𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐞 | machine gun kelly

62

'BETTER OFF DEAD' BY JADEN HOSSLER STREAMED IN rivulets through the speakers in the basement of Colson Baker's Encino LA mansion.

The lights were dimmed, and the music thrummed in the air in sync with each footstep, laugh, comment, and heart beat moving in the atmosphere.

On the walls were pristinely framed posters of Colson's concerts, album covers and magazine covers, accompanied with posters of artists that he possibly admired or was influenced by. Most notably, someone who stood out in that category to me was the elaborate flashing poster of Elvis that was glow in the dark in a hauntingly exquisite way as the lights flashed and dimmed in the basement courtesy of Colson's light system.

The basement sported a giant pool table, and all the guys were crowded around it, their eyes fixed hard on the game unfolding but their attentions wavering to other things guided by the drinks being taken and the joints being snuffed.

"It's been cloudy with a chance of depression
broke my heart and I learned my lesson
It's already over in my head
it's been cloudy with a chance of anxiety
Can't keep out the demons inside of me
maybe I'm just better off dead."

"Don't tell me you don't play," Sophie Lloyd-Colson's exuberant guitarist-spoke with a raise of her brow as she tipped her second glass and emptied it between her lips as the song reverberated in our background.

She had instantly found me when they had all arrived, throwing my anxious nervousness at meeting new people away as she dragged me swiftly into a conversation that had made me feel like we had known each other for months.

Her straight blonde hair was highlighted in sharp pink streaks, and she was taller than me by a few inches, yet her manner was so casual, it was as though her form had never let anything bother her in life. The way she carried herself was open, and it gave the sense that you knew her even though you'd only just meet her.

With me, it was the opposite. I couldn't imagine letting myself be so open in the way I stood or carried myself. I had always just been hard to crack, even when I was naïve. My depths had always been veiled behind curtains and locked inside boxes, and I had remained so.

Colson's manner had remined me of that fact always. The way he'd get so frustrated with me-the way I got frustrated with myself.

But still, I admired Sophie's own distinct manner, though I didn't envy it.

"Cause you love me and you hate me
Use your body to sedate me
And you make me fucking crazy
You made me miserable."

"I don't," I managed with a smile, a non-alcoholic drink in my own hand as I kept my eyes fixed on Colson, Jaden Hossler's voice thrumming in my ears.

It was his turn to strike, and he stood focused with the pink cue stick, his gaze scrutinizing the billiard balls scattered on the green pool table as his messy platinum hair fell over his forehead and into his eyes. The other guys were doing the same, strategizing how Colson would make his own move, and as a result, an intense silence had washed over the table as none of the guys moved.

"Well," Sophie swallowed the last gulp of her drink, "After these idiots are done, we girls will have a game of our own."

"Won't we?" She turned to glance at the two seated women at the gray sofa we were standing beside.

Kourtney Kardashian, the nearest to us, her dark hair wound tightly into a sleek small knot at the back of her head, broke out of her stupor as she looked away from her phone screen and looked at Sophie, a nonchalant expression on the woman's grim face.

In a morphing of strange worlds, she was married to Travis Barker now and was here to accompany him. Her man was shirtless, his wild and abundant tattoos on display as he whispered into Colson's ear, and pointed at the pool table suggesting ways that his friend could strike and score, all the while his naked torso glistened under the lights.