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He hates that I like to party.
He says it’s unsafe, and he may be right. But I just don’t care.
All I care about is escaping my reality.
My parents are absent at best. I don’t know that they mean to be, or if the trauma of their past is just so great that they don’t know how to be a parent anymore.
They haven’t since I was nine years old.
I don’t remember much from that time. Just my parents being sad all the time. My aunt’s funeral. The anger and hatred toward her husband, technically my uncle I guess, not that he’s been called that for a long time. They refuse to accept that he ever existed, and most days I do too.
He wasn’t around much even when he was part of the family. I think he was in the Navy or something. I don’t know, and I don’t really care, if I’m being honest.
I down another shot from the ones spread across the high table in front of us. I’m approaching the point of no return, and that’s exactly where I like to be.
Numb.
Free.
Happy.
Or at least as close to that last one as I can ever be.
I don’t really remember my aunt, but everything that happened after her death shaped the rest of my life and forced me into a life of misery I can’t escape.
My father is too protective to let me move away, forcing me to go to college in Boston rather than New York like I begged him. He doesn’t even know I’m out tonight. He rarely does. For someone as overprotective as he is, he doesn’t do a very good job of keeping an eye on me, or maybe I’m just really good at sneaking around behind his back.
Mom doesn’t give a fuck what I do. She doesn’t give a fuck about much these days. She just wants to get home after a long day at the hospital and drink her prescribed bottle of wine per night.
Maybe Dad should be more worried about her than me. She’s the one who is fading away before our eyes, and it won’t be long until the hospital realizes she’s no longer fit to be a nurse.
Then what?
She’ll just be at home all the time, drinking, slowly killing herself?
I throw back another shot at the thought.
“Wanna dance?” Bree asks, her long blonde hair curled down her back and her pupils blown wide from the E we’ve done that I can barely see the green around the edge.
I nod and finish the rest of my drink, leaving the empty glass behind with her brother Miles and his girlfriend Audrey. They don’t party like we do and tend to spend our nights out gettinghandsy at the table. I’d almost think the two of them have an exhibition kink if it weren’t for the fact that his sister is around. But she’s learned to ignore them sucking face the same way I have.
We push our way through the throes of people until we’re in the center of the dance floor. The two of us have always been like two peas in a pod. We’re basically the same person, and that means we both love to be the center of attention when we’re drunk.
I drop my head back and allow the music to wash over me. If I’m honest, club music isn’t really my favorite, but there aren’t many clubs in Boston that play metal, and I’ve kinda just gotten used to it at this point.
Hands fall onto my hips, and a small smile tugs up the corners of my lips. The stranger’s fingers dig into the fabric of my tiny dress, barely covering my ass and tits, right before a stubbled chin brushes over my bare shoulder.
“If it isn’t the girl that always gets away.” His gravelly voice drifts over me. I’m hardly surprised Bryant is here. He is the owner after all, and he’s taken a liking to me over the last few months since we got our fake IDs and started frequenting The Vault. We hadn’t seen each other in years, since before my life fell apart when I was nine. Our parents used to be friends, but I guess when my aunt died, my parents stopped seeing their friends, and therefore I stopped seeing him and his brothers.
“And yet I come back every Saturday night.” I smirk as I turn my body in his grasp and wrap my arms around his neck. Bryant Hayes isn’t a good man, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he is hot as fuck. His dark hair and chiseled jaw would be enough to make me want to drop my panties for him, but it’s the emerald-green eyes that make my breath catch in my throat every time I see him.
And yet we’ve never fucked.
We’ve been skating around it for months, flirting, dancing, occasionally making out, but never going all the way.
I catch Bree’s gaze out of the corner of my eye and don’t miss her knowing smile. She thinks it’s crazy that I haven’t slept with him, but although I have very little respect for how my parents have handled our lives since Aunt Clarissa died, their lessons have been burned into my mind.
She died because she fell into the wrong crowd. She got addicted to drugs, used and used and used until she owed money to just about everyone, and then she died because of it.
