I was just relieved that he didn’t expect anything else.

I walked back out to the party and looked around at the familiar scene. I wasn’t sure whose apartment I was in, only that it was filled with the people that I had been hanging out with since high school.

“There you are!” Dania yelled, waving me over from her spot on the couch. Her shirt had gone missing at some point and she was wearing only her bra. She didn’t seem to care though.

I sat down beside her after making the jackass sat beside her, ogling her boobs move.

“I saw you going off somewhere with Ryan Tusing,” Dania smirked.

“Is that his name?” I asked, unconcerned. Shane, who sat on the floor at Dania’s feet, handed me a small pipe and a lighter. I lit the pipe and took a pull of drug-laced smoke into my lungs.

“You’re such a slut,” Dania cackled, elbowing me in the side.

I shrugged, not wanting to admit that her words hurt. Because she was right.

I was a slut.

A pathetic girl using booze, drugs, and meaningless sex to fill a void. It should mean something that I was at least aware of what I was doing and why. But it didn’t. I went back to my inebriated self-loathing.

I was barely aware of Shane sliding his hand up my inner thigh until he tried to unzip my pants.

I smacked him in the face and got unsteadily to my feet. “I’ll cut off your as well as your dick if you don’t stay the fuck away from me,” I threatened.

Shane laughed, though he looked a little worried, and Dania thought my being groped was hysterical.

I stumbled out of the apartment and onto the balcony. I was going to puke. My head was spinning and I wanted nothing more than to pass out.

And there, just below me, I saw a familiar dark head. The hair was unkempt and hung in the guy’s face. My heart, already thudding in an irregular rhythm, went into overdrive.

“Flynn?” I whispered, hardly able to believe what I was seeing. I saw spots in front of my eyes the harder I tried to focus on the man below me.

My gut clenched in a painful combination of longing and hatred.

“Flynn!” I said a little louder, hanging over the railing to try and get a better look.

What was he doing here? Had he come to see me? Was he back finally after all this time?

I wasn’t thinking clearly but I knew I had to see him. I needed to tell him exactly what I thought of him. I wanted to scream and yell and tell him how he ruined my life.

I sobbed and I barely felt the tears slide down my face.

I wasn’t thinking clearly. The drugs and alcohol in my system were combating with common sense that it wasn’t possible Flynn was here, at this party. He had moved away years ago.

“Flynn!” I screamed, almost falling over the edge of the balcony in my efforts to get to him. Please look at me! Please!

“Ellie!” Stu yelled in my ear, grabbing me roughly by the back of the shirt and hauling me backwards. I struggled in his grip, trying to break free.

“Let me go! I have to see him!” I twisted and writhed in my efforts to get away. I needed to see Flynn! I had to! It was the most important thing in the world!

“You have to see who? You’re totally fucked up and you were about to fall over the fucking railing you dumb ass!” Stu growled less than sympathetically. But I didn’t care.

I ran back to the railing. The people on the ground were looking up at the commotion and I picked out the dark haired boy in the crowd.

“Don’t you see him?” I asked, my hands shaking, my heart thudding at an alarming rate.

“Are you talking about John Martin?” Stu asked.

“No! Don’t you see—“ I stopped. I was finally able to get a good look at the guy that I swore was Flynn Hendrick.

Because it wasn’t him.

Flynn wasn’t here.

I tore away from Stu’s grasp and stumbled back into the party, barely aware that I was crying. Dania called out to me and Reggie tried to stop me from leaving, but I pushed her away.

I just had to be alone.

Because Flynn wasn’t there.

And it broke me.

**

I had left my car outside Woolly’s and had gotten a ride back to Flynn’s with a guy Reggie knew. His name was Jonathan. Or Jared. Maybe it was Jackson.

I couldn’t remember because I was wasted.

Out of my mind, off my rocker, wasted.

I had ended up playing pool for most of the night. I won a pocket full of cash and damned if it hadn’t been fun.

Shane kept me plied with booze, and before I knew it, I was getting boisterous and rowdy. A bunch of people that I used to party with had shown up and it became a white trash reunion.

I hadn’t thought once about Flynn and the fact that I should probably call him and let him know what I was doing.

It was as though for one evening, I had slipped back into the role I had performed for most of my life. Irresponsible. Making bad decisions. Drinking too much and making an ass of myself.

These people didn’t expect me to get a job. They didn’t care that I had a bachelor’s degree. They didn’t care that I had finally found love with a man who adored me.

All they saw when they looked at me was the same girl I had always been. Only slightly less punchy.

I tried to be as quiet as possible as I opened the kitchen door. I stubbed my toe on the step and fell into the refrigerator. It was official: I was a drunken idiot.

It was just after midnight and the house was dark. Murphy came running into the kitchen growling. When he realized that it was me, his tail began to wag and he started pacing back in forth in front of me, wanting my attention.