Chapter 4

Yuna and I did not speak of The Kiss.

The party planning continued in silence, and I was under the vaguest of impressions that she wanted it to continue that way. Was she embarrassed by her feelings, that they'd continued on despite my obvious... disinterest? The fact was I almost wished we could talk about it.

Saturday morning the party and the revenge was planned to a perfect T; Yuna and I lounged upstairs on the balcony overlooking my pool area and drank familiar, delicate fruit beverages as an early celebration.

"Ah, yes," I murmured. "Sweet, sweet pineapple juice and orange liqueur. Are you at all worried that this is a bad idea?"

Yuna giggled and I wondered whether that was alcohol induced giggling or girlishness induced giggling.

"We fared well enough last time," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

"Last time we ended up wasted and... Well, it was a good night, wasn't it?"

"Oh, yes... I'm quite excited for this party," Yuna told me, her tone somewhat philosophical. "I feel it's a... a... a changing point. For shit."

"Yes, I also think so... I think."

"Anyway, you did get everything all set up?"

"Yes, Yuna, God, how many times do I have to say so?" My voice was exasperated, but also– dare I admit it?– affectionate, and Yuna seemed to pick up on it.

She smiled winningly and said, "Right. Stereo and everything's out there, then... Um. I think I'll.. I'll be right back."

"Where are you going?"

"To... put up a sign, directing party-goers to the party-going area."

Yuna stood and wove her way across the floor of my bedroom. It occurred to me that an inability to walk in a straight line at– I checked my watch, squinting at the fuzzy little numbers– 11 am was perhaps a bad sign, given that the party didn't start for another seven hours.

But who was I kidding! This was a celebration!

Yuna returned and we drank our little hearts into contentment.

Noise outside pulled us, later, out of a rather intense game of drunken go fish.

"Oh my gosh what's that sound... oh my gosh..." Yuna lost her balance as she tried to swivel and look out the window. Good thing she was sitting cross-legged on the floor or there might have been a disaster.

Leaning heavily on the mantle and then the bed and then the wall... she stumbled to the balcony and told me loudly, "OH PEOPLE ARE HERE... We should head down... down there."

"Early," I mumbled, hating the bastards already for showing up before their host was prepared.

"No no... look at your, uh, watch..."

It was indeed past 6, if the fuzzy little numbers were to be believed.

Together Yuna and I ambled from my bedroom and began to make our way in a rather hazardous fashion down the stairs. I call it hazardous because I vaguely remember ending up in a painful heap on the bottom flight while Yuna criss-crossed her way all over the room. I believe she was trying to stand still and peer down at me, but no such luck in that department.

We made our way outside, using each other as crutches. Slowly. And zigzaggingly.

"Tidus... Yuna!" a familiar voice screeched at us.

I winced as Rikku grabbed hold of us in a fierce hug. "Tidus, I haven't seen you since high school, and Yuna, you missed the concert... Christ, you two smell like booze."

Rikku let go of us and without her support we did a little swaying. And perhaps stumbling.

"We started up your stereo," Gippal– was it Gippal? It sounded like him– said somewhere in front of us. I think he was in front of us. "You don't mind?"

"Nah..." I tried to say, but it sort of came out "nergh."

"Uhh, when did you guys start getting the booze on then?" Rikku asked curiously.

"Umm," Yuna said next to me. "Ummm..."

"10?" I asked aloud. "9:30?"

"Mmm...I think... I think... yes. 9 or so. 9-ish. After 9, just a little."

Rikku and Gippal– definitely Gippal, albeit a blurry one– stared at us. "It's almost 7," Gippal said.

"Yeah. S'pose so."

"Well..." Rikku muttered, and then added in a shout. "The party hosts have arrived!"

There was the sound of cheering.

"Aaaanddd, they're loaded."

"Woohoo!' Yuna shouted, lifting a half-filled bottle of orange liqueur over her head.

We stumbled further into my pool area and began making... the rounds. Polite, welcome-to-our-party type rounds. Thankfully Gippal and Rikku came with us, because I think we relied on them rather a lot to help us stand up.

"Well, mon... you two are looking... wasted," someone said in an annoying, stupid, obnoxious, Jamaican accent as we approached the next group.

Yuna wrenched herself from Rikku's grip, and predictably fell over. Thankfully she landed sort of on Wakka, so no damage done since she didn't fall to the concrete deck or anything. But a rather exorbitant amount of alcohol did somehow end up spilt down his front. Looked accidental (least, that's how I recall it happening).

"Oops," I said ushering Yuna away quickly. Over my shoulder I whispered, "She's kind of drunk!" and was really surprised when tons of people nearby laughed like they could hear it.

We fumbled our way through the crowd, chatting with our high school friends, until finally we found ourselves on the grass outside my gated pool area, struggling to get back to our feet.

"Let's just... let's just sit, s... aiight? Just til... til a nice... friendly stranger comes along. To help us up, like."

"Ya!" Yuna agreed enthusiastically.

Someone friendly did come along. Not a stranger, though.

"Yuna?" a voice said somewhere above us. "..Tidus?"

"Oh my," a feminine voice added.

We looked up and standing over us was Shuyin and Lenne.

Fuuuu–

"Are you two... alright?" Lenne asked.

"Sgood," I told her. "Could you maybe... help us stand up?"

"Oh God," Shuyin said, and reached down to grab my outstretched hands. We stumbled awkwardly as he tried to support my weight.

"So," Lenne huffed as she helped to yank Yuna up. "When you said the party started at 6:00, you meant 6:00, huh? On the dot. At least we can say you're punctual."

"Oh, we were early," Yuna giggled.

"We been drinkin says 9," I told them proudly.

"I think he meant since," Lenne muttered.

"Yeah, I got that. So... you two are totally trashed, then, I guess."

"Why so sad?" I asked. "S'not such a bad."

"No? Well, I guess not. I'm sure you two are having loads of fun."

"Yeah, yeah!" Yuna said. Then she whined, "Lenne, I have to pee, can you help?"

That was how I ended up alone with Shuyin for the first time in two years. I'd like to say that I approached him in an angry-deserted-castoff-spurned-and-enraged-brother fit, demanding why he'd treated me with so little respect after I began dating Wakka, but really, I was ditched by my drinking buddy when she needed help using the bathroom.

"So."

"Hmpf."

"What's wrong with you?" Shuyin asked bitterly.

"Mad," I told him.

"At what?"

"You! Two years! Two years silent and then you show up like shits all the shizzles."

"I'm not... showing up like's shit's... Whatever. I was hardly the silent one–" Shuyin adjusted his grip on my elbows when I nearly fell over. Dear God, please just kill me before I die of humiliation. "I saw you outside of school and dinner like once a month when you started dating him."

"S'not my fault you leaves the room when I entered! You're a douchey douche."

"I– I did not."

"You did, though." My voice was more whiny and petulant than I would have liked it to be, since I was kind of going for furious and out for revenge, but what can you do when you've downed at least a bottle and a half of orange liqueur, eh?

It was then that Wakka approached, saying something inane which I forgot before it was even completely out of his mouth.

"Ugh. Tell him to go away," I muttered drunkenly in Shuyin's ear.

"Do you mind?" he asked Wakka. "We're having a private, albeit drunken, conversation."

He smiled far too apologetically for my taste. I would have been telling him to fuck off if I was the one dealing with it. Wakka took the dismissal easily, for which I was grateful. He had always known that my relationship with my brother was a sore spot for me, although given his behaviour lately, I was surprised he had the decency to bugger off when asked.

Shuyin studied me for a moment while I swayed in his arms.

"Are you–?"

Twin telecommunication? Drunken assumptions? Or just the obsessive inner grinding of a still hurt addled mind? Who knows what made me know what Shuyin was getting at.

"We are no longer togethers."

"Does Wakka know that?"

"He will soon enough."

We stood in relative silence, except for the near deafening sound of my drunk breathing that is, until Shuyin spat out defensively, "Well it was kind of weird! You have to acknowledge that."

"Weird! How so! No it wasn't. You're just mean."

"Tidus. Wakka was... I mean, at the time he was the guy who spent the night at our house every other weekend. Suddenly I had to worry about what the hell he was doing under our roof whereas before I just assumed he was passing out after you guys played xBox!"

"You don't have to worry about shit, it's my life. And... hell, mostly we did play xBox. But why would you worry? I'm not some girl. I don't need... I don't need a babysitter."

"That has... absolutely nothing to do with this conversation, but Tidus... you're my brother, and I just wanted..." His voice trailed away, but even in my inebriation I could tell it was because he was choking on his own bitterness. "You never told me. I found out with everyone else, in the school cafeteria."

"S...so?"

"You didn't trust me, was that it? Or... you just didn't think my opinion mattered?"

"Oh for... Noo, I just didn't think it a big enough... ich. Ish... Big enough deal... that it needed a special reveals! I didn't get a special announce when you started dating new girlfriends, so why should you..."

"It wasn't a new girlfriend, that's why!"

"I don't see how that matters." I spoke clearly, carefully that time, absolutely dead set on pronouncing everything right and getting my message across with as much class as possible.

"Of course it does. Isn't coming out supposed to be a great big thing?"

"Not nece... neces... No. Why should it be?"

"We're baaackk!" Yuna screeched.

"Good," I mumbled and yanked myself from my brother's grip. "Let's go get drunk."

"We're drunk."

"Drunker, perhapses?"

The night gets progressively more fuzzy after that. I know that the liqueur went shockingly missing and Yuna and I moved on to Keith's. I also remember calling a cab to come get us and take us to Taco Bell (Don't remember going to Taco Bell but am assuming from the take out bags all over Yuna's living room the next day that we made it).

I also know that at one point, when Yuna and I were searching frantically for her purse and my wallet so we could pay for both cab and the anticipated Taco Bell, Wakka showed up in my room asking what we were doing.

"It's just... you're wasted, ya? Maybe you should stay home."

I definitely pulled myself to my full height and said something like, "Fuck you, you stupid fucking cheating son of a goddamned Russian hooker c***."

(At least, that's what Yuna says.)

I also remember (sorta) throwing up on Wakka before Yuna insisted I get some Taco Bell to settle my stomach and dragged me from the room all while chewing Wakka out for being the "shittiest dirtbag walking the earth, go shove Lulu's clarinet up your ass before trying to tell us what to do."

As we were piling into the cab, I said, "We for... we forgoed the revenge plan..."

"But we... we did rather tell him to fuck himself, yeah?|"

"Er... S'pose we did, as it was."

The night is rather black, after that.

I woke up in a room of pink, covered in Yuna. Thank God our clothes were on.

I groaned and shoved her off of me. She was dead to the world, but happily breathing, so I tried not to concern myself about anything other than my pounding headache. I stumbled about the room and decided it seemed an awful lot like it must be Yuna's bedroom. I found a bathroom and made for the medicine cabinet like it was the pearly gates.

I rifled through the contents, pausing as something caught my eye. So Yuna was on birth control.

Good, part of me thought, and another part recoiled in disgust. Did I just think that? Did I really? I don't care if she's on birth control! I don't!

I scrambled for Tylenol or something that could take away this blasted headache–

Oh my God, Yuna's on birth control. Does that mean she's having sex? With who! I'll rip his balls off!

I slammed the cabinet door shut, giving up on my search. I splashed water from the tap onto my face and massaged my temples. I'd officially gone insane, it would seem. I heard Yuna moan in the next room. This was going to be a long day.