Frigid Flora

twelve - drunk confessions

Chapter Twelve

"I think I'll have a dinner party," My mother mused as I came into the kitchen cocooned in my blanket of misery. I looked over her shoulder to see what she had her head buried in. She was reading Cosmopolitan. "The people throwing this party look so happy. We need to do this."

"Mum, that's an advert."

"Throwing a party might be fun." She continued as if I hadn't spoken, lifting her head out of the magazine to look at me.

Throwing a party most definitely did not sound fun. My experience from last night was enough to put me off any kind of social gathering for a lifetime, especially if they were labelled as a party.

"What's got you looking so grumpy this morning? Have you split up with Beckett?"

I frowned at her. "What? Mum, Beckett and I were never together."

"But he took you out and seemed like such gentleman! Even knowing that you didn't like touching he appeared fine wi-"

The image of Beckett lying bloody across our dinner table sprang to mind.

"Mum," I cut her rambling short. "Beckett and I aren't together, nor will we ever be."

She began mumbling things under her breath that I couldn't quite hear though it seemed to be related to cooking as she focused on her magazine again.

I made myself some Nutella toast before retreating back to my room where I intended to stay for the foreseeable future. Perhaps I'd raise a pug farm instead of going back to school the next day. An abundance of pug puppies was sure to keep my sadness at bay.

As the day progressed, the more my phone got clogged up with missed calls and unread text messages. When it reached three o'clock, curiosity got the better of me and I decided that I'd see who even cared that I'd left the party early.

Skylar.

Every missed call, every slurred, worried voicemail, and the vast majority of texts had been from Skylar. Everything had been from her, all except a single message.

You looked very pretty tonight.

That's all it read. It had been sent at around twelve last night, the time I roughly got home. I didn't recognise the number.

It was probably some kind of joke but it was still creeping me out. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I debated whether or not to reply to the stranger.

The only people I'd properly spoken to the previous night had been Skylar, Axel, Parker and Quinn. I had talked to Matthew in passing but it obviously wasn't him; he couldn't count how many fingers he had on one hand, much less get my number from someone and type out a text message.

It clearly wasn't Skylar.

Axel wouldn't. The boy had been freaked out enough as it was having said a provocative comment that Parker might have somehow overheard. I could hardly imagine Axel sending me a message that voiced his thoughts and could have been found by him.

Parker's number was already saved to my phone and with the way we had left things the night before, I couldn't envisage him sending me a creepy looking message from someone else's phone just to pay me a compliment. Not only was it a little too creepy (even for him), but it wasn't his style. He'd much prefer to say it to my face just to see how much he could make me squirm in discomfort.

If I denied that I had expected to receive at least one text or call with an apology from Parker then I'd be lying. In fact - much to my alarm - I had been tossing and turning for the majority of the night thinking about why he hadn't just apologised straight away. I wasn't certain what I wanted an apology for. Sleeping with Quinn? Yelling at me for rejecting him when he didn't give me enough time to do so? Yelling at me in general? Hurting my feelings? All of the above? My head was a jumbled mess. Making sense of one train of thought was like trying to make a sentence out of Alphabetti Spaghetti in the dark.