Kelsey started the process of freaking out while Cat was at work that Sunday.

Holy crap, its st pattys day!!!! Lets celebrate!!!

Being the only one of her friends that didn’t have a fake ID, Cat immediately declined and returned to her boring duties of memorizing stupid coffee-chocolate combinations and cleaning out the same blender every other minute. The day was slow, and Cat’s phone did not vibrate to tell her that PumpkinKing messaged her after all. Instead, it was her alcoholic friends trying to find a way to get drunk when everyone had school the next day. And while she still looked at her phone any time it went off, the excitement and anticipation slowly dwindled. She messed up with Pumpkin, that was it. He wasn’t interested in her anymore.

Sitting beside the dumpsters on her break behind Jittery’s was possibly one of the most depressing fifteen minutes of her life. She sat there beside the flies and maggots, watching them squirm on the rotting food that overflowed the rusty bin. When she couldn’t stomach watching anymore, resting her head on her knees just let her heart sink to the floor.

I don’t feel like celebrating, Cat messaged back. No fake ID. She hoped that’d be enough, that they’d leave her to maybe grab some ice cream after work while she lay in bed and re-read all of her conversation history with Pumpkin and cried a little.

Let’s just do it here!!! answered Kelsey. Great. That was going to be a lot harder to get out of.

Doesn’t everyone have class tomorrow? Cat’s last-ditch attempt to prevent a gathering she’d be forced to attend proved futile when Cam had the bright idea to just “start early.”

----------------------------------------

So now Cat put on a green dress after work in an attempt to trick her friends that she felt okay, but as she and Hannah started the walk to Cam’s room, Hannah hesitated.

“You okay?” she asked quietly as the elevator doors shut. Cat sighed.

“Bad day, I guess,” was her answer. “I really don’t feel like doing anything.” That was a lie. She really felt like reading every little post that PumpkinKing made on Talkative until she was nauseous enough to force herself to sleep. But how could she explain that to Hannah?

“This should help!” her roomie insisted as she led the way out of the elevator. “Get your mind off of stupid customers and stuff. No pushing your friends away when you feel bad.” Hannah’s reminder only made Cat’s chest ache, but she offered a toothless smile and fell in line anyway.

Maybe Hannah was right. Pushing people away when she felt too much was a new habit she needed to break. Even if she felt some sort of weird heartbreak from a non-breakup with a dude that didn’t have a real name.

For a while, Cat could at least consider herself distracted from this sinking feeling in her chest. Sitting in the middle of the floor in a circle with Cam, Peter, Hannah, and Kelsey did soften the pangs, even just a little. Cam was already halfway into complaining about mixed signals from whoever he now tried to sleep with by the time all the girls showed up. Kelsey brought solo cups, and Cam, loudly protesting that the person with the “objectively worst day out of everyone here” should not be the one to pour everyone drinks, unearthed Peter’s slightly-alarming hidden alcohol, including a six pack, the bottle of rum from Halloween, and a small handle of vodka. It took Cat a while to get out of her head, so she never fully listened to whatever Cam complained about.

They sat in a circle on the floor, toasted to a saint none of them were educated enough to celebrate, and broke the night in with “shots” of vodka from their cups. Somehow, they let Cam talk them into filling their cups with rum immediately after.

As usual, they went in a circle to complain about their day, their teachers, their homework, the passive-aggressive texts from old friends and family to hang out more (at least for Hannah).

“Wanna talk about your day?” she asked, finally looking to Cat. She was the last person to go, but she sighed and shook her head.

“Nothing big, just work.”

Kelsey frowned. “You seem down.” But Cat wasn’t going to even begin to explain anything about her mood. She shrugged.

“Just one of those days….” She ignored Peter’s exasperated sigh. It was none of his business why she was in a bad mood.

“Distraction?” Kelsey asked. Cat shrugged. “Okay, so let’s play...Never Have I Ever,” she suggested as she settled into a cross-legged position. Cam pshed her idea.

“It’d be more challenging if we had to do it about each other.” He gestured to everyone. “I can easily spot when someone is lying about something.” Although Cat fought the urge, Kelsey rolled her eyes.

“You can’t do Never Have I Ever at someone.”

“Sure you can! Watch.” Cameron shifted himself to look at Peter. “Never have you ever...gone skiing.” Peter stared at him with a raised brow.

“But I have gone skiing,” he corrected. “I used to go every year.” Surprise, Cat thought sarcastically.

“Okay! I was wrong, so I take a drink.” And he did.

“Oh,” Kelsey sounded, “so if you were right, then he does.”

“Exactly!”

“Okay! I want to start for realzies.” She adjusted herself back and forth like an excited puppy.

“I already did.”

“Oh. Then...go, Peter.” Kelsey scrunched her nose, but settled down. Cat, though, remained silent. This started to sound an awful lot like the Assumptions game from orientation….

Peter shrugged, seemingly unbothered. Maybe he didn’t make the connection. “Um...okay. Hannah, I assume you took...Sign Language in high school.”

“Omigod, I did!” She gulped her solo cup quickly, but waved her hand after her sip, recovering from her scrunched-up expression. “But how did you guess that?”

Peter glanced at Cat for a moment before answering. “Because you don’t understand when Cat and I speak Spanish, and in this state, those are the only two languages offered in public school, other than French--”

“I took French,” Cam announced. The group took a collective sigh.

“I feel like we all knew that innately,” said Cat. Cam didn’t seem to get it, but no one filled him in on the stereotype he perfectly fit into. After a few chuckles, Hannah decided to think out loud as she considered her options of who to target.

“Cam,” she started with a sly grin, “I bet you’ve dated more than two people at once.” Cam sat perfectly still, then smiled very slowly.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Drink up.” The group took turns exchanging surprised glances. “I’m a serial monogamist, not polyamorous. And I don’t date anymore!”

“Fuck me,” Hannah murmured into her cup.

“Been there, done that,” was Cameron’s quick quip. Cat raised a finger for the group to hold their giggles, then pointed to Hannah, squinting.

“I swear that’s exactly what you said about Cam when we first met.”

"What!" He didn’t seem to appreciate the joke being turned on him nearly as much, but Peter and Kelsey roared with laughter.

The game stayed pleasant for quite a few rounds. Cat hadn’t assumed anything correctly of anyone--though she didn’t even dare ask Peter any questions--and no one seemed to get any on her if it didn’t involve questions about school. It left her feeling lightheaded a lot sooner than she thought she would. Everyone else seemed to have a leg-up on her. How was she supposed to know she just looked like the kind of person that did her homework the day it was assigned rather than the day it was due? That sort of unnecessary stress never made sense to her. Plus, Cam, Kelsey, and Hannah knew each other last year, and Cam and Peter were roommates--

Cat finally gestured to Kelsey. She was confident about this one: “Never have you ever,” she started, “been dumped.”

“Oh!” Kelsey seemed to realize that at the same time, and started to giggle as she took her sip of the rum. “I guess I’ve always been the dumper!” Though as the others laughed, Cat watched Peter take an unprompted sip of his Solo cup out of the corner of her eye. Oh yeah, they “saw” each other for a little bit. Cat stifled a short laugh. It was nice to get something right for the first time in the night and bruise Peter’s ego. For a brief moment, she had to admit that Hannah was right (as usual): Feeling depressed was even more of a reason to surround herself with her friends.

“Okay!” Kelsey continued when she was done, “Okay! So Peter: I think….” She squinted for a second, oblivious to the annoyed expression he seamlessly smoothed away in a second. “I think you haven’t actually been asked out by a guy, like officially, and for serious, before!” Cat chuckled at her fumble, then burst into a much heartier laugh when Peter very slowly turned to face Cameron.

“I’m joking,” said Peter, cracking a smile. The group laughed when Cam seemed confused.

“Really? I could’ve sworn I--”

“Repeatedly insisting that if I was ‘curious’, you’d ‘be down’, does not constitute asking me out.” The girls doubled over with their various hacking sounds, and for a second, Cat couldn’t fully catch her breath.

“You killed Cat!” Hannah wheezed, pointing as she curled into a ball on the floor.

Cameron was fast: “She’s got eight more lives!” And maybe if she’d not heard that joke a million times before, she’d join Hannah in the fetal position gasping for air, but instead she took everyone’s laughter at the newest joke as a quick moment to recover, and used her empty hand to start to fan her face. The rum was starting to hit everyone, at least. Not just her.

“Okay, okay,” Kelsey said slowly through slow breaths and occasional giggles. “Okay. Peter, go.”

“Right,” he remembered, his dimples still punctuating where his smile was. “Um….” He glanced around the group for a quick second, then finally, maybe for the first time in the night, actually looked at Cat. Her heart stopped. “Never have you ever...been in love.” She waited for him to add anything to that, but he stared her in the eyes, almost challenging. Cat furrowed her brows together.

“I...what?” Maybe she didn’t hear him right. It took her a little while to sit up from laughing, and maybe the blood was still rushing back down from her face. But Peter remained still, almost stoic.

“Oh, fuck,” Hannah sounded, her voice far away now. Now Cat realized that she heard him correctly.

Cam let out a single laugh. “That was a face journey, if I’ve ever seen one.”

“Are you--asking if--are you saying--” Cat shut her eyes for a moment to try and get the words out in the right order. “Are you saying no one has ever loved me before?” When she opened her eyes, Peter squinted.

“No, that’s not what I said.”

Kelsey’s voice sounded like she was behind a glass barrier. “Let’s play a different game!”

“Just that--just that I haven’t loved anyone?” Cat clarified anyway. “Like, I’m incapable of love?” Her lip curled in disgust as she said it, and Peter rolled his eyes, obviously, in front of everyone as Cam and Kelsey started throwing out game suggestions. They were desperate, even suggesting Go Fish without the cards. Hannah reached into the center of their circle for the bottle of rum.

“Well, have you, then?” Peter’s question made her cup feel very heavy, even though there wasn’t very much in it now. His eyes were still sharp, keeping her focus directly on him while her mind shuffled through various excuses. Thoughts of PumpkinKing came close, but fizzled away with a sharp, sobering pang, even when she tried to focus on them; Peter’s gaze was just too intense, offering her no room to think. After a moment of chewing on her lip, she tensely raised her cup to her lips to try and chase away the bad taste his question left on her tongue. She wasn’t very certain of her answer; and to her mutual panic and relief, saying he was right felt almost like a lie…so she didn’t actually take a swig.

She lowered her cup, steeled. “Why do you assume that?” Her cup crinkled a bit, the loudest sound in the room to shock everyone into silence.

All signs of smiles were gone, but Peter still looked genuine, his brows knitted together as if his motivation was so transparent.

“You have such a big wall up, you’d need a sledge hammer to crack it.” What? Cat gaped like a fish. Why did he sound angry, like he’d been holding these words for as long as he refused to look at her? Was this because of yesterday?

“I do not--I’m--" She would have looked away if she could gather the strength, but the rum made her eyes too heavy to move. “I’m cautious! I was--at the party, I--” Peter snorted. Her cup crinkled in her hand again, bending to her fist.

“Your walls were well up far before that happened.” If this pissed him off so much, why did he wait until now? Why did he just yell at her like this?

Cat grit her teeth. “You were there--you--I was--!” Before he could shove that away, she pointed at him. “I--and you were--”

“Yeah,” he said with a far too confident tone for her to believe she made a difference in his opinion. After she failed to continue saying anything else, Peter continued. “The only time you’ve ever shown any vulnerability is when you’re barely conscious. Yeah. I’d say it’s easy to guess you’ve never loved anyone.” The rim of her cup warped with the rest of the plastic. It took a while to get there, but her stomach finally caught on fire from his words. She had a hard time showing vulnerability? It didn’t take blacking out for someone to find out she had a brother!

“You’re one to talk!” Her voice wavered. “J-just because I’m like that around you, doesn’t mean that--” Her voice trailed off without anything constructive to add. Peter gestured like his thought process was obvious, revealing his frustration in every exaggerated gesture.

“You’re too sarcastic and defensive to ever let anyone in!”

“No,” she interrupted, shutting her eyes for a moment. “No, you’re just a dick, so I’m like that around you!”

“Are you going with that now?”

Her thoughts swirled too slowly, unable to actually come up with any real answer. “I don’t have to explain myself to you!”

“Yet here you are.”

“I bet you haven’t been in love, either!” Her legs begged to just get up and take off, but she waited. Maybe she could get him to take it all back, to say he was wrong, or prove that he was just deflecting--

“Take a drink, because like about almost everything else tonight, you’re wrong.” Her face grew even warmer.

“You’re not capable,” she spat without anything else to go off of. She couldn’t look at him anymore, the way he just stared at her, full of the fire she was so used to being in control of. Her words didn’t make any sense, didn’t offer any defense, and his just aimed and chipped at her newest wound.

“You wouldn’t even know what to look for. You just throw tantrums like a child.”

“You’re--you--” Frustration overcame her, and before she could even register that she did it, the sound of her cup bouncing onto the floor with the trickle of rum streaming off Peter’s face joining suit. He kept his eyes shut, lips tight.

“Demonstrating my point,” he said tersely. A hand reached up to ensure there wasn’t any rum on his eyelid.

Cat’s voice exploded from her throat, desperate: “You don’t know anything about me!”

He scoffed. “You work really hard to keep everyone at arm’s length!” PumpkinKing jumped to the forefront of her mind yet again, how easily he just dropped her after everything. Because she wouldn’t even let him know her name. “But despite your best attempt, no, Cat, I know you quite well!”

Her hands shook, her chest ached. Why was he saying all of this? Could he read her mind after all? “J-just leave me the fuck alone!”

“I would, but you’re in my room.” As if she just realized this, herself, Cat shoved against the floor to rise to her feet.

“You’re such a p-piece of shit!” was the last thing she was able to yell at him before she spun around to stumble to the door.

Hannah’s face was in her hands as she muttered, “Oh my god, Peter….”

But Peter had the last word. Right as Cat stepped out to let the door slam behind her, she heard Peter’s voice, sour: “She’s just going to let that bounce off of her just like everything else.”