The Only Medicine

I wake blearily, the sunlight too bright to open my eyes the whole way. My mouth is tacky with the taste of old beer. My head pounds. I sit up gingerly, holding the sheets to my naked body.
I slept with Mike last night. I slept with Mike, and Vic is going to be so upset. I look over at Vic’s alarm clock and see that it’s just past eleven o’clock. I don’t tend to drink much, but when I do, my hangover cure is always a banana and coconut water smoothie, tomato on toast and a hard session at the gym. Vic always says I’m nuts and that he can’t think of anything worse, but it works for me.

I slip out of bed and quickly dress, hoping to sneak out before Mike wakes up.


There’s a few people at the gym, but not as many as I’d expect for a Sunday morning. I slip my headphones on and start warming up, trying to ignore my pounding head. The smoothie and toast definitely helped, but a hangover can only really be waited out.

I rack up 200lb and do a few sets of back squats, the burn in my muscles effacing the pain in my brain. Back squats are my absolute favourite—they’re where I do all my thinking, and at this point, I have a lot of thinking to do. I fluctuate between feeling guilty for leaving Mike and shame for how Vic would feel if he knew what happened. And then Jane … last night was such a clusterfuck.

I’m just finishing a set of clean-and-jerks when my phone vibrates. I set the barbell down and pull the phone out of my pocket, wondering which Fuentes brother it will be.

It’s Vic. “hey, sorry bout last nite. :( u still good 4 rehearsal? miss ur face.”

Shit. I’d totally forgotten that we were rehearsing today. “hey, just at the gym. be round at one.”

I quickly speed through the rest of my workout until my muscles are thoroughly sore and then head home to get ready.


I’m in the shower long enough that Mama comes and knocks on the door to check that I haven’t drowned or died somehow.

“I’m fine, Mama,” I call, then hold my head under the spray again. I’ve washed my hair and shaved and cleaned every inch of my body, but I just can’t bring myself to get out the shower. Getting out of the shower means getting dressed, which means heading to Vic’s and trying not to act awkward around Mike and potentially blabbing everything to Vic. I’ve never kept a secret from Vic before. And then what if Mike has already told him everything that’s happened, and Vic’s just waiting to hear it from me as a sign of our true friendship and I don’t tell him and then we stop talking forever?

I sigh and shut off the water, resigning myself to my fate. Whatever happened between Mike and me last night, I just can’t tell Vic about it, and it sure as shit can’t happen again. I’ve also got to find a way to confront Jane and end things with her definitively. Now is the time when I need more friends that I can talk to about things, especially friends that aren’t related to said things.

At least I don’t feel hungover anymore.


I let myself into Vic and Mike’s house and kick my Vans off just inside the door.

“Hello?” I call.

“In the garage,” comes Vic’s muffled reply.

I can hear Mike hitting the drums experimentally—I’m surprised they could hear me. I head down the hallway toward the garage, the drum sounds growing louder.

“Hey,” Mike says as I enter, not meeting my eyes.

Vic’s curled up on the couch at the back of the room, his face buried inside his hoodie.

“Aww, Vic!” I exclaim, sitting next to him.

“I’m never drinking again,” he mumbles, looking up at me. “Every movement makes my brain rattle.”

“Are you going to be okay to rehearse?”

“I figured we could just go over lyrics and stuff today. My voice is shot as well.”

“That’s all good. I brought my notebook.” I set my bass case down on the floor, then pause. “What happened to you last night?”

Vic winces. “I made bad choices.”

I cock my eyebrow at him. “What do you mean by bad choices?”

He sighs. “I drank too much and … kind of slept with Cara.”

“Oh, Vic …”

“Wait a sec,” Mike pipes up. “You were hooking up with some random girl, last I saw.”

“What?” Vic exclaims. “Oh man … I don’t remember that.”

“Was Cara at the party?” I ask, glad we’re talking about Vic and not me.

“No … I ran to her house.”

Mike bursts out laughing. “Are you kidding me? You ran for that pussy? After already getting some at the party?”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep with anyone at the party.”

“Uh, pretty sure you and that girl were getting pretty well-acquainted in Jaime’s bedroom,” Mike snorts.

Vic rolls over and buries his face into his arms. “Ugghh, you’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t even remember sleeping with anyone.”

“How do you know that you slept with Cara, then?”

He looks up at me. “I woke up in her bed ...”

“Oh, Vic …”

“… and then I threw up in it.”

“Eww!” I exclaim.

“Yeah, I don’t think she’s ever speaking to me again,” Vic sighs, squinting and massaging his temples. “Anyway, what did you guys get up to?”

Mike and I meet eyes briefly.

“Uh, I hooked up with Jane,” I say. “And then she promptly hooked up with someone else.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m all right.” I sigh. “I think I need to end it with her somehow. Like, officially. Not that whatever we are has ever been official.”

“What, just never talk to her again?”

“I have no idea.”

“You should just send her a video of you fucking someone else,” Mike pipes up.

I stare at him incredulously—luckily Vic doesn’t notice, since he’s face down on the couch. “I’d have to find someone else first.”

“Maybe you should just meet up with her, sober, and tell her?” Vic suggests, completely ignoring Mike’s thoughtful contribution.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just ignore her and hope she gets the message. Like, I doubt she’ll even notice.” I run a hand through my curly hair. “Anyway, let’s stop talking about Jane. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

“Yeah, I was gonna call around and find out about how to enter—if we can enter,” Vic says. “But I think I’ll do that tomorrow.”

“Did you want to go over some lyrics then?”

I fetch my notebook from the front of my bass case and perch on the edge of the couch. We’ve already got about three songs written, and I figure we’ll probably need at least six or so for the Battle of the Bands. In fact, I just have no idea. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have more rather than less. Vic slowly sits up.

“I’m just going to go to the bathroom real quick,” he says, looking a little green. He staggers out of the room, leaving Mike and I to sit in awkward silence.

“Thanks for not saying anything,” I murmur after a while. Mike just gives me a bemused smile.

“Why would I say anything?” he asks.

I just shrug. “I dunno. Let’s just not make this awkward. Like, more than it is.”

I try to busy myself with poring over my notebook, but I can’t focus on the words on the page. I need Vic to come back so we can work on them together. The last thing I’ve written in the book is “wish I could pin you to my ceiling”. My cheeks warm when I realise what I was thinking about when I wrote that.

“Hey,” Mike says quietly. I look up at him. He pauses, like he’s trying to find the right words, but he’s interrupted by Vic coming back into the room.

“Are you feeling better?” I ask, scooting over so he can sit back on the couch. Instead he flops down, laying his head in my lap.

“I feel like shit,” he mumbles.

“We don’t have to go over lyrics if you don’t want to,” I reply, petting his hair. “We can just sit in the dark and watch movies.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

We relocate to the living room and, upon Vic’s request for Mike to just fetch ‘anything’, we’re watching Evil Dead.

“Seriously, Evil Dead?” I raise an eyebrow.

“Evil Dead is fucking awesome,” Mike replies.

I shrug. I’m more of a fan of gory horror movies than cheesy ones, but Vic could throw up at any minute, so it’s probably a good choice. About twenty minutes into the movie, Vic falls asleep, his head resting in my lap again. The sight of him sleeping peacefully eats me inside; that he could be so trusting when I’m such a liar. My eyes flick over to where Mike’s lanky form is draped over the other couch, his arms tucked behind his head. I wonder what he was trying to say earlier, before Vic interrupted him.

“Vic’s fallen asleep,” I whisper, just loud enough so he can hear.

He looks over his shoulder and smiles faintly, then turns back to the television. I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t; he obviously doesn’t want to say anything around Vic, even when he’s asleep. Vic wakes up just before the end of the movie, when everything in the cabin on-screen is melting and burning.

“I’m going to head home,” I murmur to him when the movie ends.

“Do you need a ride?” Mike asks.

“Um, okay. Thanks.” I hug Vic goodbye and grab my bass case from the garage. When I get back out, Vic’s disappeared and Mike is waiting for me by the front door.

“Ready to go?”

“Um, yeah.” I follow him out the door and down the driveway to where Vic’s car is parked on the street. We’re silent for most of the drive and I wait, again, for him to say what he was trying to say earlier.

We’re almost at my house and he still hasn’t said anything.

“Um, what where you going to say to me in the garage earlier?” I ask.

He lets out a short laugh. “Uh, don’t worry about it.”

“No, come on, tell me.”

He looks over at me, then back at the road. “I was just going to say that you can trust me not to tell Vic.”

“Oh. Okay.” I feel like he’s lying, but I don’t want to push any further. “I just don’t want to ruin anything, you know?”

He nods, still staring ahead at the road. We’ve turned into my street. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” He pulls over to the curb.

“Right. Uh, so I’ll see you tomorrow morning?”

He nods again, still not looking at me, and I get out and fetch my bass from the back seat.

“Bye,” I say, although my voice quavers and makes it sound like a question.

“See you tomorrow.”

Notes