Chapter 22: Chapter 22
The coffee did nothing. It was just hot brown water holding the shape of their hands. Silence stretched, thin and brittle, until it was punctuated by the rasp of Alex’s zipper as he finally pulled his jeans up. The sound was obscenely loud.
Leo stood, his knees popping. “I’m gonna shower.” His voice was flat. “The hot water’s shit, so don’t expect a miracle.”
He walked away from them, a general retreating from a lost battle. The bathroom door clicked shut. A moment later, the pipes in the wall groaned and a spray of water hit the tub.
Emily looked at the bag of vomit-soiled towels and clothes. “We can’t just leave this here.”
“Why not?” Leroy muttered, but he was already getting up. He took the bag, cinched it tight, and carried it to the door. “I’ll dump it in the big bin out back.”
Reed watched him go, then began gathering bottles. Her movements were efficient, angry. Clink, clink, clink. She lined them up by the door for recycling.
Alex just sat, staring at his hands. He looked hollowed out, his eyes dark smudges. The manic energy that had propelled him was gone, leaving only a fragile shell. When Emily touched his shoulder, he flinched.
“You should clean up,” she said softly.
He nodded, stood on unsteady legs, and shuffled to the bathroom. He knocked. The water shut off. A low exchange of voices, then Alex slipped inside.
The apartment was quiet, save for the sound of Reed wiping down surfaces with a vengeance. When Leroy returned, the smell of cold morning air clinging to him, he surveyed the room. “Looks almost respectable. A little bleach and some amnesia, and it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”
“Something happened,” Reed said, not looking up from scrubbing a ring off the coffee table.
“Yeah. I know.”
Leo emerged first, hair damp, wearing fresh sweatpants and a faded t-shirt. He looked younger, and impossibly tired. He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. He just started straightening cushions.
Alex came out next. He’d washed his face, his hair was wet, but he still looked pale and bruised. He’d put on one of Leo’s hoodies, swimming in it. He went straight to the window and looked down at the street, his back to the room.
The cleanup was completed in a wordless, joint effort. It was a penance. When the last bottle was bagged and the final wet patch was blotted, they stood in the middle of the too-clean living room. The emptiness was worse.
“I should go,” Emily said. But she didn’t move.
“It’s barely eight,” Leroy said. “The Otter’s closed. My place is a forty-minute bus ride. I’m not doing that.”
“I’m not either,” Reed said. She looked at Leo. “You got any food? Real food.”
He shook his head. “Cereal. Maybe some eggs.”
“We could go out,” Alex said, his voice small from the window. “For breakfast.”
The suggestion hung there. Going out meant facing the world. It meant pretending. It also meant not being trapped in this room with the ghost of what they’d done.
“Yeah,” Leo said, the first spark of something like life in his eyes. “Yeah, okay. I know a place.”
The diner was a relic, all cracked vinyl and chrome, smelling of grease and coffee. They took a corner booth, the four of them sliding in, a unit. The normality of it was a shock. Families argued over pancakes. An old man read a newspaper. A radio played classic rock softly from the kitchen.
They ordered heavily, as if trying to fill the internal void with pancakes and home fries. When the food came, they ate with a quiet, focused intensity. It was something to do.
“So,” Leroy said, stabbing a sausage link. “That was a night.”
No one laughed. Alex pushed his eggs around his plate.
“I’m not… I’m sorry,” Alex said, not looking up. “For the… you know. The mess.”
“We were all a mess,” Emily said. “Just different kinds.”
Leo sipped his coffee. “Forget it.”
But they couldn’t. It sat with them at the table, a fifth member of the party, silent and undeniable.
The bill came. They split it four ways, a careful, transactional end to the meal. They stepped out onto the sidewalk. The morning was bright and crisp, a beautiful Portland day that felt like a personal insult.
“Now what?” Reed asked, squinting in the sun.
No one had an answer. Going home to separate silences seemed unbearable. The momentum of the night, though crashed, had left them with a shared inertia. They couldn’t just scatter.
“Walk?” Leo suggested.
They walked. Without direction, through neighborhoods, past parks, across bridges. The physical movement helped. The silence between them softened, became less charged. They were just four people, tired, walking. By unspoken agreement, they found themselves drifting toward the quieter streets of the commercial district, where the shops were just opening.
And then they were standing outside The Tipsy Otter. It was closed, the dark wood of the door looking forbidding, the neon sign unlit.
“Shame,” Leroy said, leaning against the window. “I could use a proper drink.”
It was a joke. It wasn’t a joke.
Leo checked his phone. “It’s almost noon. They open at one.”
They looked at each other. The decision was made without a word. They would wait. The alternative—going their separate ways to replay the night in their own heads—was worse.
They killed an hour at a thrift store, thumbing through dusty records and ugly sweaters, making weak, forced comments. They got more coffee they didn’t want from a cart. They watched the clock.
At five to one, they were back outside The Tipsy Otter. Ben was inside, moving behind the bar, flipping on lights. He saw them through the glass and his face broke into a wide, familiar smile. He unlocked the door, pushing it open with a chuckle.
“Well, look who’s eager! Morning after that good, huh?” His cheerful baritone was a splash of color in their grey world. He was a big, comforting presence in a flannel shirt, his smile genuine. “Come on in, you lot. You’re my first victims.”
They filed in. The bar smelled of lemon polish and last night’s beer, a comforting, familiar scent. They took their usual booth in the back, the red leather creaking under them.
Ben came over, wiping his hands on a towel. “The usual arsenal? Or are we venturing into hair-of-the-dog territory?”
They exchanged a glance. A silent consensus.
“Whiskey,” Leo said. “Neat. For everyone.”
Ben’s eyebrows lifted slightly, but his smile never wavered. “A serious start. Coming right up.”
He returned with four glasses of amber liquid, setting them down with a soft clink. “Anything else? Marcus might pop in later, he’s got a break between training sessions. Could try to sell you all on joining the rugby team, fair warning.”
“Just the drinks, Ben,” Reed said, offering a thin smile. “Thanks.”
Ben gave a nod, sensing the mood, and retreated to the bar, giving them their space.
The four glasses sat on the table between them, catching the dim, warm light. They looked at the whiskey, then at each other. The memory of the previous night—the sickness, the violence, the utter collapse—hung in the air, more potent than the scent of the spirits.
Alex picked up his glass. His hand was steady. “To forgetting,” he said, his voice low.
“To forgetting,” Leroy echoed, lifting his.
Emily and Reed followed. Leo raised his last. Their glasses met in the center of the table with a dull, final tok.
And they drank.
And they drank.
The whiskey was a familiar burn, a hot line cutting through the residual sourness in Leo’s throat. It didn’t erase the memory of the morning, but it immediately blurred its edges, softening the sharp corners of his shame. He let out a slow breath, feeling the first warm tendril of calm unwind in his chest.
“Another,” Alex said, his voice already smoother, as he tapped his empty glass on the table. He didn’t look at anyone, just stared at the smudged circle it left on the wood.
They didn’t talk about the walk over, or the diner, or the silent cleanup. They didn’t talk about the rug. Conversation sputtered and died, suffocated by everything unsaid. So they drank instead. The second round arrived, and then a third. Glasses were drained with a quiet, determined efficiency.
“Remember that karaoke night,” Emily suddenly said, her words slightly slurry. “When Reed tried to do that Whitney Houston song and her voice just… cracked like a dropped plate?”
Reed snorted, a real laugh breaking through her stoic facade. “You poured your drink into a plant because you said it was ‘screaming for help.’”
“It was a succulent! It wasn’t meant for gin!”
Leo felt his own laugh bubble up, unexpected and relieving. It felt good. The whiskey was working, weaving a fragile, golden bridge over the chasm of the last twelve hours. He signaled for another round.
By the fourth drink, the world had taken on a pleasant fuzz. The dim lights of the Otter glowed like halos. Alex had shed Leo’s hoodie, the sleeves of his t-shirt pushed up, and he was explaining, with great solemnity, the intricate plot of a movie he’d only half-remembered.
“And then the car, right, the car is actually a metaphor for his father’s expectations, but it’s also a real car that’s on fire,” he said, gesturing with his glass. A little whiskey sloshed onto the table.
“You’ve just described every movie,” Leroy said, leaning back. His arm was slung along the back of the booth behind Emily. “Everything’s a metaphor until something explodes.”
“I like when things explode,” Alex said, nodding sagely.
Leo watched them, a soft fondness piercing the alcoholic haze. They were here. They were a mess, but they were his mess. The image of Alex on the floor flashed behind his eyes, but now it felt distant, like a scene from a film about other people. The whiskey held it at bay.
“I’m hungry again,” Reed announced. “We ate pancakes a hundred years ago.”
“Bar nuts,” Leroy declared, standing up with exaggerated care. “The food of champions.” He weaved slightly on his way to the bar, returning with three small bowls, which he distributed like trophies.
They ate the salty peanuts, the crunch absurdly loud. Emily started sorting them by shape on the table. The conversation fragmented into comfortable, drunken nonsense. They argued about the best color, the most overrated planet, whether a hot dog was a sandwich.
The sixth round was tequila. Shots appeared, accompanied by a dish of limes that looked vaguely green under the lights.
“No,” Leo said, laughing. “Absolutely not. My stomach is a crime scene, remember?”
“Precisely!” Alex crowed, pushing a shot glass toward him. “This is the cleansing fire! The ritual purge!”
They locked eyes. For a second, the night vibrated between them, raw and real. Then Alex grinned, a lopsided, open thing that crinkled his eyes. It was an offering. A shaky, drunken peace treaty.
“Fine,” Leo said. “For ritual purification.”
They licked, drank, bit. The tequila was a cheap, aggressive blaze that wiped everything clean for three full seconds. Leo grimaced, shuddering, as the heat exploded in his gut. When he opened his eyes, the world tipped gently sideways, then settled into a warm, humming blur.
Everything was hilarious now. Leroy’ impression of a seagull had Emily laughing so hard she was silent, tears streaking her mascara. Reed was meticulously building a fortress out of peanut shells and spent lime wedges.
Leo’s head felt wonderfully detached from his body. He slid out of the booth, the floor tilting like the deck of a ship. “Gotta piss,” he announced to no one in particular.
The bathroom was a quiet, tiled oasis. He braced himself against the sink, looking at his reflection in the smudged mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his five o’clock shadow more pronounced. He looked exactly how he felt: thoroughly used, and weirdly okay with it. The frantic ghost from the morning was gone, drowned in amber and agave.
When he returned, the energy at the table had shifted. The laughter had subsided into a low, conspiratorial murmur. Alex was leaning close to Emily, speaking in a stage whisper.
“...and I just think, if you’re going to have a zombie apocalypse, you should get cool hats. Like, that’s the priority.”
“Strategic millinery,” Emily agreed, nodding with grave seriousness.
Reed looked up at Leo as he sat down. Her gaze was clouded but focused. “We should go somewhere,” she said.
“We are somewhere.”
“Somewhere else.” She swept her hand, toppling her peanut-shell castle. “It’s getting… samey.”
A slow, collective idea dawned on them, glowing like the last shot glass in the center of the table. The bar had served its purpose. It had softened the hard edges, woven a buffer of noise and warmth between them and the memory. But now the buffer felt like a cage.
Leroy fished out his wallet, a laborious process involving several dropped cards. “I have,” he announced with the gravity of a statesman, “approximately forty-seven dollars. That is our voyage fund.”
“I’ve got my bike outside,” Alex said, as if this was a logical solution to transportation.
“You are not getting on a bicycle,” Leo said, pointing a finger at him. The finger drifted slightly.
“We could walk to the river,” Emily suggested. “It’s loud there. The water’s loud.”
The idea took hold. The river. The constant, rushing sound would fill the silence they were all still afraid of. It was a direction. A purpose. They piled out of the booth, a clumsy, laughing tangle of limbs, settling their tab with a messy pile of cash that was probably too much.
The night air hit them like a physical slap, cool and shocking. It did nothing to sober them up; it just made the world feel larger and more tilted. They stood on the sidewalk, blinking under the streetlight, tethered together by the shared, unsteady momentum.
“Which way is the river?” Reed asked, turning a slow circle.
“That way,” Leo said, pointing with more confidence than he felt.
And they walked, a four-person archipelago drifting through the city, propelled by whiskey and the need to keep the night, this better night, from ever ending. The streetlights stretched their shadows long and thin ahead of them, guiding them toward the dark, roaring water.
The streetlights stretched their shadows long and thin ahead of them, guiding them toward the dark, roaring water. The city sounds faded, replaced by the damp, mineral scent of the Willamette and a low, constant thunder. They stumbled down the grassy bank toward the concrete esplanade, the world a tilt-a-whirl of night sky and reflected city glow.
"Whoa," Alex said, catching himself on a railing. "The river's big."
"It's always been big, you idiot," Reed said, but she was grinning, leaning next to him.
"It feels bigger tonight."
It did. The water was a wide, black muscle sliding through the city, choppy and ink-dark, swallowing the lights of the east side in jagged pieces. The sound was a physical presence, filling Leo's head, louder than memory. He breathed deep, the cold air scraping the tequila from his lungs.
Leroy chucked a pebble into the gloom. It vanished without a sound. "Anti-climactic."
"Everything is, eventually," Emily murmured. She sat on the cold concrete, hugging her knees.
A barge pushed upstream, its lights a slow parade, its engine a deep groan that vibrated in Leo's ribs. They watched it pass, a shared silence settling over them that wasn't uncomfortable. It was the silence of being small next to something ancient and powerful.
"I feel sticky," Alex announced, plucking at his t-shirt. "I still feel... sick sticky. From before."
"We all are," Leo said. The confession was quiet, lost in the river's noise, but they heard it.
Reed stood up abruptly, her combat boots scraping. "So wash it off."
She looked at the black water, then back at them, a challenge in her bloodshot eyes. Without another word, she pulled her worn band t-shirt over her head, a pale flash in the dark. Her hands went to the button of her jeans.
"Whoa, okay, it's freezing," Leroy said, but he was watching, his head cocked.
"You got a better idea?" Reed stepped out of her jeans, kicked them aside. She stood in her plain black bra and underwear, arms crossed over her chest, not shy, just waiting. The river light painted her skin blue and white. "It's just water. It's just skin."
A wild, reckless laugh bubbled out of Alex. It was the same laugh from hours ago, but cleansed of hysteria. "Yeah. Yeah, okay." He toed off his shoes, fumbled with his belt. "Purification, right? A literal fucking baptism."
Leo’s heart hammered against his sternum. It was insane. The water was cold and dark and probably filthy. But the idea was a magnet, pulling at the deep, grimy feeling that had settled in his marrow. To shed it all. To be clean.
Emily stood up, her movements deliberate. "Last one in has to buy breakfast tomorrow. Again." She unzipped her hoodie, letting it fall.
It was happening. Leroy shrugged, a what-the-hell motion, and began peeling off his flannel. Alex was already shirtless, his softer physique pale in the moonlight, the trail of hair down his belly a dark arrow. He looked vulnerable, and brave, and very drunk.
Leo’s fingers were numb on his own zipper. The air bit his skin, raising instant gooseflesh. He stepped out of his sweatpants, folded them clumsily with his shirt, a pointless gesture of order. He stood there, in just his boxer briefs, the cold a shocking embrace.
Reed was first. She turned, walked to the edge of the concrete platform where steps descended into the void, and dove. A sharp, clean splash, then she was gone.
"Show-off," Leroy yelled, then whooped and cannonballed after her. The explosion of water glittered under a distant bridge light.
Alex took Leo’s hand. His palm was warm, a shocking contrast to the air. "Come on."
They walked down the slick steps together, the water lapping at their ankles, then calves. The cold was a knife, stealing his breath.
"Jesus Christ!" Leo gasped, his body seizing.
"Keep going!" Alex yelled, releasing his hand and plunging forward, falling into a messy, thrashing swim.
Emily waded in beside Leo, her teeth chattering audibly. "This is the worst idea we've ever had."
"It's top five, for sure," Leo managed, and then he pushed off.
The cold was absolute, a heart-stopping vise that squeezed the air from his lungs and burned the last fog of alcohol from his brain. He surfaced, gasping, the sound a ragged shout. The world was reduced to this: black, icy water, the distant hum of the city, and the pale, bobbing shapes of his friends.
He swam, clumsy strokes, just to move, to generate heat. The water pulled at his briefs, heavy and insistent. Alex swam near him, sputtering, laughing through his chattering teeth.
"It's fucking awful!" Alex shouted, joy in his voice.
"It's perfect!" Reed called back, floating on her back, looking at the stars.
Leo let himself float, too. The shock subsided, replaced by a strange, hyper-clear numbness. The water held him, washing over every part of him. He felt the gritty press of his clothes vanish, the memory of sour smells and sticky skin dissolving into the river's immense, indifferent flow. He was just a body, suspended in the dark.
He looked over. Alex had floated closer, their shoulders brushing in the water. Alex's face was upturned, eyes closed, water beading on his lashes. In the fractured light, he looked peaceful for the first time in twenty-four hours.
"Clean?" Leo asked, his voice rough.
Alex opened his eyes. They were dark pools, unreadable. "Different."
Nearby, Emily and Leroy were trying to splash each other, their movements slow and uncoordinated in the numbing cold. Reed had swum further out, a solitary, steady figure cutting through the current.
Leo’s toes brushed something slimy below and he flinched, kicking back to the surface. The momentum of the night, the terrible spiral and the drunken crawl out of it, had finally stilled. Here, in the silent, freezing baptism, there was only the present tense. The past was on the bank with their piled clothes. The future was the shivering walk home.
But for now, there was only this: the four of them, suspended in the dark river, breath steaming in the air, raw and quiet and momentarily new.