I slept until noon the morning of Halloween. It might have been later if my mom didn't slip into my room at some point, her footsteps lighter than air as she tread across my carpet and lowered herself onto the side of my bed. My back was to her, and I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath. Parents always tended to say things more truthfully when they thought they were just talking to the abyss.
"You really need a haircut," she mused softly, brushing her fingers through the curls at the back of my neck. "Your dad and I are staying in the city overnight, and we'll try and be back by tomorrow afternoon, okay?"
I exhaled. Did she know I was awake?
"I love you." She leaned down and pressed a kiss to my cheek.
"I know," I said softly into my pillow.
She left the room with the gentle click of closing my door behind her, and I found myself hating the silence. I grabbed my headphones from my bedside table and scrolled through a Julien Baker playlist. It felt like forever ago that I first heard her in Kaia's car, but during times I needed calm, but not silence, I'd listened to her and gotten attached.
I'm telling my own fortune, something I cannot escape. I can see where this is going, but I can't find the brakes.
I lulled in and out of sleep, watching light and shadows dance across my walls as the sun set. My aching body waged a war with my head. Stay in bed. Just sleep versus No you idiot, get up. You need to get up. The worst part of it was, I didn't know which side wanted what.
It was after 5:00 when Rochelle came strolling into my room with two Nike duffle bags - one for our costumes, and one for tequila. After weeks of debate, we'd settled on Black Widow and Hawkeye, and in hindsight, the irony wasn't lost on me.
"I don't know why you couldn't have just gotten ready at your house," I grumbled as Rochelle quickly turned my bathroom into a minefield of makeup and hair products.
"Because if I left the house like this, I think my mother would send me to catholic school like...tomorrow." She spun around in her slick, skintight black leather ensemble and pointed to her chest, where her cleavage was on full display and the outline of her pierced nipples poked through the fabric.
I sputtered out a laugh. "Oh my god, when did you get those done?"
"Some of the senior girls at cheer camp wanted to get tattoos the last weekend we were there. I went for the less permanent, less likely to get caught option." The contents of her makeup bag clattered as she rifled through it. She briefly glanced over to me and huffed.
"Can you at least start getting ready? You're giving me anxiety just laying there. People will be here in like an hour."
I moaned and shifted in bed. "I need a whole five minutes to get ready. Plus I'm waiting for you to leave so I can jerk off in the shower."
Rochelle rolled her eyes, but threw me a faint smirk. "You sure that's all?"
She uncapped a tube of red lipstick, and in seemingly expert fashion swiped it across her pouted lips as she leaned over the sink. I took a few breaths before I spoke.
"Honestly...I'm exhausted." The admission came out softer than I expected it to, and I paused as she processed my words, still poking at her lips with her finger. "Would you hate me if I just stayed up here and slept?"
She scoffed. "It's your party."
"Technically it's your party, and you're just using my house since my parents are gone."
She finally turned to face me and sighed, resting her hand on the counter next to the sink. "Dallas, you know I won't tell you what to do. But...it would be very weird if you don't show face. You know that."
I groaned and pulled my comforter up to my chest. "I know, I know."
Rochelle strode out of the bathroom and across my room to my desk, where she'd left the duffle of tequila hanging on my chair. All the bottles clicked together softly as she rummaged through the bag.
"Just take a shot, and you'll be loosey goosey in no time." She flopped onto my bed and handed me a mini bottle of Casamigos. I finally sat myself up with a groan, prompting a flash of concern from Rochelle's eyes, which was short lived before we clinked our little bottles together and knocked them back.
I winced as the liquor hit the back of my throat. "Alright, just don't say loosey goosey ever again."
Rochelle stood up with a smirk, then spun around in front of me in her full ensemble.
"What do you think?"
I gave her the faintest grin. "I think you're trying to break someone's heart tonight."
Her smirk faded, and she threw me a deadpan look. "Don't be like that, Dallas."
"Be like what?" I scoffed and rolled over in bed to face my body to her, still half buried under my comforter and pillows.
"You know what."
She strutted back to the bathroom with a frown, pulling at the box of tissues next to the sink. She rubbed the red off her lips with vigor.
"Oh come on." I sat up again, and all the blood rushed to my head. "You look smokin' hot, is that what you wanted to hear?"
She shot me a stony glare, faded streaks of red still clinging to her bottom lip.
"I just.." I sighed and pushed my hair back off my sweat-slicked forehead. "I just don't want you to do something you'll regret later, that's all."
"Pot should not be calling kettle black."
"Don't start with that shit," I groaned. "You know this is not the same thing. You like Kennedy, and Kennedy likes you. It's pretty simple. But what, you're afraid of like...catching feelings or something? That's lame as fuck, Rochelle."
Rochelle leaned against the doorframe of the bathroom, a wicked smirk pulling at her lips. "You know what Dallas? I already know exactly how your night is going to go. You'll be flirty with people, maybe even a little handsy when you've had enough to drink, but at the end of the night you'll still end up up here with Jordyn, despite the fact that you don't even seem to like her. You just won't let her go. And for what? Because you're afraid of disrupting the status quo? You don't want her to hate you? That is lame as fuck. I'd rather not feel enough than feel too much."
"So what, you think I should be more like you, queen of self-preservation, and break people's hearts for even glancing in my direction?"
Rochelle shrugged. "Well, you like attention too much for that, but who knows? Put some tight black leather on, drink some tequila, and kiss somebody new. Maybe just do what you want for once instead of what people expect you to do."
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Once the party had escalated into a reasonable level of controlled chaos, I'd fulfilled two of Rochelle's three phases of attack for the night - I'd squeezed myself into a front-wedgie-inducing black leather jumpsuit that maybe looked like something Clint Barton wore in the first Avengers movie, and I'd already plied myself with enough tequila to kill a fish.
In true Jordyn fashion, she showed up with her usual crew in tow in the Santa Claus outfits from Mean Girls...as if they hadn't been that the last two years. We traded drinks and coy smiles and danced the way I was sure people expected us to, but thankfully their fussing (meaning their need to travel in a pack like wolves) kept her occupied most of the time. She left a smudge of red lipstick on my cheek after she kissed me before going our separate ways.
Like heat seeking missiles, Rochelle and Kennedy had found each other, but I felt a weird knot settle in my stomach when I realized Kaia hadn't come with Kennedy.
I maneuvered through the kitchen, passing Chris in a banana suit manning one of the few kegs we had scattered around the house, and I slipped through the glass door onto our back deck. When I slid it shut, the noise of the party faded away into the cold, and for what felt like the first time all night, I exhaled.
I didn't know when I had become this person, so skittish and on edge like I was expecting a bomb to go off at any moment. I downed whatever was left in my cup with a sour face. I needed to slow down if I was gonna make it through the night, but it was the only thing that kept my nerves from jittering me into another dimension. When I looked down at my hands, they shook.
I knew Rochelle had brought over enough drinking games to put an Ivy League frat party to shame, and it was a bad look if one of the party's hosts passed out on the couch before the night ended - even if that person was me.
I tried to slip back into the kitchen undetected, but being inconspicuous was never a luxury I'd been afforded in my life. I stood too tall, and my crown was too shiny.
"Dallas!"
My name seemed to carry over all the noise and bodies that moved through the kitchen like a school of fish, all grouped together and indistinguishable. I glanced over towards the corner of the countertop by the fridge, where Anthony was flanked by two girls. But he hadn't called me over, and he looked down and scowled when he saw me glance over towards him. Instead, my late-summer soccer player hookup waved me over. Abby? Amanda? Fuck. I really needed to stop drinking tequila.
At least the other girl I recognized as Anthony's homecoming date, Meret, another junior on the soccer team. Cleats chased cleats, apparently.
I snaked my way through the kitchen crowd towards the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water. If I was gonna do this, I needed semi-clarity. I downed half the bottle before finally moving around the kitchen island towards them. The two girls were dressed identically in tiny blue dresses and big green ears - some teenage girl version of the little aliens from Toy Story.
"Hey," Abby/Amanda beamed at me.
Meret always looked unhappy, so seeing her scowl contrast her teammate's sunny disposition wasn't surprising. In fact, I almost preferred it.
Anthony, on the other hand, ignored me and kept his head into his phone. He wore a plain black shirt that said This Is My Halloween Costume, and I had to wonder if he was subtly just trying to be a jerk, since it was my party.
"Where are you sneaking off to?" Abby/Amanda continued with a subtle coyness to her.
"I don't sneak," I jabbed back with a grin.
A group of senior girls dressed up like different colored Crayola crayons shuffled through our little huddle. I took the interruption as an opportunity to unwind myself as I leaned back against the kitchen island and let out a heavy breath.
"Actually...I need to talk to Anthony," I said once the crayons had moved on. When I saw the two girls make no conscious attempt to walk away, I sighed. "Alone."
After glancing at each other for a moment, unsure how serious I was actually being, they scurried away like mice, giving us one last look over their shoulders before being melded into the crowd.
"This better be good," he grumbled, finally looking up at me.
"You played a hell of a fourth quarter." Step one of apologizing when someone is pissed at you is to kiss their ass. "You really saved my ass."
He scoffed, and a grin cracked his facade, but it wasn't out of amusement. "I saved your ass in more ways than one."
"I-I know. And I'm..." I took another deep breath to steady myself. "I'm sorry. For the things I said to you. I was out of line."
Anthony worked his jaw, glancing away from me and to a crowd of people that had gathered around the keg on the other side of the kitchen. The smell of beer and sweat was suddenly overwhelming. The sound of cheers and jeers ricocheted off of walls and bodies, and a faint dizziness washed over me.
Anthony put a hand down on my shoulder, and just as quickly as it all surfaced, it faded into the background. "Dallas don't...don't worry about it," he sighed out, and even though his words felt forced, his dark eyes softened. "I'll just kick your ass in beer pong, we'll call it even."
I didn't realize until I exhaled how relieved I would feel. Anthony and I were never best buddies, but in hindsight I knew I'd done something wrong, and sometimes I wondered if people would eventually get fed up and stop forgiving me.
I gave him a nod. "Uh, I just need a partner. Go stake out the table."
While it wasn't hard to find Chris in his banana suit, he'd situated himself in a corner with someone who was definitely not Nina Castillo, and I couldn't hold back a small smile. Maybe Rochelle was right, and we all needed to just let go of it all for a night. All the bullshit, all the expectations, and all the things and people we were supposed to do.
As I turned away from Chris, the back door slid open, and Kaia slipped in, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. I shouldered my way through the thinning crowd in the kitchen until I reached the door, almost like I wanted to make sure I was the first person to get to her.
"You came." I breathed out.
Her blood red lips cracked a smile, and two little fangs poked out. "You invited me."
I took in more of her all black ensemble, her short lacy tank top and shorter denim skirt clinging to all the best parts of her athletic frame. Red make-up that was meant to look like blood splattered across her neck and chest.
"You get mauled on the way over here?" I arched an eyebrow.
"Something like that." She tilted her head to the side, exposing what seemed to be two bite marks. I had another clever retort ready to fire before getting interrupted.
"Dallas! Sometime today!" Anthony called from the living room.
I turned back to Kaia, and the way she was dragging her gaze over me told me she was doing exactly what I had just done to her. Something crackled in the air between us, the kind of static electricity that makes your hair stand on end before lightning strikes. She'd rolled in like a storm cloud, dark and ready to rain all over me.
we love the sound that our voice makes
man this echo chamber's getting loud
doom days / bastille
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so this chapter was originally one part, until i realized that it would be over 4,000 words and i'm not about that life, and now it gives me more time to be angst over beer pong!
xoxo tay
ps; bonus gif for chris's costume inspiration. in the end, everything i do is for the aesthetic and/or the scuderia.
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