Angels Like You

Get the Party Started

I told Lizzie I was studying at Hunter's house. Toby had a friend named Tony that was already graduated and who lived in the general vicinity of Hunter. Tony had an older brother who looked like he could pass as a parent so when Lizzie walked to the front door with me, she was met by Reggie pretending to be Hunter's father. Tony sat in the living room with his back to the door, a textbook in front of him, pretending to be Hunter.

Reggie managed to answer all of Lizzie's questions without missing a beat. She didn't give any signs in the ten minutes she stood in the foyer talking to him that she was suspicious. I sat on the couch by Tony and watched as Toby, who stayed out of eyesight even though Lizzie hadn't met him, crushed up some pills and snorted them. when Lizzie wasn't looking, he slid some over for me and Tony with a bottle of water.

When Reggie moved so Lizzie's back was to us, I tossed the pills back and quickly swallowed the water. When taken like that, it took longer for the high to come, but I couldn't snort anything with Lizzie ten feet away. I pretended to study the book as Tony swallowed his pills.

"You have everything you need?" Lizzie asked. She started towards the living room and Toby ducked through the arches of the dining room. She put her hands on my shoulders and looked at the textbook—thankfully it was an actual textbook.

"Yeah," I said, "I think we're good." Tony nodded but didn't say a word.

"Okay. You kids have fun tonight. Your dad will pick you up tomorrow around noon. Maybe a little later depending on how work goes."

"Okay," I said, giving her a tight smile.

She hesitated for a moment, like maybe she suspected that something was wrong. She didn't question it. She turned and walked out of the house with a goodbye to Reggie.

As the door shut, a grin spread on my face. Toby whooped in the dining room before he came running into the living room.

"Alright, kids," he said as he flopped onto the couch next to me and draped his arm over my shoulders, "what do you say we go have some fun?"

"Let's do it," Tony said, reaching over and high-fiving Toby.

Reggie shook his head as he settled into the recliner. "I'm too old for that shit."

"You weren't invited anyway, asshole," Tony said as he got to his feet.

I followed them out of the house to Toby's car parked in the back. I beat Tony to the shotgun and took control of the radio before Toby could blast his God-awful music. It vaguely crossed my mind that it wasn't a good idea for him to drive after he'd just snorted whatever the pills had been, but the thought was only there for a moment. I'd driven way more fucked up than him and made it home in one piece. Most of the time. Sometimes. I'd lost my license for driving while high.

Shaking the thought from my mind, I settled on a song that had the real instruments Toby loved but lacked the screaming that he loved. Every time he played one of those songs for me, it made my ears feel like they were bleeding.

His hand rested on my knee as he drove. We hadn't labeled anything between us and it hadn't been anything more than a few innocent touches and one make-out session in his car during a program break. I didn't think I wanted labels. Labels always made life complicated. They were what had fucked me over when I'd first gotten in trouble. Everyone had started treating me differently, even people who had known me for years.

Whatever was going on with Toby, I wanted to keep it uncomplicated.

We all separated when we got to Toby's beach house. He went to play host while Tony disappeared into a sea of girls. I grabbed a drink and bummed a cigarette off someone on the back porch before I wandered down the steps towards the beach where a bonfire was roaring. Music mixed halfway down the path from the beach and the house. A very bad mashup.