Hopeless (byler)

Ch 15: Will

Max, El, and Will were biking to the party, when Max begins to say, "Are either of you two drinking, I'm like, 100% drinking" she laughed. "Maybe, I don't know," Will replied. They both knew El's answer to this.

When they finally got to the house, the three of them parked their bikes up against a wall where two other bikes were, and made their way in the door. The size of the room that was out of the entrance was comparable to a ball room, with marble flooring and a glass chandelier. There was colorful lighting and pizza boxes on tables, with tons of kids everywhere in the room. They all stopped in their tracks to survey the space, taking in the scale. After standing for a minute, El uttered, "wow- how is this even a house, it looks like a palace," Max and Will nodded as they slowly walked to the snack tables. Thankfully, there wasn't any communal bowls of any kind, just little chip bags and pretzels along with bottles of sports drinks, alcohol, and water.

After a few minutes of standing around, Will sees him. Walking through the door of the missive house, gazing in awe, stood Mike Wheeler. Will looked away soon after he saw him, before Mike had looked at Will. It was still unclear to Will how he did anything at all to hurt Mike or make him mad, he's just been obviously avoiding Will like the plague fir the past few days, like earlier that day, Will was at the arcade, and when Mike saw him there as well, he quickly changed sections and then left soon after.

I'm not even going to give him any attention, it's not worth it, Will thought to himself. Him and Max made their way back to El, not wanted to leave her alone for too long, be they found her talking to Lucas and Dustin. "Where did Mike go?" Max asked, obviously he left because of Will, "He went to find the bathroom, I think," Lucas then said. The 5 of them made their way into a hallway and sat around a table where Max pulled out a deck of cards and they began to play Black Jack. After a long series of "bust"'s, and "hit me"'s, and "I'll stand"'s, Mike showed up, finally. "Oh, hey guys," said Mike, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with Will and making short contact with El.

The group played for about 10 more minutes until Max and Lucas announced that they were going to the alcohol table, and Dustin and El followed (El wasn't drinking, she just wanted to be with everyone," and that left only Mike and Will, alone. "Um," Will began, "hey, cool house, right?", Mike looked up from his feet and up at Will as he started to reply, "oh my god, yeah. I mean, how rich are these people?" Mikes face slowly lit up, causing the same reaction out of Will, as he stared at the boy as he kept babbling about nothing. Mike must have noticed, because he stopped abruptly and said, "sorry- I'm talking your ear off," Will shot a look at him "No, it's fine! I mean, yeah this house is kind of over the top," "yeah, haha," the two boys back the laugh. Will felt good after not talking to his best friend for a few awkward days. Soon after, The group came back to find Will and Mike laughing about a Wills chair tilling over, "You two look like your having fun," Max giggled with slurred words, "Yeah, you guys too," said Mike, laughing at how drunk they were. "Who wants to dance?"