The Elites

Chapter Fourteen

December 31st, 2009. The Elites Agency New Year's Party. I wasn't sure why I turned up. No one wanted me there. No one asked for me to be there. I didn't need to confront him there and then. I easily could've waited for a better time with less people looking and in a much more reasonable state.

Nevertheless, I stumbled through into the hall flat out drunk and high. Not a good combination, but I'd become accustomed to it. Will had been trying to help me since Lara left me in September. Turns out that she'd told Blair when she found out about me (way sooner that she left me; apparently she was scared I'd get worse if she walked out) but it'd been kept as their little secret.

Ultimately her worry became reality. When she did finally leave it did get worse. Despite locking myself in the apartment we used to live together in and only surrounding myself with people that I knew would care enough to help – by people I mean person, and by person I mean Will – I had no intention of getting better.

My thought process behind it was that I had nothing to get better for. By that logic, I should have had an incentive while she was still around. But then I'd tried to convince myself that she was the one in the wrong. I told myself that she'd been cheating on me with Ashton since July. She'd been going to see him since May, when she found out about the drugs, but July was when it really became in issue of flat out cheating. I'm guessing that was when she found out I'd cheated on her with Violet.

Not that I hadn't cheated on her with other people before and after Violet. But I didn't know how many of those she knew about.

When she left me, the public were kept in the dark about my issues for quite a while. I'd kept myself in the dark since it happened, and by that I mean I literally just stopped turning up. I'm sure Will made something up to Paxley about having personal struggles; by this time I'd started my rule of not reading the papers but I guess they knew that Lara and I had split up.

However, no one was prepared for the last week of December when everything came out. The drinking, the drugs, the cheating and everything on how Lara and Ashton started up. Blair had assured me that Lara had said nothing to the press, which I took as her saying it was Ashton. Of course, I can see now that it was probably Violet that leaked the whole thing. God knows how much I mindlessly told her when I was on my mission to scope her out, and that's not even taking into account the profiles she must've had as she started up her master plan.

Of course I was still invited to the end of year party. Despite not turning up for anything in over three months I was still the face of the Agency. Perhaps not so much since everyone found out I was a cocaine addict, but it wasn't like Paxley was at my door ripping up my invitation. However no one was particularly expecting me to show up.

I arrived much later than everyone else, already away with the fairies so to speak. The doorman tried to let me through like he would any other person, but I could almost sense the urge to take out his walkie talkie thing and blurt code red code red code red through it.

At the end of year Agency parties, drunk people weren't particularly out of place. However, the stumbling and embarrassing dancing and slurring usually came a bit later in the night. Therefore I stood out quite a bit as I tripped my way through the crowds of people to find who I was looking for. I'm sure I passed Will and Blair at one point and I'm sure they tried to claw at my lazily thrown on suit jacket and drag me away before I even got the chance to see Ashton.

Nevertheless, raging drunk high Harry – or what I like to call Version 3.5 Harry – was extremely quick on his feet for someone who couldn't tell the ground from the ceiling. Naturally, when I did throw my first punch, I couldn't immediately tell whether I'd punched Ashton in the face or just some random guy that had dirty blonde hair like he did.