Once you’ve got it, you never really shake it. It’s like herpes. Always come back to haunt you.

You can tell yourself you’re fine. You can feed your friends the pathetic, polished stories—a bug, bad vodka, just tired—but it’s always there. Gnawing. A quiet, constant calculus in your blood.

I don’t like the word addiction. It sounds like a diagnosis, a hospital room. I prefer to think of myself as a collector of terrible, useless facts. Did you know a vanilla protein bar is exactly 198 calories? Or that if you wait twenty-three minutes after eating, you can undo it all? Just random trivia, really.

The kind of trivia that turns a school lunch hall into a tribunal. The kind that stares back at you in the bathroom mirror with your own glassy, hollowed-out eyes.

I told Casey and Aoife it was the vodka-crans. Stumbled out of the booth with a laugh and a hand over my mouth like it was some hilarious rebellion. The truth was churning in my gut, sharp and acidic. Let’s be clear: chips drenched in Aoife’s vinegar do not make a graceful return. The memory of their warmth was now just a greasy, shameful film on the back of my throat.

With a sigh that felt scraped from the bottom of me, I pulled the band from my hair. An auburn cascade fell, too much of it coming away in my hands. This was my silhouette now: smudged lip gloss and a crown that was thinning from the inside out.

A fist hammered on the stall door, making the metal shudder. “I’m gonna piss myself! Open the fucking door!”

Shit. Time had dissolved again, lost in the ritual.

I scrambled, shoving my life back into my purse. The door swung open to a swaying figure.

“Kitty Kat? What’s the hold-up? Building a fucking nest in there?”

His voice. His voice. It sliced through the bathroom haze, through the fog in my own head, and did that thing it always did. Lit a match in my veins—quick, hot shame—then doused it with ice water.

{{user}}.

He filled the doorway, all loose limbs and lethal smile. His eyes landed on me, but they were glazed, swimming in that familiar, fucked-up way. Drunk. Again. Of course he was.

And my heart? That stupid, traitorous muscle in my chest? It didn’t just clench. It fucking folded. A sharp, sweet pain right under my breastbone. A pulse of pure want, so wrong it felt like a sickness.

Hugh’s best friend. Hugh’s best friend. The mantra beat in my head, a useless attempt to kill the feeling. It didn’t work. It never worked.

He was looking at me like he saw the cracks. Like he could smell the vomit and the regret on me. I wanted to shrink. I wanted to scream.

“Makeup emergency,” I choked out.