chapter eighteen

Sebastian

"It's fine," Saanvi says. "Believe me, this is, like, the ultimate hangover cure. He'll be so happy."

"Okay but you can't just decide that," I tell her. "Since when have you been hungover?"

She rolls her eyes, pointedly. "You don't know everything about me."

"Um, don't I?"

"Remember that time you got sick and couldn't go to that debate tournament in Marshall?"

I fake gasp. "You didn't."

She just snickers, and I go back to staring at Harris' front door. "Do you think he's even home?" I ask her. We've been standing out here for at least three minutes. "What if he choked on his vomit and died in his sleep and we're going to jail forever, before we burn in hell for the rest of eternity?"

"Seb," Saanvi says, side-eyeing me, "it's not that deep."

"But it is." I actually feel terrible about leaving him this morning, but I had no other choice. He hadn't thrown up in hours, and he'd stopped crying finally. I'd felt horrible the whole time. He was just so freaking out of it. It was awful. I've never seen someone that under the influence before. Beyond catching me off guard, it was more concerning than anything. When his mom caught me on my way out, I couldn't lie to her—I told her I was just making sure Harrison was okay. After a moment's hesitation, she'd simply thanked me and sent me home.

I'd texted Harrison that we were coming to bring him some treats—some cookies Saanvi and I baked this morning, and some yuja tea that Saanvi swears by, her older sister's favorite tea she told her she'd found at a boba shop near her college. "It's life-changing," she'd promised. I just hope Harris thinks so too. He hasn't seen the text, so....

"Maybe try ringing the doorbell again?" she offers. "He might just not want to see anyone right now, which is—"

The door swings open, and there's Harris, looking completely worse for wear.

"Hey," he says, nodding once.

His hair is disheveled, one side of his head looking significantly flatter than the other. His eyes are swollen up and bruised underneath, and he looks ... sleepy. I notice that he hasn't changed out of the T-shirt we changed him into when we got back last night, or how he's in the same flannel pants. His eyes are puffy and red, and I have to shove down the urge to give him a tight hug.

"Hey," Saanvi says, her voice full of pity so obvious that I wince inwardly, "are you doing okay?"

Harris blinks. There's no Band-Aid on his forehead anymore, but the bruises beneath his eyes are dark blueish-purple, already yellowing slightly on the far edges of his cheekbones. "I'm ... I'm all good. Why?"

I don't know what to say to that. Neither does Saanvi. "Do you remember much of last night?" I offer, because I don't know what else to say. "A lot went down. We just wanna make sure you're okay."

He waves me off, maybe too quickly. "I'm completely fine, don't worry."

"You're sure?"

"I'm positive," he says.

I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around this, him being "completely fine." Last night, I was here almost the entire night, holding him and soothing him while he kept throwing up water and dry pieces of toast. "And you remember everything?"

"Why wouldn't I?" He tries to give me a reassuring smile. My heart pangs as I realize, for the first time, that Harrison is a god-awful liar.

"We bring nectar and ambrosia," Saanvi says, holding up the tiny pink mesh bag full of the mint-chocolate chip cookies we made along with the travel thermos of yuja-cha. "Perfect hangover cures. In case you're, y'know, hungover. After last night. Because ... yeah. It'll do just the trick."

"Or so she claims," I tell him, trying to smile.

He smiles back, then seems to remember himself and steps aside, inviting us in with a sweeping arm. "You can play Parcheesi with me and Grandma."

I'm confused at first, but when I walk in, there's a stocky old woman sitting on the couch, all wrinkled smile lines and sunspots, along with what are immediately observable as Harris' own eyes. Her knobbly legs are set on the floor before her, a long TV remote in her lap and some board game I don't recognize on the coffee table in front of her. She's wearing one of those little old lady cardigans, a pink one that somehow makes her paper-white hair seem even whiter. There's immediately something simultaneously serious and playful about her, a gruff, wisened humor that I can't quite describe.

She nods at us. It makes her jowls shake slightly. "'Sup."

Saanvi and I don't move for a second, until Harris reaches around us awkwardly to shut the front door. It snaps us out of the—surprise? Shock?—of receiving a "sup" from this seemingly quite elderly woman.

"How are you?" Saanvi asks, then holds out the mesh bag once more. "Cookies?"

"Well, I'm much better now," says Harris' grandma, reaching out for the bag. "Now, I've got three asses to kick at Parcheesi instead of just one. Care to introduce us, duckie?"

"This is Sebastian Krause, and this is Saanvi Gaddam," Harris says, still seemingly trying to wipe the sleep from his eyes. "We all just graduated."

"And I take it they're not friends with that Liam boy?"

Harris shakes his head, his lips drawing into a tight line. Does he remember? Does she know? I feel like he doesn't. "Nope."

"Alright then. You can call me Granny Mac." She rotates the board game in front of her. It almost looks like Sorry, but bigger, and likely more convoluted. "I'm green."

"Oh, I have to be red," Saanvi says, making herself at home and sitting on the couch next to Granny Mac. "I'll fight both of you for it."

Harris sits on the edge of the coffee table right by his grandmother, reaching out to grab the yellow pieces for himself. His shirt from last night, the splatter of crimson stains against the dandelion, comes to mind unbeckoned. "No complaints from me. I'll be nice to Seb since his favorite color is so obviously blue."

Favorite colors don't matter to me. Like, to me, knowing someone's favorite color doesn't mean you know them, just like knowing their middle name or hair color wouldn't mean we were best friends. But somehow, Harris noticed that I love blue. Either I make it really obvious, or he just cares enough to notice.

I don't know why that touches me as much as it does.

I feel his eyes on me as I sit down on the side of the table across from his grandma. "He's not wrong," I say, smiling at him. He manages an easy smile back. He really is sweet, I decide. Which makes me feel even more terrible about everything last night, something I didn't think was even possible. I have a feeling I'm going to end up having to repeat last night's events to him. I'm not looking forward to it.

Parcheesi flies by fast. It confirms the validity behind Harris' story from Paco's—his grandmother definitely has told him not to be a little pussy. She speaks like a sailor. Even worse, probably.

"I'm gonna have to do it, Gam Gams," Saanvi says, one of her two red pieces on the board hovering over Granny Mac's last green piece. It's two spots outside of her safe space, and if she were to get it in, she'd win. "Don't worry, I'll win for the both of us."

"You fucking motherfucker," Granny Mac seethes, arms crossed tightly across her chest. Her face is red. "I will fucking end you."

Saanvi and Granny Mac are two peas in a pod, surprisingly. They're both highly competitive with shrewish tongues, in the best way possible. They've been absolutely obliterating me and Harris, who doesn't play like he expects to win at all, but is instead here to be little more than an agent of chaos.

He glances at me, frowning this silly little frown with his eyebrows raised all the way up, as if he's trying to say Sheeeeesh without turning the shared rage of Saanvi and his grandmother all on him.

I snort. Granny Mac points at me immediately, eyes so narrow, they're passed being 'slits' and are just closed. Her wrinkles are creased deeply, skin folding into skin like some Inception kind of shit. "You. You're next."

One of my four pawns is on the spot one pace outside of her starting place. If she rolled a five and a one, I'd be scared, but there's a 1/36 chance of her getting out, so I feel like I'm sitting easy.

Harrison leans back on one arm, and our hands are suddenly inches away from each other. It's all I'm thinking about—the sheer proximity, while knowing there's no way he'll reach out to touch me. But then I feel the softness of his fingertips against my hand, and I try not to inhale too sharply.

Without looking down, I intertwine my fingers with his. The position isn't comfortable; the heel of my palm is digging in uncomfortably to the scratchy woven rug we're sitting on, and my elbow is hyperextended. But the discomfort is easy to overlook with his hand in my own. He squeezes me once, a silent hello. I squeeze back.

"HA!" shouts Granny Mac. "A five and a one. Who's my bitch? Sebastian is my bitch."

A/N: another day, another slayyyy

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