"She didn't even invite you," Owen huffs.

He throws a miniature red basketball to swoosh into the small hoop hanging over the doorway. The small ball hits the floor, bouncing over to the wooden baseboard and rolling under the bed.

"She just told you to show up to something we were all already invited to," Owen says.

"Yeah, but she said she'd see me there," Dean counters from the top bunk over my head. "That means she wants to see me there, right?"

We are sitting in Dean's room, at the Millers' house. Owen's sprawled lazily on the chair, in front of a small desk that must have served as a working place in a past life but now lives as a used clothes graveyard. I am laid out on Dean's bed, on the lower bunk pushed to the left wall. Dean's feet dangle off the top bunk. Metal springs and wooden boards creak and gride every time he shifts. To the right, another bunk stands untouched. 

Ten years ago, Dean used to share this room with his three older brothers. These days, Devin, who is three years older, lives in an apartment complex in Lake City, sharing a house with three of his teammates from Lake City's Olympian ski team. David, just two years older than Devin, lives in Boise with his girlfriend, working at a sales and marketing company. Daniel moved out nearly ten years back to go to college. Now he lives in Lewiston, with his wife and two children.

The only time the other three beds get used these days is when Owen and I stay over. I am not a fan of heights, so I usually take Dean's bed while he sleeps on Devin's old one overhead. That leaves Owen to sleep in the other bottom bunk, which used to belong to David.

"Who cares?" Owen grumbles.

The bunk's metal joints squeak loudly as Dean moves. He's the kind of guy who can never sit still and doesn't even notice.

"I do," he answers.

"Why?"

The bed creaks and I assume Dean is shrugging.

"Isn't she with Liam Astor, or something?" Owen asks him, with a tone balanced between boredom and gloom.

That peaks my interest more than I would like it to. I force my eyes to stay fixed on the underside of Devin's old bed. Because I shouldn't care, so I won't act like I do.

"I don't think so," Dean murmurs slowly, voice laced with uncertainty.

"Pretty sure I saw them making out some time last year," Owen muses. "Heavily," he adds meaningfully.

I squash down the trickle of unease rising to my chest before it has time to grow into full bloom.

Dean shuffles intensely on the top bunk and the whole structure complains noisily. "I thought Astor was gay now," he says. "He hooked up with a guy in the summer, didn't he? Or was that just a rumor?"

"Hell should I know?" Owen grunts.

"It can't be just a rumor," Dean insists. "Who would make up something like that?"

Owen snorts. "Maybe he did."

"Why would he make up a rumor about himself?" Dean sounds thoroughly bemused.

Owen shrugs. "To get people talking?"

"So... is he gay or not?"

"Hell should I know?" Owen repeats more intently.

I bite back my lip, squeezing my fingers tightly with interlaced hands over my stomach. The course of this conversation is starting to make me nervous. The most infuriating part is not even knowing what's making me so uncomfortable. I would love to say it is just the overall subject of homosexuality from my clueless friends' lips, but I would be lying if I said the topic of Liam Astor sucking face with other people isn't unpleasant as all hell. Which, on itself, is infuriating too.

"Gay or not, he and Mackenzie definitely messed around. Pretty sure that's public knowledge too. My sister and her friends talked about it once," Owen says.

"Are they still together?" Dean asks.

The look Owen gives him is a pointed, wide-eyed glare that is clearly meant to silently shout,"Hell should I know?"

I sit up suddenly, in a quick reflex like a full-body jerk. 

"Wanna go skate?" I blurt, even though we just came from the Ice Arenas. To offer up a change of topic. To shift the focus to anything else at all. To give me the chance to get engaged into an automatic activity before I completely sink into the torpidity that always follows a practice.

Owen's eyebrows draw in. "James is driving here to pick us up in twenty," he drawls, in a tone that implies that I should know this too.

I am about to ask them if we really want to go to this party. It is right on the tip of my tongue. But then I lay back down instead. 

Neither Dean nor Owen mention anything about my sudden bluntness, but at least they drop the Mackenzie-Liam topic. Though I can practically feel Dean's little mental wheels turning around the subject as he sits above me.

The thought of going to this party brings up a feeling of premature distaste for the large masses of people, the talking, the laughing, the incessant care-free interaction. It all feels like too big of an effort I don't want to have — or fake.

On the other hand, there is alcohol. 

Brunson is a small town made up almost exclusively of residential areas. The majority of the shops and business are clustered on the east side, or past the border to Lake City. It makes it hard to buy any alcohol when you are underage. Unless you know how to use daddy's credit card to buy it online. That is why everyone goes to these parties the Lake City kids throw every other month.

Elliott does buy the occasional six pack for us. He buys it for himself actually, but he either doesn't keep track of it well, or he doesn't even care to. Still, I can never get drunk from a couple of beers stolen from our fridge. I could, however, get drunk from half an illegally purchased bottle of tequila in a party where there is too many liquor bottles to keep count.

That is the sole reason I am willing to go. The anticipation of it even makes up for a quieter, forcefully suppressed anxiety. One by the name of Liam Astor.

When we are in school, he never looks longer than he should — at least, no longer than he used to. He never approaches me or talks to me. When the Ice Arenas are full, he keeps to himself. When we are at The Lodge, he only speaks to me about work-related stuff and the occasional Liam-typical jab that would raise more suspicion if he didn't throw it in.

It is like this silent agreement between us. An unvoiced, unwritten contract we signed only mentally. I never even had to say it for him to get the gist of it.

Still, every time he is around, I become hyperaware of everything in my surroundings. And even more so of my own actions. All the cautions that used to be first-nature, completely automatic, are now back at the center of my mind. I have to remind myself of all the things I have learned to label as 'normal behavior' all over again.

Every look he gives me or word he speaks is immediately registered and scrutinized by my brain in order to come up with the appropriate reaction. Every time he is brought up in conversation, the slightest movement or lack of it becomes of the utmost importance to maintain the image I have created. It feels like I forgot how to be me a little bit — the 'me' I decided I would be.

For the past few days, if my head isn't on hockey or numb to world, this is what I am thinking about. It is an incessant loop of faulty logic and anxious thoughts. The kind that a couple of beers before bed can't quiet. 

But maybe the tequila can.

***

Part two comes out tomorrow ;)

In the meantime, as we all know, lots of things can happen at parties... especially on Wattpad haha

I want to know what you're expecting! Drama? Plot twist? Fluff? Something steamy?

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