The Bad Boys' Soft Boys' Lonely Hearts Club - The Full Package

The Libertarian Endgame

Next thing I know, I'm in a waiting room-type of room, which is definitively made of room, due to the walls and such. Walls made of wood, which makes me think I'm still in the huge hollowed-out tree trunk. A few benches litter the room, most facing a wall where a big magic monitor displays what's happening on the floating platform. Every pair of eyes—which, need I remind you, is still on average less than one—are glued to the screen as the room itself shakes from the thunderous applause from the outside.

Well, not every pair. Two beautiful hazel eyes meet mine, and in that moment, everything else might've disappeared for all I care.

Hayden.

"Babe!" I yell as I jog towards him. "Did you see that? I'm not a murderer! I'm only an attempted-murderer!"

"I saw that, my love," he whispers, which, were I not the protagonist, I wouldn't have listened otherwise. His arms are open wide, ready to hold me tight.

And hold me he does. Tight. He gently lifts me by the waist and pecks at my face as if he were a seagull, and I'm a jumbo fry combo in a beach's trash can. Still, for as tight as he holds me, I feel something between us, dividing us. Maybe it has been the lack of communication we've been having all season. Maybe it's our honeymoon phase finally fizzling out, and the real test of love will begin...

"Babe, is there a bottle in your pocket, or did you grow a few dozen inches girthier?" asks Hayden as he puts me down softly.

...Or maybe it's the litleral thing I'm holding close to my chest like a newborn calf that's standing between us. What the shit? It's a bottle. A bulbous one at that. I mean it, it's thicc with two c's. It must be filled with jelly 'cuz jam don't jiggle like that. Come to think of it, bottles are not supposed to jiggle at all. And yet, this one does. Slightly, as if it was moving in both slow and fast motion at the same time. Inside is a swirling liquid, like a galaxy expanding, glittering, shiny. Specks of matter flow up and down and back again, stuck on a loop.

"I dunno. Some funky magical booze?" I ask. Where did it come from? How did I get it? Why do I wanna slap it and see it jiggle? Many questions, no answers to be found. Also, and this is very important: I don't care.

"I'm not sure about that, babe," says Hayden, taking the bottle from my hands. "I've studied liquor, and this doesn't look like something FDA approved. I doubt any drinkable alcohol has sediments floating all around."

The drinkability of the bottle seems to be a moot point as it is quickly snatched away from Hayden by a pair of grubby little soft boy hands with oversized rings and not a callus to be seen. Of course, it can only come from one person.

"dope, you got some homemade goldschlager," says Brayden, shaking the bottle and making the sediment go crazy.

For those of you not familiar with this drink, Goldschlager is a cinnamon schnapps liquor that, content with not being preppy enough by having the flavor profile of one of those red hard candies stuck on the bottom of every grandmother's handbag, also ups the ante by having gold flakes swimming around in it, thus making it the drink of choice of twinks, daddy's little girls and 16 year-old queen bee's all around. You can guess which one is Brayden.

Spoiler alert: he's all of them.

"I don't think you should drink that," adds Hayden.

Brayden blows him a raspberry while attempting to open the bottle. "i'm old enough to drink, arigato very mucho."

"It's not about that," I say. "It's just that I don't think that's-"

Gripping the cork with his sweater, Brayden opens the bottle with a *POP*. And then, he's gone.