I'd called into the attendance office sick, even though I wasn't sick but I was surely and most definitely dying.

The heart wrenching, stomach churning, and nausea inducing feeling in my chest had gotten worse as soon as the day started. I didn't even want to get out of bed until the feeling passed.

This was stupid. I never got sick. I wasn't even sick.

A while ago, Patrick told me alcohol never failed to upset Brendon's stomach on a rainy day. Maybe I had something similar with Ryan's chocolate chip cookies. But that would mean I'm sick, and I refuse to admit it.

I bet Ryan accidentally poisoned them. I know for a fact that he owns rat poison, because his couch became the birthplace to a couple dozen a few weeks ago. And I bet he has that cockroach stuff since he's so paranoid they'll show up in his bathtub again.

Also he's a terrible cook, so that's probably what happened.

So I didn't admit to myself that I might be a little sick, and finally rolled out of the cave of blankets (and on to the mattress where the blankets had been pulled off from) at around 5pm, when Pete finally returned from going out for a light French fry snack with everyone. He knocked on my bedroom door and gently pushed it open with his shoulder before I even got the chance to tell him to go away, carrying a stolen food tray still loaded with burnt fries.

"We're going to Brendon's tonight, if you think you're up for it." He told me in a low whisper that still made my head throb, and plopped down at the foot of my bed "also whenever I was sick my mom would always go get me a bunch of overly greasy fries. They help. I think" Pete assured me, and I felt the tray settle down next to me and the weight near my feet lift.

And I didn't want to disappoint anybody (because I'd done that yesterday when I rejected the offer to go to some new hotdog shop that had just opened up down the street), so I assured him I wouldn't miss it for the world, and Pete left with a half hearted smile on his face.

Well damn, now I had to actually hold up my end of the bargain I never planned on holding up.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, a storm having just passed over Seacoast a couple hours previously, and I heard Pete shriek out in the living room. Ryan howled with laughter soon afterwards and Patrick's complaining drowned out the sound.

This was more than I bargained for.

..:..::..:::..::..:..

As soon as I actually made the astounding decision to get out of bed, my chest stopped aching and my head stopped pounding like a drum, thankfully. I still kinda felt like death, but in complete honesty, when did I not?

I also made the stupidly brilliant choice to go down to Brendon's place and join in on whatever mayhem had ensued without me. I'd probably have to fix most if not all of it, maybe try to keep Spencer oblivious or something like that.

The hallway was dead silent again, like the start to the zombie apocalypse.

But it was the complete opposite of what I'd suspected in the front room. When I had finished the short walk down there, they were all sprawled out across the front (and only) room carpet, Patrick and Ryan leaning their backs against each other and Pete relaxing against the legs of a kitchen chair while Brendon actually sat up normally like he hadn't had anything to drink yet.

Although, the seemingly endless amount of bottles surrounding him said otherwise. He'd created a intricately built wall around him, and had started stacking a couple of them closer to him to construct a little crooked castle. Brendon smiled contently before carelessly toppling them over with the push of a finger.

Everyone did look like zombies though, dark bags circling under their eyes like bullseye rings. I wonder if I looked like that too, considering we'd all gotten around the same scarce amount of sleep over the past couple days, since we'd all make the decision to help each other with tons of pointless zoology work. Except for Brendon. He'd baked trays and trays overflowing with snickerdoodle cookies until he passed out on the countertop. Brendon had already done the zoology lab work last year and only needed to change the dates.

"Heeeey, it's Dal pal!" Pete drawled and hiccuped a couple times in a row after he finished the sentence. I smiled the 'I'm going to kill you' smile at him as nicely as I possibly could without punching him in the stomach for allowing Brendon to break his alcohol-less streak, and sat down where he had lightly patted the carpet, a rough indication as to where I should sit next to him.

I really didn't want to know how much everyone had had to drink because I'd either be expected to match up to them or already start taking precautions as to what disasters would be occurring the next morning.

Like I'd briefly mentioned before, the last time Pete had too much to drink he broke one of the lawn chairs from standing on it and jumping along to his awfully performed karaoke, terribly sung into a soup ladle that Ryan had given him off of eBay for Christmas. As weird as it was on its own, Pete absolutely loved it.

Of course the soup ladle had broken cleanly into an obnoxious amount of pieces a couple minutes later, but that's not important.

Then I found out Ryan and Patrick were just really exhausted as a result of lack of sleep, and that Brendon and Pete had held a competition as to who could drink the most before getting too sick to continue on. Brendon won.

And in the middle of one of Petes unintelligible whisper rambles that sounded like it was about peanut butter, Brendon slapped the carpet once to get our attention, and yelled out "truth or dare!" without warning, some of the contents of the drink in his hand sloshing over the lip and on to his torn jeans in excitement.

Even though I'd heard of the game, I'd never really played it due to lack of friends (or lack of decent friends, if you wanted to put it that way). But that was okay because the game seemed pretty lame anyways. It was always a reoccurring plot device in almost every movie in existence, and therefore I also deemed it as stupid and pointless.

It probably was. There's a reason why it's always played in cheesy horror movies.

"Dal pal, truth or dare?" Brendon giggled dazedly. His eyes focused and unfocused every time he began to doze off.

I had to think for a couple seconds, and after a short but incredibly complicated thought process, eventually decided on truth because whenever someone on TV chose dare, they died, and 1) I had no idea what to do if it was an obnoxious dare, and 2) I was way too scared of what he would have me do if I had chosen dare since he was completely drunk.

But like if I did die, I wouldn't be complaining. Ironically of course. I really don't want to die. It sounds like it would hurt. Like in the video games, when they slow-mo the bones crushing against a steering wheel or off from a cliff. That looks uncomfortable and extremely painful. I'd rather go out in my sleep or something.

I regretted my answer immediately from the way his eyes lit up and shimmered with a question to ask, which also kinda scared me. I should've stayed in bed. Maybe I was about to die. At least it wouldn't be off a cliff.

And he leaned in closer lazily and off balance, and stared into my eyes like they were the stars he'd been so infatuated with recently, the overwhelming scent of alcohol filled my nose and stung my eyes. Brendon flashed a coy smile like he'd just unlocked the secrets to every question in existence and his lips skimmed across my cheeks, much closer than they'd ever been. I had to remind myself a couple times that when he had too much to drink, he lost the concept of physical boundaries, that this didn't mean anything.

"Do you love me?" He whispered right next to my ear. His warm breath sent my nerves into a frenzy trying to calm down from the heat.

And I thought yes, then no, then I think so because I'd never really thought of anything like that before so specifically. I didn't want to be the 57th reason to never fall in love again, so I just never dwelled on it for very long.

In fact, the only times when I'd ever really thought about it were when he either fell asleep curled up against my chest, or made the decision to take me stargazing. And those never happened enough.

So I sat there for a second in stunned silence because drunker-than-he'd-ever-been-before Brendon had no verbal filter whatsoever. Surely he wouldn't have said that this morning. Maybe he would've. I'll ask him tomorrow and find out if he would've.

I found out in a second that he didn't have a physical filter either, because the taste of cigarette smoke and stale alcohol and watermelon candies flooded my senses like a tsunami for nearly not enough time before it was all over and he pushed away.

It lingered though, dripping from my lips and spiraling from Brendon's like a fire. A fire burning through a field of dead grass, and he was right outside my front door, waiting for me to let him in so he could set fire to everything I'd ever known.

If only I had caught him before he'd sparked.

And as soon as I realized what had just happened, it hit me that oh my god he kissed me, and then I thought, maybe I do love him. Maybe he loves me. Maybe Pete was wrong.

Maybe his coffee swirling eyes had perpetually imprinted on my mind or maybe the smell I had grown accustomed to had made it's permanent mark, but maybe I really do love him.

So many 'maybe's but not enough 'definitely's.

If only I could go back to the first day I met him and tell myself that no matter what happened and all the disasters he'd created, he'd like me back. And that would be fine. That's all anyone really wants, I guess - to be liked, loved if they're lucky enough. Hopefully I'm lucky enough.

"In all honesty," he sighed sleepily "I didn't mind falling for you."

If there was anything I'd learned from elementary school English classes, it was that the word "didn't" was past tense. And in the context he used it in, it meant that he had. He had fallen for me, just as I had for him. Maybe I'd gotten lucky, just maybe.

Take that, Pete.

Had, hadn't. Maybe, lucky. Neither of those pairs sounded like real words anymore.

The situation that had just unfolded hit me like a bus again, and I felt like I was flying. Like I'd just won first place in the Olympics. It was a totally new feeling, and I must admit it's a nice feeling in my chest to replace the overwhelming one. I could definitely get used to it.

Brendon pulled a lone cigarette from his pocket and lit it with the pocket lighter left carelessly on the floor, falling to the side so his head rested on my legs and he tried to create smoke rings with no success, the weight of what he said just starting to settle in like a rock to the bottom of the ocean.

"Dude," Pete stage whispered to me through a sloppy grin that he wouldn't possibly remember "you just kissed him." I nodded slowly, not even sure if it had actually happened.

But it was him that had kissed me, a small and frankly unimportant detail I hadn't bothered to correct. And by the time I'd convinced myself it was, Brendon was up and rubbing tiredly at his eyes.

He turned to me and smiled widely without showing any teeth and said "to be continued?" And I nodded because I still wasn't sure what to say, still stunned on the floor while he left the room and quietly closed his bedroom door behind him.

I was still stuck in a daze. My head spun from the smoke still drifting in the air like an abandoned ghost.

A couple minutes later, Patrick and Ryan had woken up and exerted enough energy to spread a couple fluffy blankets across the floor like a shitty mattress and we all worked together to roll Pete over on to them and passed out around him.

"He's so heavy," Ryan complained, falling back asleep as he pushed his legs on to the pillows.

"It was from the pizza you made and set on fire earlier." Pete whispered and rolled over by himself with a smile only I saw from the angle I was positioned at.

And I thought, completely out of context as I settled under one of the blankets, that kiss must've the thing I've been dreading. It most definitely was, because the loopy roller coaster feeling in my chest was gone. It was finally over and done for and I no longer felt like a ticking time bomb that was destined to explode at any moment.

And everything was alright.

..:..::..:::..::..:..

[YOU THOUGHT THIS CHAPTER WAS OVER GUESS WHAT BOI]

In the middle of an unimportant insignificant dream I would never remember, the door crashed against the frame and heart stopping screams startled me awake from my spot on the blanket pile, as it did to everybody else.

Brendon was full on sobbing, clutching his stomach like he was about to get sick, flinging open cabinets with his other hand while yelling "its all my fault" and "I'm sorry" at the top of his lungs.

Pete sat up like a resurrected monster and yawned "Hey, it's okay-"

"It's the opposite of okay," he interrupted with a loud shriek combined with an annoyed hiss, and finally grasped ahold of a large spiraling ring I'd never seen before. A chain with a small black and white photograph dangled between a couple shiny keys. Those must be for his car, I thought, but it didn't register in my ridiculously sleep deprived mind what he was doing with the keys to the vehicle he never used anymore. "I've got to get out of here - please distract Spencer, just please do something-"

"Okay, okay. Let's just go. Dallon, grab those spare firecrackers from under the refrigerator." Pete mumbled sleepily and slowly got to his feet, motioning towards the strings sticking out from the cabinet for me to bring along with us.

Pete and I waved a quick goodbye over our shoulders to Patrick and Ryan, who both immediately passed out again, and ran down the stairs behind Brendon all while trying to stop him from screaming "I fucked up" and "God, oh god I'm so sorry".

He probably didn't even do anything wrong. Brendon tended to overreact a lot, more often than usual lately.

At some point, I had lifted him on to my back and carried him the rest of the way towards the parking lot, his arms wrapped loosely around my collarbones, tears staining the fabric of my shirt, and uneven breaths stabbed at the back of my neck like daggers.

Specifically, his legs were linked together by his feet around my waist so that I was the one grabbing on to the bend of his knees and running at full speed, like we used to do at the grocery store when they were out of shopping carts to use.

I didn't know why we were running. Surely whatever Brendon had convinced himself that he'd messed up wasn't too terrible, seeing as he tended to overreact sometimes. Nothing we couldn't help him fix.

I reached the gate, Pete dragging behind a little bit for some reason I didn't care to dwell on at the moment. Brendon loosed his grip around me, and swung over to the right and over the gate doors. His hand lingered on my shoulder, even though it was quite a stretch. But he did it so he was able to pull me down to his level and press his cigarette smoke lips to mine once more and wipe his smile on my shoulder like it would stick to the fabric and stay forever.

"I'll see you tomorrow, alright?" He attempted to smirk reassuringly, which ended up just looking miserable. Before I could respond, he skipped backwards a couple steps and ran off.

That was the last I saw of him. His white tank top fluttering behind him as he darted through the parking lot, and his tears staining the pavement as Pete set off the first string of firecrackers behind the front office building, and the lights to Spencer's flickered to life almost immediately after the sparks hovered in the air for a split second.

The taillights to Brendon's car that he'd never used disappeared off campus and around the corner, miraculously silent and undetected.

As soon as we pulled the final firecracker string, we'd grabbed and began to return upstairs, as slow as we could walk in all confidence we wouldn't get caught.

We did not say, "it's 11pm on Tuesday night"

We did not say, "we'll drive you"

We did not say, "go back to sleep, you'll be fine"

We did not say, "it can wait until tomorrow"

And we sure as hell didn't mention he was drunk.

It was most definitely the alcohol that caused Pete to forget to stop Brendon from driving off campus, and the only explanation I had for not holding him back was that the intoxicating taste of his lips had made me dizzy and so uncoordinated that I couldn't think.

And in all honesty, it was true.

Because when we both got back to Brendon's room, we crashed headfirst into deep sleep on the floor without a care in the world.

[3100 words, 11/6/16, I'm not gonna update for like 8 years for the element of suspense where is your god now,, also @ Eva boi where you at]