Bright Young Things by Anna Martin

Author:Anna Martin [Martin, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-25T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

It was only when Jared got out of the Hemlock house that he realized he’d been driven here, and he had no way of getting home. With a sigh, he pulled his phone from his back pocket and called a taxi, managing to get to the end of the long, winding drive as the car pulled up.

He kept his eyes on the road, concentrating on the feeling of his damp clothes sticking to his skin and not the raw ache he would forever associate with losing both his virginity and his heart.

By the time he found himself back in his bed again, it was close to dawn. Jared hadn’t showered again, not possessing the energy to wash Adam’s smell from his skin, and had changed his clothes to something dry.

After ten minutes of lying in bed, he knew there was no way he was going to sleep without chemical assistance, and reluctantly dragged himself back to the bathroom, stepping over his white clothes on the floor.

The party seemed like days ago now, weeks maybe.

In the cabinet he found Tylenol, sleeping pills, and a teeny tiny, airline bottle of scotch. He took two each of the pills and chased them with the liquor, pissed, then stumbled back to bed.

Jared woke at two the following afternoon, pissed again, went to the kitchen and made a grilled cheese sandwich. He took it back to bed, set re-runs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to play on Netflix, and went back to sleep.

He woke again at seven, checked his phone, plugged it in to charge without looking at any messages or Facebook notifications. Went back to sleep.

He woke at midnight screaming, sweating, throat raw.

This time he pulled himself out of bed and to the shower, turning off Buffy as he went. It took a while to properly cleanse himself, inside and out, washing sticky residue from his skin that had been there for almost twenty-four hours.

The white clothes were still on the floor, and after dressing in cutoff sweatpants and a tank top, Jared decided it was time to clean up.

There was an in-house music system he could set up, so his hard, angry rock music blasted in every room he was in. While Alanis Morisette screamed about things that people oughta know, Jared collected armfuls of laundry and went down to the basement to set it in the washer. With that task rolling along without him, he went back upstairs and found the cleaning cupboard, taking the things he needed for the bathroom.

Unlike some people in this town, Jared had been to a school where he was forced to take part in the detailed scrubbing of every inch of a communal bathroom. It was punishment sometimes, other times so the people in charge could assert their authority. Bottom line—Jared knew how to scrub. And the bathroom needed scrubbing.

After going at the grout around the bathtub with an old toothbrush for nearly forty-five minutes, he found a bottle of Powerade in the fridge downstairs, downing it gratefully.

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