I don’t know why I felt so compelled to say that in this moment, but just having her next to me and knowing that she’s in no condition to take care of herself tonight, I needed to say it. The words were there in the back of my throat and, I admit it, they were starting to choke me up. I would blame it on the alcohol, but no, even completely sober I love her just as f**king much.

She wraps both arms around my waist, nestles her head against my chest as we start to head back, and squeezes me. “I love you, too.”

24

As the night wears on, things happening in our small group begin to shift. People are talking less and making out more. Bray and Elias are lying down next to each other on one side of the bonfire. Tate and his girlfriend might as well be f**king already; only thing left to do is take off their clothes. Thankfully, the shady blonde chick is over me and is helping her friend feel Caleb up about eight feet away from Camryn and me.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I have a feeling I know where this is heading. No big deal. It’s not like I’ve never been in a situation like this before, but this time my main focus isn’t trying to please two chicks at once. I just need to keep Camryn away from their shit.

Just as I start to roll over onto my side to talk to Camryn lying next to me, the whole f**king world comes out from under me. I try to lift my head. I think. My eyes feel like fairies are dancing on top of them. With them open.

“Oh shit…,” I say out loud, but then, maybe I didn’t. Maybe it was all in my head.

I raise my hand in front of my face and it looks like the moon is sitting between my thumb and index finger. I try to shake it off, but it’s too damn heavy and it weighs my arm down. I feel my elbow hit the sand like an eighty-pound weight.

My head is spinning. The color of the fire is blue and yellow and dark red. The sound of the ocean is tripled in my ears, blending with the crackling of the wood on the fire and someone moaning.

“Camryn? Where are you?”

“Andrew? I… I’m right here. I think.”

I can’t even tell if that was really her voice.

I squint my eyes tightly and reopen them again, trying to focus, but I realize I don’t want to focus. I’m smiling. My face feels so stretched out that I’m afraid for a second that it’s not gonna stop stretching and it’s going to rip my face in half. But then it’s OK.

Oh my f**king God… I’m trippin’. What. The. Fuck. Did they give to me?

I try to stand up, but when I think I’m standing I look down and see that I haven’t moved at all. I try again with the same result.

Why can I not stand up?!

“Holy fuck, Tate,” I hear a voice say but I can’t even make out if it’s male or female. “This is some good shit. Ho-ly fuck. I’m seeing rainbows and shit. It’s the Reading Fucking Rainbow…”

Then whoever just said that starts singing the Reading Rainbow song.

I feel like I’m in Crazy Town, but I don’t really wanna leave.

Finally, I lay flat on my back and double-check my position by patting the sand on either side of me with the palms of my heavy hands. Then I look up at the star-filled sky and watch the stars move back and forth across the blackness in a poetic pattern.

Camryn’s face appears on my chest like a ghost out of mist.

“Baby?” I ask. “Are you all right?”

I’m worried about her, but I can’t stop smiling.

“Yeah. I’m goooood. I’m good.”

“Lay by me,” I tell her.

I shut my eyes when I feel her head on my chest, and I smell the shampoo she always uses, but it’s so much stronger than before. Everything is stronger. Every sound. The feel of the wind on my face. Dax Riggs singing “Night Is the Notion” in the background somewhere that my mind tells me is far away, but it’s so goddamn loud it’s like the Jeep is right next to my head. I can almost smell the rubber from the tires.

And I can’t help it. I start singing “Night Is the Notion” as loud as I can. I don’t know how I know all the words already, but I know them. I f**king know them. And it feels like the song is going on for hours and I don’t care. Eventually, I stop singing along and just close my eyes and feel the music move through me. And I don’t care about anything right now except the moment. And I’m horny as fuck. It takes me a second—I think—to realize that my dick feels the same breeze that my face feels. And it feels good.

“Camryn? What? Yes.”

I don’t even know what I’m saying, or if I’m really saying anything at all. My mind tells me that I need to make sure she’s not so messed up that she’s giving me a bl*w j*b in front of these people, but at the same time I don’t want her to stop.

My breath catches and my head falls over to one side. I see Caleb on top of one of those chicks, her nak*d thighs crushed around his thrusting body. I look away. I stare back up at the sky. Traces of light move back and forth as the stars move. I shudder when I feel my dick hit the back of her throat.

I look down. I see blonde hair. I reach out to touch it, part of me wanting to pull her away, the other part wanting to force her to take it deeper. I end up doing the latter, but when I throw my head back and see Camryn’s face lying next to mine, I snap upward from the shoulders.

“Get off me, bitch!” I manage to get out.

I kick her off of me and the high does a one eighty. I’m not enjoying it anymore.

I force myself to sit upright. I try smacking myself in the head with both hands hoping to jar myself sober, but it does jack shit. I manage to get my dick back in my shorts, and I look across the sand through the fire to see that slutty bitch already passed out next to Caleb. I don’t know how much time has gone by, but everybody is passed out but me.

I’m panicking. I can’t f**king breathe. What the f**k just happened?

I roll over onto my side and grab Camryn, forcing her next to me, and I don’t let her go.

And that’s the last thing I remember.

Camryn

I feel sick. God, I’ve never, ever, had a hangover like this before. The early morning sun and the breeze coming off the ocean wake me up. At first I just lay here because I’m afraid if I move I’m going to throw up. My head is pounding, the tips of my fingers are numb, the rest of my body a nauseous, trembling mess. I moan and open my eyes the rest of the way, pressing one arm horizontally across my stomach. I know there’s no way I’m getting off this beach without puking for a good five minutes first, but I try to hold it back as long as I can.

My cheek is pressed into the sand beneath me. I feel grains sticking to my skin. Very carefully, I reach up a finger and shuffle it away before it gets inside my eye.

I hear a thwap followed by a cracking noise and shouting.

Against the argument from my stomach, I roll over onto my other side facing the ocean.

“Get off of him!” I hear a girl scream.

That wakes me up even more, and for a split second I realize just how out of it I really was. But I’m wide awake now. I raise my head from the sand to see Andrew pummeling Tate with his fists.

“Andrew!” I try to shout, but my throat is sore and my voice is hoarse, so I only manage to croak out his name instead. “Andrew!” I say again, gaining more control over my voice.

“What the f**k is wrong with you, man?!” Tate yells.

He’s trying to back away from Andrew, but Andrew just keeps coming. He punches him again and again, this time knocking Tate on his ass in the sand.

Then Tate’s brother joins in and spears Andrew from the side. They both fall off of Tate and roll several feet. Andrew grabs Caleb by the throat and lifts him over his body, throwing him hard against the sand, and is on top of him in seconds. He punches Caleb three times before Tate is behind him, pulling him backward and away.

“Chill the f**k out, man!” Tate screams.

But Andrew rounds on him catching his chin with an uppercut, and I hear another stomach-turning crunch. Tate stumbles backward, holding his hand over his jaw.

“You drugged us! I’ll f**king kill you!” Andrew roars.

I finally manage to get to my feet, though I stumble once before I make it over to him. Just as I go to grab his arm to try pulling him away, I’m pushed hard on my ass from behind. I don’t even know what happened, but for a second it knocks the breath from my lungs. I look up to see Caleb on top of Andrew. I must’ve been caught in the crossfire of Caleb’s attack on Andrew from behind.

I raise my body back out of the sand and see Elias coming our way.

In a panic, I look to both sides of me and back at Elias seemingly in slow motion. Are all three of them about to gang up on Andrew? Oh no way in hell! I start to grab Tate while he and Caleb are punching Andrew, but I’m pushed out of the way by Elias.

“Move!” he growls at me.

Andrew manages to hold his own well against Tate and Caleb, he’s still on his feet and he’s still returning punches with both of them, but if Elias joins in, I don’t think he’ll be able to fight all three of them.

Elias jumps in, and I can’t tell who’s hitting who when a pair of hands grab me underneath the arms from behind.

“Stay back here with me, girl,” Bray says.

Amid my confusion and dread, I see Elias punching Caleb and relief washes over my body, though it’s short-lived.

Andrew’s mouth is bleeding. But then all four of them are bleeding somewhere. I think the fight is going to go on forever, and with each blow Andrew gives and receives, I wince and shut my eyes, just wanting to block it all out of my head. I’m sitting in the sand with Bray’s arms wrapped around me from behind, because she still thinks I’ll try jumping into the fight myself. But I’m right back to feeling like I’m going to puke, and I can hardly move. Sweat is beading off my forehead. The back of my neck feels clammy. The sky is starting to spin.

“Oh no. Bray… I think I’m—”

I lose it right there. I feel my body heave violently out of her grasp and my hands come down in front of me, digging into the sand. My back arches and falls, arches and falls, as I vomit over and over and over again. Oh God, please make it stop. I’ll never drink again! Please just make it stop! But it seems like I never stop. The more I vomit, the more my body reacts to the smell of it, the sound of it, the taste of it, and it just makes me vomit that much more. I can barely hear the fighting in the background anymore over my own noises and the dry heaving when there’s nothing left in my stomach to come up. Finally, I fall over onto my side. I can’t move. My body is shaking uncontrollably, my skin is both cold and hot and now clammy all over. I feel Bray sitting next to me.

“You’ll be all right,” I hear her say. “Wow, that stuff really messed you up.”

“What was it?” I ask, and right when I do, pieces of my memory from last night start to come back to me.

I don’t even hear if she answered my question, or not.

I remember that everything was fine, just a normal kind of drunk, until shortly after we started drinking the gin. And then out of nowhere, I couldn’t see anything directly in front of me because it was way too close. I kept focusing my eyes at things farther out, the ocean and the stars and the light from the boats moving across the water in the distance. I remember thinking that a ship was coming toward us and that it was going to crash onto the beach. But I didn’t care. I thought it was… beautiful. It was going to kill us all, but it was beautiful. And I remember hearing Andrew singing this sexy song. I laid my head on his chest and listened to him sing. I wanted to crawl on top of him and get nak*d, and I would have if I could’ve moved.