Another PSA for my good conscience: Seriously guys, drink responsibly and don’t do drugs. ⁽ʷᶦᵗʰᵒᵘᵗ ᵐᵉ⁾

In the weeks that followed, I was the happiest I’d ever been.

We gave up, and we forgot. We ignored everything that had or could go wrong, drowning all our troubles in unholy amounts of alcohol. All the worries that weighed down on our shoulders seemed to vanish into thin air, and the only thing that ever bothered us was the awful hangovers we’d get every morning.

I only got in trouble once for turning the first floor’s West hallway into a massive Slip n’ Slide, and Juan only ever opened his mouth to let out a dirty joke or chug down another shot. I was having too much fun to even think of escaping, and Juan was always too drunk to remember anything I’d told him.

I stopped fighting with Pablo, Juan, or even my own conscience. I only rose my voice to scream the lyrics of my favorite songs out from the top of my lungs.

Life was smooth sailing on a sea of expensive champagne, and the only storms we encountered were sparkling downpours of golden confetti.

I was flying at an all-time high. I lived a lifestyle more lavish than anything Sarah Kennedy could have imagined, filled with endless parties, fancy dinners, and a bunch of new friends whose names I couldn’t remember.

To give up and forget was a choice that went against any kind of reasoning, but it was the best thing we could do. It felt so freeing, better than any drug I’d ever done, probably even better than crack, cocaine, meth, or codeine, better than magic mushrooms, amphetamines, oxycodone, and maybe even heroin. It was fucking amazing.

I woke up one morning, ready to do it all over again, but my partner in crime was missing.

“Are the Sandovals here yet?” I asked Oscar when I walked past him in a corridor.

“I saw Juan running around the garden with no shirt on, about ten minutes ago,” he answered.

“What, like he’s jogging?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, shaking his head. “Sorry Em, I have to get back to work.”

I frowned as I watched him walk away, and decided to go outside. I stood on the patio for a while, but aside from a couple of gardeners trimming bushes and watering flowers, I didn’t see any signs of life.

I walked over to the pool bar, thinking I might as well make myself a cocktail while I waited for Juan to show up. If he was already running around the garden half-naked, there was a fair chance he hadn’t waited for me to start drinking anyway.

I was only halfway there when a shadow darted out of the corner of my eye. I stared in its direction but didn’t see anything, and quickly shrugged it off as nothing more than a leaf swaying in the wind.

I barely had time to reach the bar and pour some ice into a cup before the shadow ran past me again. It was followed by another dark mass that scampered between two trees, somewhere deep in the forest. Whatever it was, it quickly disappeared from my line of sight.

I heard shuffling steps stomping in my direction, followed by a loud thud and some kind of grunt.

“I think there’s someone here,” someone whispered nearby.

I leaned over the bar and watched as Juan bolted across the patio with a less-than-stealthy forward roll. Pablo followed behind him, crawling on all fours, and bumped into Juan when he stopped in his tracks.

“Hey Em,” squeaked Juan.

He pulled out a small branch from his messy hair and threw it over his shoulder. His eyes were wide open, and he looked as if he’d stuck his head out the window of a space rocket mid-flight. Pablo’s shirt was hanging off one shoulder, its last two buttons holding on for their dear life. If my theory about Five-button-down Pablo was right, that meant he was absolutely shitfaced.

“What the fuck are you guys doing?” I asked.

“Drugs,” Pablo replied.

I raised my eyebrows, even though I wasn’t exactly surprised. Drugs were probably the only possible explanation for what I had just witnessed.

“Are you having fun?” I mumbled.

“Yes– no,” they argued back and forth with each other, before Pablo concluded, “We’re having an experience.”

“We time-traveled,” Juan explained with childlike awe. “We’ve just met a samurai, but like, not here. He was inside our minds.”

“We met you, too. You were the samurai’s wife,” added Pablo. “I think the samurai was me, but in a past life.”

“Oh, wow,” I whispered.

There was something a little unsettling in the way they were acting. They spoke far too fast, their bodies were too jittery, they kept talking over each other to finish their nonsensical sentences and almost hit each other in the face with each of their exaggerated movements.

“It’s so amazing,” said Juan. “When I close my eyes I start seeing new colors, new shapes, and stuff. It’s like being stuck inside of an infinite seashell.”

Pablo shook his head. “It’s not a seashell. It’s more like a tunnel, with flowers, and lights and–”

He didn’t finish his sentence and instead motioned an explosion with his lips and hands.

“Sounds fun,” I smirked. “Can I do drugs with you guys?”

“Fuck yeah, join the expedition,” cheered Pablo as he shuffled through the pockets of his pants.

“She can’t do drugs,” scowled Juan.

“Why not?”

“She does too many drugs.”

“Are you fucking kidding?” I muttered. “You guys do way more drugs than I do.”

“She has a point,” said Pablo.

“But we’re built different,” answered Juan. “She’s gonna freak out.”

“True,” Pablo nodded. “Juan got trapped inside his belly button. It made him cry.”

“It was fucking terrifying,” he recalled, wiping the sweat off of his chest. “I accidentally touched my stomach, and it opened up, and it sucked in my arm, and then my entire body, and next thing I know– I’m floating in the void.”

“I had to guide him back to Earth with my voice,” Pablo whispered.

“I want to do that,” I told them. “I want to get sucked into my own belly button.”

“Em, please, don’t do drugs. Look at how much my hands are shaking,” Juan whimpered, stretching his still arms out in my direction. “That’s how much I don’t want you to do drugs.”

“It doesn’t matter, Juan,” I shrugged. “Pablo will give them to me anyway. Right, Pablo?”

“She’s right,” Pablo mumbled, pulling out a small bottle of liquid from his pocket. “I have no self-control right now. Fuck, she’s too smart.”

I opened my mouth and let Pablo put a few drops of liquid on my tongue. I don’t know why I did it. Perhaps I was genuinely interested in time-traveling, meeting samurais, diving inside seashells and flower-filled exploding tunnels, and finding out what’s inside my own belly button. Maybe I was just trying to annoy Juan, or too curious to find out what happens when you get higher than high.

“What now?” I asked.

“We’re going in the pool, because we want to feel like we’re in zero gravity,” replied Juan.

“Okay, I’ll go put on a bikini. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“We’ll be counting,” he murmured.

“Alright, then give me five,” I answered.

Pablo raised up his hand, grinning from ear to ear.

“Five minutes,” I sighed.

Pablo lowered his hand, and his wide smile turned into a disappointed pout. I walked back inside the house, all the way up to the bedroom, and changed into a pretty bikini with long straps that crisscrossed around my body.

I tried on a few shawls to see which one best matched my swimsuit and flattered my body. I settled on one made of white lace that cinched nicely around my waist, and fixed my hair and makeup before I walked back into the hall.

The drugs were already hitting. I could already feel little shivers running up and down my skin. I stood around the hall for a few minutes, watching as the veins in the marble floors danced around like snakes in the dirt, and how the dozens of statues around me twitched and glitched as if they ached to come back to life.

I looked up to the ceiling, and the glass dome above the hall opened up like a blooming flower. The walls around me unfolded like cardboard, and sunlight flooded the hall like a waterfall.

I climbed up to the third floor to take a closer look at the Sun, a bright red, swirling ball of fire in the center of the bright pink sky. I stared at it, speechless and with a dropped jaw, until my eyes began to burn and water.

“Gordita?” Pablo’s voice echoed down below. “Why are you up there?”

From where I was, Juan and Pablo seemed so far away. They were tiny, microscopic, two black dots lost in a big bright void. I was stuck in the sky, so far from the ground, standing among soft white clouds that bled out gold.

“I can’t come down,” I shouted back. “I’m stuck. The stairs are gone.”

He took a step forward, and the clouds evaporated at his feet. They hissed like steam and turned to dust, slowly uncovering the marble stairs as Pablo made his way up.

“This is so strange,” I chuckled. “It looks like Heaven.”

It felt like it, too. The air around me felt warm on my skin, yet fresh when I breathed it in. Pablo smiled, grabbed my hand, and Juan held the other. We floated down the stairs together.

A maid side-eyed us as we walked past her, perhaps because we were giggling and gasping as if walking down a regular flight of stairs was the most exhilarating thing we’d ever done. She quickly shrugged it off –she’d probably seen this before– and kept on mopping the floor as we headed back out to the garden.

Being outside didn’t make me feel any more normal. The furniture on the patio crawled around like animals when I wasn’t looking. The trees in the forest flailed their branches like Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube Men. Even the flowers on the bushes opened and closed their petals like the beaks of hungry fledglings.

Pablo picked a daisy from the ground and stuck it in my hair, right above my ear. I looked up into his eyes as he did so, and the longer I stared, the more his face distorted.

Just like the flowers, the pores of his skin opened and closed as if they were breathing. One of his eyes was twice as big as the other, but I couldn’t tell which one, as it kept changing. His face aged back and forth every other second– one instant, he seemed like an elderly man, and the next he was a teenager.

“You look really weird,” I told him. “Your mustache is dancing around on your face.”

“You too,” he drawled. “Your eyes are huge, but I love it.”

He leaned in closer, and I could feel him longing to kiss my lips.

“Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?” he asked.

“We were standing right here the first time you did,” I whispered.

He held my chin between his fingers, and our faces slowly drew closer, but before anything more could happen, Juan ran towards us.

“Guys, I thought I was tripping but I swear this is the fifth time in a row this has happened,” he said. “There’s a lion in the forest.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” groaned Pablo.

“Yes, a medieval lion, with a huge tongue. He wraps it around himself like a– like a sausage roll,” he stuttered. “He keeps telling me to lick things. Everything. Trees. The ground. My lips. It’s so fucking weird.”

“I think you’re just tripping,” Pablo muttered.

All of a sudden, the inside of my mouth felt hairy, and I pinched my tongue between my fingertips. Juan’s eyes widened as he watched me do it, before he burst out laughing. His hysterical cackles were equal parts contagious and concerning. I laughed with him, but my face stayed frozen in fear.

“I’m so fucking confused,” Pablo cried, squeezing his head with the palms of his hands.

“Me too,” I slurred.

These drugs were fucking wild. Inside my head was a blur, a mess of contradicting emotions and colors I couldn’t name. Between two uncontrollable bouts of panicked laughter, I glared at Juan. I was doing fine before he showed up and started screaming about how he wanted to lick everything. All I wanted to do was to find out how it feels to get sucked into my own belly button, and now here I was, worrying about lions.

There was a rustle somewhere in the forest, and the three of us flinched. Something moved in the distance. It could have been the lion, it could have been the wind.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but can we go somewhere else?” whimpered Juan. “I feel weird here.”

“Let’s go to the pool, that’s where we’re supposed to go,” mumbled Pablo. “I don’t know why we’re here.”

“Also, the lion can’t go there,” I added. “Because lions are big cats, and cats don’t like water. And pools are filled with water.”

“You fucking genius,” said Juan, his eyes still as wide as saucers. “Alright, last one in the water gets eaten by the lion.”

We bolted towards the pool, running like the wind, but as soon as I found myself on the edge of the water, I froze. I hesitantly took off my shawl, curling my toes around the edge of the tiles. The water looked so deep and dark, I felt as if I was about to jump into the open ocean.

“Aren’t you going to swim?” asked Juan, peacefully floating in the middle of the pool.

“What if I drown?” I worried. “I’m really high.”

“Would you rather drown or get caught by a lion that makes you lick everything?” he mumbled.

“Stop making me panic,” I groaned. “There’s no lion. You’re just really fucking weird.”

“Are you sure? Because you and Pablo were about to lick each other’s faces,” he snickered. “Come on, Em. The water isn’t that deep.”

I took a deep breath, pinched my nose and jumped into the pool. Juan grabbed my hands to pull me to the surface. On this side of the pool, I could stand, and the water only reached halfway up my chest.

“See?” he said, still holding onto my fingers. “You’re fine.”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“I like your bikini,” he murmured, as his gaze lowered away from my face. “Looks cool.”

“Thanks,” I muttered. “Pablo got it for me.”

“Speaking of him, where is he?”

I looked around, and shrugged. “I guess he just disappeared.”

I stared into Juan’s eyes for a little too long. The sunlight that sparkled on the surface of the water reflected in his black irises, like hundreds of stars in a pristine night sky. The longer I stared, the closer they seemed, and soon enough, I was floating in space, millions of miles away from this dreadful planet.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, snapping me out of my reverie.

“I was hoping the water would be cold enough to shock me sober, but I don’t think it worked,” I chuckled softly.

“Why the fuck did you take the drugs, Em?” he sighed. “I told you not to.”

“Well, you don’t control me,” I mumbled. My smirk dropped from my lips, and my hands slipped out of his. “Also, you took drugs with Pablo, so I don’t see why I couldn’t.”

“I don’t have a drug problem, unlike you.”

“Still, you’re kind of sleeping with the enemy,” I retorted. “You guys just frolicked around the garden like you’ve been besties forever. What happened to not being able to see him the same way as before or whatever the fuck it was you said?”

“First of all, I thought we’d agreed to give up and forget about everything, so that’s exactly what I did,” he scoffed. “Second of all, sleeping with the enemy? That’s rich coming from the girl who literally sleeps in his bed every night and has probably had sex with him twice this week.”

Juan was completely wrong. Pablo and I had made love five times in the past seven days. Five times that I could remember, at least.

“You wouldn’t know if I had sex with him or not,” I muttered.

“I do. Sometimes, he tells us, and sometimes it’s obvious,” he replied. “Your hair is all messy at breakfast and he can’t keep his hands off you. And one time, you even had a stain– ”

“It’s different,” I cut him off. “I do it because I have to.”

“Do you?”

“Let’s not talk about this, you’re gonna make me have a bad trip,” I sighed, and took a few strides across the pool to go and climb onto a flamingo float.

“That’s a cheap cop-out, Em,” he spat.

“Whatever, John Glade,” I hissed. “Just let me live my life as I see fit.”

I laid back on my flamingo float, and closed my eyes. Within a few seconds of twirling around the pool, I felt like I was flying again, rising up into the sky like a victim of an alien abduction, floating in zero gravity in a dark tornado of strange shapes and neon colors.

At the top of this whirlwind was a black hole. A dark orb, that blinked. It looked like Juan’s eyes. Even here, deep down in my hallucinations, the motherfucker just could not leave me alone.

He’d infected every cell in my brain, spread like a disease down my every nerve and vein, I could feel him crawling under my skin. Even now that we were friends, Juan still spied, analyzed, and judged my every move.

Still, as annoying and invasive as he sometimes was, I couldn’t stop thinking of him.

“I hate how strange this feels,” groaned Pablo as he dipped a leg in the pool. “Why is the water so spicy?”

“Where were you?” I asked, slowly opening my eyes.

“I went to the bathroom,” he answered. “I don’t recommend it. Looking in the mirror was a terrifying experience.”

He swam towards me, and I slid off of my floatie and into his arms. We stuck our foreheads together and chuckled at each other, for some stupid reason that went over my head. Our bodies intertwined as we drifted away together. Juan stayed quiet, crouching in a corner of the pool, blowing bubbles under the water.

“The colors, man, they’re beautiful,” said Pablo. “It’s like we’re floating in a kaleidoscope.”

“I know, right?” I replied. “It feels amazing.”

“You know what else feels nice?” he asked.

“What?”

“This.”

Before I could laugh at Pablo’s cheesy line, our lips met in a fiery explosion of passion, and the world around us melted away as we lost ourselves in each other. We floated in the pool, high on psychedelics and love, our hearts in sync and our arms locked in tight.

“Have you been staying hydrated?” he asked. “Your lips look dry.”

“I don’t think so.”

“We made some fresh pineapple juice this morning, let me go get you some.”

He got out of the pool and back into the house. I went behind the bar to fill three glasses with ice, and Juan mindlessly followed me, looking around like a lost puppy.

Two is company, three is a crowd, they say. The area behind the bar started to feel a little too cramped and busy once Pablo ran back with a pitcher. We fumbled and mumbled and kept walking into each other, like bumper cars at a funfair.

As he turned around, to put down the empty pitcher. Pablo knocked one of the glasses off the bar. It shattered into a hundred pieces, covering the floor in pineapple juice and shiny shards of glass.

“Fuck,” he hissed. “Let me go get some more juice.”

I bent over to pick up the broken pieces before anybody stepped on them, but as I took a step back and stood up straight, my back bumped against his chest.

“Careful,” he murmured behind me, as his hand grabbed my waist to stop me from bouncing away.

His skin was so smooth, his touch so gentle, he sent sparks traveling up my nerves and made me giggle like an idiot. I tangled my fingers with his, fusing our hands together at the knuckles.

I brought his hand up to my breast and he softly squeezed it through the fabric, as his thumb playfully thrummed on the strings of my bikini.

Fuck it if anyone was watching, fuck it if I cut my bare feet on broken glass, and fuck it if anyone disagreed with me liking this man, because this just felt ecstatic. It was as if I belonged in his strong arms, as if we were always meant to be together. It was a unique feeling, one I’d never get from any other man.

His smile grazed against my neck, longing to leave a love bite. I breathed in the inebriating cocktail of his minty breath and addictive perfume. Something clenched in my lower stomach, a wave of heat spread down from my chest to my thighs, and a low moan escaped past my lips.

“Em,” he whispered in my ear. “This isn’t a good idea.”

“Why not?” I hummed.

I kept on grinding my hips against his, hypnotized by his delectable touch and his trembling caresses. He gulped, and the lump in his throat slid down the side of my neck.

“Pablo might see us,” he said.

As I turned around to face Juan, my eyes widened and my mouth dropped open, my lips curling back in a silent scream. My fingers turned to stalactites, and my whole body froze and petrified, but all I wanted to do was to combust into flames and melt into the ground.

“I didn’t–” I stuttered.

“I know,” he murmured. “It’s fine.”

“It was a mistake, I swear,” I breathed. “I thought you were him.”

His face dropped, his smile sagged and the spark in his eyes dimmed.

“It’s okay,” he mumbled, clearing his throat with a dry cough. “Listen, Pablo can’t know about this.”

“Holy shit, no,” I gasped. “Oh my god Juan, he’ll fucking kill us both.”

“Em, I need you to take a deep breath, okay?” he said calmly. “There’s no need to panic, we’re not going to die.”

He grabbed my wrist, and his fingers felt like fire against my icy skin. Between my racing breaths, I hoped and prayed out loud that the pool bar’s thin walls and columns were good enough of a shelter to have stopped Pablo from witnessing what had happened.

“What happened?” frowned Pablo when he walked back towards us with another pitcher in his hand. “Why are you guys acting so weird all of a sudden?”

“Nothing,” I blurted out. “Nothing in particular. Nothing at all.”

I glanced over his shoulder– behind him, Juan was cringing.

Pablo raised his voice. “What’s going on?”

“I think she’s just really high,” Juan answered. “Em, you should go lay down or something.”

“Right,” I breathed.

I walked away from them and went to sit on a sunbed, clutching my stomach and scratching my skin in the spots where Juan had touched me.

I begged my brain to come down from the vertiginous heights at which the drugs had taken me. I couldn’t start drinking again to forget about this, because it might have made it all worse, and I felt bad enough already.

It wasn’t my mistake that scared me. It wasn’t the things I’d done under the influence, or the way Pablo might react if he ever found out about them. It was worse than drugs, a haunting feeling that would linger and that I would long for until the day I died.

I was terrified by how great it felt when Juan was the one holding me.

Kerning

All-Time High

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