Chapter 35: Chapter 35
The next morning arrived as a brutal, throbbing invasion. Leo woke to the particular misery of cotton-mouth, a pounding temple, and the dull, sour ache of gin poisoning. Sunlight stabbed through a gap in the curtains, landing directly on his face. Alex was a warm, motionless lump beside him, one arm flung over his eyes. From the living room, a low, pathetic groan signified that at least one of the others had also survived the night.
They moved through the afternoon in a silent, collective haze. Emily found ibuprofen. Reed made coffee so strong it tasted like tar. They drank it on the floor of Alex’s living room, wrapped in blankets, not speaking, as if words required too much energy their battered brains couldn’t spare. The memory of the river felt like a dream, and the sex felt like something that had happened to other people.
“I feel like my bones are made of wet newspaper,” Leroy mumbled into his mug.
“My tongue is wearing a wool sweater,” Emily replied, staring at the wall.
It was Alex who broke the inertia, his voice rough. “We can’t just sit here.”
“Why not?” Reed asked, her tone flat. “It’s working for me.”
“Because we’ll start thinking,” Alex said, meeting Leo’s gaze for a weighted second. “And we can’t do that.”
No one argued. The logic was perversely sound. Staying still meant processing—the fight, the river, the intertwined limbs, the raw confession of touch. Motion, especially the familiar, numbing motion of a bar crawl, was a welcome escape. A terrible idea, but a shared one.
So they went back to The Tipsy Otter.
It wasn’t a decision so much as a gravitational pull. The dim, amber-lit interior felt like a decompression chamber after the blinding pain of the day. The usual buzz of conversation was a soothing white noise. They claimed the same corner booth, a nest of scarred wood and cracked vinyl that was beginning to feel like theirs.
The first round was medicinal: pints of cold lager, a desperate attempt to rehydrate while actively continuing the poisoning. They drank them quickly, chasing the hair of the dog that had mauled them. The second round was whiskey, because the sharp bite felt like punishment and clarity all at once.
By the third round, the world began to soften.
Leo felt the alcohol hit his bloodstream like a warm, spreading stain. The sharp edges of his hangover blurred into a manageable fuzz. Sound took on a layered quality—the clink of glasses, the thump of bass from the speakers, Reed’s laughter bubbling up beside him, louder than usual. His own body felt both lighter and less reliable, a vessel he was piloting from a slight delay.
“Remember the river?” Emily slurred, her eyes wide and glassy. “It was so fucking cold. My tits retracted. I think they’re still hiding.”
“I found a leaf in my underwear this morning,” Leroy announced, toasting the air with his glass. “A goddamn river leaf. Like a souvenir.”
They all laughed, a loud, messy sound that drew a few looks from neighboring tables. The laughter felt necessary, a release valve for the pressure built up from the silent day. They were weaving the trauma into a story, sanding down the sharp parts until they could handle them.
Round four was tequila. Shots lined up by Alex, who was moving with a deliberate, liquid grace. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright and unfocused. “To forgetting how to remember!” he shouted.
The salt was gritty. The lime was bitter. The burn was instant and profound, a line of fire down Leo’s throat that ignited something in his gut. He slammed the glass down, shuddering, and reached for his beer to chase it. The room did a slow, lazy roll.
Conversation fragmented. Reed was explaining the migratory patterns of Canadian geese to a bemused-looking stranger at the bar. Leroy and Emily were in a passionate, sloppy debate about the best flavor of potato chip, their words tangling and overlapping.
Leo leaned into the solid wood of the table, anchoring himself. He watched Alex watch the room, a soft, unfocused smile on his face. Their feet bumped under the table. Alex didn’t move his away.
“You’re staring,” Alex said, not looking at him.
“You’re blurry,” Leo replied, and it was true. Alex’s edges had dissolved into a warm, golden halo from the bar lights.
Round five was a mistake. Someone, maybe Leroy, ordered a round of brightly colored cocktails that arrived in fishbowl glasses, complete with tiny paper umbrellas and swirls of neon syrup. They tasted like candy and gasoline.
This was the tipping point. The careful, buzzing equilibrium shattered into pure, unmoored intoxication.
Leo’s perception split. One part of him floated near the ceiling, observing the scene with detached curiosity. The other part was trapped in a body that had become a strange, uncooperative puppet. He tried to pick up his drink and missed the glass on the first try. His tongue felt thick and fuzzy, like it was stuffed with wool.
Emily tried to stand up to go to the bathroom and sat straight back down, blinking in confusion. “The floor is aggressive,” she declared.
Reed returned from the bar, weaving like a sailor in a storm. She placed a hand on Leo’s shoulder to steady herself, her grip too tight. “Your face is moving,” she informed him seriously. “It’s like… melting. But in a good way.”
Leroy had given up on speech entirely and was resting his forehead on the cool tabletop, humming a tuneless song.
Alex, meanwhile, had grown quiet and still. He was just sitting, watching his own hands as he turned them over on the table, as if he’d never seen them before. The jolly mask was completely gone, replaced by a blank, open vulnerability that was far more unsettling.
“I don’t feel my legs,” Alex stated, his words precise and slow. “I’m pretty sure I left them by the river.”
That’s when the nausea arrived. It didn’t creep; it slammed into Leo like a wave, a hot, sickening surge that rode up from his gut to the base of his throat. The sweet, cloying smell of the neon cocktails suddenly reeked of poison. The noise of the bar compressed into a single, high-pitched whine.
“Gotta,” he managed to gasp, lurching to his feet. The world tilted violently. He caught the edge of the table, his knuckles white.
The journey to the bathroom was a marathon of disorientation. Walls refused to stay vertical. The floor seemed to swell and dip like the deck of a ship. He shoved through the bathroom door and barely made it to a stall before his body convulsed. The burning, acidic taste of whiskey, beer, tequila, and artificial lime flooded his mouth. He heaved until he was empty, trembling, sweating, clinging to the cold porcelain.
When he stumbled out, pale and dripping with cold sweat, Alex was leaning against the sinks, waiting. He looked pale too, his eyes like dark holes.
“You too?” Leo croaked, rinsing his mouth with foul-tasting tap water.
Alex shook his head slowly. “Not yet. Just… waiting my turn.” He pushed off the sinks and took Leo’s arm, his grip firm. “C’mon. We have to get them. We have to get out.”
Extracting the others was a clumsy, chaotic operation. Reed was now crying softly into her hands. Emily was belligerent, insisting she was fine to drive. Leroy was a dead weight. With a coordination born of pure, desperate necessity, Leo and Alex half-dragged, half-coaxed them out of the booth, through the bar, and into the shocking, cool air of the street.
They collapsed in a heap on the sidewalk, a monument to ruin. Reed was still crying. Emily was fumbling for her phone, muttering about calling a rideshare. Leroy had vomited into a storm drain.
Leo sat with his back against the brick wall of the bar, the cold seeping through his shirt. The world was still spinning, but more slowly now, a sickening carousel. He looked at Alex, who was staring at his phone screen, his face illuminated with a sickly blue glow.
“No one can drive,” Alex whispered. “I can’t even see the letters clearly.”
“We walk,” Leo said, the words an effort. “Just put one foot. Then the other.”
It took them forty-five minutes to traverse six blocks. It was a procession of the damned. They stopped frequently. Leroy vomited again in an alley. Reed sat down on a curb and refused to move until Emily pleaded with her through her own tears. Alex walked in a silent, straight line, his jaw clenched, his movements robotically precise.
When they finally tumbled back into Alex’s apartment, it was a homecoming to a disaster zone. No one had the strength to turn on a light. They fell where they stood—Reed on the couch, Emily in the armchair, Leroy on the rug. Leo sank to the floor in the hallway, his head resting against the wall. Alex slid down beside him.
The room was silent except for the ragged, unhappy breathing of five broken people. The consequences settled over them like ash. They weren't untouchable. They weren't clever. They were just drunk, sick, and profoundly, terrifyingly sad.
Alex’s hand found Leo’s in the dark. Their fingers, cold and shaky, interlaced. There was no heat in it now, only a desperate, shared anchor against the slow, spinning drop.
The morning was a shared, grinding punishment of sunlight and dehydration. Leo woke with his face mashed into a pillow that smelled of Alex’s shampoo and, faintly, the river. A deep, rhythmic throb had taken up residence behind his eyes, each pulse syncing with Alex’s soft snores beside him. In the living room, someone—Reed, he thought—groaned like a wounded animal.
“Water,” Leo croaked, pushing himself up on elbows that felt like wet paper. The movement made his stomach lurch.
Alex just grunted, throwing an arm over his face to block the light slicing through the blinds. “Make it stop.”
Somehow, they all ended up in the kitchen, a council of the damned, sipping water and chewing aspirin dry. Leroy was green. Emily had her forehead pressed against the cool fridge door. Reed squinted at the digital clock on the microwave as if it were broadcasting a hostile code.
“We fucked up,” Leroy stated, his voice gravelly.
“The river fucked us up,” Emily corrected, not lifting her head. “Last night was just… aftershocks.”
A heavy silence followed, filled with the memory of skin on skin, of gin-soaked confessions whispered in the dark. Leo felt Alex’s gaze on him, a tangible weight. He didn’t meet it. The clarity of the hangover was brutal, stripping away the warm blur of alcohol and leaving everything too sharp, too raw.
“I need grease,” Reed announced suddenly, standing up straight. She swayed, catching herself on the counter. “A burger. A whole fucking cow. Something to soak up the regret.”
The idea was a lifeline. An hour later, they were crammed into a vinyl booth at a diner, surrounded by the smell of frying oil and coffee. They ate with a quiet, focused intensity, the food a temporary anchor. But as the plates cleared, a restless energy settled over the table. The anchor was slipping.
Leroy stirred the ice in his Coke. “So. What now?”
Nobody answered. Going home meant being alone with the thoughts, with the memories of the cold water and the warm bed. The silence stretched, becoming uncomfortable.
“We could… not stop,” Alex said softly. He was looking out the window at the gray afternoon. “We could just… keep going.”
Leo felt a chill that had nothing to do with the river. “Keep going where?”
Alex turned to him, and his smile was thin, almost challenging. “The Otter. It’s open. We could do it right this time. No drama. No river. Just us. And drinks.”
It was a terrible idea. It was the only idea anyone had. The momentum from the river, from the night, hadn’t dissipated; it had just been waiting, and now it found a new channel. There was a collective, unspoken agreement in the way they avoided each other’s eyes and signaled for the check.
The Tipsy Otter at 4 PM was a different creature. The lights were a little brighter, the music lower, the air not yet thick with the heat of bodies. It felt like walking onto an empty stage. They claimed the same corner booth as before, a self-aware nod that made Leo’s skin prickle.
“No shots,” Emily declared, sliding in. “We’re being civilized. We’re having cocktails.”
The first round was precisely that: a whiskey sour for Reed, a gin and tonic for Alex, old fashioneds for Leo and Leroy, a vodka soda for Emily. They drank them slowly, the conversation tentative, skating around everything that had happened. It felt like a weird, staged reenactment of a normal night out.
The second round came faster. The third round blurred the edges of the stage lights. Laughter started to find its way back, looser and louder.
By the fifth round, civilization had collapsed. Shots of tequila appeared, the lime wedges forgotten, the salt licked from the webbing of thumbs with a focused desperation. Leo’s world began to tilt on a gentle, warm axis. The throb in his head was replaced by a fuzzy buzz, a pleasant static filling the spaces between his thoughts. He watched Alex’s mouth move, saw the smile that crinkled his eyes, and felt a surge of uncomplicated affection so strong it made his chest ache.
“Remember the river?” Leroy slurred, his arm draped over Reed’s shoulders. “Fucking cold, man.”
“I remember,” Alex said, his gaze locking with Leo’s across the table. It wasn’t about the cold. It was a secret, heavy with the memory of what came after. Leo held it, feeling drunker on that look than on the tequila.
The room melted into a swirl of sound and color. Conversations splintered and reformed nonsensically. Time became something that happened in jars—the whiskey jar, the gin jar, the tequila jar—each empty vessel marking a lost hour. Leo’s body felt both incredibly heavy and utterly weightless. He tried to stand to go to the bathroom and the floor surged up to meet him in a wave; he caught the table edge, laughing at nothing, at everything.
Alex was beside him then, a solid presence, his hand hot on Leo’s back. “Steady, sailor.” His breath was warm and smelled of juniper and lime.
“I’m so fucking drunk,” Leo giggled, the words tangling in his mouth.
“I know,” Alex said, and his voice was thick, his eyes glassy. “Me too. It’s good.”
It wasn’t good. The pleasant buzz was morphing into a disorienting roar. Leo’s thoughts slithered away before he could catch them. He saw Emily trying to tell a story, but she kept losing the thread, her words devolving into helpless, hiccupping laughter. Reed had gone quiet, staring into the middle distance with a placid, empty smile. Leroy was debating gravity with a man at the next table, his speech a slow, deliberate mush.
Another shot appeared. Leo didn’t know who ordered it. The liquid burned a path down his throat, and his stomach clenched in a sudden, violent revolt. The warm, golden haze turned sickly and green. The roar in his ears became a high-pitched whine.
“Gonna be sick,” he mumbled, shoving himself away from the table. The room cartwheeled.
He barely made it to the alley out back, stumbling into the cool, garbage-scented dark before he vomited, a painful, convulsive emptying that left him gasping and sweating, forehead pressed against the rough brick. The world sharpened into a nauseating clarity for a moment—the taste of bile, the sting in his sinuses, the hopelessness of it.
A hand touched his shoulder. Alex. He was swaying slightly, his face pale in the dim light. “Okay?”
Leo spat, his mouth foul. “No.”
Alex didn’t look okay either. His eyes were red-rimmed, his movements sluggish. He leaned against the wall next to Leo, their shoulders touching. “We really did it this time,” he said, a note of awed horror in his voice.
Back inside, the scene had deteriorated. Emily was crying softly into her hands, overwhelmed by some vast, drunken sadness. Reed was rubbing her back, her own movements slow and uncoordinated. Leroy was asleep, his head on the sticky tabletop.
The bartender, a woman with tired eyes and a tight bun, brought them water with a look of profound disinterest. “You guys need to think about wrapping it up,” she said, not unkindly, just stating a fact.
The walk home was a disaster. They weaved across the sidewalk, a convoy of ruin. Leo’s legs weren’t fully under his command. He focused on the crack between the paving slabs, trying to step on each one. Alex held his elbow, but his own balance was precarious, and their progress was a series of lurches and stops.
At Alex’s apartment building, Emily vomited in the petunias by the front steps. Reed held her hair with a clinical detachment. Leroy needed help with the keypad, jabbing at the numbers with thick, unfeeling fingers.
Inside, they collapsed like marionettes with cut strings. Emily and Reed took the couch again, a tangle of limbs and misery. Leroy slid down the wall in the hallway and was instantly unconscious. Leo stood in the middle of the living room, the world spinning violently. The need to lie down was a physical urgency.
Alex tugged his hand. “C’mon.”
The bedroom was a sanctuary of relative darkness. They fell onto the bed without undressing, the smell of smoke and stale alcohol rising from their clothes. The spinning intensified as Leo closed his eyes. His stomach churned, a sour tide. He was profoundly, historically drunk, a state beyond fun or release, a hollowed-out vessel of poison.
In the dark, Alex’s breath was ragged. “Leo.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t feel good.”
“I know.” Leo’s own voice sounded miles away.
A long pause. The house settled. Someone retched in the bathroom, the sound faint and miserable through the wall.
“Why did we do that?” Alex whispered. The bravado was gone, stripped away by the physical reality. He sounded young, and lost.
Leo didn’t have an answer. He was trying to remember how to breathe, how to keep the room from inverting. He felt Alex shift, rolling onto his side to face him, a dark shape in the gloom.
“I’m scared,” Alex breathed, the words so soft they were almost swallowed by the pillow.
The confession hung in the toxic air. Leo reached out, his movements clumsy, and found Alex’s hand. It was cold. He laced their fingers together, an anchor in the violent, tilting dark.
“Me too,” Leo said. And it was the truest thing he’d said all night.
The morning was a symphony of pain. Leo woke to a dry mouth that tasted of chemical pine and regret, his skull throbbing in time with Alex’s deep, sleeping breaths beside him. Sunlight, vicious and unearned, stabbed through a gap in the curtains. Every memory from the night before—the river’s shocking embrace, the frantic push of Alex’s body against his, the sharp, herbal burn of the gin—felt like a shard of glass in his brain. He lay perfectly still, trying to will the room to stop its gentle, nauseating sway.
In the living room, someone groaned. A floorboard creaked, followed by the sound of retching, loud and unmistakable, from the direction of the bathroom. Leo closed his eyes. He deserved this.
By three that afternoon, the collective hangover had metabolized from acute agony into a dull, persistent misery. They moved around Alex’s apartment like ghosts in borrowed clothes, speaking in hushed tones, as if sound itself could crack them open. The river had washed away one layer of filth, but the emotional residue clung, sticky and sour.
“I can’t just sit here with this feeling,” Reed finally said, her voice raspy. She was staring at the stained rug where the lamp had shattered days before. “I need to not feel it.”
Leroy nodded from his spot on the sofa, his face pale. “Drowning it is technically an option. We tried drowning ourselves. Maybe we just drown the feeling instead.”
“The Otter?” Emily asked, peering over the top of the couch. She looked like she’d been dragged backward through a bush.
Alex, who had been silent all day, cleaning the already-clean kitchen, leaned against the doorway. His eyes, bloodshot and tired, found Leo’s. There was a challenge in them, or maybe just a shared surrender. “Yeah,” he said, his voice flat. “Let’s go.”
The Tipsy Otter at five PM was a different creature. The usual warm, nighttime hum was replaced by the quiet clink of glasses and the low murmur of a few early patrons. The lights seemed harsher. They claimed a booth in the back, a dark wood cave that felt fitting.
“Whiskey,” Alex told the server, not looking at a menu. “Neat. And keep them coming.”
No one objected. The first round arrived quickly. They drank them faster.
The second round vanished quicker than the first. Leo felt the heat of the whiskey spreading through his chest, a welcome fire smothering the cold ache of his hangover and the sharper, more complicated guilt. He watched Alex knock his back in one smooth tilt, his throat working, before signaling for two more.
“Easy,” Leo muttered, his own words already beginning to soften at the edges.
Alex just looked at him, his smile not touching his eyes. “Why?”
The third round blurred into the fourth. Leroy started telling a long, convoluted story about his cousin’s kayak business, but the words began to swim together, losing their beginnings and ends. Emily laughed at something, a loud, sharp sound that made Reed flinch. Reed, for her part, was meticulously lining up peanut shells on the table into a perfect, wobbling square.
Leo’s perception began to fracture. The music from the jukebox—an old Bowie track—separated into distinct layers: the thump of the bass, the whine of the guitar, the distant echo of Bowie’s voice, all swimming in the amber light of his glass. He picked it up, watching the liquid slosh, a tiny turbulent ocean. He drank it. The world got warmer, softer at the corners.
He lost count. Glasses multiplied on the table, constellations of condensation rings spreading on the dark wood. Alex’s leg pressed against his under the table, a line of heat that felt both accidental and deliberate. Leo didn’t move away.
“You know what I can’t stop thinking about?” Emily slurred, leaning forward. Her eyes were glassy. “The river. How it felt like it was gonna just… take you. And you’d let it.”
“It was clean,” Alex said. His words were thick, rounded at the edges. He was staring into an empty glass, turning it slowly. “Nothing in there but cold and dark. Simpler.”
“Nothing is simple,” Reed stated, her careful peanut-shell square now demolished by her own sweeping hand. “Especially not you two.” She gestured vaguely between Leo and Alex with a wobbly finger.
The room tilted then, not unpleasantly, on a gentle axis. Leo tried to focus on Reed’s face, but her features kept sliding away. His own body felt incredibly distant, a clumsy puppet he was operating with frayed strings. He needed the bathroom. Standing up was a project.
The floor undulated like the deck of a ship. He gripped the edge of the table, the wood smooth and cool under his fingertips, an anchor in the swirling haze. The journey to the back hallway felt epic, a trek across shifting sands. He braced a hand against the wall, the floral wallpaper textured and strange under his palm.
Returning was harder. The booth seemed to have moved. He veered, his shoulder clipping the edge of the bar. A man on a stool turned, his expression blurring into a smear of color and mild annoyance. “S’cuse me,” Leo mumbled, the words cottony in his mouth.
When he finally sank back into the booth, the atmosphere had changed. Alex was closer, his body a solid, warm line along Leo’s side. Leroy was singing something softly and off-key into his fist. Emily had her head on the table.
“You’re fucked up,” Alex whispered, his breath hot and smelling of whiskey against Leo’s ear.
“You too,” Leo managed. His tongue was a heavy, useless thing.
“Yeah.” Alex’s head lolled onto Leo’s shoulder. His weight was immense, comforting. “Mission accomplished.”
The server appeared, her face a mask of professional patience. “Last call, guys.”
“Another,” Alex said, not lifting his head.
“All of us,” Reed added, her voice surprisingly clear from the fog.
The final glasses arrived. This whiskey didn’t taste like anything. It was just fire, a scorching path to numbness. Leo drank it, and the final tether to coherence snapped. Sound became texture. Light bled into shadow. Alex’s hand found his under the table, their fingers intertwining, a sweaty, desperate clasp.
Getting out of the booth was a farce. Leroy stood, swayed like a metronome, and sat down hard on the floor. He laughed, a wet, choked sound. Emily tried to help him up and they both went down in a tangle of limbs and helpless giggles. Reed watched them, her head tilted as if observing a mildly interesting scientific phenomenon.
Leo and Alex staggered out together, leaning into each other so completely it was impossible to tell who was holding whom up. The cool night air was a physical slap, doing nothing to cut the thick, woolen drunkenness wrapped around his brain. The streetlights fractured into kaleidoscopic stars, each halo bleeding into the next.
“My place,” Alex slurred, his words barely recognizable. “Closer.”
Every step was a calculated risk against gravity. They weaved across the sidewalk, a four-legged beast with no sense of direction. Leo’s stomach, a queasy ocean of whiskey, rolled. He swallowed hard, a metallic taste flooding his mouth.
They made it to Alex’s building, through the door, into the elevator. The mirrored wall showed Leo a ghastly reflection: pallid skin, unfocused eyes, clothes rumpled. Alex leaned against him, his eyes closed. The elevator’s hum was a seismic event.
The apartment door seemed to fight them. Keys jangled, a chaotic percussion. Finally, it swung open, and they half-fell into the dark living room. The smell of yesterday—old smoke, spilled gin, their own spent selves—hit Leo like a wall. His stomach clenched, a violent, undeniable surge.
He didn’t make it to the bathroom.
He stumbled toward the kitchen sink, a wave of nausea cresting, and vomited a burning torrent of whiskey and regret. It rushed out of him, hot and acidic, splattering against the stainless steel. He gripped the counter, shoulders heaving, as another convulsive wave tore through him. His eyes streamed. The shame was instant and absolute.
Behind him, he heard a thud and a similar, wet retch. Alex was on his knees by the garbage can, his body wracked with the same brutal expulsion.
The sounds of their sickness echoed in the dark apartment, a raw, ugly duet. When it was finally over, Leo spat, tasting bile and failure. He turned on the faucet, the water shockingly loud, and rinsed his mouth, avoiding his own reflection in the dark window above the sink. He was hollowed out, empty, trembling. The drunkest he’d ever been. A new low, excavated in real time.
From the floor, Alex wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his breathing ragged. In the faint light from the street, his face was a pale moon of misery. He looked at Leo, their eyes meeting across the wreckage of the room and the night. There were no words. There was only the terrible, shared clarity of the aftermath, and the long, slow crash still waiting to happen.