𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙋. 𝙏𝙒𝙀𝙉𝙏𝙔 𝙏𝙒𝙊 ─── 𝖲𝖤𝖠𝖲𝖮𝖭 𝟭
❝ 𝖡𝖱𝖤𝖠𝖪 𝖳𝖧𝖤 𝗜𝗖𝗘 ❞
❪ 𝙏𝘼𝙋𝙀 𝙎𝙄𝙓, 𝘚𝘐𝘋𝘌 𝘈 ❫

𝟤𝟤. ╱ ✷ ❝ you 𝗸𝗻𝗲𝘄 just how to 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸 the 𝗶𝗰𝗲 ❞

"𝙄'𝙑𝙀 𝙏𝙊𝙇𝘿 you about two of the worst decisions I ever made, and the damage left behind...and the people who hurt. There is one more story to tell...one more bad decision...and that's all on me. No...it wasn't the decision to go to the party. Because how could I have known? But it was the same night. The same awful night. Remember the story I was saving for later?"

"Well, this is it. And this is all about you...Clay."

"How in the hell am I supposed to listen to this?" Clay asked Riley and Tony as they walked over to sit on the park bench.

"I think the asshole answer is you put the headphones on, the cassette tape in, and you press play." Tony tells him.

"That is the asshole answer, isn't it?"

Riley cracks a smile, "Yeah, but it's true."

"I can't...be here. I can't listen here." Clay tells his cousin and best friend.

"Where do you want to go?" Asked Tony.

"Just...somewhere. Somewhere else."

ミ⛧ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⛧ﾐ

"𝘾𝙇𝘼𝙔, 𝙄 know you're asking yourself why you're on these tapes. What could you have possibly done? What else could have happened the night of Jessica's party? Part of me was saying, 'ask me again', but part of me was saying, 'don't go'. Not even for you. I should've listened to that part of me. See, I never told you, Clay, but I've always admired you."

"You are who you are, and you don't care. And I always cared what other people thought of me, as much as I acted like I didn't. Is that a boy/girl thing? Or a Clay/Hannah thing?"

"Well, don't you look nice." Lainie spoke as Clay walked downstairs, "Off to the party?"

"Uh, is that still okay?" Clay asked, looking around for Riley but wasn't able to find her.

"No, of course. It just started drizzling. You sure you don't want a ride?" His mom asked.

"Of the few things in my life I am sure of, that is one of them." Clay said.

"Can I get you your rain poncho?"

"I'm gonna let you guess the answer." Clay says, putting his jacket on.

"It's getting colder."

"I've got my hoodie, and I'm positive Riley would give me a ride home." Clay said, "Bye, mom."

"Be safe. Call me if you need a ride! Don't do any hard drugs!" Lainie called after him, "Or any drugs!"

ミ⛧ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⛧ﾐ

"𝙄 𝘽𝙀𝙏 also wish you'd never gone to Jessica's part. Right, Clay?"

"Clay!" Jessica opened the door to her house.

"Is the party over?" He asked.

"The party hasn't started." Jessica says, looking back into her house for a split second, "No one's going to be here for another hour."

"Oh. But I thought....I heard it started at seven?"

"Yeah. And a, it's 6:50, and b, seven really means nine." Jessica tells him.

"Oh, right. I'll come back." Clay goes to turn around.

"No, no, stay. You can help." Jessica moved out of the doorway, inviting him inside her house, "Do you know how to tap a keg? Every guy's like 'let's get a keg', and when it comes time to tap it--,"

"I told you it was the wrong kind of tap." Zach says as he held one end of the keg and Monty held the other end.

"I got this! Everybody settle!" Moty says, "Where the hell did Lee go?!"

"I was in the bathroom, bubba!" Riley bounced over to Monty, "Ooooh, look at the big boys! Thinking they're both so strong!"

"I'll have you know, I am very strong, baby." Monty tells the girl as they walked out the backdoor.

"I'm sure you are, I'm sure you are." Riley turned to look at Jessica and Clay, mouthing, "I don't believe him."

"Riley Nicole!" Zach calls.

"Coming!"

"I don't really know how too....,"

"Relax." Jessica says, handing him the bags filled with junk food Riley had brought with her, "You can do snacks."

"Got it. Is there any special order you want?" He asked, "Mixed? All in separate bowls? Certain things mixed?"

"Make a choice, Clay." Jessica says, "Be bold."

ミ⛧ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⛧ﾐ

"𝘿𝙐𝘿𝙀, 𝙔𝙊𝙐 came!" Jeff walked over to the snack table where Clay was refilling the bowls of chips, "Riley told me you were coming, but I didn't believe her!"

"What's up, Jeff? I've actually been here for a while." Clay tells him.

"You've come a long way, Clay." Jeff says, "Where's Riley?"

"She said something about going home to change." He shrugged.

"Hmm, I'm sure." Jeff smirked, "Well, I think our work together....you've made some real progress."

Clay scoffed playfully, "Right. Thanks."

"I bet you wish you hadn't invited me."

"She coming?" Jeff asked after noticing the way Clay kept glancing over at the front door.

"What? What do you mean?" Clay tries to play dumb.

"Oh, man." Jeff smirked, taking the bag of chips from Clay's hand, "Tell your cousin to come find me when she gets back. "

"Will do."

"Hey, Clay." Ale walked over to the boy.

"Oh, hey, Alex. What's up?" He greeted the blonde as he walked over.

"It's a party, so I'm pretending to have fun."

"Yeah."

"No, I'm actually here as part of my ongoing plan. Gonna hang around Jessica enough that she gets annoyed and falls back in love with me." Alex explained.

"I feel like there's a logic flaw in that plan."

"It's love, it's not logic."

"Hannah! Hannah!" People start to chant as she comes into the house.

"Cool, Hannah came." Alex said, "Now we can annoy Jessica together."

"Uh, I have to leave." Clay says, going out the open back door.

"Hey, hey, hey." Jeff goes towards him, "Slow down, man, where you going?"

"I just, gotta get up really early." Clay tries to come up with an excuse to leave the party.

"Dude, Hannah's here." Jeff tells him.

"She is? That's cool. Hope she has a nice time." Clay told the athlete in front of him.

"You need to go in there and talk to her." Jeff stopped him from walking off.

"She's talking to someone. She's busy."

"That's your cue, man." Jeff tells him as Riley comes out of the door and jumps onto her best friend's back.

"The real party has arrived!" She giggled into his ear, leaning over to place a big kiss on the side of his head, "Oh, Clay! Hannah's inside if you want to talk to her."

"I've been trying to convince him to go in and talk to her." Jeff said as Riley jumped down and moved to stand next to him rather than his back, "You look beautiful , by the way."

Riley grinned at him, "Thank you."

Jeff turned back to Clay, "That's your cue to cut in. Take a swing."

"A swing?" Clay glanced at his cousin in question.

"You've got a fat slider in your sweet spot. You've got to swing the bat through the strike zone and knock it out."

Riley smirked, "Baseball terms."

"See, I'm aware those are the baseball terms, Riley." Clay says to the two of them, "If I'm interpreting correctly, giving my batting average, I would wind up with a strikeout and not a home-run. Very good use of an extended metaphor."

"Oh, fuck me, Jensen!" Jeff exclaimed, knocking his shoulder into Riley's playfully as she looked up at him, wigginling her perfectly arched eyebrows, "Get the hell in there, man! Now, okay? Now, or I'm gonna kick your ass!"

"You'd never kick my ass." Clay tells him.

"Don't tempt me."

"How am I tempting you?"

"Go talk to her, man."

"You're the reason she came." Riley tells her cousin.

"I don't know that."

I think you do." Says Jeff, turning to the side, "Go on."

"Okay. Going in. Going in.

Riley turned to Jeff, "We're keeping our eyes on them, right?"

"Oh, yeah." Jeff nodded before the two rushed into the house.

ミ⛧ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⛧ﾐ

"𝙄'𝘿 𝙏𝘼𝙇𝙆 to you a million times before but...tonight was different, and...I didn't know what to say to you. But when you finally came up to me...you knew just how to break the ice."

"Hey."

"Hey."

"You're there on the couch." Smiled Clay.

"So I am."

"I mean, you...you came after all."

"I was feeling rebellious." Shrugged Hannah.

"Ah. So, you finished your homework."

"That would sort of be antithetical to the whole--,"

Clay cuts her off, "Right, right. Yeah." He laughed, "Uh, do you...do you want a drink?"

"I believe you promised me a drink, in fact." Hannah smiles at him, "And a ride on your bike."

"I did, didn't I? Which is a pretty big deal. I don't just let anybody ride my bike." Clay says, "Not even Riley, and she's my favorite person."

"Well, I look forward to it."

"Yeah, me too. I actually didn't ride my bike here, so we can't do that." Says Clay, "So, I'll go get the drinks."

"Yeah, I think I'm gonna come with you if it's cool." Hannah stood up from her place on the arm of the couch.

"Cool." Clay nodded, turning and walking away from the crowd of people.

"I was so nervous that night, but you made it seem so.....,"

ミ⛧ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⛧ﾐ

"𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗬?" 𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗬 pulled the headphones off his head, startling Riley who had almost been asleep in the car, "Is she kidding me? I was shitting myself."

"And I was getting drunk with Jeff while we were spying on the two of you." Mumbled Riley, curling into a ball in the backseat.

Tony shrugged, "Okay."

"But she's not telling the truth about the way things happened." Clay said.

"She's telling her truth." Tony replied.

"Why do you two act like you know?"

"Because we do." Tony tells him, "From the tapes, we know her truth."

"So, why do you have to be here knowing?" Clay questioned, "Both of you?"

"Because we don't know what your truth is." Riley leaned up, "And we don't know what's gonna happen when you find out hers."

ミ⛧ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⛧ﾐ

"𝙎𝙊, 𝙇𝙀𝙏'𝙎 start with the part of the party I left out."

"So, the idea is, you can have a super power, but it has to have a drawback." Clay tells Hannah as they stand in the kitchen at the table filled with red solo cups, neither of them taking notice of Jeff and Riley as they poked their heads around the corner to watch them, one above the others with those around them giving them confused looks.

"For example, there's the triple take. You can freeze time when you want for as long as you want, but once you unfreeze everyone else, you're frozen three times as long."

"Okay, and you read this in a book?" Hannah asked him.

"No, I made it up." Clay said, "For like, when you're in those real life situations where you wish you had a super power to get out of."

"If you had a superpower, what would you use it for?" Asked Hannah, pouring coke into one of the cups.

"Well, technically, I'm not really in a situation I want to get out of." Clay says.

"Well, what kind of situation are you in, then?"

"I'm on a party situation."

"And if you could use a superpower right now, what would you want it to do?"

"Uh, I would make....everyone else disappear." He tells her.

"And then what would you do?"

"Um...well, we would--,"

"Oh!" Hannah exclaimed as some guy opened the can in his hand, letting it spew out everywhere.

"Did he get you?" Questioned Clay.

"Mostly dry."

"Do you wanna, maybe go--,"

Hannah cuts his off, "Say no more."

"Go, go!" Jeff pushed Riley towards the backdoor, "Outside! Outside!"

"I'm going, dammit! No need to push me!"

"There is a need to push you because your ass is slow!"

ミ⛧ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⛧ﾐ

"𝙅𝙀𝙁𝙁!" 𝙍𝙄𝙇𝙀𝙔 screamed as the boy pretends to throw her into the swimming pool just as Hannah and Clay came outside, the two best friends having beat them out of the house.

"It's, uh, nice of Jeff to force you to come tonight." Hannah says as she and Clay sit down next to the pool, "With Riley's help, of course."

"No, they didn't force me...they, um, strongly recommended it." Clay says.

"Didn't they also strongly recommend you come to the dance?" She asked.

"No, I lost a bet." Clay admits to the brunette.

"To Jeff?" Hannah asked, making Clay chuckle, "So, the only time you and I actually ever get to hang out it's...because of Jeff? And sometimes Riley?"

"No, no. I mean...maybe." He chuckles again, "Kind of. But it's strictly coincidental."

Hannah glanced over to one of the beer pong tables, finding Jeff and Riley looking over at them.

Once Jeff noticed that Hannah had caught the two of them watching, he pulled Riley to stand extremely close in front of him, pretending to teach her how to play beer pong.

"If it's strictly coincidental, then why are they watching us?" She asked.

"I mean, he does take an interest in my social life. Both of them, actually."

"Uh-huh. So...you tutor him in academics, and the two of them tutor you in....?"

"Girls." Clay says before correcting himself, "Girl. Singular."

"Hannah! Clay!" Troy exclaimed as he stumbled over to the two of them, putting his arm around their shoulders.

"Hey, Troy." Clay greeted the boy.

"You two are gonna come over there...and you're gonna play beer pong." Troy tells the two.

"Uh...actually, I'm not really big into sports with balls." Clay says.

""Uh, no, actually, they don't."

"Oh, they totally do." Troy tells them.

"Jeff." Riley slapped the boys chest as she turned her head to find Troy talking to Hannah and Clay.

"What's up?" Jeff looked down at her, only to find her looking away from him.

Turning his head, he found Troy bothering Hannah and Clay.

"Oh, no you don't! Hey, you ain't sinking my ship. Not today, buddy."

Riley let out a giggle at her best friend's words, following him as he walked towards Troy.

"Troy, buddy!" Jeff walked up behind them, wrapping his arms around the boy's waist to hoist him away from the two and off the ground, "We're gonna leave these kids alone for the rest of the night. And I'm going to let Riley beat your ass at beer pong like always. Whoo!"

Riley smiled down at Hannah and Clay, "Enjoy the rest of your night, kids." She shot her cousin a wink before running after Jeff and Troy.