GIN AND JUICE pt 1

The house was practically vibrating from the inside. Music was blaring so loud you could clearly hear every word to every song. People would burst out the front door every few minutes to smoke or get some air. You stood on the porch and contemplated the reasons it would be best to leave: 1) this party was practically drowning in alcohol and you were not 21, and 2) social anxiety was a real bitch.

The only reason you were here at all was because your roommate dragged you here, then immediately ditched you outside when you got nervous about all of the people. She said it was time to “live the college experience” and “get the hell out of the dorm.” Maybe you liked your dorm. Maybe you liked feeling safe. Your college experience was supposed to be getting an education and then getting a good job so you could support yourself. This felt frivolous.

The door opened again and your roommate came out of the rave sure to be happening inside, alarm registering in her eyes. “Where have you been?! Come inside!”

“Caroline,” you whined, “I really don’t want to be here.” She grabbed your hand and started for the door to the house. You followed, dragging your feet the entire way.

“Will you stop acting like a child? I’m about to introduce you to some people so you’ll maybe make some friends and talk to someone other than your mother!” she screamed at you. You stopped in your tracks, breathing shallow and trying to control the tears threatening to fall. Caroline didn’t understand what it was like. Being at college felt like a thousand people staring at you all the time. A million sets of eyes just waiting to watch you fail. It was exhausting on a level that blowing off steam at a party wasn’t going to just fix.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean that. I just want you to get out and enjoy where we are a little.” She was backtracking, and she really did look like she cared about your well-being. You decided to just go with it. She could lead you around this party and make her introductions,  then you could go back to your dorm and crawl in bed until class on Monday. Caroline’s “college experience” be damned.

Your body slacked and let her lead you through the door. Inside, it was maybe less of a rave than a really smoky, smelly concert. Like an all-ages venue that drew in the under-18 crowd and their friends who were in bad alt-rock bands. Not quite the EDM show you thought you were hearing outside.

There were about a hundred thousand people packed into the two-story house. Caroline pulled you through the crowd, hand wrapped around your wrist like an elementary school buddy system. She jerked you around the corner, leading you both toward the kitchen, when you ran into a wet wall, jostling you out of your own world.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” the wall shouted over the music.

Not a wall. A person. A boy. A very tall boy. A very tall boy with wall-like abs that were pressed against your body. A very tall boy with wall-like abs who had spilled his beer all over your shirt.

You slowly craned your neck upward and almost fell over. This boy had the most gorgeous brown-hazel eyes you had ever seen. They were looking at you, puzzled at your apparent lack of functionality. He swivelled his head then, searching for something or someone, “HEY GEOFF!?! CAN YOU BRING ME A RAG OR SOMETHING??”

He had stepped back from you, assessing the damage, and held you at arm’s length by the shoulders. His hands wrapped seemingly all the way around your upper arms and you could feel his calloused fingertips scratching your skin through the thin cotton shirt you wore. He kept looking into your eyes, pleading with you to say something, but you just couldn’t. His face was mesmerizing—a smooth, square jaw; cherubic, alcohol-flushed cheeks; the straightest, whitest teeth you’d ever seen; and a messy head of thick brown curls, coiffed into a perfect disarray. He’d stunned you into silence and the touching wasn’t helping. He seemed to be transferring body heat through his fingertips and you were starting to sweat.

A stocky guy with long-ish hair and a serious scruff situation ambled over with a rag. Wall Abs took the rag from him and started dabbing it all over the wet pattern on your top. You blushed violently and jerked away from him.

“Oh, here. Sorry, I didn’t think…I’m really sorry…I’ll leave you alone…enjoy the party!” he handed you the rag and then vanished. It didn’t escape your notice that he had turned just as red as you had and was quickly trying to exit the situation.

You held the rag to your chest and searched for Caroline. She was staring at you from ten feet away like an alien had just tore itself out of your body. You walked over to her and snapped your fingers in her face.

“Caroline!” you shouted, “why do you look like I’ve birthed an alien?!”

“Don’t you know who that was?” she asked, totally mystified that you obviously had no idea.

“Uhm, no? A tall boy with wall-like abs?” you mused, humoring no one, especially your roommate who kept flapping her jaw up and down.

“WHO IS HE?!” you roared, getting frustrated with this weird fangirl reaction.

“He’s Shawn Mendes, the captain of the football team. He’s the starting quarterback. He’s in the running for the Heisman Trophy. AS A SOPHOMORE.” She rambled on about stats and measurements and how fast he could run a 40-yard dash for what seemed like ages. It was an impressive, though weird, body of knowledge that she had collected on a guy that seemed overwhelmingly normal, if not shy, based on the interaction you had just had with him. The football god that Caroline was blathering on and on about seemed incongruent with the tall, blushing, albeit Adonis boy that you had just run into.

She finally settled down after living vicariously through your beer shower experience by the Heir Apparent of college football. You thought maybe she had forgotten about introducing you to people but no such luck. Her mission was revived and she grabbed a hold of your wrist again, making her way through the sea of humanity and finally pulling you into the kitchen. The sheer gallons of alcohol that must have been in there made it smell like somewhere between a hospital and a gas station.

“What do you want to drink?” You stared at her with a blank expression, “uhhh, I guess whatever you’re drinking?”

She rolled her eyes and tutted, grabbing a couple of bottles of clear liquor and a carafe of cranberry juice and a can of lemon-lime soda. Stirring together equal parts of everything, Caroline handed you a fizzy pink drink that tickled your nose when you smelled it.

“I call it Bitch Juice because it tastes like non-alcoholic prom punch. Literally not a hint of alcohol,” she nodded, acting like that invalidated the actual presence of alcohol in the drink. You took a sip dubiously.

“Huh, not a hint,” you confirmed, kind of impressed and yet kind of alarmed at the chemistry of it. Armed with red plastic cups, a chainmail-like requirement on this college party battlefield, Caroline led you into the main room of the house, filled wall-to-wall with bodies.

“CAROLINE!” someone shouted from across the room. Caroline frantically waved at them, giving your wrist a fresh jerk in their direction. Before anyone could ask you anything, you took a long pull from the cup in your hand. They called it liquid courage, right? You needed some of that right now.

Caroline introduced you to her friends and you tried to take in all of their introductions, but mostly you focused on the pink concoction in your cup and how it magically kept refilling itself. Caroline must have gone back into the kitchen three times before you realized what was happening, too wrapped up in your own awkward to realize that she had been pouring more Bitch Juice into your cup as you paid attention to engaging with the people around you, a task that had become noticeably easier as the past couple of hours had dragged on. You had even laughed a few times and put your hand on a passing shoulder. You felt free for the first time in a long time. I guess that’s why they called it intoxicating.

“How many of these have you poured for me?” you asked her, starting to feel your fingers, toes, and lips tingle, a slight slur on your tongue.

“Oh, I’m not sure,” she thought, “maybe four? Maybe more?” Your eyes threatened to pop out of your skull. “Caroline!” you shrieked, “what do you mean ‘MAYBE MORE?’”

“I mean I’m not really sure, but it seems like you’re enjoying yourself! This is a good thing!” she encouraged, linking her arm with yours, as if you’d asked her to manually let your inhibitions down for you. It was a betrayal, no matter how freeing it may have felt.

You ripped your arm away from hers and stormed off, out of the crowded room. Having no idea where you were going, you climbed the staircase to at least get out of the thick of people on the first floor.

The second floor was just a long hallway with a bunch of doors. There were a few people up here, mostly making out, and none of them paid any attention to you. You hoped and prayed one of the doors led to a bathroom. A locked door felt necessary for breathing.

The first door was a bust—surprisingly empty bedroom (didn’t people hook up at these things?). The second door revealed a study, lined with bookshelves—intriguing but not a bathroom.

That left door number three. You tried to shove it open, but it only opened to a four-inch crack before halting. The light was on, and you could see a sink, confirming it was, in fact, the bathroom, but there was still something impeding your entry. You looked down at the tile and saw a black chelsea boot flat against the floor attached to a pair of black jean-clad legs. Someone was lying on the floor of the bathroom, and judging from how hard you must have knocked into them with the door, they weren’t conscious.

Flight or flight set in immediately. The hair on the back of your neck stood straight up and you felt more sober than you did two hours ago, let alone two minutes ago. The adrenaline burned through the alcohol like a forest fire. You needed to flee.

But what if they were injured? Or sick? Or…worse? Your mind screamed that you didn’t care, but your heart was compassionate and needed to make sure the person was okay. You used all of your combined body strength to slowly push open the door, sliding the body mass across the tile and onto the rug. You gasped when you finally slipped inside the room and locked the door behind you.

It’s him.

Tall Boy with Wall-Like Abs. Captain of the Football Team. Shawn Mendes.

And he was passed out on the tile floor alone next to an empty bottle of gin.

Had he finished the bottle himself? Was he drinking alone? —How passed out was he? Should I try to wake him up? A million questions ran through your head, none of them answered by the massive human form at your feet.

You reached out and put the back of your hand to his face. He was clammy, far colder than he should have been in a house with so many people in it. You remembered the signs of alcohol poisoning from orientation—clammy skin, inability to stay conscious, inability to walk—all of which he was clearly exhibiting.

You crouched down and patted his cheek. “Shawn, Shawn, can you hear me? You need to try to wake up. Can you hear me?!” you yelled with increasing volume, “You need to get up, Shawn, or I’m going to have to call 911.”

That seemed to make it through his gin-fueled haze. He lazily opened his eyes, looking completely disoriented, clearly not sure how he had gotten to the bathroom floor. Running his hands through his thick, chocolate curls, he finally focused his eyes on you.

“Oh, it’s you,” he whispered in awe, flashing you a blinding smile.

You probably would have fainted if he hadn’t immediately doubled over and thrown up in the bathtub.

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