Homewrecker

34 - 𝓼𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓴𝓼

"Bronwyn, this is a party. On a Wednesday."

This wasn't something I really needed Indie to inform me of as she peered out from behind her steering wheel, approaching the address Kingston had texted about fifteen minutes earlier, around a dozen cars parked in the front lawn or on the shoulder of the road after the gravel driveway had been turned into an unorganized parking lot.

The front door was left open, shadows shifting against the walls inside, and there were a couple of people hanging out on the front porch, smoking and drinking from tinted bottles. When Indie pulled over behind a telephone pole, a crinkle in between her eyebrows forming, with our windows rolled down, it was quieter than I expected it to be. Music wasn't pulsating through the structure of the house, there wasn't shrieks of laughter or yelling. It wasn't until we got out of the car and approached the opened door that we started to hear muffled laughter, songs from the Top 50 playing on low inside.

It was all so much more contained than I expected it to be. But it wasn't like I had never been to parties before, I had. When I was on the volleyball team, the girls had birthday parties or end of summer parties, end of season parties. My other friends did too, and they were kind of loud, but without the smoking and drinking since parents usually knew all about the parties, chaperoned them. I had never been to, like, a college party before, even though I wasn't sure if anyone here was actually in college or they were like Kingston, part of the working force straight out of high school.

It was obvious there was beer here, and the scent of marijuana drifted out through the front door, but other than those things, it seemed calm? Although, that could've been the marijuana, and everyone was probably older than eighteen here anyway.

There was an archway that led into the living room from the hallway, the sight of the flattened beige carpeting with the fibers matted and somewhat stained almost comforting to me after spending weeks in the Solidays' lake house, where everything was plush and soft and clean. Perfect, but unreal.

Everyone seemed to be in there, crammed together on a couch covered with quilted blankets, feet propped up on a coffee table with scratches across the finish, an ashtray smoking near beer bottles without coasters beneath the glass. There was a television mounted to the wall across from the couch, a multiplayer video game on the screen as controllers clicked in the hands of a couple of the people on the couch.

There was a pizza box with crumpled, sauce-stained napkins and crusts inside on one of the chairs, Styrofoam containers lined with foil left open beside it, a couple of wings leftover in the buffalo sauce that left a tangy scent in the air. A rap song played from a phone, one with a beat I could recognize but lyrics I couldn't quite make out, and people started shouting at the TV when one of the players clearly started to lose. Laughter echoed after every word.

The scent of the lit cigarettes reminded me of my mom, smoking on the futon as we watched whatever was on TV, eating whatever we had in our cupboards. She would run her fingers through my hair, scratch her fingernails against my scalp, and theorize where I got my blond hair from.

I took in a breath, buffalo sauce and smoke mingling together, and smiled, finally feeling at home for the first time since the tornado struck.

I walked into living room, Indie tentatively following behind me as she carefully walked across legs sprawled out on the floor from the people slumped against furniture or the walls to watch the TV, and spotted Kingston standing near the back of the room, on his phone. He smiled when he looked up and saw me there, nudging around the arm of the couch and nearing him.

"Hey," he said, then he waved at Indie behind me, who nodded, crossing her arms around her chest and glancing around the room again, over her shoulder at the people on the couch, drinking and smoking and playing video games. Even though she had never really met Kingston before, just fleeting interactions whenever she picked me up at the trailer park, she had never been the biggest fan of him.