Alcohol and My Know-It-All

2 Unfortunate Familiarity

"Are you guys ready to party?!" Adelaide threw her arms in the air, bursting with energy.

My smile quickly turned to a frown as she approached me with a curling iron. "Why do I have to curl my hair?"

"Because you look better with your hair curled, and we have to be on our A-game tonight." Adelaide looked at me through the mirror and smiled.

"I'm going to ignore the fact that you said I'm unattractive 99.9% of the time. Not because it was rude or anything, but because it simply is not true."

I brought the death stick to my hair, wincing as I wrapped a piece around it. My hair was weird and barely wavy, but I liked it that way. I couldn't justify curling my hair every day, nor would I want to wake up early enough to do it.

"Are we ready?" Calliope approached us not only in that red dress but in heels and lipstick that made her smile even more beautiful.

"Look at you!" I giggled.

"Yeah, we're ready." Adelaide took our arms and we followed her down the stairs. My mom sat at the dining table, reading a book.

"And where do you think you girls are going?"

"Don't worry mom. We'll be responsible." I smiled widely, selling it as much as I could.

She sighed giving me a hug, "don't do anything you'll regret." She whispered in my ear. I nodded as we pulled away.

"You girls look beautiful, go have fun. But not too much fun!" I gave her a kiss on the cheek before grabbing my car keys from the table.

___

We drove drown a car packed street, lights and people showing the way to Kai's house better than the yellow brick road helped Dorothy find the Wizard of Oz. After searching for a spot to park we got out of the car looking flawless as hell.

I took a couple deep breaths, everything would be okay. It doesn't matter if Damien is here or not because I am over him and I am over this lifestyle. I had to reassure myself because even deep down I knew I shouldn't do this.

As we approached the front door we saw eyes fall on us immediately. My self-assurance shrank. There was no way they wouldn't know I was here. Clarissa hadn't talked to me since that night no matter how many times I tried to get in contact. I smiled weakly at them all before taking a step into the humongous house. Calliope smiled deviously with enough confidence for the both of us, but Adelaide? Well Adelaide being the shyest one out of us, had red cheeks and refused to look up from her expensive heels.

"Let's do this." Calliope smiled at us, grabbing our hands she forced us to merge with the crowd.

____

I headed over to the keg, hoping to find one of my friends there. Not even an hour into the party and they'd already managed to leave me. I didn't know how they exactly disappeared but they did. They promised me we'd stick together, and I was determined to uphold that promise.

The kitchen was filled with bottles and sweaty, intoxicated people. It was one of the few places I'd encountered in the house that had decent lighting. I scanned the faces in the room but my search brought no luck. I leaned up against the wall trying to figure out what to do now.

These stupid party lights Jake had set up were giving me a headache and the music constantly shaking my soul was more than enough to make me want to leave. How the hell did I do this every night? Oh yeah, I laughed to myself. The alcohol. A generous amount of an alcoholic beverage always did the trick. A sigh parted my lips, my taste buds salivated remembering the weird mixes Damien used to make for me. Well there I go thinking about him again.

"Here," my eyes meet those of a tall boy I didn't recognize. He held out an unopened beer bottle that glistened as it caught the few wandering light beams from the party a room over.

"What?"

"I saw you drooling over that keg." He shrugged, soft brown eyes flickered to my face completely unaware of my discomfort. "Take it, my arm is tired."

"No, I-" He took a hold of my wrist, warm electricity from his touch met the coldness of the beer as he wrapped my fingers around it.

"You look like you need it," he said letting go of my hand.

I hadn't had anything alcoholic to drink in months. But there was a familiar party girl that still owned half of my conscience no matter how hard I tried to push her out. She was the girl that screwed the cap off and brought the bottle to my lips. The one that welcomed the soothing as it slipped down my throat, captivating my taste buds. It was her that missed the taste, wasn't it? The bottle was almost halfway gone, regret on the back of my mind when an eruption of screams started bouncing through the air. I jumped off the wall, whipping my head around the room looking for the source. My heart beat quickly, jumping into my throat with each irregular thump.

"Are you okay?" His face scrunched together as his eyes inspected me. He reached his hand out, touching the side of my arm. In an instant, my body was filled with enough foreign electricity to make me flinch away. "Whoa." He held his hands up, "Sorry."

I shut my eyes tightly, through the blackness clusters of light swirled. "They screamed because the song changed." Why was he still here? I pushed that aside with a heavy breath that I was trying to regulate. My ears buzzed with sound fragments, old memories reflected the noise.

"I know it was the song, okay? It just scared me." My mind was still replaying memories from the last party I went to but I begged myself to let them be shut out with the bitter taste of beer. The bottle became light, I rubbed the bottle between my palms. I thought of the alcohol absorbing into my bloodstream the same way the once faint party girl from last year was becoming part of me again. I screwed up and broke a promise.

"Do you want another one?"

My eyes flickered up to his face hesitantly. I opened my mouth to speak when a loud thump sounded from the kitchen entrance. "I don't understand how something that drunk can be enjoyable." The two across from us were sloppily kissing each other if you could even call it that. The guy's hands roamed her body hungrily. A wave of pain hit me that I fought with disgust as I remembered the way Damien kissed me when we were that drunk.

Damien.

I took another look at the two leaned up against the opposite wall, the guy all too familiar. Even in the dim lighting if you knew what you were looking for it was easy to find.

And I did, on the guy's elbow was a scar. In my life, I'd only met one guy with a scar like that, Damien.

When he was younger he fell off his bike really hard, sliding across the sidewalk with his elbow. It was Damien who was making out with some random girl. They started to pull away from each other but my eyes were not moving. Drops of jealousy slowly consumed me proving to be more dangerous than the alcohol.

In a swift, familiar motion I grabbed the guy that had given me the beer, smashing my lips against his. He hardly had a second to react before I pressed my tongue to the seam of his lips. Whether he realized what was going on or not he allowed me access.

The strong scent of alcohol tickled my nose but I was used to it. My arms reached up and tangled around his neck, hair brushed lightly against my fingers. His lips slowly started to move away from my own, still trying to process what happened he stared at me with big eyes. I glanced to the other side of the room to be impressed with how I made Damien feel. He was staring at us, his jaw cocked and veins more noticeable. When he caught my stare he grabbed the girl and led her out of the kitchen.

"I'm Leo," he breathed heavily.