drunk dialing {Jade}

[Erik Stewart]

He’d spent some time with Jade, who would quickly find that the kid she’d found by the side of the road was a bit like a wild animal or a feral cat, skittish and un-socialized and maybe a bit hissy.

This was because Erik knew only two kinds of people: people who wanted to fuck him over, or people who wanted to fuck him over, and Jade seemed to want neither of the two. Thus, at first, he was nothing but suspicious of her company to an exaggerated extent. It was probably only the promise of cigarettes that kept him coming, like bait.

Eventually, though, the college student was starting to worm her way into his cold, neurotic heart. Somewhere between visits he realized that his time with her didn’t serve a purpose, per se, he just enjoyed it. This was new and exciting to him. Now, it seemed like the only person he could genuinely call a friend here was Jade Parrish.

Sometime around twelve in the morning, an obviously inebriated Erik called her up. “I think I’d make a great hooker,” he told her, eventually.

[Jade Parrish]

Jade had learned a lot about Erik since she butted into his life at the station when he had the sudden urge to skip town. Of course, she didn't know everything and to be honest, he didn't know a lot about her either. She was open with most details--like the fact that she was bisexual, who she found attractive and pretty much anything else about herself. The only really touchy subject was her family and her home life that she'd left behind.

She'd always been somebody who latched onto other people. It was kind of funny. She could help others and tell them to just get the fuck over things, but could never seem to do the same for herself.

She was laying on her bed, on her stomach. Purple tank top and boyshorts on and legs up in the air as she chewed on her pen cap. She was making edits to a news article a fellow journalism major had written when her phone rang.

It didn't take Jade long to realize he was drunk and she almost wished she could be drinking with him, because honestly she was bored, but she did have work to do for college. "And why do you say that?" she asked him with a laugh.

[Erik Stewart]

Alcohol had a way of loosening everyone up, and Erik was no exception. He was definitely chattier, and his guarded disposition just fell away. What hadn’t left, though, was his crude way of talking…in fact, it probably just made it worse. “You wouldn’t even be askin’ me that if I sucked your dick,” he slurred. “’Cause if I did you’d be in love with me.”

Neither did he ever try to hide his sexual orientation. It probably wouldn’t have been too hard to figure out, even if he did – he liked nail polish and the prospect of putting it on, and he’d shown interest in fixing her hair up once or twice. It was an odd combination for someone who talked with such a rich southern accent.

[Jade Parrish]

Jade kind of liked when Erik was under the influence of alcohol. He became a lot more talkative. She laughed at his crude response, twirling her pin in her fingers with her phone still pressed up against her ear with the other hand. "If I had a dick to suck that might be an accurate statement," she shot back at him. "Unfortunately I don't have parts you're interested in."

She'd learned rather quickly that Erik was gay. He'd offered to paint her nails and done her hair in a lot of cool styles. She had to admit that was one of the reasons why she kept him around. Another was his broody nature felt like home. She'd been the same way for a long time. She hadn't told him about Lanie. She didn't know how. She didn't really tell anybody, but maybe it would come with time.

"Do you have a secret stash of alcohol at Hammel or what?" she asked curiously.

[Erik Stewart]

“I guess you’ll never know,” he responded.

Erik’s alcohol-and-cigarette supply wasn’t that much of a secret – it wasn’t even really a covert thing, and if anyone thought too long about it, it was probably easy to figure out. A lot of men around Pilot Ridge were into metas, and the thought of so many of them within reach had them salivating; they were easy to pick out, and Erik – for lack of a better term – looked pretty gay. He didn’t even have to put himself out there first. It was them that came knocking, looking for a good time, and if they gave him some cigarettes in exchange then that was all for the better. Erik didn’t care that they might have wives or girlfriends. He had internalized long ago that homosexual relations weren’t as important as heterosexual ones, and didn’t even consider what he did ‘cheating’.

But he was still careful about who knew about it. Even he understood that he could get himself in a lot of trouble; this kind of practice might be considered illegal or, at the very least, unsavory.

But he was drunk now so that all went out the window. “I got this from mister Jones from th’ bar a week ago. Kinda a creep, but whatever. It’s good stuff.” There was the sound of liquid sloshing around a bottle. “An’, an’ he’s got kinda a big dick, too.”

[Jade Parrish]

"Not unless I come over and raid your dorm room, which I am quite capable of. You wouldn't believe how sneaky I am," Jade pointed out. How he managed to get past the dorm monitors and Hammel staff in general with a stash like that shocked her. Although she'd managed to pull off having cigarettes and once in a while alcohol stashed in her room, but she never smoked inside. That was disrespectful in her opinion and she had some boundaries. But she was crafty...and Erik didn't seem to be too much of that.

She laughed, turning the page in her text book. "Who the fuck is Mister Jones? And you're not even old enough to be in the bar!" She shook her head at Erik's antics, getting a little too much information from him about what he'd done with this Mister Jones. "You know, I'm not going to go all sisterly on you when you're drunk, but man, do we need to talk about your idea of sexual relations." She made a mental note to do it at some other time, when he wasn't drunk off of his ass.

[Erik Stewart]

It really was a miracle he hadn’t been caught yet. Erik broke all sorts of rules. He didn’t make curfew most times, he smoked in his room, he drank on occasion…sure, sometimes he’d been caught with a cigarette in the bathroom, but that only led to a lecture and some detention. Sometimes he wondered what they’d do if they found all the shit at his place. But it was clear that, for the most part, Erik was unconcerned or unaware of the consequences; he’d that teenage syndrome that gave him the misguided belief that the rules were meant to be broken.

“What’s wrong with my idea ‘bout” – he gestured – “sexual relations?”

Erik didn’t sound guilty, but that might have been a side-effect of his drunkenness. He went on. “You callin’ me a slut?”
He laughed and took another gulp.

[Jade Parrish]

"We'll talk about it when you're sober, alright? That way you'll remember and I won't have to fucking repeat myself ten times to get it through your drunken mind," Jade told him. What he was saying, sounded a lot like prostitution and while she knew he could make his own decisions, she was also somewhat worried about him, like she needed to look out for him.

"I do not call people sluts," she corrected him, shifting her phone to the other ear. "Because sex is fun and who doesn't want to engage in it? But you have to be careful." Sure, Jade was a virgin. Nobody asked the question because they just assumed she wasn't. She didn't know what gave off the non-virgin vibe? Her amount of dark eyeliner? The way she dressed? Whatever.

[Erik Stewart]

“I’m not that drunk,” he assured her. He was pacing about his room, holding the neck of the bottle in one hand and the phone against his shoulder. And he wasn’t, not really. There might’ve been some memory hiccups but other than that he’d be fine, even though he’d just downed half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Erik could handle liquor like a trooper, and that was a fact; no one cared all that much if a minor drank down where he came from, and often Pabs beer was the only thing to drink in the fridge (besides water). He took a can of it while he went fishing. Needless to say, Erik got acclimated to it real fast.

“It’s alright if y’do,” he mumbled. “It’s true, an’ I don’ have feelings or nothin’.”

Erik wouldn’t have thought Jade was a virgin, either. She just didn’t seem the type. “Whatever. People who say that are just fuckin’ jealous anyway, feels fuckin’ great.”

[Jade Parrish]

"Well, you sure seem really drunk. Do I need to come over there?" It was half of a joke. "Because I'm in the middle of homework, but you're really making me want a drink."

And Erik wasn't a slut in her eyes. Honestly, people made their own decisions and could do what they wanted with their bodies. She just didn't want them to get hurt because of their decisions. "Shut up, will you? You have feelings." She rolled her eyes at his next statement, tapping her pen on her textbook. She really needed a cigarette.

[Erik Stewart]

“I’m not that drunk,” he asserted.

He was, though. He wasn’t falling over drunk, to be sure, but his very denial was evidence of it, and his inflections were wrong: his voice rose and fell at odd intervals, much different than one might expect from a sober person. He was loud, too. Erik had the potential to get aggressive when provoked, but when under the influence he became unpredictable…though it often came across as more comical than threatening. Especially since he was so small.

”Shut up, will you? You have feelings.”

“You don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even like cats.”

[Jade Parrish]

Denial was an obvious sign that he was that drunk, but Jade didn't tell him that. Instead she went with a long drawn out "mhmmmmm." She sighed heavily. "What does liking cats have to do with having feelings?" Drunk Erik talking...this was interesting. "Do you have feelings for anyone you're sleeping with?" She truly wanted to know. And maybe she was being a bit nosy, but that was Jade for you.

[Erik Stewart]

Erik never realized he was more talkative while drunk – or, he might have known, somehow, but that didn’t seem to stop him: he never made any apologies for it nor shied away from its consequences, which either came from recklessness or from sheer disregard for himself. Possibly both, given he was a seventeen year old boy.

Her question seemed to throw him off. There was a distinct pause on the other line. Jane could practically hear his brows furrowing as he considered. “No,” he said, at last.

A staticy-brushing noise from the other side, as if he were shuffling the phone around. “I got a bang ‘em an’ leave policy,” he explained.