I feel like someone's taken a hammer straight to my skull. I hear the squeal of Wes's pullout coach's shitty mattress when I make the attempt to roll over, but it's to no avail. I remain lying on my stomach, my face pressed into the pillow as I try to open my eyes. My vision is blurry as shit, so I decide my best bet is to fall back asleep and check in with my body in a few hours.
"Morning, dumbass," comes Wes's voice as he leans down to smack the back of my head. I groan loud enough to wake the dead, but not loud enough to drag my sorry ass out of the depths of hangover-ville.
Fuck. You'd think spending most of my days drinking would lead to a decrease in hangover symptoms, but alas, no such luck so far. Guess I'll just have to keep trying, and maybe one day I'll become immune. My dad seems to do a pretty bang-up job ignoring all the symptoms.
"I'm asleep," I mumble back, my voice muffled by the pillow.
"Not anymore, you're not. It's almost eleven."
I can tell he's opened the door to his shitty screened in porch, because a gust of sticky wind sweeps over my sorry ass. I force myself to sit up, yawning and blinking the blurriness from my vision. My stomach shifts like a boat in choppy waters when I stand, briefly making me reconsider my decision to wake up.
Late morning sunlight streams in through Wes's dirty windows, warming my feet as I stumble into the kitchen. I find the bottle of ibuprofen he left on the counter, locate a glass of water, and down the pills with one gulp.
Then I force down the rest of the water, much to the chagrin of my very pissed off stomach. It's not the first time I've felt like this, and it's certainly not going to be the last, either. Fun and freedom is worth a little—okay, a lot—of bodily pain.
"Jack! Hurry your sorry ass up!" Wes yells from somewhere outside.
I withhold another groan, but manage to throw on a cleaner shirt and another ratty pair of shorts. I say another, because pretty much every article of clothing I own is ratty, faded to the point of no return, and occasionally riddled with holes. I don't give a shit as long as they cover what they need to.
"Jack!" Wes yells again.
"Calm down!" I yell back, stuffing my feet into my beat up work boots and head out the door. Neither of us bother locking the house up, on account of the fact that no one in their goddamn right mind would steal anything from this dump.
Wes's old man is out of the state working, and Wes, along with the rest of our group, isn't exactly responsible when it comes to cleaning up after ourselves. It's a dump, but it beats my crappy house. I jog down to where Wes waits by the water near our boat. S.S. Scratch is scrawled on the side, Ri's handiwork.
"What do you got today?" I ask when we're pushing off into the water. We hop over the sides with ease, me driving, him sitting in the back.
"Work at the Karrs and the Wilsons. Oh, and Declan said his mom might want some help delivering shit to the Birds later," he answers before he downs a bottle of water with a wince. "Shit. Why did we drink so much last night?"
"Your suggestion. It was fun."
"We needed that," he says, but with the way he says we, I hear you. I grunt in response, something he doesn't miss. A shit-eating grin spreads slowly across his face, like he knows something I don't.
"What the fuck are you looking at me like that for?" I demand to know, glowering at him in pure annoyance. Wes is good at pissing me off, and he knows it.
"Nothin'. Just that you got shitfaced for a reason. We only followed in support."
"The hell are you talking about?"
