Page 18 of About to Fall

My pulse disagreed.

9. Adrian

I fled Nicky’s apartment like the building was on fire.

Not left. Not departed. Fled. I woke up on a couch that wasn’t mine, under a blanket I didn’t remember pulling over myself, with a glass of water and two ibuprofen on the coffee table that I definitely did not place there.

Where the fuck am I? Oh shit, I need to puke.

And then the memories started trickling back like water through a cracked dam. Each one worse than the last.

The club. Dancing with Sabrina. Stumbling upstairs. Nicky’s shoulder under my arm.

Oh fuck.

My boots were by the door. Unlaced. Placed neatly side by side on the mat like little soldiers.

He had taken off my boots like I was a child.

I shoved my feet into them without lacing them, grabbed my jacket off the floor, and let myself out as quietly as combat boots would allow. Took the stairs two at a time because if Nicky appeared in that doorway right now I was throwing myself down the stairwell.

Outside, the cold sliced through some of my brain fog.

Three things became clear simultaneously. One: I was still drunk. The hangover was circling like a shark but for now my blood alcohol was high enough that the sidewalk had a gentle rolling quality I did not trust.

Two: my phone was dead.

Three: I had no idea where I was. My entire mental map of Toronto consisted of Cam's apartment, Renaud's rink, and the sushi place halfway between them.

No phone. Yesterday's clothes. Smelling like a distillery had a baby with a nightclub. No sense of direction—geographically or emotionally. I looked, to anyone with eyes, like a guy doing the textbook walk of shame.

Except nothing happened. Nothing happened because there was nothing to happen. I got wasted and got carried home by a guy who couldn’t stand me, and he was cool about it because Nicky was annoyingly cool about everything. He probably felt sorry for my drunk ass.

The memory hit me out of nowhere.

Nicky's face above me. Glasses still on. That careful, patient look.

You're so beautiful.

I groaned out loud, alone on some random Toronto sidewalk, and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes like I could shove the memory back into whatever whisky soaked hole it crawled out of.

Prince beautiful. It’s annoying.

Oh fuck.

I like looking at you.

My inside thoughts. Those were my inside thoughts. The ones that lived in the locked, alarmed, heavily fortified vault inside my brain. The shit I didn’t even admit to myself, let alone say out loud. And apparently six whisky sours was the exact dosage required to blow the vault door off its hinges.

I was going to kill Sabrina for letting me drink that much.

No—I was going to kill drunk Adrian. That guy was a menace. A loose cannon with no filter and absolutely zero respect for sober Adrian’s wellbeing.

A taxi appeared at the end of the street like a small yellow miracle. I flagged it down with the frantic energy of a man fleeing a crime scene.

“Where to?” The driver looked at me in the rearview with a pinched expression.

I gave him the cross streets for the rink because it was the only address my panicked brain could produce. The taxi pulled into traffic and the swaying motion made my stomach clench.