My eyes widen. “Right, of course. Should I go after him?”
She shakes her head, waving her hand in the air. “Nah, he’ll be fine. Not much trouble he can get into here.”
I drop it, but a big part of me wants to chase him and see if he’s okay. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I lashed out. It’s not that I didn’t want to see where things would go between me and Hella, but in my defense, he had shitty timing.
“You can stay at my place,” Jada suggests, directing us back towards the bar. “We have a few hours left until the party, but we’ll go back to my place to get ready.”
I point toward Phoebe, who is walking towards us with a smile. “Hey, girls!” She gives each of them a hug. “Where’s the mama?”
I laugh. “I forgot about mom. How’s she been?” I drink the rest of my drink as Millie and Jada fill me in about all the craziness my mom has been up to. Millie looks as uptight as usual, but more relaxed with the environment now. She hasn’t managed to look me square in the eye yet, and I’m having problems with that because before this shit blew up, she had no problems with me.
After finishing our drinks, we all head over to Jada’s house, me in Phoebe’s car as she curses all the way there after every bump.
“One thing’s for sure,” Phoebe says, stepping out of the car once we arrive. “You’re going to look on fire tonight.”
Melissa
I look at myself in the cheval mirror, running my hands down the sides of my legs.
A wolf whistle sounds out as Phoebe walks in, handing me a shot of absinth. “Damn, girl. You outdid yourself this time.”
I shot back the burning liquid before returning the empty glass. “Thanks.”
Phoebe’s potion is absinth. It’s been her thing for years. She makes everyone drink it when we’re drinking with her. It’s not the fake stuff that glows bright green, either; it’s the real shit that’s clear. I wore the nude dress and teamed it with some red platform pumps. My hair is tousled, hanging over my slender shoulders, my eyes shaded in thick dark smoke and my lips are plumped up in red. I look like a classy hot mess. I only say classy because all though the dress is a little skimpy, it’s nude, and nude is classy as fuck.
“I’m ready!” I say to Phoebe who’s in a tight little white dress equally as skimpy as mine, and when we head downstairs, I see Jada in a black, strappy tight dress, and Millie in black slacks with a silk blouse. “Millie,” I snap, disappointed. “Get changed.”
“No!” She brushes down the crinkles in her pants. “There’s no way.”
I roll my eyes, taking my phone off the counter.
“More shots before we go?” Phoebe offers.
Jada nods. “Yeah, Skid is coming to pick us up in the van and will drop us off when we’re ready.”
“Good!” Phoebe says, pouring more liquid into the shot glasses and handing me mine. “Cheers. Let’s get wasted.”
We all shoot it back. I wipe my mouth with a finger. “It’s a shame Meadow isn’t here.”
Jada nods. “She’s already down there.”
“Is everyone down there already?” Phoebe asks, looking at her watch. “It’s only eight. I thought it started at nine?”
Jada takes the bottle and pours more shots. “It does, but they’re there already.”
I swallow loudly, waving my hand in the air towards Jada at the sudden panic that within the next hour I’m going to see Hella and I have no idea in what state I’m going to find him—or rather, with whom, I should say. “Can you hurry up? I need more,” I urge Jada, sliding my glass toward her.
By the time the headlights of the van light up the inside of the living room, we’re all well and truly buzzed. I’m slightly past buzzed, but not drunk. Phoebe hooks her elbow in with mine and bumps my hip with hers. “Hey, chill. He’s going to die when he sees you.”
Yeah, that’ll make two of us.
We slide into the back of the van and I lean forward between Skid and Jada, who sit in the front. I turn the stereo’s Bluetooth on and look at Skid, whose eyes are glued to my chest. “Well hello there, big eyes,” I tease, and his eyes shoot back to the road in front of him.
“Fuck!” he curses. “I’m sorry. You look real good, Melissa.”
“Ha! Thanks.” I smile and sit back on the seat. The van’s back seats are turned toward each other with a spacious aisle between them. Phoebe snatches my phone off me and scrolls through my music.
“Aha!” she smirks, hitting play on Dirty Talk by Wynter Gordon.
“I love this song!” she gushes.
“Yeah, of course you do.” I smile at her. When the beat drops, Phoebe twists the cap off the bottle of the absinth and takes a long pull of it before handing it off to me. “What’d you say we party like the old days?”
I take the bottle from her, a smirk on my face. “I’d say I don’t think these people are ready for it.”
She winks as we all start laughing and dancing in our seats to the song. It hits repeat just as we’re pulling in to the clubhouse. I don’t even realize we’re here until Jada slides the back door open to all our laughing and loud music.
I’m laughing at something Phoebe said when I notice from the corner of my eye a large group of bikers standing around outside the front door with a few club whores shuffled between them. I can instantly feel Hella’s gaze on mine, but my laughing doesn’t die out. I’m a little more past buzzed now and I don’t really care. Yeah, hot mess and all that.
“Alright, get out,” Jada says, hitching her thumb in the air.
The deep bass of the song is still pounding as we all stumble out of the back. I clutch onto Phoebe’s arm, steadying myself, and she throws her head back in a laugh at my clumsiness. We partied hard growing up. Two blondes who liked to get fucked up, we haven’t done it in a while since we started becoming adults, but I feel that’s about to change tonight. I still haven’t let my eyes fall on the monster-sized shadow I know is Hella in the corner for two reasons. One, it might kill my buzz. Two, he’s standing near a club whore and I might end up ripping her face off.
Phoebe and I begin to dance our way inside the clubhouse, purposely ignoring the group who are only a few feet away from us now. Skid comes running up to us and my smile falters.
“Melissa!” His breath catches.
“What, Skid? You want a closer look at my rack? Ask me a little later, I might grant you your wish.” I push him out of the way before Phoebe and I both laugh and step through the clubhouse. There are a few people scattered around inside, but the majority of people are out back where they have a bonfire lit. I tug on Phoebe. “Let’s go see our friend.” The entire outside is set up with speakers and a DJ’s playing music. It’s amazing. There are people dancing on the makeshift dance floor in front of the DJ too, which is refreshing to see; I’m so used to seeing X-rated shit going on here. We spot Meadow and Beast sitting by the bonfire and I wave excitedly at her. I need to slow down my drinking. I’m at the nice drunk buzzing faze and I know if I go further, I’ll get messy, and I don’t want that this early in the night. I also don’t want to disappoint Meadow either. Besides, Beast would most likely kick my ass. So I take a water bottle off one of the tables before walking towards them. Phoebe has the absinth bottle tucked tightly in her hand and Meadow laughs when she sees it. She swings her hands around Phoebe’s neck once we get close enough.
“Hey!” I say to Beast.
He smiles, nudging his head as his eyes drift behind me towards the door. “How you been?” he questions casually.
“Meh,” I shrug my shoulders. “Getting through life one glass at a time.” He gives me a small smile before Meadow pulls me into her embrace. She pushes me back, her hands gripped around my arms as she searches my eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Except when people keep asking me if I’m fine.” I take the bottle off Phoebe and twist the lid off.
Meadow’s lips widen. “You sure you wanna do that? I mean, get as messy as you want, but that stuff is lethal.”
“It helps,” I say to Meadow with a smile. She nods in understanding, except she doesn’t understand. Her and Beast have been nothing but smooth sailing. They both knew when they reconciled that that was it for them. My and Hella’s relationship has been nothing but fucked up from the beginning. With that thought fresh on my mind, I take another drink before giving the bottle back to Phoebe. When Jessie J’s Do it Like A Dude begins pounding through the speakers, I drag Phoebe to the dance floor, dropping the water beside Meadow and leaving her with her man.
We start dancing within the crowd of people. I’ve seen a few of the people that are here around the clubhouse before, but I think a lot of them are civilians. The bass drops and Phoebe drops it low, grinding down me. When she comes back up, she leans into my ear, “Hottie, four o’clock.”
I lean into her ear, “If you’re meaning Hella, don’t make me look.”
“Well,” she answers. “He’s watching you. He’s hotter than I remember. Didn’t think that was humanly possible for him.”
I laugh, throwing my head back. “That’s the problem, you see!”
When David Guetta’s “Little Bad Girl” comes on, Phoebe wiggles her eyebrows at me. I laugh as we dance and grind all over each other. Throughout the whole song, we laugh and make up stupid dance moves, mocking the song and lip syncing the lyrics while shaking our asses. When the song finishes, I tell her, “I need the bathroom.”
She waves me off as she continues dancing, but the fast beat gets replaced by Disturbed’s “You’re mine”. Phoebe, in all her fashion, works with whatever is thrown at her. I turn around as I start walking towards the front door.
I stop as soon as my eyes automatically find Hella’s. His jaw is set, a beer in his hand and his eyes dead. I tilt my head, feeling the effects of the liquid courage. When we would fight, his eyes would be alight with fire and he’d look at me with such intensity that it could burn holes through my head. But now he looks through me like I don’t exist, despite the fact that he’s staring right into my eyes.
“Fuck it,” I murmur under my breath. He’s leaning his shoulder against the entry doorframe and when I make my way towards him, his eyes drop to a death glare.
“Hi,” I say, folding my arms in front of myself.
“Want something?” he asks, his eyebrows risen.
“How have you been?”
He takes a drink of his beer, the plump lips I’m so familiar with wrapping around the rim of his bottle. His eyes land on someone in the crowd, and a smirk comes on his mouth. His shoulders square as he pushes off the doorframe. His shoulder connects with my body as he’s about to shoulder barge past me and my breathing hitches at the sudden contact. His mouth comes down to my ear, his lips slightly skimming over my lobe before he growls, “Your sister has been taking real good care of me.”
Someone has reached into my stomach and ripped out all my insides. He shoulder barges past me and I almost lose balance. My hand flies out to the table to steady my footing. I stay in the same position, my breathing heavy.
“Hey.” A hand reaches my back. “Hey, are you okay?” Meadow asks.
I shrug her hand off me. “I’m real sorry, Meadow. I need a minute.”
I speed-walk into the clubhouse, shoving past a group of club whores who are watching me with a snicker in their glare. I square my shoulders, all sadness gone. I turn towards them, my eyebrows cocked with false confidence. “Got a fucking eye problem, whores?”
They all walk faster out the door towards the bonfire. Like fuck Meadow would have wanted those sluts here, but she would have done it for the brothers, so they keep their hands off her friends and the civilians.
I push through the bathroom door and slam it shut behind myself. Flipping the toilet cover down, I take a seat on top and rest my face in my hands. How could I be so stupid? Here I was, mourning his—our—whatever the fuck it was, and he was doing exactly what with my sister? It all made sense, with her being distant from me. She’s hardly spoken to me since I caught them whispering a couple of weeks ago, and if there was anyone that could deflower a damn nun, it would be fucking Hella. I rest my back against the cement wall, my head tilting up to look up at the roof. There’s a soft knock on the door and I swallow past the vile feeling crawling up my throat. That little encounter had sobered me entirely too much. Now I just wanted to forget everything and I wanted to hurt him. Hurt him fucking bad.
“Melissa?” Phoebe’s voice comes through the door. “Melissa, I know you don’t shit that long. Open the door.”
I swing the door open and glare at her. “Oh my god, shut up!”
She laughs, handing me the bottle of our trusty pal, absinthe. “Fear you may need this.”
I take it off her. “I won’t be giving it back this time.” I push past her with the rim of the bottle in my mouth. When I hit outside again, Hella is standing a few feet from me, his beer in his hand, a smirk on his mouth, and Millie standing close to him. I swallow, tears threatening to prick the corner of my eyes.
“Lissa!” Millie calls out from behind me as I walk towards the dance floor. I flip her off over my shoulder while continuing my walk back towards the dance floor, scanning any possible toys I can play with. I have no chance with any of the brothers, sadly. My heart snaps a little in my chest, leaving a dark gaping hole when I picture Millie and Hella together.
Was this it? Was the whole thing Hella and me had all a fucking lie?
Filled with frustration and immense amounts of alcohol, Evanescence’s “Imaginary” emerges through the speakers and I raise my head up to the DJ who’s on the platform looking above the dance floor. He’s hot, young, and decent. I haven’t had sex since Hella because it’s been too hard, and if I’m being honest, it’s still too fucking hard, but the alcohol and the risen facts that have just surfaced make me forget all that. I make my way towards the stage and tug on his jeans. He removes his headphones and looks down at me. His smile beams and his eyebrows quirk. He drops down to my level. “Hey, you okay?”
I can barely hear him over the electric guitar, but I lean into him. “Can I come up?”
He smiles, his hand reaching for me. I take that as a yes, and pull myself up. Everything looks high from up here, even though it’s not that high. I can see where Hella and Millie are still standing, and Phoebe is down on the dance floor making moves. The DJ leans into me. “What’s your name?”
“Melissa,” I yell back, smiling at him. “What’s yours?”
“DJ Eazy.” He winks at me and I laugh, throwing my head back, making our exchange way more interesting than what it really is. When I look down at Hella, his eyes are burning into mine, only instead of him being angry, he smirks, lifts his beer bottle to me, and pulls Millie under his arm possessively before throwing me a wink. My heart shatters. My gut weeps with betrayal and something changes in me. I just want to go home and crawl under my covers. I look towards DJ Eazy. “Can you play a song? Then I better get off.”
He bobs his head to the beat. “Yeah, go for it.”
I tell him what song to play as he helps me climb back down the little platform we were on. I look towards the crowd, bringing the bottle to my mouth and taking a drink. Tears begin to cloud my vision. The dancing, the drunken laughter, all of it slowing to a drastically crawling speed, and then finally Hella and Millie’s exchange. I turn my back on the party and begin walking towards the dark farmland behind the DJ as Three Days Grace’s “I Hate Everything About You” remixes in from the previous song.
Melissa
My heavy steps drag me deeper into the paddock until the music has died out a little and I drop down onto my knees, the bottle falling to the side of my legs, hanging from my grip. The first tear falls and I wipe it away angrily, taking anther drink. I drink and I drink until the thick darkness of the night is nothing but smudgy ink. I’m lying on my back with the stream of tears I had unleashed finally drying out on my cheeks.
“What the fuck are you doing, Melissa?”
I dra
w in a breath, but my brain is way too fucked to even comprehend or give a shit right now.
“Go away,” I whisper, attempting to bring my hands to the grass with my knees pressing into the ground. The hollow hole is still aching in my stomach from the betrayal and I try to push my body up when a snicker leaves me. “My own fucking sister and my ex—whatever the fucking fuck you were—you know what!” I slur, finally getting to my feet. I can only see the mere outline of his shadow. “I may have meant jack fucking shit to you, Braxton fucking Ward, but you meant something to me,” I whisper angrily before stepping up to his body. I point my finger into his chest. “You hear that?!” I yell, more tears surfacing. “I fucking loved you, you piece of fucking shit!” I stab my finger into his chest and his hand whips up to it, gripping my fingers in his palm.
He pulls me toward him. “You don’t know shit about love, Melissa.”
“Oh, and you do?” I scoff, ripping my hand out of his grip.
“I know what I felt for you wasn’t love,” he says, his body still, the breathing between us heavy. More tears fall as the last bit of my heart finally breaks.
God, I was an idiot.
He steps up to me, his hand finding mine. “It was fucking more than love, Melissa. It was obsession, possession, lust, love, fucking ownership, and it fucking consumed me, but you took it all away when you walked away from me.”
I swallow past the shock. “Well then, you’re wrong, Brax. It wasn’t any of those things, because if it was, no one could take it away from you, especially not my sister.” I push past him and begin stumbling back towards the party. I don’t know if he’s following me and I don’t care. I need to be alone right now. I almost reach the DJ platform again when Jada rounds the corner. “Oh, thank God!” Her hand flies up to her chest. “Hey,” she whispers, her tone changing when she sees my face. New tears are pouring down my face and it infuriates me that I have no control over them.
“I really need to leave,” I answer, my voice hiccupping with each word.