Chapter 97
Jake's POV
Standing outside Pinewood Bar at eleven PM on a Tuesday night, staring down at my vomit-covered jacket, hoodie, and jeans, I had one thought: Mercury must be in retrograde.
That was the only logical explanation for how a simple plan—grab one beer, decompress from exam stress, go home and study—had resulted in me becoming a human barf bag for a complete stranger.
Let me back up.
Two hours ago, I'd been in our dorm room, drowning in Pathology notes while Jackson obsessed over his anatomy diagrams. Ryan wasn't even in the room—probably off somewhere pursuing Lily with the determination of a man on a mission. The fluorescent lights were giving me a headache, my eyes were crossing from reading about metabolic disorders, and I needed out.
"Going to Pinewood," I'd announced, grabbing my jacket. "Back by midnight."
Jackson had nodded without looking up from his iPad, too focused on the brachial plexus to care.
So I'd walked to the bar, ordered a beer I barely touched, and spent three hours pretending my textbook was interesting while really just enjoying the change of scenery. Around ten-thirty, I'd paid my tab and headed out, my head full of Krebs cycles and electron transport chains, mentally organizing my study schedule for the week ahead.
Then I'd seen her.
Blonde hair whipping in the wind, party dress completely inadequate for thirty-degree weather, stumbling toward the icy steps like a baby giraffe on roller skates. My first instinct had been to keep walking—not my problem, got studying to do, need sleep—but then she'd started to fall, and my stupid medical student reflexes had kicked in.
I'd lunged forward, caught her by the elbow, and felt briefly heroic.
Then she'd turned toward me and—
SPLAT.
Perfect aim. Down jacket, CVU hoodie, favorite jeans. All casualties of war.
And somehow—somehow—she'd remained completely clean, like she'd calculated the trajectory to maximize my suffering while minimizing her own inconvenience.
Now here I stood, three seconds into processing this disaster, my brain stuck in a loop of disbelief.
"Did you just..." I looked down at myself, then at her pristine party dress, then back at the carnage that used to be my outfit. "Did you just aim for me?"
She giggled, swaying dangerously. "Felt... spinny."
Right. Of course. Spinny. That explained everything.
I took a careful breath through my mouth, immediately regretted it as the smell hit me—beer, vodka, and what might have been pizza rolls—and switched to shallow breathing through my nose.
"Okay," I said, more to myself than to her. "Okay. This is fine. This is... a learning experience. Character building. Future funny story."
"Where do you live?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady and professional. "Can I call someone for you?"
She fumbled in her tiny purse with the coordination of a drunk octopus and finally extracted a keycard, pressing it into my palm with the solemnity of someone passing along nuclear launch codes.
"Cedar... Cedar Inn," she slurred, then promptly used my shoulder as a pillow. "Sleepy..."
I stared at the keycard, then at her, then at my ruined clothes, then at the cold November sky.
You could walk away, the reasonable part of my brain suggested. Call campus security. Let them deal with it. You have studying to do. Next week's exam won't ace itself.
But the pre-med student part—the part that had been drilled with medical ethics and the Hippocratic Oath and worst-case scenarios—was already running through the risks: Aspiration. Alcohol poisoning. Hypothermia. Falls. Head trauma. Choking.
I sighed, the sound carrying all my exhaustion and resignation. "Fine. But you're going to owe me big time for this."
She snored in response, a small, contented sound that suggested she had zero awareness of the chaos she'd created in my life.
Jackson's probably wondering where I am by now, I thought, pulling out my phone to call an Uber. This better be worth the explanation.
The universe, it seemed, wasn't done with me yet.
The Uber driver's face when I approached the car—half-supporting, half-dragging my drunk damsel in distress—was a masterpiece of judgment. His eyes traveled from my vomit-stained clothes to her sparkly dress to the way she was leaning heavily against me, and I could literally see him filing this away as evidence of my moral failings.
"She's drunk," I blurted out, because apparently, I felt the need to defend myself to a complete stranger. "I'm just making sure she gets home safely. I'm pre-med. Medical student. This is, like, a civic duty. Hippocratic Oath adjacent."
His expression—visible in the rearview mirror as I wrestled my passenger into the back seat—suggested he'd heard similar excuses from every frat boy with questionable intentions since the dawn of Uber.
"I volunteer at the free clinic," I continued, because my mouth had apparently disconnected from my brain. "I donate blood. Regularly. O-negative. Universal donor. Very altruistic."
"Mm-hmm." The sound carried enough skepticism to fill a medical journal.
I buckled her in—she was already trying to curl up against me like I was a human-sized pillow—and resigned myself to the most uncomfortable car ride of my life.
She mumbled something incomprehensible, shifted closer, and the driver's eyes narrowed further in the mirror.
This is fine, I told myself. Everything is fine. You're helping someone. That's what good people do.
My reflection in the window looked deeply unconvinced.
The drive to Cedar Inn took ten minutes that felt like ten hours. She kept mumbling, occasionally nuzzling closer, and I kept catching the driver's judgmental stare in the rearview mirror. By the time we pulled up to the hotel, I was ready to write a dissertation on the various ways the universe tests one's commitment to doing the right thing.
"Thanks for the ride," I said, practically falling out of the car in my haste to escape.
The driver just shook his head, his expression suggesting he'd be telling this story to his wife over dinner.
Great. I'm now an anecdote about the moral decline of college students.
Getting her from the car to room 302 should have been simple. Should have been.
Instead, she kept trying to lie down—on the lobby floor ("nice carpet"), against the elevator wall ("so smooth"), in the hallway ("just... five minutes..."). Each time, I had to physically redirect her, like trying to steer a shopping cart with a broken wheel.
"Almost there," I muttered, fumbling with the keycard while simultaneously preventing her from sliding down the wall. "Just a few more feet. You can do this. We can do this."
The door finally clicked open, and I'd never been so grateful to see a generic hotel room in my life.