I Object [gxg]

15. The Party: Garbage Disposal Edition

"Are you okay?"

I raise my head to pulsing music and green once more. Amy stares at me, her eyebrows raised as she waits for a response.

"Why does everybody keep asking that?" I grumble. Her last words to me have settled like bricks in my stomach. Love is a trap. It hurts. It's just another name for melancholy, sadness, betrayal, and hopelessness all rolled into one and packaged with a nice bow. But that doesn't make it any prettier.

Amy nods. "Rough night already?"

"Something like that." I heave a giant sigh. "You know those scary-ass sinks with the thing in the drain that can chop your fingers off?"

"The ones that have a light switch over the counter that you always use to try to turn on the lights, but instead you have to go change your pants because the drain is louder than your worst nightmare?"

"Yeah." I grimace. "I'm in the drain. Like not just the fingers. The whole way."

"So, something strong then," she translates.

"Um, maybe not," I stop her halfway. "That didn't work so well for me last time."

"Well," she says with a rueful smile, "at least you're learning something."

I eye her as she heads back down the bar. Why did she say that like I'm supposed to be learning something from all this? Like it's all some big plot and the climax is taking way too long to reach?

Every time, I wake up at the bar. Live roughly half a day, transport to the future to live half of another day, and then pass out at the bar.

Pass out at the bar.

Wake up at the bar.

I crane my neck to look up at the ceiling, like it might hold answers. What if this place is some kind of space-time anomaly? Like maybe it's sitting on the edge of a wormhole and if you get drunk enough to pass out, you might accidentally fall through?

Or what if Amy keeps sending me back? Maybe she's a witch. Maybe she's the one who can time travel. Maybe she's a superhero.

Why does that outrageous possibility make me so depressed all of a sudden?

The superhero never gets the girl.

I blink.

Amy comes back around. "Do you want anything?" she asks, a dimple forming as one corner of her mouth pulls up. "I wouldn't even give you a hard time about asking for water on St. Patty's Day."

"That would be new," I comment, remembering her judgment the first time I'd asked for just that.

"Are you saying I'm judgmental?" She's frowning now, but the tiny crinkles forming by her upturned eyes give her away.

"Maybe," I hedge. I want to smile, but after everything I just can't fight the gravity anymore. I've ruined Nessa's perfect day four times now. I've made everyone want to kill me at some point. I chained Cam to this town for the rest of his life with a kid that wasn't his and a wife he didn't love. I gave Connor a ten-ton secret to carry on his shoulders for every day of his married life, and I know he would've kept that secret for the same reason I would have. We both love Nessa. Too much.

And with that, I remember what Amy said last night. Today? Last cycle? Right before I fell asleep at her bar the last time.

"Love is a prison."

I don't realize I've said the words out loud until Amy's eyebrows shoot up past her hairline. "Who told you that?" she asks with heavy skepticism.

"It's a long story," I sigh.