Beer, Spaghetti, and Pharmaceuticals ||COMPLETED||

Eight

Alice crouched behind a wooden fence at the end of Simon's block, smoking the cigarette she stole from Blaise's pack. Despite the beads of sweat rolling down her neck and her spinning stomach, her mind was completely blank. She was not prepared to have this discussion today.

She always had an image of how this scenario would play out in a perfect world. Once the app was complete, and she would no longer spend sleepless nights working alongside Blaise and Isaac, she intended on simply showing him the app. She would say, "Hey! Look what I made!" By then, she hoped enough time had passed since Isaac slept with Chelsea, and that maybe because the app would already be finished, he would decide there was no point in being angry. Maybe she would buy him a hot tub, or maybe buy them each a trip to Europe. They always wanted to go together...

How gloriously naïve of her. Of course, if she spent the five weeks being distant with Simon he would eventually seek her out. That's just what Simon did; he was the protective older brother. She got so caught up in her selfish and new exciting life filled with handsome boys, copious amounts of alcohol, fancy offices, and thousands of dollars to barely even think about Simon. She deserved a gold medal in being self-centered.

She flicked the cigarette onto the street and briefly thought about packing a backpack and flying to Thailand. It was pretty affordable over there; by the time she returned everyone will have forgotten about everything.

As tempting as the thought was, she quickly found herself outside of Simon's door. As she let herself in, her nose wasn't hit with the usual stale beer and weed. Instead, her nose was engulfed with the lemony clean scent of Pine-Sol and Pledge. He did it. He really cleaned. He was back on his feet. And she was going to do literally the second worst thing she could do; the first being her running off and marrying Isaac.

"Alice, thank god," Simon breathed out when he turned the corner of the hallway. The bowl he was drying with a towel smacked the back of her head when he threw his arms around her neck. "I was so worried when Kathleen said you quit! I thought you had gotten kidnapped or something."

"Nope," she said, clenching her eyes shut as she embraced the tender hug. This will be the last hug you get for a while... "I'm very much here and alive."

"Have you been smoking?" he asked, sniffing at her coat.

"Of course not," she said quickly. One more lie couldn't hurt.

"Well, come on in, then," he said, guiding her to the living room. Mark sat on the couch with a joint in his hand. His bright green eyes lit up when they landed on her and Alice winced. The entire way over, she prayed Mark wouldn't be in the house during this...he would never look at her the same again.

"Alice!" Mark exclaimed, shifting on the couch to make room for her. She was too afraid to be near him, though, and sat in the armchair beside the couch. "You're alive!"

"Sure am..."

"Want a drink?" Simon called from the kitchen.

"Anything with alcohol," she said. Simon handed her a beer and traded a beer for Mark's joint. Alice silently hoped he would be too stoned to react to her news.

"Want some?" Mark asked with a crooked smile.

"No thanks."

"Not smoking anymore?"

"Not really." She shrugged. "Haven't gotten high in a while, I guess."

"That's too bad..." he said, leaning back onto the couch. "Remember all those times smoking in the back of my truck?"