"Fuck you, P."

Tom spits the words at me as he bursts through the bedroom door, the sounds of the pre-pre-Saturday night party downstairs trail in behind him. This is his bedroom, I should say. I'm back at his house and I'm curled up against the side of his bed holding a wad of crusty red paper towels to my shredded hand which is clutching a bottle of gin I stole from downstairs. Without the towels, my hand looks like a just-hung piece of meat in a butcher shop. If I were sober, I'd try to count the different shades of red - crimson to pink to to maroon to bright lipstick. Tom towers over and peels off his ski-mask. I give him the most blank look I can muster.

"What the fuck, P!?" Tom is pretty upset. After he yanked me away from the window, the shop manager--who obviously didn't witness the incident--burst on to the sidewalk. Tom and I ran, splitting up.

Naturally, the manager followed the guy in the ski mask. And I escaped back to Tom's.

"And he was fucking fast, man. Tackled me right in front of Soccer World. Look, look what that fucker did!" Tom lifts up his arm to show me the bright red abrasion on his left elbow. "This shit hurts! He let me go because, obviously, if I had done it I'd have a bloody hand. No gloves and all." Tom raises both of his nice, clean hands and shakes them jazz-style.

I look at my bloodied excuse for a hand and then switch the bottle over to my intact one.

"Here," I straighten my arm stiff and hold the bottle over my head. A tiny wash splashes over the lip and spills onto Tom's bed. Tom grabs the bottle and starts in on a long drink.

"Dude, I have herpes." Tom chokes off his sip and spits gin around the room like a damn firehose.

"What?"

"I have herpes."

Tom turns and marches out of the room, down the hall and into the bathroom.

"Dude! You can't catch it from a bottle..." I shout as I try to stand. Instinctively, I put my strong, right hand on the ground to lift myself up. My right hand is my mangled hand a sharp pain shoots up my arm, through my collarbone, up my neck and burrows right into my brain. Everything goes black for a split second. When I come to, I'm standing.

Down the hall, I push my shoulder into the bathroom door. Tom is guzzling mouthwash and has the shower running.

"Are you mental?" I ask and yank the mouthwash out of his hand. "You can't get it from gin. You can't get it from a toilet seat. You can only get it if I fuck you." I can see the information leaving the slightest impression on Tom's brain.

"You're not fucking me."

"I know."

"You serious...I can't catch it from..."

"Dead serious."

"Shit, man. That sucks. Was it Bethany?" He leans against the sink as I slump down sighing in the doorway.

She flashes across my brain, her and the coffee shop and some guy in a black sweater with idiotic facial hair. Her and our creative writing TA. Her and that random guy across the room at that mexican place downtown. That bar down the street. That guy she mentioned from class.

"No. It was Krissy."

"Krissy? No fucking way!"

"Yeah. I found out today."

"Shit. What are you going to do?"

We sit in silence for a moment before some girl, way too drunk way too early, trips over me on her way into the bathroom.

Giggling with one hand on too-narrow hips, she says "Oh...hey. Wait. What happened to your hand? That looks awful!"

"Yeah," I pull some paper back and scan the mess.

"We have to take care of that! Trust me I know First Aid." She yanks me off the ground, her chemically blonde hair cascading over the top of me. I follow too-drunk-too-early-too-narrow girl down the hall with the first smile I've had in hours.

"Hey, ah..." I turn and cut Tom's sentence short.

"Forget I said anything."

I fix my gaze back on too-girl. My cell phone buzzes in my pocket. Five times, pause, one time.

I have a voicemail.  ¶ 12:17 PM 0 comments