Ryder

one

Alice's POV

Life could sometimes be one hell of a godforsaken asshole.

It'd be going so sweet and simple and the next thing you know, it smacks you right in the face, and everything, everything goes tumbling down to the deep pits of hell.

You never see it coming because what's the fun in that?

Soren: we need to talk.

I let my eyes run over the text for probably the sixtieth time in the past few seconds (alone) and wondered why I felt so sick to my stomach right then. It could've been those words--the text--that Soren had sent me hours ago, or it could've just been that Soren never sent me texts without a handful of emojis--which in itself told me deep down that he was going to break up with me.

Or maybe it was just the fact that I was having a massive hangover headache right now.

"Ungh." I groaned into my pillow and tossed my phone aside, aiming for the sidetable but wincing when I heard it fall to the floor. "My head."

"If only you'd have consumed a little less alcohol." My dormmate, Brooke, was being hella sarcastic and it only managed to increase the pounding in my head tenfold. "But hey, why go for something so tiny when there are these multiple tequila shots calling your name?"

"Stop...talking. Please."

"I'm merely repeating your words from last night, Alice."

Tequila shots. I remembered those words just as well. I could still taste the leftover bitter remnants of it on the very back of my tongue. It should've been alarming that I couldn't remember absolutely anything from last night but then again, this happened every time I was within reach of a bar. I went berserk whenever alcohol was involved.

A long, suffering sigh resounded from somewhere in our tiny little dorm and Brooke dropped something on my side table. "Take two of these if you want to make it till Dorothy's class."

"Fuck Dorothy," I mumbled, "when you're being the green witch."

Brooke tsked. "I'd advise you to take a handful, now that I see how bad it is."

I could practically feel her standing in front of our wall-length narrow mirror and examining her appearance. She always did that before going to class, almost as if she saw a hundred different flaws in her perfectly flawless attire and couldn't do anything about it.

"Do you want me to die?" I asked her amidst the continuous pangs in my head, then added as an afterthought, "You look amazing as you are, Brooke. Please stop staring at yourself." Because yes, it did freak me out sometimes when she did that every morning.

Brooke responded with a huff that wasn't her being offended, but just her way of giving me the older sister glare, even though she was just a year older than me and not even my sister. "Don't want you to die, I want you to live, champ."

I groaned again and pressed my face entirely into my pillow, grimacing at the stench of booze and trying to pretend that I wasn't still wearing clothes from the party last night.

By the time Brooke left and by the time I managed to get out of my bed and inhale a glass of water with only one aspirin, I felt somewhat better leaving my dorm, trying to shrug on my coat at the same time and protect myself from the morning chill. Even after a quick, scalding hot shower, something still smelled like booze and I tried not to complain since getting shit-drunk had all been my idea.

A peaceful night out, I had been thinking last night. And look how it had ended.

I was a little late to my first class and by the time I had managed to slide into one of the empty back seats, the professor had already started the lecture on classical conditioning. Not like he cared much about the pupils who came in late or early. It was relieving and disappointing at the same time because college was nothing like high school and if I found myself thinking too much about it, that too freaked me out sometimes.