Ecstasy

Alex

I pick up the bottle by the neck, slam it against the sliding glass door. It shatters into a thousand pieces, the sound soothing my rage, splintering the quiet of the morning.

There are people passed out in my living room, some idiot naked and drunk on a pool chair. Zara is still in bed and I want all these people out of my fucking house. All of them except her.

Fuck.

I run my hands through my hair and hear someone padding down the hall from the living room. I whirl around, glaring at a guy I vaguely recognize as someone on the fucking wrestling team.

His eyes go wide as he stares at the shattered vodka bottle on the floor.

He scrubs his hand over his face, blinking, as if he thinks he might still be fucking drunk or still asleep.

Slowly, his eyes slide to my face.

“You okay, man?” he asks me cautiously, taking a small step back.

I glare at him in answer.

I see him swallow. He doesn’t have a shirt on, his jeans unbuttoned. All I can think about is my fucking father. His jeans shoved down to his ankles while he plowed into that woman in the pool house.

I was fucking fifteen.

I’m twenty-one now and he still hasn’t fucking stopped.

I close my eyes, hands still fisted in my hair, willing it to stop. The memory. The anger. The hatred. The distance between us now.

What he did to my mother.

“Hey, Alex, you need anything—”

My eyes snap open. “Get out of my fucking house.”

The guy nods. Backs away slowly. “Are you sure you don’t need—”

“Get. Out!” I point to the door at his back, in case he doesn’t fucking know where it is.

“Shit,” I hear someone whisper from the living room. “Alex is fucking trippin’.”

And then it isn’t just the kid without the shirt leaving. It’s a fucking mass exodus from mine and Eli’s house. I turn my back to everyone getting their shit together and leaving, and I pick up a bottle of tequila, ready to fling it at the door, too, when someone grabs my elbow.

“Alex.”

A lump forms in my throat at the sound of her voice. I shrug out of her grip and take a step back, lowering the bottle by my side before I turn to face her.

Her eyes are bleary, tinged with red, some of that fucking excessive eyeliner she wears smeared all over her face. She’s dressed in the same clothes she wore last night, not my clothes. She’s even got her shoes on.

“You can’t leave,” I tell her, confused. “You can’t leave right now.”

She glances at the bottle in my hand, her eyes going to the shards of glass behind me, at the sliding glass door. “I’ve got to go,” she says, clutching her phone in her hand. “What…happened?”

I curl my fingers tighter around the bottle, half-expecting it to burst into pieces. But I’m not that strong. If I was, I’d have found a way to tell Mom before she found out the hard way.

I slam the bottle on the counter, grip the edge of it with both hands, hanging my head. I was out of bed before Zara, which is no surprise. She sleeps a fuck load in the morning after she tosses and turns all night.

I slipped out of bed and intended to come down and clean up. To cook breakfast. To have a nice fucking day. But I got the email from Dad to his congregation, just like everyone else. I didn’t even get my own email, nor did he have the decency to warn me beforehand. Instead, he let me read it in his blubbering, half-assed apology, proclaiming that it wasn’t what it looked like.

Zara’s hand rubbing my back brings me back to the present. “Alex,” she says softly, “what’s wrong?”

“It’s my fucking Dad.” She doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know how I saw him. How I caught him the first time, before people started paying attention. Before Pastor Cardi became a local celebrity and a big fucking dumbass at the same time. Before he started being more brazen about his mistresses, seemingly uncaring that everyone in Grove Beach has a fucking cellphone and could snap a photo at any time.

Zara doesn’t know all of it. She and my father already dislike each other. I didn’t want to add more fuel to the fire.

But she knows enough.

Her hand stills on my back. I wonder if she’s thinking of saying something snarky. I wonder if she’s about to piss me off even more.

But surprising me, all she says is, “I’m sorry.”

I glance over my shoulder and meet her blue-green eyes. I think of my mother’s own deep chestnut eyes. I think of her curled up under the sheets of her fucking oversized bed. I think of coming home from school to a silent home. Of tiptoeing up to her bedroom. Of watching her slight form move up and down under the sheets confirming that she was still alive. The relief I felt knowing the prescription bottle that dwindled far too quickly every day on the nightstand hadn’t yet killed her.

I think of her trying to fake it every Sunday, smiling and standing beside my father in the church that looks more like a mall than a house of God.

I would never do that. I would never fucking do that to Zara, and yet all this bullshit started because Riha

She’s already doped up on pills half the time she’s awake and she doesn’t even have shit to deal with like my mom does.

I want to step out of her touch. I want to scream at her too. But I don’t yell at her, because I don’t want to push her away. Not really. I just want her to wake the fuck up and realize that, just like my mother, she’s on a collision course to an early grave.

I straighten and she drops her hand.

For a moment, I feel guilty. For the video that’s going around, and the pool shit and all of it. For a moment, I feel fucking bad about that and everything else I’ve done to fuck with the women in my life.

But the moment passes. Quickly.

I was drunk then. It’s not an excuse, but I was drunk, and…

It doesn’t fucking matter.

“Where are you going?” I ask her instead. “Where do you need to be?”

She twirls a lock of hair between her fingers, shaking her head and looking at the floor. “It doesn’t matter. I was going to…I was going to walk anyway. I’m sorry about your dad and—”

I run my hand through my hair again. “Just fucking answer me. Where do you need to—”

“Her mom’s engagement party,” Eli says, coming up behind her and brushing past us both without sparing a glance at the glass all over the floor. He walks over to the fridge, opens it up.

Her mouth falls open.

I turn to stare at Eli. He’s not wearing a shirt, his black hair is disheveled and he’s just staring into the fridge like something is going to float out and pour down his throat.

“What—” I start to say.

“Yeah,” Zara interrupts quickly, swallowing hard. She’s looking at the floor again. “Mom’s having that stupid—”

“Shit, I forgot that was today.” I scrub a hand over my face. I should remember. Zara sent me a calendar invite one night while Eli, she, and I were in the living room. Eli was on his phone, silent as usual. I made a shitty joke about Zara’s mom, and the fourth fucking husband. I didn’t even know Eli was listening.

He’s still staring into the fridge.

Zara’s eyes are flicking from me to him and the silence in the kitchen is weird. I clear my throat. “I’ll take you,” I tell Zara, and she wrinkles her brow. Like she doesn’t want me to take her.

She shakes her head. “You should be there for your mom,” she says softly.

“It’s okay, I’ll just go down after. I don’t want you to have to go by yourself.” I know she’s pissed with her mom as is about this fourth engagement shit. I know she doesn’t want to go alone. She never really wants to do anything alone.