“Not right now, buddy,” I slurred, pushing past the overgrown dog and stumbling into the living room. I was surprised to find the television on.

“I didn’t know where you were.”

I jumped, startled by the sound of Flynn’s voice. He sat on the couch, still very much awake.

“Oh, um, well I went out for a drive and then I stopped at Woolly’s,” I explained, not wanting to look at him. Even though the booze had made it easy to forget to feel, the guilt came back with a crushing force.

“You’re drunk,” Flynn said flatly.

I struggled to take off my boots, almost falling over. I braced myself against the wall, unzipped one and tossed it in the corner.

“No I’m not, I’m just tired is all,” I protested.

Who was I kidding?

I was drunk as a damn skunk. When I was away at school, I didn’t drink much. Maybe a beer here and there with Nadine after classes. But I had made it a point to not let myself go back to the mess I had been before.

Until tonight.

If I hadn’t been so wasted, I would have seen how upset Flynn was. I would have seen how close he was to exploding. I would never have provoked him with my thoughtless words.

“You’re lying. You’re drunk!” Flynn stated, his voice rising. Murphy ran back into the kitchen, obviously picking up on his owner’s mood even if I hadn’t yet.

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. I’m fine,” I dismissed.

“Don’t say whatever! You went out! You didn’t tell me where you were! It’s midnight! I’ve been home for six hours and twenty-four minutes!” Flynn yelled, getting to his feet.

“Don’t yell at me!” I yelled back, holding my head with my hand. It was starting to pound and I was beginning to feel a little sick.

“I looked for you! I looked in the woods, and you weren’t there. I tried calling your phone and you didn’t answer! You’re supposed to answer your phone when it rings, Ellie!” Flynn gripped his hands in front of him and for the first time in a long time he began to wring them together. Up and down, over and over again in anxious, methodical movements.

“I didn’t hear it ring, Flynn. It was loud in Woolly’s,” I excused, starting to realize that Flynn was very close to losing his shit on me.

“You shouldn’t have been at Woolly’s! You should have been here! I come home at five-thirty every day! We eat dinner together and then we take Murphy on a walk. We watch television together and then we go to bed! A lot of the time we have sex. That’s what we do! But tonight we didn’t because you weren’t here!” Flynn screamed, throwing the remote control across the room where it smashed against the wall and fell to the floor in a dozen, jagged pieces.

“Whoa! Flynn, hang on a second—“ I started to say, wishing I could sober up a lot quicker.

“I ate dinner by myself! You were supposed to eat dinner with me! That’s what you do when you live with someone! You do what you’re supposed to do!” Flynn was bordering on hysterical and if I hadn’t been so drunk, I would have backed off, given him his space.

But his words pissed me off. If he expected me to be some sort of dutiful housewife then he had another thing coming! That wasn’t me. It never would be. How dare he think that?

I wasn’t thinking very clearly. All I heard was that I hadn’t met his expectations. That I had failed, yet again.

In that split second, I unfairly equated him with the dozens of families that wanted me to be a perfect child so I would be easier to love. Teachers who wished I wasn’t such a troublemaker. My mother who probably wanted a smarter, prettier, better kid and then maybe she wouldn’t have left.

And here was Flynn, the one person in my life who I had thought would always accept me for who I was, telling me that tonight, I wasn’t good enough.

Well fuck that!

I picked up the tiny Westminster Abbey that Flynn had sculpted for me not long ago and smashed it on the floor.

“Don’t do that!” Flynn cried out, holding his hands up as if to stop me.

“You’re not the only one who can throw shit, Flynn!” I yelled, picking up a glass shoe that I knew had belonged to his mother and hurled it against the wall.

“No!” Flynn shouted, covering his ears.

I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt the wetness dripping off my chin. I looked at Flynn who had his eyes scrunched closed and his hands over his ears. He was shaking his head.

“Just stop it,” he whispered.

Oh my god!

What was wrong with me?

I looked at the pieces of hardened clay shattered at my feet and felt the bile rising up in my throat. I ran down the hallway to the bathroom. I dropped to my knees and emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet. I stayed there for what felt like hours, heaving.

When I was finally finished, I rested my forehead against the cool porcelain and tried to stop my spinning head.

I had never, in all the years I had known Flynn, ever spoken to him like that. I had never scared him with my violence. Not even when I was a messed up teenager, barely able to control my feelings or reactions. I had never taken my vicious anger out on him.

But tonight I had.

Flynn didn’t come to check on me and I was too much of a drunken chicken shit to go find him. I felt like the worst human being in the world.

So I curled into a ball on the cold bathroom tile and fell asleep.

**

I woke up the next morning with my face pressed into the tile, dried vomit on the side of my face. I moaned and sat up. My head felt like it was going to split open.