The One Without Words

❀ chapter sixteen | smiley face underwear ❀

"I feel," Jack declared, "strange."

I let the lump of soggy rope I'd picked up fall onto the boat's deck. "You're drunk. And I would offer to drive you home, but we're kind of in the middle of a lake over here."

Admittedly, I found this far more interesting than the party last time. Relished in the sudden chaos, the petty drama, and the glaring reality that despite our modern technology and social rules, humans were still cavemen as hell. But... as I watched Jack, laying at the front of the boat and dragging his hand along the surface of the water, an unfamiliar panic shot up my spine. I saw no paddles to steer with. The key to the engine was nowhere to be found. My sailing experience came up at just about zero, and Jack, my supposed partner in crime, was drunk. With our luck, we'd both end up drowning.

Under the seats, I found bright orange life vests. I put one on then threw the other at Jack. He didn't acknowledge it or me—he seemed very fascinated by the water right now—and I sighed and went to him.

"Are you really going to make me put it on you?"

He rolled over on the deck.

I asked, "Why are you laying there?" 

"I'm tired," he mumbled.

I grabbed his shirt and attempted to pull him up. "Get up."

"No."

"Do you want to drown?" 

"Noooo."

His head drooped to the side again. My arms were getting tired, so I let him go, and he fell to the deck with a thump. The boat rocked.

"Ro-myyyy," he whined, and I froze at the sound of my name, my senses suddenly becoming hyper aware.

"What?" I asked. In the total quiet of the lake, my voice came out so much louder than normal. His, too.

A smile formed on his lips. He threw his head back and gazed at the sky, dotted with stars. "Nothing."

I sat beside him. Party over to say the least. I wondered if Eli and Seth had made up by now or if this marked the end of their "bromance" for good.

"I don't think you're understanding the severity of this situation," I told Jack.

"I'm understanding... perrrrfectly fineee," he slurred.

These were the words that for some reason made me realize, really realize, that he was talking. He was talking. The past weeks of silence and glares became fuzzy, distant things. If his first words to me, go to hell, had stayed stuck in my brain for so long, what about this? 

My sudden awareness of his voice, soft-spoken yet demanding to be heard, made me aware of everything around us, everything about him. The night with its nearly full moon gave me a clear view of his dazed expression as we floated... floated... floated away.

"I just wanna," he drawled, "sort of... restart my brain."

"What do you mean?"

"Get rid of them. All these thoughts." He laughed, a real laugh, not just a silent scoffing into his hand. It came out as a dark, bitter sound, and I found myself moving closer to him. "Imagine tomorrow. My brain will go crazy... thinking about what happened tonight. You."

"Me?"

"I'll remember," he said. "I'll remember everything that happened. There's no way I could forget... the past two hours. No way."

For the first time, I was the speechless one. Adrenaline filled my veins—was I really getting a rush just from hearing him talk?

"No way you could forget all those guys acting like total cavemen," I mumbled after several moments of quiet. "Or maybe I'm the caveman for wanting to watch the show."