SINS (Completed)

TIPSY

I chug the shot down in a single go, my nerves still a bit flustered and my throat burns.

"Tessa and tequila. Let me guess, courtesy of Hardin Scott." Trevor speaks sitting beside me, still at the bar.

I chuckle humourlessly, feeling more exhausted by ten minutes of Hardin, than by an hour of dancing.

"Seriously though, hey. You okay?" Trevor asks softly, and I turn to him with a reassuring smile.

"I'm fine."

Trevor nods lightly, and I rub my face with my palm, trying to get my head clear, trying to erase Hardin off me.

"Is that Hardin's tie?" I turn to look at Trevor eyeing the tie lying on the table with furrowed eyebrows.

"Uh- yeah. He- he was feeling out of place, so he took it off." I mumble confidently, so he believes it.

"What a princess, that one." He cracks a smile, rolling his eyes, and listening to him, I crack a genuine amused smile.

I turn around in my stool to look at the party. I spot Hardin standing on top of the couch, one leg perched on the table in front of it and Lily standing right beside him on the same couch.

She throws her hand up in the air with a loud cheer, and Hardin opens a fizzing bottle of alcohol after shaking it rigorously. Both of them have the widest of excited grins on their faces, and the crowd goes berserk.

I smile, gazing.

"Why were you two dressed so formally anyway?" I ask Trevor, genuinely curious now that I think about it.

"We had to hit up the magistrate's office for the- some legal stuff." He ends hesitatingly, and I look at him.

"I know about the case." I tell him, and he looks at me with an understanding look, guilty of having lied.

But then I understand he's a good friend, and every one of Hardin's secrets is safe with him. I kind of admire that, considering if anyone would come asking me questions about Lily, I probably won't tell them the worst parts either.

"I see."

"You offered him your legal team, right?" I ask him, even though I know, and he nods with a chuckle.

There's no double guessing that it might have led to a conflict with him and his father, but then he owns the fifty one percent, so of course his say would go. Once again, I'm astounded at the lengths to which these two boys go for each other.

"Of course I did. I mean, Hardin needed all the help he could get." He says seriously.

I look at Hardin once again.

There was a childlike delight on his face, an innocent laugh, and I feel strange that it had to be a rare sight.

I remember how he had enjoyed the music festival, how he obsesses over cars and speed and how he would tease me about Math. I see a kid. I feel how young Hardin still is, and how his life forced him to grow up too soon.

"He filed the case two years ago, he would have just been out of high school then. Wasn't he too young for all this?" I kind of ask no one in particular, just feeling that Hardin deserved better.

And it was exactly the year when I lost touch with him. The year I know something happened that gave rise to this version of him. Parents. Claustrophobia.

It can't be a coincidence. I feel that whatever Hardin had been punishing me for, has to have stemmed in that particular year.

"He was. But life doesn't let you choose a convenient age when it throws you into messes. My legal head Dennis Jeffrey, helped him a lot, Hardin still really looks up to him."