"Yes... I want you to leave me alone. I mean it."
The words leave a sickly taste in your mouth and you wash them down with even more wine, aware that the more you drink the more your resolve might weaken but you're not thinking straight.
"Do you tho...
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You'd fully expected the party to be excruciating, but in an entirely different way. You'd thought that you'd have to endure watching Van and Sophie entwined in a passionate embrace from across the room through gritted teeth, but there's none of that. In fact Van looks increasingly exasperated by her drunkenness, edging away as she paws at him longingly, clinging on to his arm to save herself from landing in an ungracious heap on the floor.
You try to keep yourself busy, refilling glasses and chatting to your friends, but you find your eyes keep trailing around the room, searching for Van. And whenever they find him he's looking right back, his own eyes swirling with a dark kind of determination as he watches you, a simmering hunger which is barely contained. You try to keep your distance but that doesn't ease the tension, in fact it just increases as the night wears on, spiking each time your gaze meets across the crowded room, unspoken words flowing between the two of you as you both imagine what could happen if you were to find yourselves alone again once more. But you can't let that happen. You just can't risk it...
You think back to simpler times, the three of you knocking back pints in the local pub together, Van dreaming his dreams of fame aloud whilst you and Larry giggled and held hands across the table and started your tentative flirtations. Van would roll his eyes and tease you both. In truth you'd always had a soft spot for Van back then, but that's all it ever was. He was too chaotic and impulsive for you to have ever considered him as boyfriend material. There'd been a drunken kiss at a party once when you'd let your guard down but you'd quickly dismissed it with a flippant remark when he'd turned up on your doorstep with bright eyes and a cheeky smile the following morning. Van had just laughed it off the way he did with most things in life back then, shrugging his shoulders with a comment of "you win some, you lose some!"
How times have changed. The rules of the game have become infinitely more complicated and all of a sudden you feel like Van won't settle for losing this time. It feels like the stakes have been raised and you're the highly coveted prize.
"Are you actually gonna relax and enjoy yourself Y/N?" You hear Larry's voice in your ear as he comes to stand behind you and you jump. "You seem so wound up. Is something wrong?"
You swivel your head around to look at him, grimacing at the creepy mask he's wearing. He's Michael Myers, complete with blood-stained boiler suit and menacing looking knife.
"You know what I'm like at our parties, I just wanna make sure everyone's okay and having a good time."
"Everyone is having a good time, so you can chill. Look... everyone's completely fine."
And you do look, taking in smiling, happy party-goers, your eyes flicking around the room until they come to rest on Van and Sophie. They're sitting on a sofa in the corner of the living room and for once Van isn't looking at you. He's brushing Sophie's hair back off her face with one hand, the other resting on her thigh which is draped over his lap. A sharp sting of jealousy shoots through you as you see her leaning in to whisper something in his ear, watch his lips curl into a smile.
