Ashley ✓

Twenty | Poison

SOTC: Hymn For The Weekend by Coldplay

Yay for double updates!

"Bitch, what took you so long?" Francesca asked upon Sienna and I hopping in the small red car she was behind the wheel of.

"Chill, I had to bring Ashley," Sienna tsked her as she got in shotgun. I resorted to the back seat, adjusting my off-white crop and dark navy sweatpants.

The annoyance melted off Francesca's face upon looking at me. "Yooo, let's go!"

Francesca began conversing with Sienna about Twilight once more, and I really began mulling over my sudden actions as the car threw itself into the sea of traffic to the destination. I hadn't stepped foot into a party in months. My lips hadn't met a splash of alcohol in what felt like eons-- not since my life seemed to have crashed into the concrete from a skyscraper.

Now I supposed I could get as high as one, too.

Maybe for a moment I could forget the numbness down into the depths of my memory, writing like a rose suffocating in the snow. I'd never intoxicate myself to scream karaoke with friends who'd never call me when I rotted away in a police station. Never would I drown myself in tequila to give my friends with benefits head with the bathroom door open again. Never would I celebrate the remembrance of my achievements, barely able to stand.

Never again.

Tonight, I'd drink to forget.

"Aight, we're here," Francesca eventually said, pulling the car to a stop.

Blasts of sound echoed throughout the street we all stepped onto upon leaving the car. Sienna led us further to the sound's shelter, a rundown house with partially broken front windows according to the lights and silhouettes flashing through it.

Francesca was the one to knock on the door, which automatically opened.

Rap music attacked my eardrums upon the door swinging open. I drank in the sight of the Atlantic Ocean of sweaty, stumbling bodies of high schoolers Sienna automatically swam us through until she screamed out a, "HEY!" And joined a group of guys and two girls, all of which gripped Red solos.

It was when I nearly twisted my ankle stepping on an abandoned Corona bottle to almost back into a more-than-making-out couple that I spotted Fedor in the distance. He and three other guys and girls huddled themselves around what appeared to be a dining table.

Might as well make a good decision today.

I pushed through the crowds, gripping my eardrums for dear life when a bunch of Edgars chanted, "SHOTS!" Until I got within arm's reach of him.

"FEDOR!" I shouted over the Ice Spice now playing, tapping his shoulder repeatedly.

Fedor's head eventually whipped around, surprise rushing throughout his face. "Ashley, what are you doing here?"

"DAMN FEDOR, YOU GOT A HOT ONE!" the guy with a short Latina clung next to him by the arm shouted.

Fedor scrunched his eyebrows, squinting his eyes in disgust at the guy before softening his face at me.

"Sorry, wha—"

Before Fedor's words exited his mouth, I clutched his wrist and led him through a crowded hallway trashed with beer cans. I only stopped when I tapped the shoulder of a Latina with long, beautiful noir curls donning a long T-shirt.

"Hey, Ash—" Francesca's words ceased in her choke as her eyes met his wide ones.

My words travelled in the speed of light. "Francesca, meet Fedor. Fedor, meet Sienna's friend, Francesca. I'm sure you all have a lot to talk about!"

And before any of them could say anything, I jogged away.

Right into a chestnut vape cloud.

"WATCH WHERE YOU GOIN', WHITE GI—" the girl with massive eyelashes who exhaled the cloud began shouting at me until she really looked at me. Her friends had also done so until she went, "Wait, are you Mustafa's newest side chick?"

"Yeah, it be her!" the boy next to me shouted over the 6ix9ine echoing through the house's walls.

"Did he quit the basketball team because he had beef with Joshua?

"Is he fucking girls again?"

"Can you talk to the rest of the basketball team for me?"

"How big is he?"

"Is Mustafa getting back in the basketball team? Fucking Ridgeview ain't beating our shit again!"

"Are you dating him? Because he's probably cheating on you!"

"Is he fucking Jordyn?"

Then my jog turned into a run through the halls away from the guys and girls demanding answers all around me.

Finally, after I nearly whammed into the couch with the scary gangbanger-looking dudes cheering with Mondelos over the 6ix9ine, I reached the drink table riddled with every liquid poison. Beer, Tequila, Fireballs, and all.

I laughed dryly.

Poison.

The nickname Tanner Johnson used to give me as I'd tilt my head at him, cocking it ever so slightly to showcase the jawline he'd graze his index finger over. I'd graze over the butterfly tatted to his neck, the way the turquoise faded to emphasize its rough noir etches to create the piece. Harder than the needle, though, I'd penetrate the design into the subconscious of my head. Every stroke of darkness the needle utilized to create the wings. Everywhere the remaining blues dissolved into the skin I'd give him love bites on before we'd take it somewhere else in the party.

I knew I could've memorized it with one glance, how his face had already formed a movie in my soul's brain. But I was fearful that even with the memory power I possessed that I'd never make that part of him timeless within me.

Even though he was a twenty two year old man. Even on the days I convinced myself that even when we were both drunk we possessed this fictitious crazy love, even in the mornings after when the fantasy crumbled apart and the fear with him with other girls plagued my hungover dizzy spells.

Ashley Walker could've texted him afterward, but she didn't want to give him power. She was Mother Teresa's Queen Bee. A sociopath. A sadist.

Now I wasn't Ashley anymore.

That's when the glass of tequila met my lips, and all the bad decisions began.