Page 239 of His Hungry Wolf
Kendall
How many times have you put something into your mouth and thought, ‘This does not taste good? Am I supposed to swallow it?’ And then you do and you regret it. But seconds later you forget how much you hated it and put more of it in your mouth?
Well, that was me last night and I’m paying the price for it this morning. How can anyone drink whiskey? It tastes like dirt and it’s like swallowing lava. I should have just held it in my mouth and spit it out when no one was looking. No one really cares if you swallow, right? They just care that you’re there making the effort.
Okay, that’s it for me. I know that it’s a cliché for people to wake up with a hangover and claim that they will never drink again. But, I’m really not going to. I will never drink again. Not wine, not whiskey, not even a cider. I’m done with drinking. And, while I’m at it, I need to reconsider my relationship with loud noises and the sun.
“Can you quit that, please?” I said to my roommate Cory before groaning and rolling over feeling awful.
“I was putting on my pants,” Cory replied confused.
“And, can you do it quietly?”
“How many ways are there to put on your pants?”
I groaned. “I don’t feel well.”
“Do you want me to get you a glass of water or something? I’m gonna go get breakfast. Do you want me to bring you back a bagel?”
I thought about a bagel with cream cheese and lox and almost threw up. What was Cory trying to do, kill me? Our dorm room wasn’t very big, was he trying to get it all to himself? I moaned in reply and crawled into a ball.
Cory remained quiet for a moment and then sat on the edge of my bed and pushed his fingers through my hair scratching my scalp. It felt so good it almost made me forget that he had a girlfriend.
Aside from how loudly he put on pants, he was a very sweet guy. He was the type of guy I wished I could date if every gay guy didn’t see me as quirky and sexless, or as their brother.
“I take it you had a good time last night?”
“I don’t remember,” I admitted.
“Did you black out?”
“Yeah,” I told him burying my face in my pillow.
“Wow, that’s rough,” he said rubbing my head a little harder.
The man had magic hands. If I were a dog, my leg would be going wild right now. Girlfriend or not, if he wanted to crawl into bed and wrap his arms around me, I wouldn’t have objected.
He wouldn’t do that, though. Because besides being annoyingly straight, he was the purest guy I knew. No matter how innocent, he would probably think of it as cheating. The man was just a good guy. I would probably spend the rest of my life looking for a gay guy like him.
“Can I ask you a question?” Cory asked seriously.
“If I will marry you? If you’re going to keep rubbing my head like that, the answer is yes.”
Cory chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind, but that’s not the question.”
“Ooooh,” I groaned disappointedly.
“I’m wondering why you have a piece of paper pinned to your shirt.”
“What?”
Cory moved his magic fingers from my scalp and tugged at something hanging from my tee shirt. It was the one I was wearing when I headed out the night before. And until the moment my memories went dark, the pinned paper hadn’t been there.
I rolled over to get a better look at it. Tilting it upwards, I saw words on it.
“It’s written upside down,” I told him as the whiskey’s remains sloshed around in my brain.
Cory chuckled again. “Let me get that for you.”