A New Start

Prologue

"I don't want to go."

"Come on, Conner!" Thomas groaned,throwing his head back in exasperation. "It's our last party of the year! You have to go!"

"It's in no way the last party," Conner retorted in amusement at his friends over the top display."There's still a month until graduation and I'm sure your friends are going to spend the entire time with 'last parties'. Besides, I don't care if I miss out or not. You know how much I hate-"

"Yeah, yeah," Thomas laughed. He threw a heavy arm over Conner's shoulders and peered at him with whiskey colored eyes. "Please?"

Damn.

Conner scowled and pushed the arm off of his shoulders, attempting to cover the fact that his heart was frantically pounding in his chest. "Tommy-"

"Oh, breaking out the big guns, huh?" Thomas chuckled, shaking his head. Conner flushed and glanced away. He and Thomas had lived next door to each other their entire lives and Conner was the only person that ever referred to his friend as "Tommy". It was a habit that he had picked up somewhere along the way and both he and Thomas knew he only used it when he was attempting to get his way. He didn't know why he continued to try, it never seemed to work. "Con, please?"

Bastard.

"Fine. But I'm not staying all night," Conner warned as Thomas let out a loud whoop! of excitement. Conner watched in amused resignation as Thomas jumped off of his bed and disappeared into Conner's closet. Within a minutes, Conner found himself standing in the middle of his room, now wearing a pair of jeans he would never wear normally because they were difficult to move in and a black shirt.He scowled and tugged at the bottom of the shirt, attempting to pull it lower over his abdomen but the thing refused to stretch any further. "I should have thrown this away years ago," Conner muttered to himself.

"Why? It's the one thing you own that actually fits," Thomas retorted quickly, eying Conner critically. "Good. Now the hair-"

"You aren't touching my hair."

"Conner-"

"No."

Three hours later and Conner was standing in the middle of a loud party, a drink in hand and Thomas nowhere in sight. He sighed as he gulped down the drink without a care of the consequences. He knew this was going to happen. Despite what he said, Thomas wasn't one to stick around with Conner while he was being a wallflower. While Conner was more comfortable in his house, reading a book or playing video games, Thomas flourished when he was around people. The two of them were best friends and always had been but Thomas needed more than just Conner to be happy. Conner, on the other hand, wouldn't care if the world just consisted of the two of them.

But he knew he wasn't enough for Thomas so, occasionally, he would allow Thomas to drag him to things like this despite the fact that he always ended up alone within the first hour.

Conner glanced around the room and grimaced at the sight. Many of his classmates were drinking, yelling, dancing...doing other things that made Conner blush at the thought of doing them in public. Well, in truth, it would have him blushing in private as well. It was then that his eyes landed on Thomas and his girlfriend, Heather. He quickly averted his gaze but not before he saw Heather press herself up against Thomas and press their lips together heatedly. Conner quickly grabbed another drink and downed it. If he had to be here, if he had to actually see that, he didn't want to remember it.

It was one thing to know that Thomas was dating the most popular girl in school, it was another to actually see the proof for his own eyes. He made sure to avoid having to do so at school. He knew coming here was a bad idea.