It was my idea to crack open the last bottle of tequila, the one with no label on it, just the word tequila scrawled across it in red Sharpie. A survivor from some half-abandoned party two apartments ago. It felt fitting for tonight, somehow. The room smelled like an unholy mix of old pizza and Febreze, and the carpet had that special crunch underfoot that only came from sustained neglect.
“We should make it last,” I said, shaking the bottle.
Kelsey was sitting slouched on the opposide end of the couch, already half-tipsy. “Sure, why not?” she said, reaching for her mug on the low table between us. “Might as well sink the sinking ship.”
Our living room was a shrine to inertia: a sprawl of takeout boxes, unpaid bills, and a houseplant that had clearly given up weeks ago. Plans lived and died here too. Big ones. Go back to school. Move to California. Start a podcast. Kiss, fuck, marry. Now they were just like some ghosts haunting the corners, muttering should-have, could-have, didn’t. We killed nothing but time in this room, in this shithole house.
“Cheers,” I said, clinking my mug to hers.
The rest of the night, we’d poured shots into our mismatched mugs because the real glasses had wandered off months ago, probably to some better house where people washed dishes regularly. Kelsey’s mug said Pink Flamingos in peeling gold letters. Mine had a cat wearing sunglasses. Neither seemed to mind being repurposed.
“You know,” she said after her third shot, “do you still ever, like, think about leaving?”
I glanced about the room. “Leave this beautiful life behind?” I said, gesturing at the pizza boxes and the unplugged lamp leaning against the wall like it was on the verge of passing out.
“Seriously, though.” She straightened up on the couch. “We could, like, just leave, you know. Just, like, walk out right-fucking-now.”
“And go where?” I framed her with my deadliest stare.
“Anywhere. Everywhere. I don’t know.” She pulled her knees under her chin. “Off to save the world, for all I care. Save ourselves from all this…shit.”
I gave what she’d just said some serious thought. I knew nothing held me here anymore since what happened with my brother last year and we could just screw it all and hop on Kelsey’s Dad’s car like in movies. Pack nothing. Hit the road. Find ourselves. Become baristas in Austin or sell fake crystals in Sedona until we figure our shit out. Casual-fuck each other when need be and maybe have big beautiful lesbian babies down the road.
But dreams deflate slowly, like a tire with a pinhole leak. By the time you realize you’re sitting on nothing, you’re too tired to get up. We used to believe the world was waiting for us, that the future had neon signs flashing to point us the way. These days, the signs felt more like a maintenance placard.
“Sure,” I said, slumping down in the couch. “Why not? Let’s just head over to Cleveland. Or Mexico.”
She leaned forward in her seat, a dumb smile on her face. “Let’s hit fucking Mars.”
“I’ll change my name to Maverick. And you can be…Indigo.”
“Why can’t I be, like, Moraya?”
“I’ll dye my hair blue. And you’ll get a nose ring. And we’ll drink kombucha wherever we stop.”
“We’ll be insufferable,” she said. “We’ll be the pink fucking flamingos.”
We laughed then, perhaps a little too loud for how late it was, and then toasted again with our sad half-empty mugs. Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was the existential mildew brewing in the core of our bodies, but for a second it felt huge, like what we’d been sharing this tiny, crumbling dream of ours, so packed with promise we forgot how large our lives could be. Outside, rain began its lazy percussion against the window like it was trying to tell us something. Somewhere down the street, a siren flared and faded like an exhausted firework, reminding us of how easily the world could move on without us.
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, handing her the bottle. I watched as she poured the last of it between our stained mugs. One final toast. We downed it, feeling the burn down our throats. And for a moment, it all tasted real. •