Okay

.17.

The bar is fancy, everyone dressed like they've got money and they're trying to impress someone. I'm not exactly sure who picked this place but I feel out place in my denim jacket and gray jeans. I finally forced myself to throw a load of laundry in.

"So where's Mina tonight?" Alec shouts over the noise of the music and socializing from other patrons.

Owen takes a sip of his beer. "Max and Chelsea."

"From high school?" I ask without thinking.

Owen looks over at me, smirking. "Not everyone fucks their high school friends over."

"Owen." Alec punches him in the arm.

I turn to stare at the bar top, accepting his scolding without a second thought.

"What?" Owen snaps. "I'm not going to spare his fucking feelings just because he tried to kill himself."

"Jesus Owen!" Alec blurts over him.

"Probably half his problem, everyone's pussy footin around him." Owen grumbles and I feel a laugh bubble up inside me even though I'm mostly certain I shouldn't be finding humor in this.

But it falls out of me anyway.

And I look over to see Alec staring at me with shock and confusion and Owen's scowling like he's about to tell me to fuck off. They probably think I've lost my mind.

Maybe I have.

It just makes me laugh harder.

What the hell has my life gotten to?

Flagging down the bartender, I order each of us two shots of whiskey and another beer for me, stifling the laughter that wants to continue.

"What the hells your problem?" Owen asks, downing the first shot as he does.

Myself. I'm my own problem.

Instead a smirk pulls at my face and I nod at Alec saying "we gotta get him laid."

Owen turns to look at the Goliath beside us, the two shots of whiskey untouched as he stares at his phone with his lips pursed and eyebrows knit.

Silently, Owen raises his knuckles to me agreeing and I knock mine to his.

"Pick someone out, I'll send them a drink." I tell him.

His eyes light up with mischievousness and I think back to the countless dares and pranks we pulled when we were younger. How alive I felt doing them, no matter how dangerous they were.

Like the time we were hanging out at my house, my parents weren't home as usual and Julia was with my grandparents or something. We took my dad's brand new Maserati for a spin through town, trying to max it out on a country road. We hit gravel and the car took off down the crumbling pavement in circles. We eventually came to a stop just off the road but not before Owen and I screamed like a couple of babies. Our hearts were pounding, hands gripped so tight we nearly had to peel them off the car. And then we looked at each other and burst out laughing. The ride home was much less eventful, our confidence knocked down a peg or two. But everything seem brighter, bigger, I felt alive.

"Right there." Owen says, leaning closer to me as he points across the bar to a couple of woman. "The brunette keeps looking this way."

He looks over his shoulder, stopping a waitress as she passes with a smile.

"Our friend wanted to buy those ladies over there a drink." He says.

I produce my card saying, "You know what a Blue Hawaii is?"