Letters to Audrine

17- You Were Jealous

I'm never drinking again.

My stomach is churning, my head is spinning, and I feel like my heart is beating twice its normal pace. I feel like I'm moments from death. And my mouth is so dry, I feel like I've never had a drop of water in my life.

"Here," Silas is standing above me when I wake up on one of Ramone's couches, holding out a glass of water for me as if he can read my mind. "Drink this."

My bones ache as I sit up and take the glass from him. "Thank you."

"Feeling okay?" he questions cautiously as he sits beside me.

"No."

"You'll feel better soon," he assures me as I'm guzzling down the entire cup of water. "I didn't think that you were going to drink so much."

"It didn't taste that strong," I say with an aching laugh. I don't see anybody else in the living room with us, so I wonder if not everyone stayed the night here. When I went to sleep, almost everybody was still awake.

"Let's get going," Silas suggests in a soft voice. "We can go back to my place, I make a really good hangover breakfast."

The last thing on my mind right now is eating, but I still get up from the couch. I make sure that I have my purse and everything is in it before I follow him out the door. I basically lean my entire body weight onto the railing as we go down the stairs to make sure that I don't fall down them.

"My friends really like you," Silas tells me once we get into the car. "Did you have a good time?"

"Yeah, it was fun. I really like them too," I tell him. "I wish they'd tell me what you say about me though."

"They'll never break," he promises me with a laugh.

I don't want to say the words that are coming out of my mouth, but they spill out too quickly and I can't scoop them up and put them back in. "How close are you and Melanie?"

He shrugs and says, "Not any closer than I am with all of them. Why?"

I've already started the conversation, and I'm sure it's obvious why I asked, so I might as well be honest with him. "It looked like she was flirting with you, and I got jealous," I'm cringing so hard right now. "I'm sorry, I know that I have no right to say that. I just didn't like seeing her flirt with you."

"You were jealous?" he smiles at me.

"I'm sorry," I apologize again.

"You don't have to apologize, Maisie," he assures me in a soft voice. "Melanie is a flirt, but that's just her personality. She flirts with everybody, and I've never thought of her romantically."

"You don't have to explain anything to me," I assure him. Even though I do really like that explanation, and I like that he gave it to me. "We said we weren't labeling this, we never talked about seeing other people, so you don't have to explain anything to me and I'm sorry that I brought it up."

"And I don't want to flirt with anybody else," Silas adds. "Just you."

"Oh," I wasn't expecting that, and it makes me smile. "Well, I don't want to flirt with anybody else either."

After that, the conversation changes to something else and I'm glad that talking about Melanie is over. I regretted bringing it up at all, but relieved that it didn't upset Silas or scare him away because I was acting too clingy. I don't want to be clingy, but I also want to cling to Silas like a panda on bamboo. I just don't want to be so obvious about it.