Chapter 2: The Hangover and the Heist
The headache wasn’t a symptom; it was the main event. A jackhammer drilling through his temples, synchronized with the thud of his heart. Will opened his eyes to the gray, flat light of a Houston morning seeping through his blinds. The taste in his mouth was foul—vodka rot and the phantom of jasmine perfume. The empty bottle lay on its side by the bed like a fallen soldier.
He groaned, rolling onto his back. The memories of the night assembled themselves with cruel clarity: the punch, the alley, Cat’s eyes, the sterile intimacy of his own bed, her final verdict. Tedious. The word echoed in the hollow space behind his eyes.
For two hours, he didn’t move. He listened to the sounds of the dorm coming to life—showers running, doors slamming, the inane, cheerful chatter of people who hadn’t dismantled their own lives before breakfast. He felt like a specimen under glass, observing a world he couldn’t touch.
The velvet bag was on his desk, noticeably lighter. The cash from last night, mostly singles and fives, was a meager stack beside it. He needed to re-up. The thought was mechanical, devoid of thrill or dread. It was maintenance. A part of the machine.
He swung his legs off the bed. The movement made his skull scream. He shuffled to the small, dingy bathroom attached to his single and gulped water straight from the tap, the metallic chill a minor shock. In the mirrored cabinet, behind a half-empty bottle of ibuprofen, was the gun.
A Smith & Wesson M&P Shield, nine millimeter. Compact. Matte black. It had been Eli’s. A stupid, macho purchase for show. Will had taken it from the glove box of Eli’s crumpled Ford F150 after the police left, after the yellow tape came down, after the world had gone quiet. He’d never fired it. He just kept it. A totem. A promise. Some days it felt like a anchor, others like the only solid thing he owned.
His fingers closed around the grip. It was cold, heavier than its size suggested. The weight was a fact, unarguable. It didn’t judge. It just was. He tucked it into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back, pulled his sweater down over it. The familiar pressure was a kind of calm.
He scrolled through his contacts, past blurred names from parties, and found a new number saved simply as Ryan - Supplier? A kid from his Intro to Biochem class had mumbled about him last week, desperate to impress. Guy's a genius, man. Synthesis stuff. Pure.
Will typed a message. Heard you have product. Need 2 oz. McCord.
The reply was almost instantaneous. Yeah. Can do. Come to my place? 2509 Yoakum Blvd, Apt 4B. After 3.
Amateur hour. Having a stranger come to your place. Will almost laughed, a dry, cracking sound in the silent room. This Ryan was either an idiot or a cop. Either way, it was a problem.
He spent the afternoon moving through campus like a ghost. He went to his statistics lecture, took notes in a precise, looping script, answered a question about Bayesian inference correctly and without inflection. He was a perfect student. He ate a granola bar in the library, staring at a page of equations until the symbols swam. The gun was a constant, dull pressure against his spine.
At 3:15, he stood outside 2509 Yoakum. A decent-enough off-campus apartment building, brick facade stained with humidity. Apartment 4B. He knocked.
The door was opened by a wiry guy with glasses and the pale, under-slept look of a lab rat. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-two. He blinked. "McCord?"
"Yeah. Ryan?"
"Come in, man, come in." Ryan stepped back, nervously gesturing. The apartment reeked of stale beer and patchouli, a cheap vinyl couch sagging under the weight of half-empty whiskey bottles. A single, flickering floor lamp cast long shadows over a coffee table littered with crumpled receipts and a half-smoked joint. In the corner, a microwave hummed ominously, its door warped from years of neglect. Beside a stack of vinyl records and a dog-eared copy of The Catcher in the Rye sat a half-empty case of Bud Light.
Will’s eyes tracked the room. No other people. No obvious cameras. Just clutter and poor life choices.
"You want a beer or something?" Ryan asked, shifting from foot to foot.
"No. Let’s see it."
"Right, right." Ryan scurried to a small closet, pulled out a plastic toolbox. He opened it on the cluttered coffee table. Inside, nestled among wire cutters and screwdrivers, were several thick, heat-sealed bags of a white, chunky powder. A small digital scale sat beside them. "It’s good stuff. I recrystallized it twice. Almost 92% pure. I ran a sample on the HPLC in the lab last—"
"Save the infomercial," Will said, his voice flat. He picked up a bag, pinched the powder between his fingers. The texture was off. Too crystalline, not fluffy enough. He touched a tiny bit to his gum. The numbness was delayed, diluted with filler. It was cut to hell, probably with lidocaine and baby laxative. Graduate-level cheapskate.
"You’re cutting it with garbage," Will stated, dropping the bag.
Ryan’s face pinched. "What? No, man, that’s pure—"
"Don’t." Will’s tone was quiet, final. "I said two ounces. This is maybe an ounce and a half of actual product, drowned in shit. You trying to skimp me, or are you just bad at math?"
The atmosphere in the room curdled. Ryan’s nervous energy tightened into something defensive. "Look, the price is for the weight. That’s the weight. You got a problem, go somewhere else."
Will stared at him. The headache pulsed behind his eyes. He saw the Sigma Chi brother’s sneer, heard Cat’s voice saying the system reasserts itself. This pipsqueak in a dirty apartment thought he was part of the system. He thought he could dictate terms.
A cold, familiar clarity washed over Will. He wasn’t angry. He was bored. And in his boredom, a drastic, simple solution presented itself.
"Where’s the rest?" Will asked.
"The rest of what?"
"The good stuff. The uncut stash. You didn’t synthesize all your supply to this garbage level. You kept some pure for yourself or your friends. Where is it?"
Ryan took a step back, hitting the edge of the sagging couch. "Dude, what? Get out. The deal’s off."
Will moved. It was two quick steps. He didn’t throw a punch. He simply shoved Ryan, hard, backwards over the arm of the couch. The boy went down with a yelp, crashing into a side table and sending the lamp rocking wildly, the shadows pitching around the room.
Before Ryan could scramble up, Will was on him. He planted a knee on his chest, not enough to crush, just enough to pin. He didn’t feel rage. He felt like he was performing a necessary, unpleasant task. Like changing a tire.
Ryan wheezed, panic in his eyes. "Okay, okay! Shit!"
"The good stuff," Will repeated, his voice still horribly calm.
"Bedroom! Top drawer of the dresser, under the socks! Jesus!"
Will got off him, walked to the bedroom. It was a mess of laundry and textbooks. He opened the top drawer, pushed aside the balled-up socks. There, in a Ziploc bag, was a smaller, denser brick of powder, much finer, much whiter. The real product. Alongside it were three crisp one-hundred dollar bills. He took it all.
When he returned to the living room, Ryan was sitting on the floor, rubbing his sternum, his glasses askew. He looked like he might cry.
Will tossed the bag of cut product onto his chest. "This is shit. You’re going to get someone killed selling bunk like this. Or get your teeth kicked in. Probably both."
Ryan just stared, humiliated and terrified.
Will looked down at him, this idiot playing at being a kingpin surrounded by his vinyl records and his microwave that looked like it might catch fire. A wave of something like disgust—for Ryan, for himself, for the whole grimy charade—rose in his throat.
"Stay out of drugs," Will said, the words absurd even as he said them. "You’re a biochem student. Go discover a virus or something."
He turned and left, closing the apartment door softly behind him. In the hallway, he leaned against the wall for a moment, catching his breath. The gun pressed into his back. The pure coke and the stolen hundreds were in his pocket. He had won. He had asserted the system.
He felt emptier than when he’d arrived.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, expecting maybe a threat from Ryan, or a message from one of his regular clients.
It was Cat.
You left your football in the middle of the floor. It’s tripping hazard. Also, you stole my lighter. It was my grandmother’s.
He read the message twice. The casual tone. The absurd accusation about a lighter he’d never touched. The pretense of a reason.
The system was reasserting itself, but not in any way he could have predicted.
He didn’t reply. He walked out into the late afternoon light, the weight of the gun and the drugs a familiar burden, the words on the screen a strange, new, and unsettling weight in his chest. He had no idea what game she was playing now, but for the first time in a long time, the numbness had a crack in it. Something, faint and unwelcome, was stirring underneath.
Something, faint and unwelcome, was stirring underneath. He deleted the message. He shoved the phone back into his pocket like it was burning him. How did she even get his number? He’d never given it. The violation felt intimate, another layer peeled away without his consent.
He walked for blocks, the adrenaline from the confrontation with Ryan melting into a jittery sweat. The pure cocaine in his pocket felt heavier than the gun. He didn’t go back to his dorm. He couldn’t face the room she’d dissected. He spent the night on the couch of a guy who sold Adderall, sleeping in fitful bursts on a stained corduroy cushion, chasing the numbness with warm beer.
A week passed. The rhythm of oblivion reasserted itself—classes, deals, the calculated blur of substances. He almost forgot the text. Then, in his 10 a.m. American Foreign Policy lecture, he felt a presence loom at the end of his row.
He looked up. Cat stood there in a cream-colored sweater and dark jeans, a leather satchel slung over one shoulder. The fluorescent light of the classroom made her look severe, academic. Her expression was pure, impatient business.
“McCord,” she said, not bothering to whisper. A few heads turned.
Will stared. His brain scrambled, trying to reconcile this image with the girl in the black dress from the party. “This is a 200-level class.”
“I’m auditing. For my PoliSci minor.” She didn’t blink. “My lighter. The silver Zippo with a fleur-de-lis. You stole it.”
“I didn’t steal anything.”
“It was on your nightstand. Therefore, you have it.” She shifted her weight. “I’m not leaving without it. It was my grandfather’s.”
He knew he should tell her to fuck off. He should turn back to his notebook filled with precise, meaningless notes. But the entire lecture hall was watching now, a low buzz of curiosity humming around them. The professor, a droning man in a tweed jacket, paused mid-sentence about the Domino Theory.
“Fine,” Will muttered, shoving his notebook into his backpack. “It’s at my place. Maybe.”
He stood, shouldering the pack. He could feel the weight of the gun in the main compartment, the textbooks a poor disguise. He walked out of the lecture hall, and she followed, her footsteps a steady, infuriating click behind him on the linoleum.
They walked across campus in silence for a full five minutes. The live oaks dripped from a morning rain. The air smelled wet and clean, a stark contrast to the stale memories between them.
“How’d you get my number?” he finally asked, staring straight ahead.
“I have friends. You’re not exactly a phantom, Will. You’re the guy who sells coke to frat boys.”
“So you texted me to accuse me of being a thief.”
“I texted you because you are a thief. Of lighters and, apparently, peace of mind.” Her voice was crisp. “You could have just replied.”
His dorm room was, for once, orderly. The bed was made. The football was back on the windowsill. The sheets from that night were balled up somewhere at the bottom of the communal laundry room. He dropped his backpack by the desk, the soft thud of the gun inside unmistakable. He didn’t look at her.
He went to the top drawer of his bureau, rummaged past socks and the velvet bag. His fingers closed around the cold, engraved metal. He’d found it in the tangled sheets that morning after she left. He’d meant to throw it away.
“Here,” he said, turning and tossing it to her.
She caught it deftly, her fingers curling around it. She didn’t check it. She just held it, looking from the lighter in her palm to him, then around the sanitized room. Her gaze lingered on the football.
“You really do live in a waiting room,” she said, her earlier bravado softening into something like curiosity.
“You got your thing. You can go.”
She didn’t move. Instead, she stepped further in, placing her satchel on his neatly made bed. The intimacy of the gesture was staggering. “Why’d you keep it if you didn’t steal it?”
“I forgot.”
“You forgot.” She gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “You’re a terrible liar for a criminal.”
He had no retort. The air in the small room grew dense, charged with everything they hadn’t said, with the memory of their last confusing collision in this same space. She was looking at him not with judgment now, but with a reopened investigation. He felt transparent, caught between the person he pretended to be and the vacuum he actually was.
He wasn’t sure who moved first. It was gravitational. One moment they were standing three feet apart, a charged silence between them. The next, her mouth was on his, and his hands were in her hair, and they were falling onto the bed, a tangle of urgent limbs and sharp breaths. It wasn’t tender. It was a wordless argument, a physical continuation of their conversation in the alley, in this very room a week prior. His back hit the mattress, her weight settled on him, and the world constricted to the points of contact: her teeth on his lower lip, her knee between his legs, the cool metal of the lighter still clutched in her hand digging into his shoulder.
It was just as confusing as the first time, but slower, less frantic. There was a simmering anger to it, a mutual frustration that found its only possible outlet. She pulled his sweater over his head. He fumbled with the button of her jeans. The afternoon light shifted across the ceiling. He didn’t check out this time. He was painfully, relentlessly present, hyper-aware of every flinch of her body, every hitched breath. It felt like being seen, and it was terrifying.
Afterward, they lay sprawled across the covers, the silence returning, thick and loaded. His heart hammered against his ribs. The chemical calm he usually sought was nowhere to be found. He felt raw, scraped clean.
He sat up, reaching for his jeans on the floor. The need to reestablish the dynamic, any dynamic, was overwhelming. He pulled the small Ziploc of pure product from the pocket—Ryan’s good stuff. He tossed it onto the bed between them. It landed with a soft, crinkling thud.
“Want some?” he asked, his voice raspy. “It’s good. I tested it myself.”
Cat stared at the bag. Her expression, which had been soft, unguarded in the aftermath, shut down completely. It hardened into something cold and disgusted. She sat up, clutching the sheet to her chest.
“Are you serious?” Her voice was low, dangerous.
Will shrugged, a defensive gesture. “You’re here. We’re… I don’t know what we’re doing. It’s what I have.”
“It’s what you are,” she said, the words slicing through the room. She pushed herself off the bed, turning her back as she dressed with sharp, furious motions. “That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it? A punch. A fuck. A line of coke. You’re just a collection of brute reactions.”
“You came looking for me,” he shot back, standing up, feeling exposed and foolish.
“For my lighter! Not for… this!” She gestured at the bed, at the bag, at him. “God. You’re exhausting.”
She finished dressing, snatched her satchel, and tucked her grandfather’s Zippo safely inside. She paused at the door, her hand on the knob. She didn’t look back. “McCord. Will McCord. Statistics major. Right?”
He blinked, thrown. “Yeah. What do you study, since you’re clearly so smart?”
“Catalyna Tran. Pre-law. Political Science.” She finally glanced over her shoulder, her eyes dark and unreadable. “Now we know. Congrats. We’ve graduated to acquaintances who’ve seen each other naked.”
She left. The door clicked shut.
Will stood alone in the middle of the room, the bag of cocaine glaring at him from the rumpled sheets. The stale taste of it was already in his mouth, though he hadn’t taken any. He picked it up, hurled it against the wall. It didn’t help.
He had her full name now. It felt like a defeat.
It felt like a defeat. Her name was a piece of data he couldn’t purge, sticking in his mind with the tenacity of a bad song. Catalyna Tran. Pre-law. For two days, he half-expected her to materialize in his peripheral vision, delivering another surgical strike. She didn’t.
The silence was worse.
On Wednesday, a kid from his Econ discussion section shoved a ticket into his hand. “My girlfriend dumped me. You want this? It’s student section. Rice versus U of H.”
It was a rectangle of red paper. Will stared at it. He hadn’t been to a game since high school. The thought of the noise, the crowd, the organized passion of it all made his skin crawl. But the emptiness of his dorm was a physical pressure. The ticket was an excuse to be somewhere that wasn’t here, where the ghosts felt quieter.
“Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”
Tudor Fieldhouse that night was a drum of sound. The air vibrated with shrieking pep bands, the squeal of sneakers on polished wood, the collective groan of a missed three-pointer. Will moved through the crowds of red-faced students, a tall ghost in a dark jacket, feeling utterly disconnected from the roaring school spirit. He found the student section, a bleacher chaos of painted faces and oversized jerseys.
He squeezed past knees, muttering “excuse me” to backs that didn’t turn. His seat was near the top, in a row packed tight with shouting strangers. He looked at his ticket stub, then at the seat number bolted to the bleacher.
She was already there.
Cat sat with her knees pulled up, chin resting on them, watching the court below. She wore a simple Rice Owls sweatshirt, her dark hair in a messy ponytail. A subtle, clean scent of soap cut through the stale popcorn and sweat of the arena. She hadn’t seen him yet.
Will stopped. Every instinct screamed to turn, to walk back into the concourse, to vanish. This wasn’t chance. This was a cosmic joke. He stood, trapped in the stream of students still filing in.
Her head turned. Those dark eyes found him, tracked from his face down to the ticket in his hand, and back up. Her expression didn’t shift to surprise, or anger, or even the cool appraisal he’d come to expect. It was just… acknowledgment. A faint, tired resignation. Of course.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. Her voice was barely audible under the roar.
“My seat’s next to you,” Will said, stating the absurdly obvious.
“I can see that.” She shifted an inch to the side, a minimal concession. “Well. Sit down. You’re blocking the view.”
He sat. The hard bleacher was inches from her. Their shoulders didn’t touch, but he could feel the heat from her arm. The game played on below, a frantic ballet of bodies he couldn’t focus on.
“You follow basketball?” he asked, just to say something.
“No,” she said, not looking at him. “I come for the profound philosophical discourse in the student section. ‘Ref, you suck!’ is particularly nuanced.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile, but something in his chest unclenched a fraction.
They sat in silence for three full possessions. Rice turned the ball over. The crowd booed. A guy behind them spilled beer, the splatter just missing Cat’s shoe. She didn’t flinch.
“I didn’t plan this,” Will finally said, the words torn out of him.
“I know,” Cat replied, still watching the court. “You’re not that clever.” She took a slow sip from a water bottle. “And I’m not stalking you. My roommate’s brother is on the team. She gets tickets.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Another silence, this one thinner, less absolute. The Rice point guard drove the lane, drawing a foul. The whistle blew. The crowd stood to cheer, a sudden wave of motion and noise that forced them both to their feet, their arms brushing. They sat back down simultaneously.
“So, Pre-Law Catalyna,” he said, testing the name. “What’s the legal precedent for stealing a lighter you left behind?”
Now she looked at him. A real, if weary, smile touched her lips. “Finders keepers is generally civil, not criminal, law. But possession is nine-tenths. You gave it back. Case closed.”
“Good.”
“You’re wearing the same sweater,” she observed.
“It’s a sweater.”
“It has a hole near the collar.” Her finger almost, but not quite, pointed. “Right there.”
He looked down. There was a small pull in the gray wool. He’d never noticed. “So it does.”
The game churned on. They didn’t speak for minutes, then one of them would offer a fragment.
“Number fifteen travels every time,” Will muttered, after a dubious pivot from the Houston forward.
“You know basketball?” Cat asked, glancing at him.
“I know movement. That’s a carry. Obvious.”
She nodded slowly. “You watch. You calculate.”
“You sound like a broken record.”
“You make it easy.”
At halftime, the lights came up. The roar subsided to a conversational din. The person on Cat’s other side got up for food, leaving a temporary pocket of relative quiet around them. The space felt dangerous, exposed.
Cat kept her gaze forward, on the cheerleanders forming a pyramid. “Why’d you offer me that coke, Will?”
The question landed like a gut punch. Direct, unflinching. He fumbled for his default settings—cynicism, deflection—but they were out of reach. The noise of the arena faded to a distant buzz.
“I don’t know,” he said, the truth a bare, ugly thing. “It’s what I have. It’s what I do.”
“It’s a shit thing to do,” she said softly, without malice. A factual correction. “You’re better than a shit thing.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve seen your transcript, McCord.” She finally turned her head, fully facing him. The fluorescent halftime lights were merciless. “Valedictorian. West Texas. Full ride. I asked around. You’re a genius from a dirt road who sells blow to trust fund kids and gets in fights. The math on that doesn’t work. It’s a waste.”
Hearing his biography recited back to him, clean and clinical, was more violating than anything that had happened in his dorm room. His throat tightened. “It’s my life to waste.”
“Is it?” she asked. “Or is it just what you’re doing until you work up the courage to do something else?”
The buzzer blared for the second half. The crowd flooded back, a tide of sound and motion that saved him from having to answer. The game resumed, a frantic back-and-forth. With five minutes left, Rice down by four, the energy in the building became a tangible, screaming thing.
On a crucial play, the Owls’ center went up for a block, collided mid-air, and came down wrong. A sickening, silent crunch of anatomy betrayed by physics. The player didn’t get up. A hush fell over the arena, broken only by his muffled cries of pain.
Will stopped breathing.
The squeak of sneakers faded. The player’s anguish, the frantic coaches, the hushed crowd—it all tunneled away. He wasn’t in Tudor Fieldhouse. He was in the house, his collar bleeding, holding Eli as the blood spewed out of his neck.
A warm hand closed over his wrist.
He jerked, a full-body spasm. He was back on the bleacher. The medical staff was surrounding the fallen player. Cat’s fingers were tight around his arm, her nails pressing into his skin. Not gentle. An anchor.
“Will.” Her voice was low, urgent, cutting through the memory. “Look at me.”
He couldn’t. His eyes were fixed on the court, but he wasn’t seeing it. He was trembling.
“McCord. Look at me right now.”
He dragged his gaze to hers. Her face was pale, her eyes wide. Not with pity. With a fierce, alarming understanding. She’d seen his unraveling. She’d followed its thread all the way down to whatever dark well it led to.
“Breathe,” she commanded.
He did. A ragged, shuddering inhale. The noise of the arena rushed back in a wave. The player was being helped to his feet, putting weight on the ankle, waving to the crowd. A sprain, not a break. The crowd applauded in relieved sympathy.
Cat didn’t let go of his wrist. Her thumb moved, a single, deliberate stroke over his frantic pulse point.
“You’re here,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “You’re at a basketball game. With me.”
He nodded, a stiff, mechanical motion. The ghost of Eli’s face receded, leaving a cold sweat and a devastating emptiness in its wake. He felt stripped bare, more than naked, more than ever before.
The game ended. Rice lost, of course. The crowd began to disperse, a slow drain of disappointment and chatter. The hand on his wrist loosened, then fell away.
They sat there as the row emptied around them. The cleanup crew began sweeping the aisles. The reality of the exit, of going back to their separate silences, yawned before them.
Cat stood up. She slung her small purse over her shoulder. She looked down at him, still seated, his face doubtless ashen.
“Come on,” she said. It wasn’t an invitation. It was an instruction.
He looked up, his vision clearing. “Where?”
“Anywhere that isn’t this loud, or your room, or a party.” She extended her hand, not to help him up, but as a pact. “We’re going to get coffee. And you’re going to tell me why a statistics genius with a football on his windowshell carries a gun in his backpack.”