I don't think I'll ever really understand partying.
The deafeningly loud music, the alcohol, the sex, the drugs—not that I was entirely opposed to drugs.
That would make me a hypocrite.
In fact, I was sat outside on the front stoop of whoever's house this was with a joint between my lips, inhaling long and heavy, filling up my lungs with burning air.
It was an easy way to ease my anxiety and stress, and it put me in a grounded and relaxed state I craved day to day. Though, I only allowed myself the pleasure of marijuana when I couldn't think of a different solution for my inner turmoil because I never wanted to just smoke weed. I didn't want to make the plant the solution to all my problems.
Only when reading or music or physical exertion failed did I bite the bullet and roll a J as a last resort.
I took another puff then put out the burning roll. I'd only inhaled about a quarter of it but that was all I needed. Just a buzz. Just something to take the edge off so I could stop being fidgety and nervous—so I could stop panicking and being insecure about every move I made.
I sighed and began sifting through the contents of my purse. There weren't any lights on outside, so my search was dimly illuminated by the bright, creamy light of the moon that kept dipping in and out of the thick clouds trailing across the night sky. I searched in the natural light with one hand for a while until that didn't work fast enough, so I brought the joint to my mouth and clamped my lips around its filter to free up my other hand.
This time around, my ransacking took less time and I was met with almost immediate success.
My hand closed around the cylinder shape of a pill bottle and I triumphed silently as I pulled out the old ibuprofen container. The tops to pill bottles always sealed smells away completely, so they made getting caught with drugs less probable.
I twisted open the cap of the small bottle, listening to its many ridges click and slide past each other, then sealed it closed after making my deposit. I dropped the tiny storage container back into my bag and sighed, closing my eyes for a moment, then zipped up my purse just as the front door slammed open and Tommy Burrow came stumbling out with two random girls hanging off his footballer physique.
Tommy Burrow was North Oak High School's middle linebacker and a beast of a teenage boy.
We'd known each other since preschool where he'd adopted me as his person and I'd adopted him as mine. He was far from the small boy he'd been back then, however, standing at six foot six with broad shoulders and scary looking muscles adorning his arms and legs.
That didn't change the fact that he was one of the sweetest guys I knew, though. That's why, when he came bursting through the door with his conquests, as he liked to call them, I stood up and immediately made it my job to separate the squirrels from the tree.
Being drunk was fine, but being drunk and engaging in sexual relations with two equally, if not more drunk girls as an esteemed line backer looking to make a career out of football was an entirely different story.
Rumors generated in high schools could be nasty. I would know.
"Go back inside.", I told the girls, and they complained and moaned about how mean I was being but they knew better than to go against anything I said.
Sometimes rumors were true.
Tommy groaned and slumped clumsily against the front door, thudding loudly against the stained dark wood. "Come on, Williams!", he complained, his words lazily pronounced and slurred in a tell-tale sign of drunkenness.
I pursed my lips and shot him a withering look before sitting back down on the steps and patting the spot next to me. I spent the next few seconds pulling out a bottle of water from my bag and shaking it up at him.
"Sit down, Tommy. You're drunk as fuck and you need to ingest something other than hard liquor and cheap beer."
He must not have been as mentally gone as I thought he was, because a moment later Tommy slouched down beside me and spread his long legs into the neatly cut bushes next to us.
He ruined the poor things as he haphazardly stretched his limbs out and plopped his head down in my lap with a deep sigh.
I shook my head and uncapped the water to gently pour some into his mouth until he gained enough control over his heavy arms to take it from me and chug until it was all gone. Next, I began to gently cord my fingers through his dark hair and he sighed.
"Thanks, Rue.", he mumbled, sounding more coherent as he lifted a hand and palmed the back of my head so he could pull me down and plant an affectionate kiss onto my lips. He tasted like tequila and Budweiser, but a small smile made its way onto my face as we parted, nonetheless, and I lay a kiss onto Tommy's forehead for good measure.
He'd always seemed like he needed to be loved, and I'd always been the loving type, so we clicked.
If Tommy needed to vent about a girlfriend or something going on at home, he came to me. If he needed a hug, he came to me, and if he just needed someone to care for him while he felt a little sad one day, I was the one he called. That's how it had been for as long as I could remember, and it'd never turned into anything more than an intense, platonic love riddled with the occasional kisses and cuddles.
We loved each other, but we'd never felt inclined to be romantic. Our friendship was what it was, no matter how people tried to label it.
I continued running my fingers through his hair until he sat up, squeezing his light brown eyes shut until he regained his equilibrium, and sighed.
"What's wrong?", I wondered, and Tommy shrugged. "Nothing really.", he answered vaguely and I scoffed.
"Thomas."
He cringed and gave me a sharp look that I was surprised he could muster with all the alcohol in his system and replied, "What'd I say about the government name, Rue?"
I grinned, amused by his complaint, and nudged his shoulder. "Come on, Tommy. Tell me what's got your drunk brain so twisted up.", I coaxed, taking one of his hands into both of mine and kissing his knuckles.
He smirked. "You're a dangerous girl, Ruedelia."
I groaned. "If I can't call you Thomas you definitely can't call me Ruedelia.", I grumbled.
I didn't hate my name, it was just weird and made me sound like I was seventy. I disliked hearing it, so I tried my best to limit the amount of people who knew it. Hell, even the school knew not to announce me as Ruedelia Williams at events and assemblies.
It was Rue—the more age appropriate option—and that was it.
Tommy grinned and wrapped me up in a big hug, avoiding my question. "Are you coming to my game tomorrow?"
I frowned and looked at him like he was an idiot—which, he was most of the time. "I haven't missed one of your games since you started playing football, Thomas. What the hell?"
He ignored my use of his name and just smiled, nodding his head like the dummy he was. "I'm just messing with you, Rue.", he laughed, then stood and pulled me up with him.
"Come inside with me.", he said, and I immediately tried to resist. "No way. You know how I am.", I told him, and he nodded. "There's a room upstairs where our people are hanging out. They were asking about you earlier but no one knew where you'd gone after you showed up with Lucy.", he explained.
Lucy was a friend of mine.
We got along really well when we hung out but the both of us kept to ourselves, so we ended up ignoring each other more often than not. Neither of us really thought anything of it, though.
That was just the nature of our relationship.
She'd brought me to the party since we'd been hanging out when she heard about it and I told her I'd catch a ride from my brothers since I knew they'd be present and one of them was always sober.
I sighed and looked at Tommy skeptically. "Who's up there?"
If there were sports groupies hanging around the football and track stars upstairs I'd have to decline Tommy's offer. Those girls were relentless, and every single one of them saw me as a threat because they all ignored the fact that I wasn't interested in being anything more than friends with the people I surrounded myself with.
I didn't feel like dealing with passive aggressive comments from cheerleaders who believed that they held some sort of claim over my friends and siblings. It was annoying.
"Just Hakeem and Jordan...", my brothers. "Milo, Jace, Oliver, and Silas.", he finished.
I frowned thoughtfully at the last name mentioned, but I didn't say anything as Tommy pulled me upstairs through the thick crowd of drunk and gyrating teenagers.
Hakeem and Jordan were incredibly talented track runners for our school and Milo and Jace were right behind them in terms of success and doubled as their best friends. Oliver and Silas were Tommy's best friends, and they played football together.
Oliver was our wide receiver and Silas was our quarterback, and both were incredible in their positions. There was no doubt in my mind that they'd be going to D1 colleges along with Tommy.
We breached the door where our family was and Hakeem smiled when he saw me. "Rue!", he exclaimed, gaining the attention of our brother along with Milo, Jace, and Oliver—and Silas.
Milo waved, Jace blushed, Oliver didn't look up from his lap, and Silas just watched me walk across the room from a lounger in the right corner next to a large couch where everyone else sat.
I looked around and realized that this must be a second living room or a game room.
The walls were painted an ash blue and the wood floors were light gray and neatly fitted together. Straight ahead was a navy blue, L-shaped couch that Tommy sat next to Oliver on facing me. Milo, Jace and my brothers took up most of the space on the longer side of the couch that sat aligned with the wall to my left.
On the opposite wall, directly across from where my brothers sat, was a mounted flat screen tv playing football, and beneath that was a stand complete with a Wii and Playstation and what looked like every video and board game I could think of.
The table sat parallel to the left wall in front of where majority of the guys sat was littered in chip bags and beer bottles, and I shook my head at the mess as I made my way between a foosball table to my left and a pool table to my right.
"I hope you guys plan on cleaning this up before you leave.", I said to no one in particular as I squeezed myself between Jordan and Hakeem—the latter of which draped his left arm over my shoulder and flicked our brother's ear.
We snickered together when Jordan scowled, but the amused smile dropped into an exasperated look when Tommy pouted after I sat between my kin.
"I wanted you to sit with me.", he whined, and I rolled my eyes and tried my best to shimmy from in between my two lanky brothers.
When I couldn't catch my balance, I groaned and slumped back down between them.
"Come on, Rue. With all the shit you do surely you can stand up on your own?", Hakeem teased, and Jordan just watched me, amused.
"Fuck off, Keem, and help me up. I'm trying to go sit on your friend's lap.", I said, intentionally trying to annoy them. Jordan scoffed and pushed me up from between them, while Hakeem glared over at Tommy from where he sat diagonal and to the left of us.
I shook my head and tried not to laugh at how grumpy my brothers looked.
The only reason Hakeem and Jordan weren't constantly trying to kill Tommy was because they knew of the platonic nature of our friendship. No matter how touchy we were, they knew that Tommy and I were just friends.
The linebacker grinned when I finally made it over to him then made grabby hands at me. I laughed and opened my arms, falling into his embrace.
"You're so soft and cuddly.", he mumbled into my shoulder, and I snorted and rearranged us so I was sitting sideways in his lap with my feet resting just shy of Oliver's thighs.
I stretched out and toed his leg to catch his attention.
"Hi Oliver.", I greeted sweetly, reaching over to playfully pull on his fitted t-shirt, and he looked over at me shyly with those wide, expressive eyes of his.
Oliver was incredibly reserved and shy, and it had always made me want to protect him, despite the fact that he was quite a bit larger than me. His mop of curly blond hair was always hanging into his big blue eyes, and his voice was so gentle and sweet I felt obligated to baby him.
Another thing about Oliver was that he was gay, but he was only out to our friend group, so I tried my best to shield him from all the girls that didn't realize they didn't have a chance at all—not that I could fault them for their attraction.
Oliver sported a jaw that was defined and sharp, and a face that still held traces of adolescent plumpness which made him look quite boyish and sweet. It didn't help that his cheeks were dotted with light brown freckles that multiplied in the summer, or that his lips were so beautifully shaped. I'd heard girls express jealously over them in the past.
Oliver was stunning, but everything else on him screamed out his close relationship with physical activity. He was built just like Thomas and Silas. The broad shoulders and wide chests, the defined pectorals and sculpted abdominals, the mile long legs boasting thick, muscly thighs. Oliver was only a bit more slender.
It was crazy how different their bodies were to my brothers', Milo's and Jace's, who all sported more lean, sleek builds that they'd crafted specifically for speed.
I stopped analyzing my friends and looked over at Silas just as Oliver murmured an embarrassed 'hello' to me in reply, and whistled for him.
When he looked up I asked, "Ready for the game?".
I didn't know much about Silas since, unlike the rest of us, he'd moved to our area in middle school, and after the first time we met, he seemed to avoid me—not like he didn't like me or couldn't stand my presence, but like he just didn't know how to be around me, and I'd always been intrigued by his avoidance.
It was different to how everyone else tried to stay away.
Silas shifted when he realized that I'd gathered the eyes of the room, but he answered regardless.
"Yeah.", he answered simply, and we eyed each other for a few seconds longer before I smiled and looked away.
I leaned forward and pulled Tommy's head close to my own so I could whisper in his ear.
"I like Silas."
Tommy leaned back and smiled wide, "Oh, really?", he queried deviously, and It didn't help that his canine teeth were sharper than most people's--a feature that only made him look even more devilishly mischievous. I rolled my eyes.
"Yes, really.", I confirmed, but then I moved on to say, "You can't say anything, though.", quite seriously.
I wanted to get to know Silas before my brothers started being ridiculous over my being interested in a boy, and Tommy seemed to understand that as he looked at me.
He nodded. "Of course I'll keep your little secret.", he said with a smirk, and I shook my head at his ridiculousness, but I trusted him nonetheless.
I knew that Tommy could keep a secret, and very well at that, so his agreement gave me the confidence to continue on in my plan to finally begin speaking with Silas.
I just needed an opening.