Don't Touch Me

"No more parties."

The party was raging, the alcohol was flowing and Lauren was in a haze of smoke that made her mind far too cloudy but she didn't care.

That was the third night in a row Lauren had made it out of her house along with her brother to a party hosted by someone whose name she really didn't give a shit about.

With alcohol flowing through her body and weed lowering her inhibitions, Lauren was a free spirit. She danced with people, they touched her and she was so buzzed she barely felt the stern grip of their hands on her waist or smelt the intoxication in their breaths as they whispered vulgar words in her ears. Her eyes were closed and for once, she wasn't seeing brown behind her lids. She was seeing swirls of just a spectrum of colours and it was bliss.

This wasn't a regular thing for Lauren, most of the time she was painting her walls or talking to her therapist or trying to actually get her grades up in school but it had been two months as of a few days ago that she'd last seen the girl her heart was still beating for and she figured she deserved a time out from pretending everything was okay. So she partied. She partied and it seemed like it was actually making her feel better. Lauren missed just feeling okay.

"Laur!" A voice cut through her drunken haze and she slowly opened her eyes to find Chris looking at her with excitement in his eyes. "We're doing shots in the kitchen, come on!"

"Okay," And even the simple word came out slurred, but she pushed the guy currently holding her off and shoved her way through the crowd until the beaming light in the kitchen was overhead and Chris was offering her a shot of some kind of clear liquid.

Lauren didn't need to be told twice to down it, her throat was already numb to the burn of the alcohol and she swallowed it with ease before slamming the small glass down as a demand for another.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and Lauren was sort of aware of it but knew she was far too out of it to take a phone call. She also suspected it could be Clara calling and she wanted to save the lecture until tomorrow...or any time after that if she could.

She decided she was having fun with the room full of strangers, the smell of sweaty bodies and the music too loud for her to process her thoughts. She decided she liked these kinds of parties because she didn't have to think, she could just do and her body was numb to people's touched and she felt sort of normal not flinching away from everyone.

And Chris was there and Chris was smiling and they were acting like two delinquent siblings should. She had no worries in those moments of intoxication and it was liberating.

"Dance!" Lauren pulled at her brother's hands and ushered him onto the makeshift dance floor where they drunkenly twirled, the world in their heads spinning enough to stop the dizziness of reality overwhelming them.

"Hey, you're Camila Cabello's girlfriend!" Some one yelled out of the crowd and Lauren simply laughed off the statement.

"Nope!" She called out to the stranger and opened her eyes to the ceiling splayed with coloured lights that swirled with her.

And then her head was sort of spinning faster than she felt earlier, causing nausea to overwhelm her and her feet to make a beeline for the backdoor.

Lauren rushed over to the nearest corner of the fence and the contents of her stomach came rushing up, soon sprawled all over the dead grass at her feel with only the moon as her source of light. She retched and retched further as her stomach heaved the last remnants of what she'd consumed in the past few hours out.

"Whoa, that's pretty gross." A drunken boy slurred but Lauren paid him no mind as she began heaving with nothing more to expel.

She coughed, her chest tightening and she squeezed her eyes closed because this physical pain was slowly morphing into the emotional pain she'd become accustomed to.