Chapter 42 - Oregon

Stan's Pov:

As we drove through Idaho while the sun fully rose on the horizon, I noticed groaning coming from the passenger seat. I looked over and saw Kyle waking up and holding his head, knowing what was going to come next. I quickly pulled over on the side of the road as his groaning turned into gagging. "Get out dude." I said rolling my eyes Kyle literally fell out of the truck onto the grass field that was on the side of us. It was lucky that no cars were around or they probably would've thought some trafficking shit was happening or something, it was just me and Kyle on this road. I heard him throwing up his entire stomach as I listened annoyed with my arm holding up my head placed on the window seal. I didn't even have the patience to get out and make sure he was okay, I was so fucking pissed off with everything that had just happened, and the hangover that made my head ache, that I just sat there, occasionally looking at his wheezing body in the grass. As he continued I looked back at the duffel bag, just yearning for another pill to take my mind off everything, just to be numb for a bit more again. I looked back at Kyle, he didn't seem like he was getting up anytime soon. I quietly reached into the backseat, opening the duffel bag and pulling out the bottle of pills, carefully pouring a few into my hand. I quickly threw the bottle under my clothes again and zipped it up, stuffing the pills into my pocket and making sure Kyle wasn't looking still. I heard him coughing with more puke following, so I stuffed two in my mouth and put the rest in my pocket for later. I knew it was a horrible idea for me to take two, especially since I was driving, but I couldn't take it anymore. "It'll take my headache away." I mumbled to myself under my breath, trying to validate what I had just done. I knew it wouldn't kick in right away since It only did when I snorted it, so I prepared myself to endure all the pain I was feeling for just a bit longer. Kyle eventually crawled back up into the truck, wiping his mouth with a tissue that was in his glove department, and throwing it out the window when he was done. "Jesus christ how do you do this so often." he said banging his head against the window. The question offended me a lot, I hated that Kyle always criticized me for my drinking, because he'd never understand. Even when he tried to pretend like it didn't bother him, he'd usually ignore me involuntary until eventually going off on me on why I shouldn't be drinking this much at this age, and how it will effect me when I'm older, like I really cared. But now, it was really making me annoyed because it felt personal, like he was attacking me for something he did acting like it was my fault. "No one told you to drink my fucking alcohol." I said snapping back at him as I began driving again. "Oh well, better me than you. You'd probably finish the rest in a day and have to get your stomach pumped, I'm surprised you're not dead. I saw how much you drank." he said as I saw him looking at me pissed off in the corner of my eye. "Yeah? Well you clearly didn't care enough to do anything about it, so don't pretend like you care now." I said still pissed off at what I walked into. "You know I fucking care Stan, don't even fucking say that.""Clearly you cared more about getting your dick wet than if I was 'dead' from too much alcohol." "Shut the fuck up Stan, Jesus. Your jealousy isn't making you attractive." he said rolling his eyes, which pissed me off to the max. "You can shove a cock down your throat if you think I'm jealous of that bitch. Nah, I'm pissed off that you left me there by myself to have sex with a random girl. The fuck are you doing here if you're just gonna go fuck everyone in the fucking world dude." I said speeding up as my anger took control of my foot pressure on the pedal."Not like you weren't doing the exact same thing with Wendy while swearing that you loved me. So, I don't really care dude. We're even now." Kyle said as I saw his eyes piercing through mine. I wanted to stop the car and beat his ass more than anything. "We're even? You think we're fucking even? Mind you, you slept with my fucking girlfriend while I was literally being fucking tortured, and lost my dad and home. You think we're fucking even Kyle? You're fucking pathetic."

Kyle's Pov:

I froze at Stan mentioning the situation with Wendy that I had blocked out of my mind. I stayed quiet, feeling like the biggest asshole in the world; which I definitely was. I saw Stan reach into the backseat and retrieve a bottle of vodka, which made my blood boil and stomach churn as I saw him pop the bottle open and take a swig straight from it with no reaction. "Oh so now you're drinking again, what a fucking surprise. That'll surely fucking fix it now!" I said, as the urge to just throw the stupid fucking bottle out the window grew bigger and bigger. Stan said nothing as he took 2 more swigs from the bottle and closed it, throwing it back into the backseat as I watched him feeling disgusted at how he was acting. "Whatever dude. Ruin your fucking life then. You clearly haven't learned shit." I said rolling my eyes and positioning my body towards the window. Stan turned up his hard metal cd louder to drown out my words and I felt my anger taking over my body. Me and Stan were fighting like some old married couple, and it was pissing me off more than I could handle, yet, I wanted to be the bigger person, so I said nothing. After 30 minutes I realized we had just passed into Idaho, but just then realized how much the car was swerving into the passing lane, and back into the slow lane. I looked over at Stan in disbelief of his recklessness, until I realized his eyes were closing and opening slowly; he had been fucking falling asleep while driving. I smacked the shit out of him as he jolted up and looked over at me pissed off. "The fuck are you doing?! Trying to get us fucking killed?" I said yelling at him and his stupidity. "My eyes fucking hurt." he said horribly lying, he sucked at lying to me, and it made me mad. "Pull the fuck over now dude. I'm not letting you kill us." I said unbuckling my seatbelt. "Kyle shut the fuck up I'm fi-""PULL THE FUCKING CAR OVER STAN." I hated screaming at Stan, but sometimes it was the only thing that got his stubborn brain to listen. He let out a few cuss words that I blocked out before he pulled over and got out. We traded spots, and he got in the car slamming the door. He mumbled more cuss words under his breath, I felt myself rolling my eyes at how childish he was being over some stupid girl. I knew how stupid of me it was to even think of doing what I did, but still thought it was pretty hypocritical of him to be mad at me. Since he was now in the passenger seat he pulled out the bottle of vodka and began drinking again. I pretended like I didn't care enough to say anything, but it was eating me up inside. I knew I needed to stop Stan, but my ego and pride got the best of me, and I pretended like I was just annoyed with him. Eventually, he passed out in his seat, and I finally felt a relief knowing that for a second I pretty much had some alone time.

As some hours passed, we finally made it into Oregon. I stared at the Oregon state highway welcome sign and felt myself smiling realizing we had finally made it. I wanted to wake up Stan, but remembered that he went to sleep mad at me, so I decided to leave him alone just incase he woke up cussing me out. As some time went on, I found myself missing Stans voice and overall awake-and-sober presence. I decided to ease tensions by getting food. I stopped at a nearby drive thru and ordered for me and Stan. After receiving our food I gently woke up Stan, and he got up with anticipated cursing, until he realized I had food for him. He quietly took it and we began eating in silence. I could tell he was still drunk as I noticed that he was eating slowly with his eyes closed, he always said being drunk made everything taste better. But there was something different this time, usually by now drunk Stan would be back in a talking mood when he received food, even if he was feeling any negative emotions, but this time he just stayed silent, eating slowly. I found it weird, and disappointing, considering I really just wanted an excuse for him to let go of the tension and come back to being affectionate with me like he always was. Instead, he just mumbled;"Thank you.", under his breath as he swallowed his food." It was a start, I nodded and kept eating my food, realizing that he had let his guard down enough to at least thank me instead of saying nothing. As I finished my food, and looked over to ask if Stan was done with his I stared confused realizing he had fell asleep with the rest of his food in his hand still. God... he must be really drunk. I picked up the bottle and examined how much he had drank. It was only about 1-5th of the bottle, which was usually nothing for someone like him with a sky-high tolerance. It really confused me, but I didn't know how to explain what just happened. I just assumed Stan needed to catch up on sleep, and left him alone, taking everything he left and throwing it away before driving off.

Stan's Pov:

I randomly awoken realizing I had blacked out for the past few hours. "What the fuck happened." I wondered to myself as I looked around realizing I was still pretty high from the pills. I forgot that they made alcohol hit like 10x harder than it usually did and wondered if I did anything regrettable while blacked out. The last thing I remembered was driving then slowly falling asleep, and now waking up. The peak had clearly passed, and I contemplated taking more, until I looked over and realized Kyle was gone. I quickly looked around my surroundings, confused at where we could even be. It was nothing but trees and a dirt road surrounding the truck, with a lonesome building that the truck was parked in front of. I sat up from my previously-slumped position as I tried to look into the window of the building, but saw nothing. When I looked at the clock it was already 7:43PM. The sun was set enough that the sky was a blue-ish pink, the beginning of a sunset. I found myself groaning at how long Kyle was taking doing whatever he was, and even contemplated just leaving, until he emerged from the building, smiling when he realized I was awake as he got in the truck. "Afternoon, sleeping beauty." He said smiling at me as I looked over at him rubbing my eyes. "Where did you go?" I said trying not to sound too impaired even though I was."I was booking our temporary room, we're at Mount Hood idiot." I was suddenly slightly snapped out of my trance as I realized we made it. Kyle began backing out of the driveway and driving deeper into the forest, as I looked out the window. I finally got a glimpse of the beautiful mountain in the distance that me and him had always dreamed of seeing together, and felt a sense of bliss, even though it was probably just from the drugs. "Woah dude. Sick." I said not being able to hold back myself as Kyle laughed."We made it dude." Kyle said rubbing his hand in my hair playfully before putting both hands back on the wheel. After a few minutes of driving through the forest we made it to a small residential cabin on a lake. Trillium Lake. A place we had scouted out for years. It was the perfect spot to stay, I felt so proud of Kyle. As we got all our bags out of the car and brought them to the house I felt all the grudges we were holding against each other disappear as we walked in admiring our new place. It was a nice cozy place, with a fireplace and backdoor that lead outside to a dock. Me and Kyle walked our separate ways in the house, investigating for ourselves in awe. After we finally got our stuff situated we headed out to the back, where the sun was already halfway set fully. The view was breathtaking.

It was everything we had dreamed of. "That's fucking beautiful dude. I can't believe we're here" Kyle said as he took in the sight while I stood by him. We eventually sat on the side of the dock, I was still in a daze from the pills so I made sure to sit down slowly to avoid falling into the water. Eventually my head confused itself, and I found my head falling onto Kyle's shoulder. I felt so comfortable, like nothing could ever go wrong again. Kyle took my hand into his, and we sat in silence with music playing from his phone faintly. "I'm sorry for everything Stan. I know I've hurt you too many times, and you probably shouldn't even be here with me right now. But I really do regret every time I've done anything that might've hurt you." Kyle said apologizing for something he probably didn't have to, it was me who was usually doing the hurting after all."It's okay Kyle. It's in the past.. We're new people now. In a new state, with new identities. We can just start over. Get a clean slate, you know." I said, feeling extremely proud of my wit even with my impaired state of mind.I felt Kyle let a laughing out of his nose. "Yeah, you're right. It can start with us. Hi, I'm Eren." Kyle said looking at me and holding his hand. I laughed at his goofy ass fake name. "Eren? That's what you came up with?""Shut up, you came up with Marshall, thats literally just a different version of your last name." He said punching me playfully in the shoulder. "Fine, what do you think should be my name?" I said rolling my eyes at him as he got a mischievous grin on his face. "Mmhhhh.. I always thought you kind of looked like a Daniel or Leo. Or something like that." Kyle said laughing."Ew, I fucking hate Daniel. Leo's cool I guess.""Then thats who we are, Eren and Leo." Me and Kyle stayed quiet for a bit, before laughing so hard at our stupid ass names, laughs that somehow turned into kisses, until the sun was fully down. We returned back inside and sat on the living room couch."I really don't feel like just going to sleep, I slept way too much in the car." I said throwing my head back."Wanna find something to do? Now that we're Eren and Leo we can go out without worrying." Kyle said smiling as I thought about it. I was already pretty gone, so I was definitely in the mood to go do something without feeling the anxiety of being in a new place, so I agreed.