The Friend Zone

Chapter Five: Whatever Tess

 Sometimes I wondered exactly how much alcohol we'd consumed in our few short years of going out, or staying in, and drinking. Part of me wanted to know just how big that drinking problem I always nagged at Taylor for allegedly having was. The smart part of me reminded myself that I drank just as much as he did, I just spread it out and drank like a sailor once in awhile but got my money's worth when I did.

It was a vicious cycle, drinking was. You feel like you're the shit after a few shots of tequila and a little Vodka mixed with whatever you can find that masks the taste of straight liquor but then you don't remember what you actually did the night before and if your luck was bad enough, you'd wake up next to someone with little to no clothes on in some random bed in a random room on campus. I had yet to wake up in a mysterious bed while being at Aladine, the only beds I had managed to sleep in were my own, Whitney's, and Taylor's and nothing happened in any of them.

It was also a funny thing, being drunk. I much preferred being the drunk one to being the sober one who dragged Taylor out of Caf on Thursday nights or taking a drink from him and dragging him by the ear out of a frat party.

"Tess we're leaving in ten," Taylor said, yanking the blanket off of me on Sunday morning.

"No," I replied, reaching blindly to try to pull the blanket back over myself.

"We're meeting your Dad before his flight leaves, remember?" he said, ripping the pillow out from under my head.

"I don't want to," I groaned.

"Get up or I'm shooting you with my Nerf gun," he said.

"No," I replied.

"Tessa I'm not kidding, you need to get your ass out of bed," he said.

Crap, he really meant business this time. You see, Tessa was my real, legal, name but nobody but Taylor called me that when he was either pissed at me or being dead serious. Boht instances did not happen often, but when he whipped out my real name, I knew I should probably give him a chance.

"I'm not wearing this, it smells like booze," I said, picking my shirt up off the floor.

"I know," he said, going to his dresser and pulling out an old sweatshirt.

"I thought I snagged this one last year," I said, slipping on the sweatshirt and absorbing the soft and familiar fabric of his Buffalo Jr. Sabers Hockey sweatshirt.

"It was in your room and I stole it back," he said, his usual lopsided grin spread across his smug face.

"Sneaky bastard," I laughed, slipping my leggings back on after tossing off the oversized basketball shorts I had slept in.

As much of a dumbass as Taylor could be, if he was the one taking care of me when I was drunk he always made sure he gave me a change of clothes and tied my hair back when I went to bed. He'd insist it was because he didn't want me to puke in my hair and if I was that drunk in the first place that meant I'd spilled shit all over my clothes and he wasn't going to let me in his bed with booze all over my clothes. 

It was funny when you thought about it, the fact that we spent so much time together, the fact that we knew each other so well, the fact that we slept in the same bed God knows how many times, yet we'd never actually even thought about being anything more than friends.

The truth was, we were the only constant in each other's lives. His parents had been on again and off again since he was in kindergarten and his older brother would go with his dad whenever his parents split up, leaving him alone most of the time while his mom worked to try to support herself and Taylor.