Effortless

Twenty-three

I felt bad for the cups after insulting them in my head so I tried to fix it by picking them up. I took one step to the side to be better able to pick up one of them, but another sneaky cup was in front of me and I didn't realize it. My foot glided over the top of the cup and I started falling. It was a slow and dramatic fall, like the ones in the movies. Or maybe it felt like that because I was so intoxicated, who knows?

I was about to faceplant on the floor but Javier caught me by my arm like my knight in shining armor. Even when I was up and steady, he didn't let go of me.

"Sorry." I said genuinely. "One more?"

Poppy's brother shook his head as he looked sternly and over dramatically and said, "Hell no."

"Go to Hell." I insulted him. I probably should not have said that as he was twice my size and could have definitely beat me up for insulting him like that if he wanted to. Lucky for me, he wasn't looking to fight teenagers that were at least five years younger than him. Instead, he glared at me with the most intensity I had ever experienced.

Javier started pulling me to the side. "We've been here a while. How about we go?"

I shook my head. The only thing I processed from his sentence was the word 'go' and I was not ready to go. "No. That asshole wouldn't... uh..."

I couldn't think of the right words to finish the sentence. Javier wasn't hiding the concern anymore; I don't think he could. He finished my sentence for me anyway. "He wouldn't give you any more."

"Yes!" I exclaimed because I was excited that he understood me. "Don't know why."

"Maybe because you've had enough?" Javi framed it as a question, but he was stating it. "Which is weird because I didn't even see you drink that much. You must have been sneaking it or something because I've been with you the entire night."

There were times when he would pay less attention to me because he was talking to someone he knew. Those were the times when I slipped off, and I was quick with it. I only did that because I didn't want him to freak out at the amount that I could drink. My tolerance had gotten decently high, so to others it was concerning.

I shushed him as I put my index finger over my mouth. I then moved my finger and pressed it against his lips so that he understood that I was shushing him. He smiled softly as he grabbed my wrist and gently put it back by my side.

"You've gotta go." I heard a higher-pitched voice say with disdain. I swirled around to see who was talking and it was the host herself, Poppy.

Javi pulled me closer to him so now I was against his chest. The next few sentences that were exchanged I missed. They were talking very fast and I was more focused on being able to smell the cologne Javier had on. He smelled so nice.

Then we were leaving and I had no clue why. I was blindly following Javier out of the door. If I had any sense of survival skills I might've thought about the fact that I was aimlessly following someone with no idea what was happening. Too bad I had terrible survival skills at that moment.

"Why leaving?" I asked. I didn't want to leave the party, I had said that before. I wanted that idiot guy to give me another drink. I just wanted one more and then I was going to stop.

I heard him sigh. "Because."

"Because why?"

"Because we are." Javier was irritated now, but I couldn't tell if it was because of me or Poppy. We pushed through the crowd for what felt like forever until we were finally outside.

Once we got outside I took my hand from his grasp and stood in place. Stubbornly, I said, "I'm not leaving."

He groaned in frustration as he ran a hand through his hair. "Elias, please stop making this difficult."

Ignoring him, I folded my arms and turned my head to the side. He tried to grab my arm again but I backed up. I lost my balance, as one does, and hit my head on the wall behind me. Javier's eyes flashed with concern but once he saw that it didn't hurt me, he was irritated again. I was mad about him trying to force me to leave so I moved from his grasp again. This pissed him off more.

He paced across the front porch a few times before looking at me with pure anger and exasperation. I didn't budge as we had an intense staring contest.

"Your siblings aren't here, your friends have disappeared, and I'm not sure that anyone else in that house likes you enough to care about what happens to you." Javier raised his voice as he berated me. "Which means that I am the only person who actually gives a fuck whether you are safe or instead dying from alcohol poisoning."

He wasn't fully yelling but his tone was harsh and clear, even in my drunken state. I stared at him silently because he wasn't finished.

"You have to be the most stubborn person I have ever met in my entire life! For the sake of you and everyone else, quit refusing help from someone who actually wants to help you." Javier said through gritted teeth. He then aggressively stuck his hand out for me to grab. "Now walk to the damn car."

After he finished his rant he took a couple of deep breaths. He was still holding his arm out and waiting for me to comply. The yelling had snapped me back into reality, it seemed. He didn't have to tell me again to listen to him.

I put my hand in his and he gripped it then wrapped my entire arm around his shoulder. We walked to his car, though he was doing most of the walking. I was completely relying on him keeping me up.

Once we were in his car he buckled me up and then did the same for himself. I was starting to get familiar with his car. I could never get tired of seeing the black leather seats and the cool neon teal dashboard.

He drove and I stayed silent. I was focusing extremely hard on not throwing up in his car. I didn't think he'd like it if I did.

It was crazy to me how many times I had sat in that very seat of his car. It was, what, three times now? Once because he happened to find me in the middle of the night, twice after a party, and the ride to that competition we participated in. Not to mention the time I rode on his motorcycle.

I was going to tell Javier to bring me to Ricky's house. I wasn't technically allowed to go to the Halloween party, but I did so anyway. I had no idea whether or not my siblings would be home but I knew for sure my aunt would be. So home wasn't an option.

She wouldn't notice if I showed up the next morning and acted like nothing had happened. She never checked our rooms at night because she never cared enough to, so a lot of the time she wouldn't see us until the morning anyway. It would be like I slept there all night. She would, however, notice if I showed up in the middle of the night. She wouldn't be happy and I didn't feel like being grounded.

Though, I had a bad feeling that I wasn't Ricky's favorite person at the moment. I didn't even know what I did wrong but I could normally sense when things were tense between us. Also, showing up to his house and burdening him with myself wouldn't fix whatever problem we were having. I wouldn't do that to him.

So, Ricky was out of the question. The only other logical and reasonable place for me to go — that I totally was not happy about asking to go to — was Javier's house. If I was asked a month and a half ago if I wanted to step foot in Javier Cortez's house, I would have laughed like that was the most outlandish question asked to me in the world. And now here I was asking to go over there. 

"Javi?" I asked hesitantly.

Javier glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "What's wrong? Do you want me to pull over?"

"No." I whispered. "I just...don't wanna go home."

Javi nodded. He seemed to understand what I meant. He didn't ask me why I didn't want to go home and he didn't ask me if there was somewhere else I could go. Instead, he softly replied with, "Okay."

And he drove us to his house without a second thought.