Fall from Love

an excuse.
    There is some more static and I assume he’s dropped the phone again. I hear him cuss before he comes back on the line. “Are you coming over now?”
    “Yeah, I’m getting in my car, so I’ll see you soon.”
    The line goes dead and, before I pull out of the parking space, I scan through my phone until I find Josh’s name. I press call, but it goes straight to voicemail.
    “Hi, Josh, this is Holly. I’m on my way over to your house. I just talked to Carter and he sounds drunk… really drunk. Anyway, I thought you may want to know.”
    I hang up and throw my phone in the seat beside me, putting my car in drive.
     
    CARTER
    “Shit!” I shout, jumping off my bed. After I try calling Holly and get nothing except her voicemail, I decide I’m going to pass out and sleep off my drunkenness. It takes me by surprise when she calls me back and tells me she’s heading over to my house.
    Using both arms for support, I lean against my dresser and get a good look at my reflection in the mirror. I grimace at the man staring back at me. The puffiness on my right cheek has started to diminish, but the swelling and cut on my lip still look pretty fresh. “What the fuck are you doing, man?” I ask the reflection staring back at me and my head falls down between my arms. “Shit,” I breathe, realizing I have about fifteen minutes before Holly gets here. Fifteen minutes to pull myself together. Fifteen minutes to sober up.
    Yanking my shirt over my head, I throw it on the bed and do the same with my jeans. I don’t even bother letting the water warm up before I jump in the shower. The ice cold water covers me and zaps me awake, making the reality of the situation all too real. After brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth with mouthwash a few times, I throw on my jeans from earlier and pull on a clean t-shirt.
    Just as I’m putting on my boots, I hear a soft knock at the door. Before heading down, I lean over and look at myself in the mirror again. My eyes are still red and bloodshot, but it’s still an improvement from a few minutes ago. After running my hands through my hair a few times, I jog down the stairs to the front door.
    “Hey,” I say, opening the door and trying to keep the right side of my face turned away from her—the side that’s still red and puffy from the fight.
    “Oh, my God.” As hard as I try, she sees it anyway. Her eyes look me over and I feel embarrassed that she’s seeing me like this. I didn’t want her to see me get angry the other day with Travis, or the marks he left behind, and I sure as hell don’t want her to see me shitfaced drunk, either. I open the door a little wider and she walks in, never taking her eyes off me.
    “Hey, let me see,” she says, taking a step towards me. Slowly, she raises her hand and grazes my right cheek. It doesn’t hurt too badly, but it’s still tender. I watch her face as she assesses the damage. I’m frozen where I stand, realizing at that moment that, even if it did hurt, I wouldn’t have flinched or breathed a word. She’s touching me... and any pain is worth that.
    “Does it still hurt?” She glances up and our eyes meet.
    “No,” I breathe out. “Not really.”
    She grins at me with sympathetic eyes, and if I didn’t feel like a pathetic loser about two seconds ago, I do now. The last thing I want from her is pity.
    “When was the last time you ate?” she asks, dropping her hands from my face and moving past me, towards the kitchen.
    My heart aches from the absence of her touch and I’m still drunk enough that I almost ask her to touch me again. “I don’t know. What day is it?” I answer instead.
    She turns her head back over her right shoulder and frowns at me. “It’s almost eleven a.m. on Wednesday.”
    I scan my mind, trying to remember the last time I ate something, but nothing registers. Shaking my head and feeling like even more of a pathetic loser, I answer her truthfully, “I’m not really sure.”
    She gives me another sympathetic grin and continues into the kitchen. She starts opening and closing cabinets. “Where do you guys keep the bread?”
    Pointing to the cabinet on her left, I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s moving around the kitchen like she’s on some type of mission. When she reaches up high to grab a plate from the top shelf, her shirt lifts, too, showing off her flat stomach. Tearing my eyes away, I slide down onto a bar stool and try to distract the thoughts running through my