I scooted by him and saw Buck standing in the bathroom in the same exact stance with the same exact expression on his face.

I passed Buck and got to my knees beside Tatiana, trying to ignore the sound and smell. She had a hand clenched in her hair, but she hadn’t captured it all and her head was over the toilet.

I gathered her hair, and she let me, her body heaving, her back bowing and contracting violently. I secured her hair in the clip and reached out to flush the toilet.

I looked up at Buck. “Can you get me a big glass of cold water?”

“She drinks it, she’ll puke it,” was Buck’s reply.

“She’s got alcohol poisoning. We need to rehydrate her at the same time counteracting the alcohol. Please, get me a glass of cold water.”

“Babe, it’s gonna come right back up and she won’t thank you,” Buck warned.

“I don’t want her to thank me. I want her to get that garbage out of her system so she’ll feel well enough to sleep without her foot on the floor because the room’s spinning,” I shot back. “Now, can you please get me a glass of water?”

Buck stared at me, scowling, but Gear offered, “I’ll get it.”

“Thanks, Gear,” I called because he disappeared.

I got up and walked to the bathroom closet. Opening it, I grabbed a washcloth and took it to the sink to wet it with cold water. As I did this, Tatiana spit into the toilet while alternately moaning.

“I got this, Toots,” Buck declared, even though he hadn’t moved a muscle and was still standing there, arms crossed on his chest, face like thunder.

I guessed him “having this” was him letting his daughter live the nightmare of over-imbibing in order to teach her a lesson.

I wet the washcloth and wrung it out.

“Why don’t you clean up the floor by the door?” I suggested.

“Oh no, babe.” He shook his head. “Only one’s cleanin’ the floor by the door is on her knees in front of the toilet.”

This caused another hollow, echoing moan from the toilet area and then the sound of more vomit hitting water.

I decided that Tatiana Hardy was likely not going to be excited at the prospect of enchiladas for a while.

I swallowed down the bile that rose up my own throat then moved back to Tatiana, going down on my knees. I folded the washcloth and leaned in to press it against her forehead while I reached out with the other hand to flush again.

I looked up at Buck and said quietly, “She’s sixteen, West. She’s going to do stuff like this.”

“Yeah, and she’s gonna learn she shouldn’t do it too.”

“I thought your motto was to live more,” I threw at him.

“It is, but that don’t mean you live stupid, Clara. She’s sixteen, she’s dressed like a whore and she’s shitfaced. She didn’t have her brother with her, right now she could be in a world a’ hurt. I was sixteen once, and I had ears then like I do now. I heard the talk. So I know there are fuckwad boys who live for the opportunity she presented tonight. So, she learns the hard way, she doesn’t give them that fuckin’ opportunity.”

Even as I could argue, at length, and correctly, that Tatiana should feel she could drink what she wanted and wear what she wanted whenever she wanted without any boy on this planet, any other one, in alternate dimensions or on parallel universes thinking it was their right to take such an “opportunity,” I didn’t have the time.

But sadly, in this universe on this planet at this moment, I had to admit, he was right.

“You’re right,” I whispered, and Buck just stared at me. Then I said, “But if you don’t clean up that mess out there, I will.”

He opened his mouth to speak, and I stopped rubbing Tatiana’s back to lift my hand, palm out, in his direction.

“I get it. Again, you’re right. Definitely right. Though only about the underage drinking and not being particularly smart in just how much she partook of that. But the shape she’s in, that punishment doesn’t fit the crime and she won’t be much better tomorrow. You leave it until then with that mess out there all night, tomorrow morning, we’ll all be punished.”

His mouth got tight. Gear came in with a glass of ice water. Then Buck stormed out of the bathroom, I hoped to clean up the mess because I sure didn’t want to.

Gear gave me a curious glance I couldn’t quite decipher before he followed his father as Tatiana spit into the toilet bowl.

“Can you sit up, honey?” I asked, and she surprisingly did.

I took the cloth from her head and reached out to flush the toilet again. With her latest offering swirling away, I wiped her face and mouth. I tossed the cloth into the sink and reached up to get the glass from the counter and handed it to her.

“Drink slow. Sips, yes?”

She nodded, her mascara running down her face, her eyes going anywhere but me. She sipped then again gagged. I grabbed the glass and her face was back over the toilet bowl.

Tatiana and I did this routine for a while with me wringing out the cloth repeatedly and finally leaving her to run to Buck’s bathroom to grab my facewash. When she settled enough, she moved with me to the sink and I helped her wash off her makeup. We accomplished this feat, but seconds after, she was on her knees again at the toilet.

Though now it was only dry heaves.

Not fun for Tatiana, but the worst had passed.

I stayed with her until she finally curled up beside the toilet and closed her eyes, apparently happy to sleep on the bathroom floor.

“You want me to help you to bed?”

“No,” she whispered and started to shiver.

“You want me to get you a blanket?” I asked.

“No,” she whispered again, still shivering.

She didn’t want me to get a blanket, so I didn’t. I went to the closet and got a clean bath towel and threw it over her. She didn’t shrug it off, but instead clutched at the edge with her fingertips and pulled it up under her chin.

“When you think you might be able to hold it down, I’ll get you some ibuprofen,” I offered.

Tatiana moaned.

“Okay,” I said quickly. “Not now.”

I sat on the floor beside her and rested my back against the tub.

We were both silent until she whispered, “Go away.”

“I’m happy to stay.”

“Go away,” she repeated.

“You can’t sleep on the floor in the bathroom, honey.”

“Go…away.”

I sighed.

I also decided, if she didn’t want me around, I wasn’t making her feel better. Therefore, there was no reason to hang around.

She was over the worst of it. Now she had to count on her youth and time to get her to the other side.

I stood, got another towel and threw it over her lower body.

“Water’s by the sink,” I told her. “Try to get it down.”

“Go away,” she replied.

I went away, heading to my next chore of cleaning up sick.

I hit the kitchen area to see Gear sitting on the counter, Buck standing by him, arms crossed on his chest. I saw the sick was gone, and I bit my lip, grateful.

“She feels like sleeping in the bathroom,” I announced when I hit their semi-huddle.

“Bet she does,” Gear muttered.