by Lexi Archer
2: Dragged Out
"Are you ready for a party?" Valerie asked.
I shook my head. Her enthusiasm was almost infectious. Almost. The trouble was I just wasn't in much of a partying mood. Not tonight.
Apparently some of my mood was obvious on my face. Valerie put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. "There is no way you're backing out on going to this party Madison. I don't care if you are still moping around. You can only mope for so long!"
I rolled my eyes. "Come on Valerie, it's only been a week!"
"Which should be more than enough time to get over a breakup," she said. "Now get up. We’re going out! You're not going to back out on this party for the first time in years. Especially when we’re all about to be scattered to God knows where!"
I sighed again. Valerie did have a point. It wouldn't be much longer before I wasn't going to house parties. No, I'd be going to parties on campus. At frat houses maybe. It was hard to tell what kind of new fun I might get up to once I got out to state. All I did know was that at the end of the summer it was going to be the end of my time with Valerie, and that still made me sad every time I thought about it.
Great. That's just what I needed. More sadness on top of already moping around because I was upset over breaking up with David. The asshole. Breaking up with me because he wanted to "explore his options." The son-of-a-bitch. He'd probably been cheating on me already. As though he could ever get a girl as a great as me.
No Madison. That wasn't the way to think. That wasn't a good attitude to have. Sure I'd been blessed in the beauty department, but that was no excuse for taking it for granted. It was definitely no excuse to think poorly of whatever girl David ended up with.
No, better to feel sorry for her because she was stuck with that asshole!
I glanced over to Valerie and smiled. It looked like she was already prepared for a night on the town when she came over. I’m sure she'd assumed I would give into her demands. At least from the way she was wearing that sparkly getup it left no doubt that she was ready for a night of partying whether or not I came along with. Though I had a feeling she had no intention of leaving me behind.
"You're not going to let me get away, are you?" I asked.
Valerie shook her head. "Not a chance!"
I sighed. "Fine. Let me get ready."
The party was the same as it had always been, and in a way that was comforting. Derek's parents had been nice enough to give over their massive house to the partying crowd for several years now. I was pretty sure that was in violation of a couple of laws about furnishing alcohol to minors, but it's not like anybody was going to come out and hassle a judge’s son for throwing a party.
No, in a small town like this that was what was referred to as a "career limiting move" in law enforcement circles. And so his house had acted as sort of a no-fly zone for the local constabulary which meant everybody was free to party and have fun as long as they dropped off their keys at the beginning of the night.
Derek's house. I closed my eyes as I stepped through the front door. As the music washed over me. Just stepping in here felt like I was going into hostile territory. It felt like I was being overwhelmed with all the memories associated with this place. Coming over here for dinner. Hanging out in the pool out behind the house. Taking pictures out in the front lawn for prom.
Yeah, this house was definitely loaded with memories. Memories that had been mostly good right until about a week ago when he dumped me. Sure I hadn't been entirely sure we were going to stay together after graduation considering I was going off to state and he was going off to a private school, but it still sucked being dumped whether or not it was something you saw coming.
“Madison! I can’t believe you’re here!”
I frowned as Cynthia made her way through the crowd with a couple of drinks in hand. She was the last person in the world I wanted to see in this moment, but at the same time she was offering me a beer and I figured that was worth putting up with her two-faced bitchiness for just a little while.
“Cynthia. So good to see you,” I replied.
I hoped my response sounded at least as insincere as hers did. I’m sure the reason she couldn’t believe I was here was because she knew all about me and Derek breaking up. I’m sure she’d planned on having a whole evening with him to herself, and now I was ruining it just by existing and being at this party.
Well that was her fucking problem.
“I’m so sorry about you and Derek,” she said.
“Yeah I’m sure you are,” I said. “So did you call him right after you found out we broke up, or did you wait until the party tonight to hit on him?”
“Madison!” Valerie said.
I didn’t care. This snake had been hanging all over Derek whenever she thought I wasn’t around and I was sick of it. Now that I wasn’t dating Derek anymore and didn’t have to worry about playing nice so I didn’t hurt the feelings of his “special female friend?” Well the claws could come out.
“God you don’t have to be such a bitch,” Cynthia said.
“Right. Have fun with Derek,” I said. “I’m sure he’s going to find another “special friend” to hang out with as soon as he gets sick of you. Maybe he already has.”
I looked across the party to where Derek was chatting with Khara Anderson. A blonde girl who was a little short in the brains department but very blessed in the tits department. Guess which asset most guys seemed to care about when they were drooling over her? Hint, it wasn’t her SAT score which was rumored to be so abysmal that she couldn’t even get into the local community college that took anyone with a pulse and a student loan.
“Fuck!” Cynthia said, and then she was off through the crowd to track down Derek. I smiled a thin smile. Let her enjoy a taste of the medicine she’d put me through for so long. It served her right.
“You didn’t have to start the party by starting a fight,” Valerie said.
“Right, but I wanted to. I’m feeling the claws coming out tonight Val,” I said. “Besides, if I’m going to enjoy this shindig then I might as well really enjoy it, right?”
“Whatever you say. Can I expect more of that as the night goes on?”
“Maybe. We’ll see how it goes.”
Shouting broke out from across the party. I had the singular joy of watching Cynthia starting to lay into Khara while Derek sat back and looked at the whole thing with a shell shocked expression. I might’ve gotten upset with him about his special female friends in private, but I’d never done anything as wild as getting into a fight in the middle of a party like that. I wondered if he was regretting his decision to use Cynthia as his rebound already.
His gaze moved out over the party and finally fell on me. I favored him with a thin smile and raised my glass in a mock salute. His eyes narrowed and he gave me the finger.
Well then. I guess I wasn’t the only one who was in the mood to act a little petty and childish this evening.
Petty. Two could play at that game. Turnabout was fair play and all that. I turned and looked out over the party to see if there were any promising prospects that I could use for a little bit of rebound fun of my own. And if I happened to have that rebound fun in plain view of Derek?
Well that was all the better as far as I was concerned.
The only problem? All the guys at this party were pretty much the same guys who ever came to these parties. Guys I’d either dated before and didn’t want to have a second go-round any more than I wanted to give Derek a second chance or guys who were so far below my league that I wouldn’t give them the time of day. I told myself that wasn’t egotistical or bitchy or anything. I was just realistic about what I looked like and the kind of guy I could pull.
And tonight it looked like there were no new worlds to conquer. A pity. I really would’ve liked to get one over on Derek while he was busy working his way through the rest of the cheerleading squad.
“Slim pickings tonight,” I said.
“Yeah? May
be if you relaxed your standards just a little you wouldn’t have that problem?” Valerie said.
I sniffed. “As if. It’s not egotistical to want to date a guy who’s in the same league as me.”
“If you say so, but if you’re waiting for that then you might as well wait until you get off to college. It’s just the same old crowd here tonight,” Valerie said.
There was a touch of annoyance to her voice as well, and why not? For all that she was getting on me for not giving guys a chance, she did the exact same thing. We were fucking royalty at this school, and the prom queen wasn’t going to deign to get with one of the peasants even if we were out of school and heading off to college soon enough.
No thank you!
“Looks like this party is going to be a bust,” I said with a sigh. Not that I’d expected anything else. Still, it was a disappointment. These parties were supposed to be the most fun I’d ever had, and now I was sitting here dumped with just Valerie to keep me company. Not that Valerie was bad company, necessarily.
I looked out over the crowd one final time and my eyes caught a couple of guys moving through the crowd. One wasn’t bad looking. He had a cute face and sort of a geeky build going for him, though he seemed a little out of place here. He kept looking around and gawking at everything like he wasn’t used to this sort of party.
Which was probably true. I didn’t recognize that guy or his friend.
His friend. Damn. Talk about yummy! How could I have ever missed that guy before? He had the sort of good looks that made me think he should be modeling underwear in a catalog or something. He wore a tight shirt that showed off his muscled body and I liked what I saw. I also wondered why I’d never seen him before.
“Valerie,” I said, grabbing her arm and pulling her towards me. Pointing her to the two guys who’d just made their way into the party and were being greeted by a couple of other guys who looked familiar, but I’d never really talked to them before. I think their names were Derek and Connor? Something like that.
“What?”
“Who the hell is that guy?”
Valerie squinted and then smiled. “You mean Sean Sinclair, or the geeky guy standing next to him?”
As though on cue the geeky guy looked over in our direction. And he immediately looked away with a blush. I was used to that sort of reaction. He wouldn’t be the first guy to have the hots for me who didn’t have the balls to actually come up and do something about it. Not that I’d be interested in him coming up anyways, but his friend on the other hand…
Damn. Talk about yummy!
“Why have I never seen him before?” I asked.
Valerie sighed. It was a long suffering sigh that I was used to. One that told me she was about to tell me just how I could’ve met that guy before if I’d just followed some of her expert advice somewhere along the line.
“Remember all those times I told you that you needed to come with me to swim meets? That there were always a bunch of hot guys at those meets that you should check out?”
“Yeah?” I replied with a sinking feeling. I knew where she was going with this.
“Well maybe if you’d gone with me to one of those meets you would’ve seen Sean Sinclair before the end of our school career when it’s too late for you to do anything about it!”
“So he was on the swim team?”
“He wasn’t on the swim team. He was the swim team. This guy won state in his event.”
“What event is that?”
Valerie giggled. “You won’t believe me if I told you.”
“C’mon Val, stop being so lame,” I said. I didn’t know the first thing about swimming. I’d always hung out with the football team and the basketball team. It was one of my duties as a member of the cheerleading squad. I always thought Valerie was a little weird for always going to swim meets, but now that I saw what was on offer at those meets and thought about seeing guys like Sean in nothing but a speedo…
Well let’s just say that I could see the nature of that sport’s appeal all of a sudden. That was something I was going to have to keep in mind when I got to college! Chances are the guys there would be just as hot, if not more so.
“He did the breast stroke,” Valerie said, giggling even more. I looked over at him and blushed. I’m sure that was some sort of swimming thing, but I was thinking of something else entirely and it was getting me good and wet between the legs.
Yeah, this was a guy that I could see myself getting a little revenge with. Maybe more than a little revenge. Damn.
“I need to talk to him,” I said.
“Looks like you don’t need to go to him,” Val said with another giggle.
I looked back in their direction hope rising inside me. That hope was dashed as I realized that it wasn’t that Sean guy coming towards me, though. No, he stood back and stared at me with an intensity that sent another fire raging between my legs, but he wasn’t the one approaching. It was the cute geeky one who was coming up to us.
Damn. I hoped he was going for Valerie, but something about the way he looked at me when they walked through the door told me that wasn’t going to be the case.
“Talk about pulling the wrong one,” I muttered.
Then the guy was standing right in front of him. I fixed him with my best disinterested smile, but from the way he grinned it looked like he was taking it the wrong way. Damn. He was going to be one of those guys who had no clue about how to deal with women. I knew it.
“Madison?” he asked.
“Um, yeah?” I said. I had no idea who he was, though he seemed to expect that. The smile grew even wider.
“I was so glad to see you here at the party. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for so long, and I figure there’s no time like now, right? Last chance before we all go off to college and all,” he said.
“Right. So can I help you?” I asked. I tried to sound neutral. I wasn’t interested in the guy, but I also didn’t want to be a total bitch to him or anything. Even if he did seem a little oblivious when it came to the whole talking to women thing.
“Well I was wondering if maybe you’d want to go see a movie with me or something sometime? I know you’re busy tonight at the party, but I figured maybe when you had some free time or something…”
I sighed and he seemed to realize that he wasn’t doing so well for the first time since he approached me. He was asking me to a movie and we hadn’t even said two words to each other? Even if I was interested in the guy that would’ve seemed a little off. When I wasn’t particularly interested in him, though? That was a date death sentence.
“Look, I’m sure you’re a nice guy and all,” I said
I chose my words carefully. It seemed like the guy was really putting himself out there tonight, and I didn’t want to completely crush him even if there wasn’t a chance in hell we were ever going on that date he was talking about.
He looked down and suddenly seemed angry. A lot more angry than I thought the situation called for. Most guys took it in stride if I didn’t want a date, but from the look on his face he was taking this pretty damn personally.
Weird, and yet another reason why I wasn’t in the mood to give him the time of day beyond this brief conversation. And yet he’d probably go back and talk with his friends about what a bitch I was for turning him down and never mention anything about how awkward he was, how he jumped right into asking for a date without even trying to talk to me, or how weird he made it when he realized he was getting turned down.
Men. They could be really fucked up. I hoped college guys would be better than this.
“Right. I see where this is going,” he said. “Well fuck you too!”
And then he disappeared into the crowd after confirming every reservation I’d had since the moment I laid eyes on him.
“Well that was weird,” Valerie said.
“Tell me about it,” I said. “It’s a damn shame, too. If that Sean guy is anything like his friend then I don’t want anything to do with him.”
“Actually Sean is supposed to be a pretty nice guy even if he doesn’t go to these parties all that often. Not sure what’s up with his friend.”
“Interesting,” I said.
I almost went over to talk to Sean even after what happened with his friend, but then his buddy, I realized he hadn’t even bothered to tell me his name which was yet another red flag in my book, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the crowd where they disappeared.
A damn shame, but the night was young.
3: Party
“What a bitch!” Kyle said as he yanked me through the crowd.
I turned around and spared one last lingering glance for Madison. Damn was she hot. She was like a walking wet dream. She was the sort of girl that made you want to sculpt a marble statue and then beg the gods to bring her to life so you could do her, only skipping the marble stage and getting right to the doing because she was obviously flesh and blood.
And as I looked at her she did something that made my heart melt even as it caused my cock to stand at attention. She smiled and gave a little wave, more a slight wiggling of her fingers than anything else, as I was pulled off into the crowd by Kyle. Her friend, a girl I recognized because she was always in the stands at swim meets staring at us like we were pieces of meat in a speedo even if I didn’t know her name, also smirked.
Damn. Now I really wanted to go over and talk to her. The only problem? Kyle was dragging me through the crowd and fuming about flaming out with the first girl he’d had the courage to ask out in a couple of years. And boy had he flamed out in a major way.
“I told you it wasn’t a good idea for you to go up to her like that,” I said. “You haven’t ever talked to her before and suddenly you’re asking her on a date?”