Guardian Angel: Ch. 1 (A Christmas Romance)

Shit.

I can’t feel my legs.

It sounds so damn cliché, but I really can’t.

My feet are suspended in mid air, hanging next to each other like two wooden planks. My body is immobile and it also feels unusually heavy.

Nothing is in focus, and I’m desperately struggling to stay awake. I’m insanely light headed, and right now, my brain feels like a huge chunk of boiled Play-Doh.

I feel like shit.

I’m not really sure what’s going on, but I think I’m moving. I mean, I don’t really feel like I’m moving, but at the same time, I’m pretty sure that I am.

My hair that I had beaten into submission with a flat iron just hours ago has transformed back into its usual frizzy haystack, and the poofy mess is covering pretty much my entire face.

My arms are too weak and limp to even move it out of the way, so I just let it be. But even if the crazy hair wasn’t blocking my view, I’d still barely be able to see a thing in the drunken haze I’m in; and, boy, is it one hell of a drunken haze.

I guess I would be much more honest in saying that it’s more of a drunken stupor. Heck, maybe it’s both, I dunno. I’m not exactly the most coherent person in the world right now.

I’ve never been this drunk in my life, and I’m still not even sure how it happened.

It’s my younger brother, Stan’s birthday today—or I guess I should say last night, ’cause it’s definitely morning now, even if the sky is still dark as hell outside.

He finally turned twenty-one, and like the nice and supportive big sister that I am, I went out to celebrate this great marker in his life with him and all of our friends in the way most people traditionally celebrate this particular milestone; by spending a bunch of money on a shit ton of alcohol, rapidly consuming said shit ton of alcohol, and then eventually puking every ounce of it out along with your guts into and around the bowl of a nasty public toilet.

I just hadn’t planned on getting even more wasted than the birthday boy himself.

As a matter of fact, I was supposed to be the DD. I had actually volunteered for the not-so-coveted role of being the only sober person responsible for driving around a truckload of super wasted college kids and a few young working professionals like myself, and safely getting each and every one of them home.

Honestly, it’s something I’d wanted to do, something I’d intended to do ever since my own twenty-first birthday. Whatever memories I still have of that night still give me occasional chills. I’d never expected—or even imagined—that shit could get so out of control and go all the way left in just a few hours.

If that night had taught me anything at all, it’s that everyone—and I mean, everyone—needs a good, reliable, and most importantly, sober DD on their birthday, especially their twenty-first.

Being the oldest and well into my mid-twenties, I’d like to think that I’m the most responsible of all my siblings, but after last night, I guess that now remains highly debatable.

I really wanted to be that responsible DD for my brother, but that clearly did not go as planned.

Not after I’d spotted…him.