“Slow down,” Tully demands.
I look back over my shoulder and laugh as I realize that she can barely stand on her own two feet and has Aiden struggling to hold her up, but they’re both more than willing to join me. Maybe we’ve all been drinking a little more than we should have tonight, but who cares? It’s my birthday and I have a shiny yellow car that’s so much more kickass than anyone else’s…maybe even Noah’s, though I won’t let him catch me saying that.
Speaking of Noah; I wonder where the hell he is.
Tully, Aiden, and I get ourselves inside and start shaking our asses, just as Noah had instructed me to. We dance, we laugh, and we get stitches when it all becomes too much only for us to do it all over again. I mean, for the rest of the people here not to realize Aiden is gay is some kind of miracle. I know he looks like every other jock in the room, but he’s the only one of them whose style of dancing isn’t to grind his junk into some chick’s ass, though I have a feeling Tully would approve if he wanted to give it a try.
Someone crashes into my back and I spin around to find Alyssa staring at me in horror. “Shit,” she cringes before she begins rambling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I promise. It’s just this guy knocked into me and I fell and…”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Tully demands.
I place a hand on Tully’s arm as Alyssa turns towards her, her eyes instantly trailing over the black cast Tully still wears on her arm and the pink scars from the accident. “I…I…Um.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say to Alyssa. “It’s fine.”
“Um…what?” Tully grunts.
I turn back to Tully. “It’s fine. You know just as well as I do that Rivers was using her, just like you were doing with Rocko. What the hell is happening with him, by the way?”
“Your point?” Tully prompts, clearly not wanting to discuss Rocko right now.
“My point is that Alyssa didn’t know that Rivers was going to vanish into thin air the way he did. It’s not her fault, just as it’s not yours, or mine, or Noah’s. Alyssa was just a pawn in whatever game he was playing.”
“I know,” Tully grumbles towards the floor, “But I still don’t like her.”
“Yeah, you’ve made that clear,” I scoff before narrowing my eyes on Alyssa. “Why would you come though? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a party and you’re welcome, but if I was in your shoes, I’d probably have sat this one out.”
Alyssa’s eyes flick to Tully and it’s clear that she’s worked out that there’s a little more than friendship between Tully and Rivers. “I just had to see him,” she says before letting out a sigh. “I figured that if there was going to be a time that he showed his face, it would have been tonight.”
“Yeah,” I grunt. “I think we were all hoping for that.”
Her eyes drop to the ground. “He was never really into me, was he?” she questions before looking to Tully again. “Because he’s already in love with you.”
Tully’s eyes tighten and I see a wall come down as Aiden slips his hand around her back, giving her the comfort we all know she needs right now. I mean, talking about Rivers and seeing the girl he was with instead of her surely couldn’t be easy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tully says, dismissing her.
“Oh,” Alyssa mumbles, looking away and making it clear she doesn’t believe her. “Well, um…”
“I think you should walk away now,” Tully says.
“Right, um…ok.” And with that, Alyssa quickly scurries off.
“Did I even want to know what the fuck that was about?” Aiden questions, looking between me and Tully. “And who the fuck is Rivers?”
“Shit,” Tully moans. “We’re going to need a few more drinks if we’re going to get into this.”
“Damn straight, we will,” I laugh, taking both their hands and squeezing our way through the house towards the kitchen.
It’s been such a huge night. We’ve had noise complaints which brought the cops who saw what was going on and realized that no matter what they did, we were still going to party. We’ve had angry parents showing up, looking for their kids. There’s been an idiot attempt to snort something off Violet’s good coffee table who was promptly kicked out on his ass, minus the goods.
There’s nothing better than a true Haven Falls party.
We get into the kitchen and realize the table set up with the drinks is an absolute mess, but that’s expected. Empty bottles have been tossed aside, half empty cups are littered all over, and the table is drenched where people have spilled and not bothered cleaning up after themselves like the pigs they are.