Confessions of a Teenage Alcoholic

Chapter 23

"What do you mean it was nothing?" Lucy exclaims, sitting across from me and Nora in Stars. It was Sunday, and we all felt terrible after last night, we all looked terrible as well.

But, nevertheless, Lucy, Nora and I had decided to climb out of bed and get some comfort food.

I went back in after Jackson left, I didn't know what else to do, I drank until I forgot why I felt guilty drinking. I drowned everything away, and I didn't even talk to anyone about it. About what happened with Jackson; about what happened on the dance floor or outside.

I didn't tell anyone what I knew because I needed to talk to him first. Before I broke this little piece of trust he felt with me.

So, I ignored it all last night, I refused to talk about it, refused to listen to their sympathetic words of comfort. Because why are they supporting me?

When it's him. When they have totally overlooked him.

I haven't spoken to Jay, or Max or Luca. I was so angry with them, because although yes, I left. And Although I only found out myself, they had been here the whole time.

They could have helped him.

But they hadn't.

Or well, they may have done three months ago, 'the slip up' but he's still drinking. And they had no idea.

I drunkenly dialled Jackson's number five times before Nora took my phone off me as I crashed at hers. He didn't pick up, not once.

Lucy picked us up from Nora's a little bit ago and I was happily drinking a smoothie when they both turned to me and confronted me about what happened last night with Jackson.

"Ok, so you have to tell us. We can't just pretend like nothing happened." Nora says pleading with me to talk to her.

"Nothing happened." I sigh. Of course, a lot happened, but I wasn't going to tell them that he was drinking again, they didn't even know the back story, the half of it. They wanted to ask me about the fact I danced with him, about the fact I kissed him.

But I just hate talking about this thing with Jackson, nobody understands.

I remember what it was like to kiss Jackson last year, but for the five seconds our kiss lasted last night, I don't remember ever feeling anything like it.

Had I really blocked that out? I didn't remember it feeling like that.

I knew we had chemistry, we always did. But I guess last year, everything that happened with us, was surrounded by a cloud of fear. I was fragile then, and he treated me as such.

When he danced with me last night, it was as if he had stopped seeing me as fragile. And I know he was drinking and so was I, I tasted it, but something had changed between us.

On that dance floor, something was different. There was so much more longing than there was last year.

Even although last year I said I felt it, it was a hundred times more intense when he wasn't hesitant.

And I didn't know what to do with this information.

I knew I couldn't go there with him, I couldn't let myself just fall headfirst into these feelings, because he's not going to be there to catch me this time.

And he shouldn't be. I made that mistake, of loving someone when I hated myself. It doesn't work, you end up breaking them.

He needed to get better, without the presence of complicated feelings. He needed to focus on himself.