Chapter 4
“Don’t drink. Don’t have sex. Be careful,” Nate’s voice turned into father mode as he, Caroline, and I were in his truck.
“Why are you suck a party pooper? Literally,” Caroline asked.
“Um, I think you’re brain’s a little mixed up, dad,” I told him, emphasizing the word dad.
“It is?” he questioned, giving me a side glance from his place behind the steering wheel. Unfortunately, I was stuck in the middle seat beside him and Caroline was in the passenger seat.
“Yes, what you really meant was: Don’t drive after drinking. Use protection. Be careful.” My eyes were looking at him while a smirk played on my lips.
Nate always did act a bit like a father figure to Caroline and I. He wasn’t a big fan of his own father, either. I guess the brother instincts kicked in when it came to Caroline, and since I was always with her, they kicked in when it came to me, too.
“Why do I even bother?” He mumbled to himself as he shook his head, keeping his eyes on the road this time.
Honestly, Nate should realize that Caroline and I were big girls and we could take care of ourselves. We had all gone to plenty of parties together, and by now, Nate should also put together that Caroline and I weren’t exactly angels. We had both done the one-and-done hookup deal at some parties. Nate was just in denial, I’m sure, though. He didn’t want to think about a hormonal teenage boy deflowering his baby sister and her best friend- surprisingly, we got along pretty well.
“No seriously, take precautions in any way, shape, or form,” Nate told us, obviously not only talking about sex.
“Hop of my dick,” I groaned, wanting Nate to snap out of dad mode and into the hormonal teenage boy he was.
Seriously, he was telling us to use protection, but he was the one we needed to worry about. That boy had the body of a god. I would gladly lick chocolate off of that boy- especially his abs.
“No thanks, I like the ride,” Nate told me easily, snapping me out of my daydream of the two of us doing things that Caroline would kill me for.
“I’m sure you do, but if you don’t hop off, I’ll shove you,” I told him, quirking my eyebrows up at Nathan, even though he wasn’t looking at me.
“That’s alright, I like my sex rough,” Nathan glanced at me again, a large smirk plastered on his face.
“Will you two please stop? That’s just a terrible mental image for me,” Caroline spoke up. My head whipped to the right to look at her. She had her nose scrunched up in disgust, obviously not liking the thought of Nathan and I together. I couldn’t say I blamed her, though. I would probably do the same thing if I were in her shoes. I did do the same thing.
The reality of that sunk in, and I was wondering what was wrong with me. I was thinking about him too much. Yes, I thought about him a lot anyways, but it usually wasn’t as often, or as painful. Usually, I held it together better than this.
I seriously needed a drink. Scratch that, I needed about twenty.
The rest of the ride was silent, but as soon as we pulled off on the side of the road at the end of the street, Caroline threw her door open. The car hadn’t even come to a complete stop, but I didn’t care, either. We were on the same page. I slid out of the car with her just as Nate put the car into park.
When I landed smoothly on the ground, I groaned. I was going to have to walk all the way to the end of the street to get to the party in 5-inch heels. Story of my life. Caroline seemed to realize the same thing as I did, because a groan escaped her lips as well.
Why did Chris have to be on the football team? I was almost sure that our entire school was at the party, and that was why the whole street was filled up with cars parked alongside the road, on the neighbors’ lawns, and completely covering Chris’s lawn.
“Nate wasn’t kidding when he said Project X good,” I told Caroline as I saw the cluster of people lining the street, as well as the house. Luckily, the whole street wasn’t on fire, though.
Caroline and I started making our way down the street then, Nate catching up to us soon. We were walking side by side, the same way we had ridden down here- I was stuck in the middle.
“You know, I’d be a bit careful,” Nate whispered into my ear. I could feel him breathing down my neck and it sent an involuntary chill down my spine.
“Why?” I whispered back, hoping Caroline didn’t pick up on our conversation. I wasn’t sure if she had, but she showed no signs of paying attention to us. She was too busy assessing the party before us.
I glanced up into Nate’s cerulean blue eyes, biting my lip subconsciously. Hadn’t we covered everything in the car?
“Your ass is about to fall out of that dress and as much as that would definitely not bother me at all, I wouldn’t want a bunch of nasty teenage boys groping you because of it,” Nate’s smirk grew when he saw my reaction.
My mouth was gaping open because I couldn’t believe he had just told me that. Nate never acted like this around me; who was I kidding, Nate always acted like this. But he was just being dramatic about it, right?
I looked around at my ass, trying to figure out if it was really about to fall out of my dress. It wasn’t. Nate started laughing when he saw what I was doing, and by that point, Caroline had noticed us. She was looking at us like we had grown three heads while I was glaring at Nate.
“You asshole!” I hit his arm repeatedly, but it didn’t hurt him at all. Nate just continued laughing, cowering away from me even though it didn’t hurt.
“What the hell?” Caroline asked, finally speaking up after she realized that neither of us were going to just explain it to her.
“Your brother is an asshole,” I told her through clenched teeth as I turned away from him.
I started walking towards the party again, leaving Caroline and Nate behind me and tilting my chin up. I was going to walk away from that douchebag with as much pride and dignity as I could- which wasn’t much.
“Hold up,” Nate told me, grabbing my arm to stop me in my tracks. “We’re going around back so that we don’t have to deal with all that shit; we can just get inside.”
“Whatever way is the fastest for me to get a drink,” I told him as I shrugged off his hand and moved closer to Caroline.
We both followed Nate as he maneuvered around the cars that were parked in the yard. Sure I had been to Chris’s house before for a party, but they were never this extreme and I had never really paid attention to the place. I still wasn’t. All I knew was that I needed to watch out for random people who were too fucked up and were passed out on the lawn.
After finally reaching the side door and walking into the house, I made my way to the kitchen with Caroline- the only place that I did know where it was.
Honestly, I spent the majority of my time in there getting drunk off my ass. That basically me at every party. Occasionally there would be a hot guy that caught my eye, but that was just a bonus.
When Caroline and I got to the kitchen, I was already drenched in sweat- and it wasn’t mine. Everywhere I looked there were people crowded around; you could barely move through the house. If you did, though, you would be pressed up against about six bodies at one time, and there was no stopping the sweat from passing from body to body. It was disgusting.
I turned to look at Caroline before saying, “If I don’t get a drink in my system soon, I’m just going to go home and go to sleep.”
“Me too,” Caroline agreed, looking down at her own sweat-laden arms in disgust. We were too alike.
I made two cups of vodka with coke. The majority of it was vodka, but there was enough coke to make it drinkable. I handed Caroline her cup, fighting the urge to not down mine then and there. We had a tradition, though, and I couldn’t break it now.
“Cheers,” we said simultaneously, clinging the red cups together before bringing the cups to our lips and taking a long gulp.
The alcohol burned my throat as it went down, but by now I was used to it. My face didn’t contort into one of distaste anymore; in fact, I didn’t think my facial expression changed at all. I had actually grown to like the feeling, and the taste of the strong beverage. It was the same drink Caroline and I always had at parties.
Screw the pussy beers; we went straight for the shit that would get us wasted. Usually I would add some Jack Daniels in, too, but Chris seemed to be out of it since there was none on the counter. That was too bad, because I could actually drink that straight up.
“You know, I have a feeling that this year is going to be fun as hell,” Caroline told me, yelling so that I could hear her over the thumping of the music. I was pretty sure a few eardrums were going to be busted.
“Me too!” I smiled, telling her that we would be getting into a lot of trouble doing a lot of fun things. I could already tell that it was going to happen.
Caroline and I stayed in the kitchen for quite a while; for the most part we just talked and laughed, but occasionally we would dance a little or move to get another drink. By about my sixth cup, I decided that I wanted to play a game. Beer pong was being played in the back room like always, so we just decided to go in there and play.
Nate was standing at the table when we walked in, destroying some little freshman at the game. It was pretty funny actually, because the poor kid looked kind of scared as his hand shook when he was bringing his arm up to take his shot. He missed completely, not even hitting the table. He hadn’t made it into a single one of Nate’s cups, but the poor kid only had one cup left.
“I call next round,” I yelled, just as Nate released the ball from his hand and it landed right in the freshman’s last red cup. A little bit of beer splashed out as the ball hit it, and a roar came from the crowd of people. Everyone was hooting, hollering, and clapping as loud as they could. Nate was even getting patted on the back.
“You really think you can beat the champ, Ariella?” Nate asked, turning his attention to me now.
I crossed my arms over my chest as I strutted to the place where the freshman had been at before he scurried off, talking about how he was going to throw up. The poor kid couldn’t even hold his alcohol.
I smirked at Nate as I brought my hands down on the table and leaned forward. “Somebody get some beer in my cups.”
It didn’t take long before Nate was aiming the ball at one of my cups. He released it from his hand, letting it fly through the air and land right in my cup. I didn’t flinch, just grabbed the ball before gulping down the cheap beer that was in the cup. Unlike the freshman, I could hold my alcohol. I even heard a few whistles after I placed the cup on the side of the table, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand.
I narrowed my eyes as I tried to focus on the ball going into one of Nathan’s cups as the alcohol finally seemed to reach my brain. My vision became a little fuzzy on the sides and I wasn’t thinking clear. I was pretty sure I was seeing two of Nate.
Shaking my head slightly, I regained focus before letting the ball soar through the air and land in one of Nate’s cups. The smirk on my face grew as a few guys ‘oh’-ed and Nate looked at the cup in shock. He didn’t seem to think I could play beer pong.
Nate quickly regained his composure, though, as he grabbed the ball and slowly drank the beer in the cup. In a matter of seconds, though, he threw the ball again and landed it in another one of my cups.
I downed the beer, too, but it wasn’t without consequence. About that same time, my thoughts became jumbled up and I wasn’t only seeing two of Nate, I was seeing three. I would have definitely failed a sobriety test at that moment.
Also about that same time was when my memory just seemed to turn off. The last thing I remembered was cheering after I made the ball into another one of Nate’s cups. After that, it was just complete darkness.