The Teetotaler at the Door

When Leena arrived back at her dorm on a warm evening in June, she found three bottles of vodka lined neatly outside her door.

One of them had a red bow tied around the neck. A little note was taped to it, the ink blurred enough that it took her a second to decipher the words: “;) <3 — D.”

Her stomach dropped.

Leena did not drink. Not out of principle, not out of rebellion, just because she hated the taste and hated even more the thought of losing control. Most people accepted that without comment. That was why the mess in front of her door felt so wrong—because she understood, instantly, that someone had gone out of their way to put alcohol where she lived, where she could be blamed for it if the wrong person saw.

She knew who had left it.

Darius had just graduated, but he still drifted through the campus like he belonged to its after-hours life more than anyone else. He was older, loud, charismatic in a careless way, the kind of man who could make a room feel warmer or more dangerous depending on how much he had been drinking. He had returned to the debating society in the spring, and when he discovered that the senior members hadn’t held any social gatherings the semester before, he took it upon himself to change that. Every weekend, music thundered from some borrowed room or rented house. Leena went at first because she loved the team, loved the energy of it, loved the way arguments sharpened her mind.

At the first gathering, Darius had shoved a shot toward her and told her to join the others.

“I don’t drink,” she had said.

He had laughed, assuming she was being difficult, and pressed again until one of the older students told him to back off. He apologized after that and never directly pressured her again.

But he never stopped calling her “the teetotaler.”

At first it had sounded like a joke he repeated too often. Then it became his favorite nickname for her, something he used in front of other people and sometimes directly to her face, as if the word itself were affectionate. The others on the team hated it on her behalf, but Leena only found it mildly irritating. She had thicker skin than that. It was the pressure she disliked, not the teasing.

Eventually she stopped going to the parties.

After that, Darius began showing up everywhere else.

He partnered with her during practice, helped her shape her speeches, and had a knack for turning her rough ideas into something strong and clean. He became someone she trusted. They started getting lunch together, studying in the library, talking about classes. He still used the nickname whenever he could, but now it felt more like an annoying habit than a jab.

Until the vodka.

She stared at the bottles for a long moment, then carried them inside with shaking hands. The room was empty. She shoved them into the sink, emptied them one by one, and threw the glass away. Her mind kept circling the same terrible thought: if anyone had seen them, if anyone had decided she was responsible, she could get in serious trouble.

By the time she had calmed down, the campus was dark.

A text came at three in the morning from Darius.

Did u get my present? ;))))

She stared at the message until the letters made sense, then typed back: Yes. My floor enjoyed it very much. What are you getting them next time?

He didn’t reply.

The next afternoon, her resident advisor knocked on the door. She had seen the empty bottles in the trash and wanted to make sure they were not Leena’s. Leena explained everything, and when the advisor accepted her answer without drama, she felt a tremor of relief so sharp it almost made her laugh.

An hour later, Darius appeared.

He was pale, unsteady, and obviously hungover, if not still a little drunk. When Leena let him in, he frowned at her with genuine confusion.

“Why’d you give the bottles to your floor?” he asked.

Leena stared at him. “Because they were sitting outside my door in a residence hall. What were you thinking?”

He blinked, then broke into loud, helpless laughter. “It was a joke.”

“It wasn’t funny.”

“It was a joke,” he repeated, still grinning.

Leena crossed her arms. “It could have gotten me in trouble.”

That made the smile fall away. For a moment, he only looked at her. Then he rubbed at his face and muttered an apology that sounded more sincere than his laughter had.

When she asked if he had been drunk when he left the bottles there, he gave a sheepish shrug.

“Maybe.”

He admitted he had been drinking all evening and only vaguely remembered the joke itself. The explanation, such as it was, left Leena colder than before. She told him she was worried about how much he drank. She said it because she meant it.

He made a dismissive sound and changed the subject whenever she tried to keep it on the drinking.

So she took a breath and asked him, plainly, why he drank so much.

He didn’t answer at first.

When he finally did, his voice had gone quieter. “Makes everything easier.”

That answer opened something in the room. Leena had always assumed he partied because he liked the chaos, the attention, the noise. Now she saw something else beneath it: a person who had built his social life around being unable to face it sober.

She asked him whether he had ever told a girl he liked her, or done anything genuinely romantic, while sober.

He looked uncomfortable. After a long pause, he admitted that almost everything serious he’d ever tried had happened while he was drunk. When he was sober, he felt foolish.

Leena frowned. “That’s not a good way to start anything healthy.”

“I know,” he said.

Then he inhaled, braced himself, and looked directly at her.

“That’s why I want to tell you now that I like you.”

Leena froze.

He immediately went pale. “If that’s weird, I’m sorry. I just thought… I should say it while I’m sober.”

She told him, as carefully as she could, that she did not feel the same way.

He nodded once, disappointment flashing across his face before he hid it. After a beat, he managed a crooked smile and asked why she had looked so horrified about the vodka.

Leena admitted she had thought it was a romantic gesture.

He laughed so hard he had to sit down.

“If I was trying to be romantic,” he said at last, wiping his eyes, “I’d at least bring wine.”

Despite herself, she laughed too.

The tension eased after that. He apologized again for scaring her and said he had never meant to make her feel unsafe. She told him the bottles had been a stupid thing to do, and that if he kept drinking the way he did, he was going to hurt himself or someone else. He didn’t argue. He only looked tired.

When he left, the room felt larger and emptier than before.

Leena never decided that day whether to keep him as a friend. She only knew she was going to keep her distance for a while. Friendship, she had learned, could survive teasing. It could even survive clumsy apologies.

But trust was a different matter.

And once someone left vodka at your door like a joke, you could never quite look at them the same way again.