chapter one: stranger danger

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STRANGER DANGER

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STRANGER DANGER

STRANGER DANGER

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connie's villa

letting it slip to your best friend that you had zero plans the saturday night before senior year started? rookie mistake.

not even an hour later, you found yourself perched on a shaky barstool at a fancy home bar, clutching a blood orange and cardamom cocktail, in what could only be described as an end-of-summer sweatbox.

the basement sweltered, lacquered in a golden haze that softened flaws into fantasy. the air was thick and dense, a stew of spilt alcohol, budget perfume, and too many bodies packed too close. from the wall-mounted speakers, bass thrummed beneath your heels, an r&b remix so distorted it didn't sound like music anymore but a second heartbeat pounding in your chest. 

around you, partygoers grinded like one writhing organism in a primal dance: tongues colliding and hands wandering without a care. 

you didn't hate parties. you usually enjoyed them. but this? this was something else. a hedonistic purgatory full of half-drunks on the prowl, chasing the next high, the next kiss, the next mistake.

it was, without a doubt, your personal version of hell.

but for sasha braus? this was heaven.

pink dress, pink dress...

you observed the oscillating masses in search of your best friend—a needle in a haystack—and maybe, also a way out of your spiralling thoughts.

the only reason you'd even contemplated stepping out of your house tonight was sasha's insistence that it might be a good distraction from the fresh wounds of a recent breakup.

in theory, her suggestion sounded plausible: a night of carefree dancing, harmless flirting and maybe even a pretty stranger to take you home and erase him with their hands.

but in reality, surrounded by music that felt like the soundtrack to every painful memory and enough eye candy to make you nauseous, you felt like complete shit.

IF HAPPY EVER AFTER DID EXIST; levi ackermanWhere stories live. Discover now