We Are the Rebellious Youth (All Time Low fanfiction | Alex Gaskarth)

Chapter Fifty-Six: Happy New Year

Alex's POV:

"Okay, okay. Just go and have fun. We'll be safe." I ushered my parents towards the front door and opened it for them before pushing them out.

"Have fun!" Mickey shouted from the kitchen, out of sight.

"You know the usual, call us when something goes wrong," my mom ordered right as I wanted to close the door.

"Of course, I will." I nodded and finally shut the door.

It was New Year's Eve and they were letting me throw a party while they had their own party to go to. They had celebrated Christmas in England, but were back here for New Year's I was lucky to have parents that consented to me throwing parties. Quite frankly, their own New Year's party was going to be a lot different than mine, yet they still allowed me to do it without supervision. The bottles of alcohol were already lined up on the bar in the kitchen, and there already were bowls with snacks filled to the brim, including bags to fill them up again.

But the party wasn't going to start for another hour, or two if you considered people never showing up on time.

I walked back into the kitchen and saw Mickey taking a look at the assortment of drinks we had while sipping from a red cup.

"Already drinking?" I teased with a smug grin.

She turned around and gave me a look. "Um, yeah. I heard the front door close, so I immediately got something. Who do you think I am?"

"I think you're you." I went up to her and kissed her. "And you look very pretty."

"I didn't try much more than usual," she frowned at the compliment. It wasn't like she was disagreeing with me, she was just unsure where it was coming from.

"Well, you did the... thing... with your hair." I twirled one of the wavy red locks softly with my forefinger. "I like it curly."

"It might be nice now, but it's horrible the way it is naturally."

"I like it in those old pictures of you as well," I argued back.

"Fuck off." She rolled her eyes and pushed me away as the doorbell rang.

While it was my house--or technically my parents'--she went to open for whoever was on the other side. I followed her as she waltzed over to the door with the red solo cup still in her left hand. She swiftly opened the door to reveal Rian waiting for one of us to open it for him. His car was parked out just on the street and he was dressed in a way that said he was here for the party, not just dropping by before coming back later.

"Rian," I laughed and shook my head at him, "you do realize that the party doesn't start for another few hours, right? Most people come late, not super early."

"I know," he glared at me and entered, "I'm not stupid. Mickey invited me."

My gaze shifted over to Mickey. "Since when do you invite people over to my house?"

"It's Rian." She shrugged, acting like that explanation was enough. And, weirdly enough, it was.

"If you were hoping to sneak in a quicky, I'm sorry, Alex," Rian mockingly apologized.

"No, that's for one minute past midnight," I retorted.

"You'll first have to find me," Mickey smirked with a wink before pushing her cup into Rian's hands. "Here, drink this."

Rian brought the cup to his lips without questioning her, which was very unlike him, usually he was very skeptical about anything Mickey did. He must have trusted her. But that trust was quickly broken. His face scrunched up in disgust and he coughed loudly.

"The fuck is in this shit?!" he exclaimed, pursing his lips as he tried to get rid of the taste.

"Everything," Mickey shrugged and strolled back over to the assortment of drinks.

"Everything? Why the fuck would you mix everything together?!"

"It just does the job," I answered with a smirk and winked at Mickey.

"God, well first of all, you guys are weird," Rian scoffed with a shake of his head and quickly put his cup on the kitchen table, "and second of all, I'm not drinking that shit."

That got Mickey to spin around towards his direction in no time. She gave him a scolding look, picked up the cup and forced it back into his hands. If only it hadn't involved alcohol, and it would have seemed very motherly of her. This, however, was the opposite of responsible.

"Nope, we had a deal." Mickey crossed her arms and gave Rian a stern look. "Drink up."

"A deal, huh?" I butted in, both amused and wondering what the deal was.

"Yeah," was all that Mickey said with a single nod before patting Rian on the cheek. "You've gotta loosen up a little."

"Fine," he grumbled and hesitantly took another small sip of the concoction.

Mickey and I started seriously pre-gaming while Rian nursed his drink for way too long. Although I was used to it by now after my first taste during Halloween, I also absolutely couldn't stand the wretched taste. I would down it in one go, knowing it was worse to take it slowly. It was made perfectly for its purpose. You chugged it, and it didn't take long to hit you. Why Rian needed to do so, I did not know.

Slowly but surely, the house started filling with people from school. The music was turned up and drinks were poured constantly. The upper floor was practically off limits. I didn't want to ruin the party, but I couldn't fuck up a promise made to my parents. The basement, however, was free for all. Although nobody was really paying attention to it, the TV was on so when it was time for the countdown, we could at least see and not miss it.

At one point, I found myself downstairs in the basement playing beer pong. It wasn't my favorite, but any drinking game was good in my book. It made the sheer joy of drinking even more fun. What made it even better was Mickey being my partner. Because of her, our opponents were being completely destroyed. It was rare for her to miss--although that did happen as well, but the question was if that was on purpose or not. Whenever she got one in, she still got excited and threw her hands up in the air, sometimes kissing me.

"Your turn," she smiled and handed me the ball after the opposing team had missed yet again.

I picked it up from the palm of her hand and aimed at the single cup still left standing on the other side. Of course, I horribly missed and the ping-pong ball bounced off the table and into the crowd of people.

"I'll get it!" Mickey announced and drunkenly ran in the direction where it had disappeared to.

We others just shrugged and continued playing with a spare ball. The other guy missed, then I missed, and then it was their turn again. Mickey wasn't back yet, but they managed to throw it into one of the cups. I groaned in defeat but didn't complain all too much as I started chugging the beer. But before I could get halfway, somebody knocked into me, causing me to spill everything down my shirt.

I swore loudly and threw my empty cup on the floor. I was completely drenched, but couldn't leave the game. Lucky for me, they didn't manage to get another cup. I quickly tossed the ball back to their side and managed to get it in their last cup, finally finishing the game officially. While it was always thrilling to watch somebody chug, I left without taking a glimpse.

Having beer spilled on you sucked, having half a cup poured on you was even worse. It could ruin the rest of the party. I was not going to keep walking around with a beer-soaked shirt if there was an entire closet of clean clothes upstairs in my bedroom.

I completely forgot about Mickey having gone off into her own direction and the fact I would no longer being there if she returned. Instead, I pushed through the crowd to get to the stairs so I could go upstairs. There were more people upstairs drinking, socializing, singing, and dancing. The TV was on, a few minutes displayed on the countdown. But I had one goal. And that goal was to change.

So, I continued walking and went up the stairs. While I did say nobody was allowed to go upstairs, I expected people to have disrespected that. However, not a single soul was up there other than a drunk Zack who emerged from the bathroom.

"Dude!" He exclaimed and came up to me. "I've been looking everywhere for you!"

"I got beer thrown all over me," I complained in return.

"Well, that's not a good way to start the new year."

"I still have a couple of minutes," I pointed out.

"Then go fix it," he urged and gave me a pat on the back, pushing me in the direction of my bedroom, before stumbling over to the stairs himself to go back to the party.

I went into my room and opened my closet, staring at my clothes for a while until I decided to just go for the t-shirt that was on the very top. As I pulled off my beer shirt, I groaned out 'fuck' loudly as the wet fabric his my face. It smelled absolutely horrible. It was the worst thing ever. I couldn't throw that shirt onto the floor any quicker. My chest was still damp, but I pulled on the clean shirt so I wouldn't have to miss any more of the party.

"Why are you in here making sounds like you're having sex?" Mickey asked as she pushed open the door, somebody being dragged in behind her.

"I sound disgusted when having sex?" I frowned, wondering why she was even bringing this up with another girl in the room with us.

"You were swearing under your breath and groaning a lot," she shrugged and pulled in her friend before closing the door behind them. I was utterly confused, not able to identify this stranger with how much I had had to drink.

"I got beer spilled on me, it was worth swearing about," I replied, pointing at the soiled shirt before noticing her own white tank-top had a brown stain on it as well. She wasn't drenched, but it was quite noticeable. "Seems like you're here for the same thing."

"I saved Olivia from some guy hitting on her without her wanting him to," Mickey replied easily, taking off her shirt without thinking twice. "He got way mad and splashed me with his rum and coke." She then pushed me away from my closet and grabbed one of my shirts instead of one of her own from her bag. "Unlike you, I didn't spill it all over myself."

"Somebody bumped into me!" I argued to defend myself, trying to remember where I knew the name 'Olivia' from.

"Sure." She nodded and put on my shirt, which was oversized on her. "Anyway, Olivia's here! Woo!O-LIV-I-A!"

I blinked a couple of times, trying to get my vision to focus as I stared at this Olivia girl. When I finally saw her face properly for a split second, I knew exactly who it was. "Oh! Old-childhood-friend Olivia!"

"You're so drunk," Mickey chuckled and leaned into me, practically hanging off of me. "You couldn't recognize her. And I'm so druuuunk. All's good."

"You guys are a mess," Olivia's high voice commented as she laughed at us.

"Our shirts are a mess," Mickey corrected her and stood up using her own strength again.

She scrambled towards her bag and dug through it. After pushing away all her clothes, she pulled out that diary of hers. I had no clue she had that thing with her and didn't even know why she would have. Earlier, it seemed like she was surprised to see Olivia.

"Here you go." Mickey gave it to her after she had some trouble standing back up. "I've added some stuff to it and was going to give it later, but you're here now!"

"I'll try to keep it safe." Olivia accepted it, quite obviously not as drunk as we were.

"Good."

Just a second later, the noise coming downstairs from the party changed completely. It wasn't just a jumble of conversations anymore. Everybody started counting down the seconds to midnight. Although we were missing it and even running downstairs wouldn't give us enough time, I at least was glad that I was around Mickey. If everything had happened just a few minutes later, I would not have found her.

"Here's to another shitty year!" Mickey yelled out in triumph right after everybody shouted 'Happy New Year' to each other.

She kissed me deeply before turning around and planting a kiss on Olivia's lips as well. Without another peep, she walked out of the room. Olivia and I shared a confused look. First of all, Mickey kissed her out of the blue. Second of all, what was with the attitude? I, personally, thought this year hadn't been too bad for her. You know, with--although it sounds selfish--me coming into her life, and Rian, and Jack, and Zack just a little.

"You do realize your girlfriend just kissed me, right?" Olivia asked, also confused about why I was just standing there.

"Yeah," I shrugged, "she sometimes does that. It doesn't mean much, though."

"I get that. But she just walked off. Is there anything stopping her from doing it to other people downstairs?"

I stood there frozen for a while, thinking over what she just said with my cloudy mind. "Oh, fuck."

I quickly ran out of the room and shouted out Mickey's name as I bolted down the stairs.