Lucky Me

Chapter 48 - May 13

Sike.
The bar was relatively quiet for one of their Friday nights but honestly, that's compared to the nights they spend at the college bars during the active semester. This is technically post college season and this particular bar is not considered one of the popular ones due to its distance from the campus, even though it is eighteen plus. And on this relatively quiet night, the largest group of people had to be the group of seven girls sitting at the bar.
"This is hour thirty-three without the boys," Selene announces to her snapchat, an exasperated expression on her face, she then slowly lifts the camera up to reveal Cat, Mia, Sarah, and Rae sitting slumped at the bar, mirroring each other with their head resting in their palms, elbows resting on the bar, and a variety of cocktails perched in front of them. "You'd think they'd be okay since it has literally only been thirty-three hours," she emphasizes the end of her sentence before she continues, "but no. They're all missing their boyfriends."
"In my defense, it's been a lot longer since I've seen mine," Sarah adds, looking at both Selene and the still rolling camera.
"The only exception," Selene concedes before stopping the video and lowering the phone and focusing her attention on the device.
"Give them a break," Meg starts, a teasing tone entering her voice, "the poor girls have only ever gone longer than this when they were in a fight with said boyfriends." She finishes with a scrunch of her nose and a sip of her drink. She wasn't driving and the bartender didn't bother IDing her, so she went ahead and got herself a drink.
"Excuse you," Cat says defiantly, slightly straightening in her chair, "that was just most recently. I went much longer without him prior to that."
"Oh, really?" Danielle goads, batting her eyes at her new friend.
"Girl, like you have room to talk," Rae giggles, shifting to rest her chin on just one arm so she can look at the three jeering at the end of their row.
"Yeah, you've barely left Selene's side for the past few days," Mia snickers.
"Touche," Danielle shrugs before leaning into Selene, who finally looks up after posting her video on her story, "but she's right here instead of moving somewhere far far away," she dramatically waves her hand in an arch over her head to over-exaggerate how far the boys moved.
"Touche," Cat grumbles, returning to her drink and pouting position. A few more drinks flow through the group before it's enough for them and they move to dance and sway in the center of the room.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
"So we know it's barely been over a day since we moved to the new house but," Sebastian drags out the last word, addressing the camera in front of him. He pauses for a moment while he scrolls on his phone before showing the screen of his phone to the camera lens. "See just posted this," he emphasizes the snapchat story playing on his phone, "and the state of a few of our guys are less than energetic," he drops his phone back to his side, "so we're going to travel and surprise the girls!" He cheers before turning to face Darren, his partner in crime for this particular mission.
"Of course the other guys don't know about this yet and we're going to see if we can keep it that way," Darren adds.
"Personally, I have low expectations," Sebastian adds, earning him a quick smack from the boy beside him.
"So how are we gonna convince them to get in the car?" Darren asks after dodging a retaliation hit from Sebastian.
With a shrug, Sebastian answers, "wing it, man. I'll be saying that we're filming a surprise video at a different location." So the two divide and conquer. Darren ends up using the same excuse as Sebastian, and when the boys ask what the surprise is, he plays dumb while pointing excuses to Sebastian. Honestly, it's a miracle that only Ryan realizes their destination, even if he only realized ten minutes down the road by the process of elimination. The others were either disinterested or glued to their phones. Sebastian and Darren on the other hand, were driving around on the edge of their seats hoping that the snap map location that the girls had was accurate to their actual location. Another ten minutes pass before the cars roll up to the bar and the boys pile out onto the street.
"Will you finally tell us why we're here?" Oliver huffs, directing his attention to his brother.
"Now don't get haughty with me, brother, I just did you a favor," Sebastian tutts, presenting the building behind him, "I just delivered you to your girlfriend."
"She's in a closed tax firm?" Oliver questions.
"Wrong building Seb," Darren says, physically correcting the building that Sebastian was pointing at, slightly to the left to reveal the bar. "Plus it's all the girls and not just Cat." With that clarification, the boys bolt. All of them. A bar plus their friends? What more motivation could they need? The bar is significantly more full than what the video showed almost an hour ago, so it took some time to find their group of girls. However, once they did, Oliver wasted no time in sliding up behind his girlfriend and wrapping his hands around her waist.
"Excuse you," Cat swings around to face the strange man who just pressed himself against her, immediately backing away from the body "I have a boyfriend."
"Babe," Oliver says, leaning down to be in the light, "I am your boyfriend." Recognition flits across her face and she jumps into his waiting arms.
"Oli!" She cheers, a smile blooming across her face, "You're here!"
"Yes, baby," he responds, a smile to match hers, "how have you been?"
"Horrible," she mumbles as she buries herself into his chest, "they just keep getting worse cause we all end up moping together."
"You do realize we just moved like twenty-five minutes in the other direction from your house right?" Justin prods, inserting himself in their reunion.
Cat reaches up to Justin and flicks him in the forehead as she responds "that's fifteen more minutes than before."
"How about we get out of here," Oliver suggests, leaning down to whisper in her ear.
"You just got here though," Cat responds, still not letting go.
"Thank god for the surprise visit, these girls are unbearable with the new distance from you guys," Meg teases, poking the boy nearest to her.
"We're like 20 minutes away from your place, just in the opposite direction," Ryan responds, eyes trailing to the drink in Meg's hand.
"You'd think we moved cross country with how these idiots act," Justin adds before deciding that a drink is in order and heading to the bar.
"How'd you get that?" Ryan asks, his attention still on Meg.
"They didn't ID me," She quietly responds, bringing her drink up to her lips to take a sip.
"So where are y'all staying tonight?" Sarah asks Darren and Sebastian who just so happen to be nearest to her.
"With you, obviously," Darren responds, grabbing her drink out of her hand and chugging it.
"I should have seen that coming," Sarah sighs, "both staying with us and stealing my drink."
"We better head out," Selene groans, "Cat and Oli just left."
"But we just got here," Kane whines, having just returned to their group of friends after grabbing his own drink at the bar with Justin.
"Mia and I will go with them and you guys just take your time heading out," Regie offers, guiding Mia out of the bar before any of them could respond. Honestly, it was up to the individual whether or not it was a good idea to leave such a chaotic group on their own with alcohol. Especially since, for most of the group, it was their first time in a bar. If you asked Selene and Danielle if they thought it was a good idea, they'd probably shoot you the deadlies 'I had to babysit these hooligans' glare. If you asked Rae or Kane they probably wouldn't have noticed much change in dynamic. With Kane and Rae being all wrapped up in spending time together, they didn't notice much difference. If you asked the rest of them? Best. Idea. Ever. All the under 21 year-olds maybe got a little too excited about a bar that doesn't ID and went overboard with the drinking. The two legal 21 year-olds, were just excited to have drinking buddies to goad into buying more. By the time they were finally leaving an hour later, only Selene and Danielle were fit enough to drive them all home.
"I'm starved," Sebastian groans, letting himself into the house.
"Y'all got food here?" Justin asks, following behind Sebastian as he looks back towards the actual residents of the house.
"No." Sarah answers, chucking off her shoes and walking towards the kitchen.
"Now don't start that shit with me. I know y'all eat good," Ryan counters, following her to the kitchen to see if he could steal anything. With all the grace of a herd of elephants, the newcomers stumble into the kitchen in search of sustenance.
"Let's just order pizza," Meg suggests, because even though they do have food, it's nowhere near enough to feed everyone here. The commotion of their guests draw out Cat and Oli from the depths of the house just in time for them to hear the conversation of food.
"Oh! Can we get buffalo wings?" Cat adds, pulling out her phone to pull up the app for the nearest pizza place.
"And the cinnamon sticks," Danielle quickly jumps in, ignoring the commotion in the kitchen and just plopping herself on the couch, Selene following suit. They got everyone back alive so their job was done.
"What kind of pizza?" Who knew such a simple question would prompt immediate chaos as everyone shouts their answers to the poor girl that asked the harmless question. Cat fumbles the responses of the group but eventually orders them with the help of her sober boyfriend. After raiding the snacks in the pantry, everyone situates themselves in front of the TV as Danielle and Selene pull up Minions. Apparently there was a very specific scene that they disagreed on earlier in the day and instead of just looking up the individual portion, they decided to watch the whole thing tonight. Everyone slowly forgets the pizza as they absorb themselves in the movie, but a knock at the door reminds them and it's suddenly a race for the food.
"So why did you guys actually come to surprise us?" Mia asks. The smell of food lured her and Regie out of her room so they could join them in watching their movie.
"Obviously," Justin begins, a slightly slur to his words, "it's because we all missed you guys."
"It's so weird not having at least one of you in the house at all times," Darren agrees.
"Awe," Selene coos, phone in hand as she documents all of her drunk friend's conversations. Great blackmail for later.
"We missed you guys too," Meg agrees, mouth full of a pizza.
"Not that you have anything to worry about," Cat continues, "it's not like you'll be able to get rid of us now."