Sterling winked. “Nah. You love me. I can tell you the ugly truth, and we still remain friends. That’s why I love you.” He put a tall glass of gin in front of me. “Drink up. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

“I can’t apply for a job drunk.”

He held up a small white pill, and then placed it on the table, pushing it toward me. “We’re not applying for jobs today. Today, we’re saying goodbye to Ellison Edson the rich bitch, and hello to Ellie the blue-collar worker.”

“Eat shit and die, Sterling.”

He popped his own pill, washing it down with wine. I looked down at the table, turning the chalky white oval with my fingers. He was right. I wasn’t going to find a job today.

I threw the pill to the back of my throat, not caring what it was, just hoping it would take effect quickly. I gulped the gin until my throat burned, and then looked at Sterling, wiping my mouth. “This is going to get ugly.”

“It always does with us,” he said, taking another drink.

I woke up on the floor, naked and barely covered with a tablecloth. Sterling was my pillow, his bare thigh against my cheek. I sat up, wiping my mouth, tasting salt and gagging.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, looking at his naked body sprawled on the floor.

He didn’t look like Sterling, with the clean-shaven jaw I was used to. His face had begun to darken with whiskers, and his typically slicked coif had pulled free from the gel meant to keep each strand in place. He was no different from anyone else I’d left in my path, messy and ruined, but the sight of him was the physical manifestation of rock bottom—the man my sister loved lying naked on the floor, a mixture of our sweat still glistening on his skin.

Bile rose in my throat, and nausea overwhelmed me. I hadn’t thrown up after a day of drinking since junior high. The feeling caught me off guard.

I crawled on the floor to reach my clothes, pulling each piece of fabric to my chest. I breathed out a quiet cry and felt tears burn my eyes. Finley.

She would never forgive me—she’d never forgive us. I tried to remember what had happened. The sun was already behind the mountaintops, the sky getting darker by the second. Sterling and I had been fucking for hours, but I didn’t remember any of it.