chapter thirteen

Harris

I'm changing shirts in my room when a sudden knock on the basement window has me nearly jump right out of my skin

There's only one person who knocks on my window. I nearly head straight to open it, but I decide to make him wait, choosing instead to slip into the fresh yellow T-shirt I just took from the dryer. It's warm, and after having just dried off from my shower, it's like the hug I didn't know I needed.

Then I walk across my room and pull open the blinds.

Liam crouches in the window well before me, his shaggy hair a mess around his face. He has dark, sunken eyes and cheekbones so sharp, they make his face look hollow. He's truly a haunting figure, just there in his little $uicideboy$ sweatshirt and baggy jeans, staring right at me, looking half hyper-focused, half completely phased out.

I take the screen off and open the window. He immediately puts his legs through and slides himself in, landing on his feet just as he does every time. I've seen him make the jump hammered beyond reason too many times to count. "Hey," he says, "you've been awful quiet today."

"What do you mean by that?" It kind of bugs me that he just came right in, but I can't exactly blame him, seeing as Liam's arrivals at my basement window are routine now.

"Dunno." He shrugs. "You just usually text at least once, even to see if I didn't die the night before. Nothing."

"You were with Eli Wakeman," I point out. "I figured you were taken care of." Everyone knows that Eli keeps strictly sober. He's also straight, with a girlfriend at UMN Twin Cities, meaning he probably just took Liam home out of some kinda civic duty bullshit. Which, yeah, good on him. Seriously.

Liam shrugs again. I kind of hate it when he shrugs a bunch. Honestly, sometimes, I anti-hate Liam. I can't get enough of him. But other times, every single little thing he does bugs the shit out of me to such an extent that I think I could go right ahead and strangle him, Homer and Bart Simpson-style.

"Whatever," I tell him. "You're alive, aren't you."

He grins. His teeth are yellow, stained with nicotine from years of cigarettes and vaping. I do my best to keep my teeth clean and white, especially after my mom found out about my little habit a few months ago. We tried our best to break it, but I still sneak them when I'm with Liam. Which, really, is frequent enough that it's less so a thing I do sometimes, more so "I'm still very much addicted." What my mother doesn't know won't kill her.

"You're in a sassy mood today," he says, reaching out to pick a piece of fuzz off my shirt. When he suddenly leans in to try and kiss me, I can smell the faintest trace of alcohol on his breath. If he's here just for sex—which, right now, I feel like he is—he's probably more under the influence than I realize.

His lips are right in front of mine, but I lean back instead of forward. "Are you high?" He doesn't smell super strongly of alcohol, but knowing him, he's on something. Maybe he's cross-faded. He gets super horny when he's crossed.

"Come on, you know this isn't about that," he says, reaching out to try and grab my forearm. "I just missed you is all."

His palm is rough yet damp against my skin; his eyes are wider than usual, his smile a little too lopsided. It's the same expression he made at Elana Doorsey's New Year's party when he tried to lock the door of her basement bathroom. Liam's inebriated state had been funny before that—I was so high that I said to the guy standing next to us, "Oh my God he is so high, look," and then took a picture of Liam and showed it to him. Neither of us should have been as fucked up as we were; it was an obvious recipe for disaster.

I don't like thinking about that though. Thinking back to the bathroom makes me feel uncomfortable all over again. I know he didn't mean anything by it. He apologized after, and he really was so high, but he didn't listen to me when I said to stop, so. Here we are.

I'm just not gonna let that happen again.

I jerk my arm away from him. His fingers leave my skin a little sweaty in their wake, which, ew. Gross. Not important right now. "Liam, let me drive you home."

He rolls his eyes. "Oh my God, Harris, come on. I know you want me too."

Yep. There it is. "I'm not going to do anything with you when you're like this," I insist. It feels like teaching a four-year-old to share or something. "You know that."

"Oh, fuck you. Fuck you." He spits the words at me, as if they're poisonous. I don't even flinch. Par for the course. "I fucking hate it when you're sanctimonious like this. It's just sex, Harris. We've been fooling around for years. Quit being so fucking..."—he struggles to find the words—"precious about it."

He's got to be crossed. He's only like this when he is. Drunk Liam is witty and biting; High Liam is mellow and easily amused; and Crossed Liam is a cruel, horny bastard with no regard for others.

"Let me take you home," I insist.

He inhales slowly and closes his eyes. "No. My parents are home."

Right. It's not that Liam has issues with his parents. It's not even that they abhor the fact that he gets wasted and high and shit—they're just chill/neglectful enough to not care. But they hate the gay thing. Not Liam for being gay, but for doing it quote-unquote "under their roof." And that's why Liam doesn't want to go home: because he wants me to go in with him.

"Liam. No."

He takes a step closer, his eyes hazy. His lips are their same usual strawberry red, but they're chapped, with white, dead flakes of skin peeling off. And he's got a massive pimple there on his Cupid's bow, big and white and poppable. Even if I wanted to kiss him right now, this would deter me. But I wouldn't have kissed him regardless, icky Spongebob-style face close-up or no. I don't hook up with people when they're high and I'm sober, for one. And I try not to do the same when we're both in that situation. Liam knows this.

"You've gotta go," I tell him. "Am I taking you home?"

"Fuuuuck you."

"Alright, get out. Text me when you're back home safe, or I'm calling your parents."

"Fuck off, you fucking bag of dicks."

"Love you too."

Liam—miraculously, somehow—manages to pull himself back out of my window well and stalks off in the direction opposite the setting sun. Not the way back to his house, but whatever. I just cannot deal with this right now.

I don't know why my hands are shaking, but they are. I try clenching them into fists to make it stop. It doesn't work. My heart is hammering, and it's as if with every beat, it's pounding its way further up my esophagus. Each time it pounds against my ribcage, it reverberates through my whole body. I sit down on the edge of my bed and try to control my breathing.

I hate it when Liam is like this. Fuck. He always oversteps. And it's not his fault—he's beyond fucked up when he tries to do this shit. But it's scary. I haven't always kicked him out of the house. Sometimes, I let him do it, even when I'm sober, even though I feel disgusting afterwards. And then there were a few times where Liam said we were both fucked up, but I don't really remember much of anything. And even though he's my best friend, and even though I make myself take his word for it, I hate it. It's terrifying. Sometimes, times like these, I wish I was stronger. That I'd listen to my mom. That I'd quit being his friend. But it's hard. It's hard, and so I don't.

I roll onto my side and lay there with my eyes closed until I can no longer feel my heart's too-strong pulse all the way in my fingertips. It's just enough to allow me to take a deep breath and unclench my fists.

I pull out my phone from beneath my pillow and check a plethora of missed texts, all from mainly other track team guys. There's a party going on, an Elana Doorsey party. She's on the track team with us, a long jump girl, and she usually throws epic ragers. She and I aren't close, but she's sweet. Still, seeing her name, thinking about Liam and the last party, and what Seb said happened between us ... I don't know that I want to go.

Still. There's a part of me that knows I'm going to go, no matter what. So might as well invite someone I trust to keep an eye on me. Someone who's not Liam.

A/N - y'all the way I just had so much fun at a Hippo Campus concert that it compensated for me forgetting the key card to my future roommate's dorm and rendering myself maybe a little bit homeless for three days and two nights. I'm supposed to go on a date on Friday night too but we'll see if I can get in, do laundry, and shower on time. L. O. L.

(Don't worry though, one of my bosses at the radio station is super nice and is letting me crash on her couch. And her roommate is apparently my favourite Starbucks barista??? Small world af.)

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this week's chapter!!!! Yaaassss!!!! See you next Friday!