore. I don’t like it.”
Somewhere along the way, I forget that Riley is sitting on the other side and I just start rambling, not even fully aware of what I’m saying. They’re just words I’ve kept bottled up for too long.
“Do you remember that dickhead who’d always pull your hair at school? I gave him a black eye for harassing you, and when he told me he liked you, I broke his nose.”
“Why would you do that?” Her voice breaks through the silence, so close that it sounds like she’s beside me. I get distracted, staring at the door unblinkingly for a long moment as I picture her sitting right there, her head pressed against the wood the same way mine is.
Lifting a hand, I flatten it against the door, imagining her doing the same.
“All I want is to hate you,” I rasp so low I’m not sure she even hears me, except a moment later she responds, sounding beyond exhausted.
“You do hate me.”
