"You're kind of an ass."
The words slurred out before Sophie could give them structure. Or critical thinking. Or a filtered version. Her brow furrowed for a conflicted moment, frustrating and wondering why her mouth wouldn't behave when a laugh pulled her back to the room.
To her relaxed pose.
To her bright eyes.
They glistened through the squint of her cheeks. For as much as she couldn't stand the cadet standing in front of her, Sophie was always taken by how alive the piercing green of her eyes were. Even in the poor 'mood' lighting of twinkling string lights and a desk lamp they still burned bright and sparkled in an impossible way. It was even more effective when the smile was genuine and climbed up to warm them an extra degree like they did now. Sophie wondered if all green eyes naturally glowed or if Kate Kane had some magical quality about her.
"I'll take that as a compliment," Kate chuckled back.
"Huh?" Sophie asked, rattled by the ease of Kate's response. "No, t's'wasn't supposed to be."
The words flowed out again by accident, and she wanted to literally facepalm herself for her inebriated lack of tact.
"T's'wasn't?" Kate mocked back.
"Words are..." Sophie muttered before trailing off, her thought already lost to the cloud that had become her brain.
"You don't usually drink this much," Kate observed.
"Oh… well, uh…?"
It wasn't just that Sophie didn't drink that much. The truth was Sophie didn't drink at all. The only time she'd ever tasted alcohol was the Thanksgiving prior when her dad convinced Diane a glass of red wouldn't kill anyone. Even with the added weight of turkey, stuffing, and sweet potatoes she'd felt the impacts in the way smiling felt easier and her lips became looser, unable to withhold dry retorts toward her sister and cousin.
"How many have you had?" Kate asked. It rubbed Sophie the wrong way. Had anyone else asked it she might have heard the concern in it, but when it came to Kate Kane, everything sounded condescending and soaked in sarcasm.
"What's it to you?" she replied. She tried to sound indifferent but knew immediately her annoyance had leaked out.
She cursed her sludgy brain. It was already bad enough she'd just admitted an opinion that she'd harbored for the better part of a year: Kate Kane was an ass. She was an obnoxiously over-confident, privileged, stubborn, would-never-in-a-million-years-admit-she-was-wrong-about-anything brat who strolled onto campus like the world was her oyster and this just happened to be the dock she chose to tether herself to for a few years. She regularly challenged authority, couldn't be bothered by the norms of cadet-life, and was somehow still the most popular plebe in their year.
Had it been up to Sophie she'd have steered clear of her all year except for one tiny problem: they were roommates. Those forced interactions had become one navigation after another as Sophie curated reason after reason to be out of the room. She should have just moved her bed into the library for as much time as she spent there. It took all of one day for Sophie to realize they were at fundamental odds: Sophie didn't join the Academy to make friends or socialize; she came to excel and guarantee a future that didn't include flipping burgers or stocking jeans at the local department store. Kate Kane came for the exact opposite; she came to goof off and spend her weekends studying booze over books.
"Just wanted to make sure I was ahead of you," Kate replied dryly, tossing back the rest of her solo cup.
Sophie stared down at the foamy remains of her third drink. She'd learned the hard way that temperature mattered after her first beer had lingered too long in her warm hand. The early summer heat that came with the end of term and the stickiness of too many bodies sharing unairconditioned dorm rooms had added to the drink's shortened lifespan. Condensation quickly dripped onto her fingers before evaporating to join the rest of the room's humidity. This left behind a lukewarm flavor that stung Sophie's taste buds. The crinkle of her nose made Kate laugh when she struggled to swallow down the last of the cheap, flat beer. Sophie hated that Kate found humor in it. She hated that she was there at all. Kate rubbed her the wrong way and brought out a competitive side she wasn't familiar with. Instead of taking it slow, she took Kate's laughter as a challenge. She negotiated a refill through the growing crowd, returning to the group of peers with a full, frothy beverage.
Always the attentive student, she tried learning from her earlier mistake and had guzzled down most of her drink while it was still chilled and tasteless. This resulted in the second hard lesson of the night: the buzz that quickly followed clouded her palette from knowing the difference between a cold tasteless beer and a warm flat beer. Sophie didn't know whether this was good or bad, but that's also because she didn't know to question it. Days of exhaustingly barricading herself in the deepest, darkest delves of the library left her brain malleable to the influence of the four percent drink.
It was a cheap and nameless pilsner that came from a now luke-warm keg submerged in a bath of melted ice. A few of these aluminum barrels were littered around the dormitory floor along with bottom shelf bottles of liquor and sugary drinks for mixing.
This was not Sophie's scene. She'd only been to a party once in high school and that was by accident. That she was here on the eve of the end of term meant somewhere hell had frozen over. Sophie had nearly turned away from the booming bass, the rowdy shouting, and the smell of alcohol invading her nostrils when a group of peers identified her and pulled her into the crowd.
She didn't know the music. Or how to pump a keg to get a beer. Or that talking about school work with a drink in hand was taboo. Or that Kate Kane would be there.
She had appeared out of nowhere, slipping her way into the conversation with well-timed remarks and inside jokes garnered from a year of studying and partying together. Sophie understood none of them because Sophie didn't socialize.
"Sophie?"
The voice called over the fuzzy hum of conversation and yanked her back to the room; to the cup in her hand. The string of lights hung overhead bounced off the red of the cup's plastic and shaded the foam a soft hue of the same. She stared at it for a moment longer, letting the fog of alcohol soften her demeanor.
"I've never been drunk before," she confessed. "But I think I might be."
"You don't say."
"It's like… it's like I can think, but only for a second."
Kate was smiling back at her, and she wanted to be angry. She didn't like Kate. If she had never met Kate she might have enjoyed her first year at Point Rock. Instead she spent it skirting around Kate's late starts in the morning and her drunk stumbles disrupting Sophie's sleep at night. It wasn't how she expected a roommate at a military academy to behave, and she found herself regularly biting her tongue in frustration.
"Well in that case," Kate's voice said, cutting through the chatter again. "How about we get you home?"
"We?" Sophie asked, latching onto Kate's word choice.
"Yes?" Kate asked, her bright eyes narrowing in confusion. "Unless you think you can navigate your way across campus without tripping into a fountain."
"You have really green eyes," Sophie admitted, hearing none of Kate's words.
"I really do," Kate replied dryly, taking the plastic cup from Sophie's hands and setting it on some forgettable surface.
"Has anyone ever told you that?"
"Just the mirror."
"I don't think I've ever met anyone with green eyes before," Sophie said. She didn't know why she was saying this, but it was all she could think about.
"I'm sure that's not true," Kate said, her signature smirk on full display. It didn't seem as annoying as it had before. Sophie knew she'd wake up the next morning and hate it again, but for the moment, she didn't mind it so much.
"No, I think it's true. I'd have remembered," Sophie tried to argue, sluggishly and superficially searching her memory for any memory of green eyes.
"Maybe they just weren't worth remembering."
Sophie jolted awake, seeing the low light on the horizon mark the hour. She didn't know the day - time had gone both too quickly and too slowly to know the difference. She unfurled from the blanket entangled around her, trying to rub the sleep from her eyes. She glanced toward the kitchen, knowing she should eat; knowing she should do something - anything - but the weight on her chest drew her back into the couch's armrest and under the blanket. She didn't feel tired - she'd slept plenty. No, it wasn't that she was tired - it was that she was drained.
She glanced at her phone, then at the corridor's light flooding under her front door, then her terrace, then the sky. With each emptiness the vice of loss tightened around her chest. She knew it was depression. She had already denied, lashed out in anger, and bargained for a second chance - for another opportunity to redo what she had failed at. This was the final step. All she needed to do was jump this final hurdle toward acceptance, but she couldn't bring herself to it.
Instead, she felt the way her body craved with every ounce of her being that the door swung open and the one face she wanted to see more than any other would come strolling through it. Sophie wasn't ready for acceptance. She didn't know if she ever would be.
a/n: My goal is to have this whole diddy wrapped by the end of the weekend. I'm writing it fairly quickly as a short exercise that just so happens to (maybe?) be readable/enjoyable. I've slowly discovered I'm dreadful at planning and can get rather long-winded and never finish anything (*cough* becoming batwoman *cough*). Even this was started as a beginning and an end with no (some) middle, so it has my weekend challenge: to start and finish something, dayem-it!
I hope you all enjoy it.