Tomorrow Will Be Better

Saturday, December 31, 2011
11:47 P.M.

There’s thirteen minutes of this year left. Thirteen minutes until we all metaphorically start anew, make promises to ourselves that we won’t keep, kiss someone we think we love or who at least looks good enough for midnight. Thirteen minutes ‘til we begin the last year on Earth as we know it if the Mayans and the Tinfoil Hat Alliance get their way. Thirteen minutes until I’ll have to make a decision I think I’ve already made. Thirteen minutes to midnight and I’m already way too drunk to care about any of this.

Twelve now.

I’m sitting on the end of an ugly dark orange couch in Mindy’s apartment, elbow propped on the armrest with my head in my right hand and a red cup of PBR in my left. Jeremy’s got his arm around my shoulders and he’s falling in to me, slurring about how badly he wants this to work even though he knows how badly I don’t want it to and his whiskey-tainted breath is hot on my flushed cheeks and I don’t know if it’s him or the alcohol but suddenly I gag.

“Get off. I need to go to the bathroom,” I tell him and push his stocky body off of me. He falls in to the blonde girl sitting on the other side of the couch and she scoffs but I don’t care and he doesn’t notice. I’m walking away and he’s yelling about our new year’s kiss so I snap that there’s still ten minutes left and to stay right there, don’t follow me.

I push through the crowd of all the other Harvard Law legacies that I’m supposed to be graduating with next school year. They’re all sloppy-drunk and it’s not even midnight and oh god, if they can’t even handle themselves at the beer pong table how will they ever handle themselves in the courtroom when they’re trying to defend the next O.J. Simpson? These are concerns I once held for myself before I was just some disillusioned twenty-one-year-old with too many self-inflicted problems and not enough integrity, throwing up in the lavender-scented bathroom of Mindy Kissinger’s shitty apartment nine minutes from the new year.

I hold my own hair back because unlike in the movies, no one’s that nice in real life, not anymore, and if they are you can bet your Ivy League tuition it’s an act. It burns my nose and shreds my throat and I don’t think even death smells this bad, but it’s for the best and when the last drop hits the water, I feel a bit more like myself again, whoever that is. Flush the toilet, blow my nose, wash my hands. I wipe the smudged mascara from beneath my eyes, brush my hair out with one of Mindy’s combs.

It’s quiet and dimly lit in here, in jarring contrast to the noise and the sweat and the lights just several feet away outside the door, and the more I think about reentering the party, the more daunting and unappealing the idea seems. I take a seat on the bathroom counter, light the last cigarette in my pack of Camel Turkish Royals, and use the sink as an ashtray.

Tomorrow is decision day, I decided a short while back. Part two of one of the biggest decisions I’ve ever made, and possibly one of the worst mistakes. I’m not sure yet and I’m finding it difficult to care. The winter term starts Monday, but I already finalized my dropping out ten days ago. Haven’t told a soul yet, and now I’m torn between somehow keeping up the lie and making a living here in Massachusetts, or dropping the charade and returning to Colorado.

I jump at the knock on the door, almost slide right off the counter but catch myself. The knock turns in to banging and I hear him yell, “Molly? You in there?”

“I told you not to follow me.”

“C’mon, Molly! What the fuck are you doing in there? It’s only four minutes to midnight.”

I roll my eyes and put my cigarette out in the sink. “Go away. I’m taking a piss.”

“No, you’re not—I’d be able to hear it.”

“Just go away, Jeremy.”

He starts to turn the door knob and I jump off the counter and try to push the door back but I’m not quick enough, and I stumble backward with the force he uses the pry it open, shuts it behind him. “God, what do you want?” I cross my arms and sit on the toilet, shoot him the most evil glare I can but I’m drunk and it probably looks as desperate and pathetic as I feel.

“Why are you being such a bitch?” He stumbles closer, towers over me, all big teeth and broad shoulders. He takes a sip from the red cup he’s holding and then it slips from his hand, drops right down on me and spills all over my bare thighs, my white skirt. I see it, but it doesn’t register at first until suddenly I feel the cold dripping down my calves, jump up from the toilet and instinctively push him in to the counter.

“What the fuck, Jeremy? Look what you fucking did!” I start to scream at him as I search around for a towel—fuck, how hard can it be to find one in a bathroom?—and he’s not even apologizing, only yelling back at me and going on about his fucking new year’s kiss and baby, I just don’t understand why you’re being such a bitch and baby, why can’t we just make this work. I can hear them all counting down from ten just outside the door, and while they all yell “Nine!” Jeremy suddenly pushes me in to the wall as I’m trying to wipe the beer off myself with some puke-stained rag.

I freeze and look him in the eye. All he does is cross his arms over his chest and clench his jaw, stares right back at me. No remorse, no hesitation. I’m visually tracing the curves of his crooked nose and when I imagine all the Casey Anthonys he’ll get off on a technicality twenty years from now, I know I’ve made my decision.

“I’m going home tomorrow,” I say as I open the bathroom door, head back in to the chaos. “Don’t ever call me again.” And the whole room is counting down from three and I pick up the first shot I can find and when they all shout “Happy New Year!” I close my eyes, take the shot, and silently promise myself another new year’s resolution: make better decisions.