THERE WAS A party that night. Before I went home from school, Winnie asked me if I wanted to go with her and Summer, but I refused. The last party I went to was a disaster, and I wasn't planning on showing my face in another party ever again.

Clubs? Okay.

Bars? Okay.

Parties? Not okay.

I had a bad experience with parties ever since my seventeenth birthday party, so that definitely meant that I was not showing up at a party anytime soon after that. In fact, I doubted I would even throw an eighteenth birthday party. What if it would be a repeat of last year? This time, however, instead of my boyfriend being stolen, it would be my best friends? I had already lost one best friend and many other fake friends in the process. I doubted I could take losing another best friend again.

"Get up." Wesley dumped a bag on my stomach all of a sudden, making me cringe and shoot up almost instantaneously.

"What is your problem?" I winced, pushing the shopping bags off my body and onto the carpeted floor.

"I can't stand seeing you stay at home and weep like some weakling any longer."

"I'm not weeping."

I was sure he heard what I just said, but he did not reply. "So today, you'll be going to the party no matter what. Ryan Smith is the one hosting it, and I sure as hell am not missing it. I heard that his parties were legendary." Wesley's expression stayed neutral even as I scowled at him and sat up.

"Then go to the party. No one is stopping you," I grumbled, grabbing my pillow and burying my face into it.

"You love parties—"

"Loved parties."

"And you will be going to this one too. Come on, Ava. One, just one. Then I won't ever bother you about parties ever again."

I peeked at Wesley. His face remained expressionless, but his eyes were pleading.

Damn it.

"Fine," I grumbled, grabbed the bags, and headed toward the bathroom. "But you do know that Ryan Smith is Blake's best friend, right? That will mean that Blake is going to be there as well as Charlotte." I hissed out her name with as much venom as possible.

"Make it quick, unicorn! I don't like to be late." Wesley's voiced held bucket-loads of what victory would sound like, and I flipped him the bird without looking back.

Just making this decision alone, I could already tell that I was going to regret agreeing to go to this party. Big time.

I quickly slipped into the dress that Wesley got me and looked at myself in the mirror. The dress wasn't bad, but I wouldn't say it was my type too. Maybe it would've been if I was the old Avery. With a butt-short skirt and skin-tight design, the dress was insanely uncomfortable. The top of the dress, though, had a lovely black lace design. Grinning, I picked up a pair of scissors from near the basin, stripped off the dress, and carefully snipped it from where the end of my rib cage would be. Satisfied with the finished product, I slipped on the now–crop top, and strutted out of the bathroom in search of a pair of black ripped jeans. After slipping the jeans on, along with a pair of black high tops Converse, I realized that Wesley was spread lazily across my bed with my phone in his hands.

"What do you think you're doing?" I snapped, reaching out, and easily snatched my phone out of his hands.

"You have a very nice figure." He winked at me and nodded toward my phone. When I looked at the screen, I scowled. He was scrolling through my phone gallery before I emerged from the bathroom. In the picture, probably one of the first few, were Blake and me two years back. I was still wearing my short and tight-fitting cheerleader uniform with my hair up in a high ponytail. Blake's arms were wrapped around my waist as he pulled me in for a side hug. This was most likely taken during one of the in-school competitive games. Why I still had the picture on my phone, that I did not know.

Fuming with rage at the memory that came flooding back, I pressed the screen quickly and deleted the picture permanently from my phone. That was apparently the only picture of the both of us left on my phone, and I wasn't quite sure why I left that one particular picture if I had already deleted everything and burnt down all our printed photos.

"Don't go through my phone," I mumbled, throwing it back on my bed before heading toward my old dressing table. I swiped on a plum lip gloss, ran my hands through my lavender hair, and went back to my bed to grab my phone. "I thought we were in a rush?" I raised an eyebrow when I noticed Wesley cuddling with my pillow.

"Give me five seconds, woman."

"Do not call me woman," I snapped, made my way over to him, pulled him up by his ear, and made my way out of my room with him howling in pain right behind me.

***

"You're right, I guess. Ryan's parties are insane," I muttered as I took in the view. The huge house was already lit up with multi-strobe lights and insane teenagers were already dancing to the thumping music, which I could already hear way too clearly even when I was standing right across the street. Wesley was cupping his ear, but I pulled his hand, and his face contorted in the funniest way, showing anger, frustration, pain, and amusement.

"They never listen to me," he mumbled to himself, but I caught it easily. As we started making our way toward the party, the music only grew louder, and I could already feel my feet thumping along with the music.

"I'm going to go get a drink. You want anything?" Wesley turned to face me, and I nodded.

"Just a can of Coke. I don't want to get too drunk tonight since you'll most likely be drinking."

Wesley scoffed and rolled his eyes. "I don't need you to bring me home. I'll be having company tonight most likely." With his last words hanging in the air, he winked at me before strutting off to God knows where.

"Asshole," I scoffed and turned away.

A crowd of sweaty teenage bodies rubbed against each other on the dance floor, and I squeezed my way past them, elbowing someone in the process. Finally reaching the stairs, I turned my head to make sure no one was following me before I quickly made my way up.

Ryan Smith, Blake's best friend, was nothing but an absolute pain in the butt for me. Ever since Blake and I broke up, he had been hitting on me nonstop until I came back to school with a head of wild purple hair. He had totally forgotten the bro code and blatantly checked me out even when Blake was around. He thought I was an easy bait and had been like a pestering, bothersome fly for so long, thinking that I would have gone with his "wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am" attitude. Of course, I was in a terrible condition at that time, but I didn't give in and actually slept with him if you dirty freaks were wondering.

Nope. I slapped him across the face with my trusty heel on a Monday morning for the whole world to see. The mark of my signature black heel was imprinted on his face for the rest of the week, and sweet glory, it was one of my best weeks.

As I trudged through the halls looking for Ryan's room to sabotage, I noticed someone standing just in front of me by a few feet with a bottle in his hands and his head hung low. I edged closer toward the wall to dodge him, but when I was beside him, his hand suddenly shot out and held on to my wrist tightly as if he was hanging on to his dear life. When I tried to shake his hand off, his head finally rose to meet me, and I scowled when I noticed who it was.

Of course, how could I have missed it? His head of dirty blonde hair and signature black baseball jacket was already pretty obvious, but I was still a fool for choosing this particular corridor to search in.

"Let go, Ryder." I gritted my teeth and started to wildly shake my arm to break free from his grip.

"Avery, I—" Whatever he wanted to say was cut short when his face suddenly turned green, causing mine to pale in worry as well.

"Oh, ew. Hold it in. Don't throw up on me." I almost screamed at him and dragged him, with his hand still desperately holding my wrist, into the toilet just in time as he bent down and started to puke his guts out. Disgusted but not wanting to stand there just watching him, I patted his back with my free arm and reached forward to grab him a huge roll of toilet paper when he was done.

I watched as his eyes fogged up as if he was going to cry, and his eyelids started to droop. Not wanting to leave him there in the toilet, I dragged him toward the room just beside the toilet and hoisted him onto the bed. The instant he touched the bed, his grip started to loosen, and I pulled out my arm quickly, turning to leave.

Unfortunately, just as I was about to slam the door shut and walk away as if nothing had happened in the past few minutes, Blake just had to ruin the moment with his next few words.

"Don't leave me, please, Avery..." His voice was soft, almost a whisper. When I turned back to look at him, he was already fast asleep.

Cover done by @alexuhh .