-LINA'S POV-

*******

"It's christmas, lighten up, moody. I should change your name to the Grinch." Sin says as I slouch on the sofa whilst the others joyfully sing Fairytale Of New York.

I hate Christmas. My madre loved it, and I once used to, but without a family to spend it with it really isn't all that.

"I'm surprised you like it." I tell Sin, although, I'm lying.

Sin seems to put up this whole 'bad boy' demeanour, however the conversations I have with him show me a little child.

He shrugs, "You know how it is with Care-homes. But Missy always made it special for me."

I nod, remembering Missy said she used to look out for this boy who was put in a similar situation as her son, as she would want someone to look after her the son wherever he may be.

"Drinks?" Arianna says, her eyes half closed from the amount she's drunk already.

The others nod, but I obviously shake my head, and to my surprise, so does Rhiannon.

"Your not drinking?" I ask with a raised eyebrow.

She shakes her head. "Mum's on a diet, she asked me to join her. I made her a promise, I have to stick to it."

I laugh and nod, before heading outside to have a zoot, although I have to walk down the road as Jagger's parents think its a disgusting habit.

I inhale as I sit on a bench. Today has been a strange Christmas, I've been with people, people who say they care about me. I know they're lying though, or even if they do, it'll all change soon.

I sigh and have a few more zoots, far more than I normally do in one go, until my head feels dizzy and everythings blurry. I walk back and begin to feel a little hot, but brush the feeling off as it isn't uncommon to me.

When I enter the house again, the music is blaring and the drinks are going. Linda and Marcus, who I met briefly, are out again, and I'm guessing this is a regular occurrence for Jagger as he doesn't seem too bothered.

"Bro, your eyes are red as fuck." Arianna giggles as she sips some vodka.

I nod and laugh, but I'm not sure what's funny, my brain is just encouraging me to laugh.

Arianna and I talk about Dahlia.

"I really like her, Cat. Like, a lot. I don't wanna screw this up, but I feel like I will, you know?" She says, and I nod, waiting for her to carry on.

"No one else can make me feel this way. Like, not to be mushy, but like they say in After, and in Pride and Prejudice, whatever our souls are made of, hers and mine are the same."

I nod slowly as I look over at Sin, who has got caught in the fairy lights, and begin to giggle.

"Go for it then. You know I don't believe in love, but if you do, and thats what you wanna go for, then fucking do it."

Arianna nods and gives me a hug, and the amount of cannabis in my system allows me to be more carefree and hug her back.

Jagger sets up a karaoke machine, and opens a bottle of vodka for the others to drink.

I roll my eyes, what are we, five year olds? There's no fucking way I'm singing karaoke. I can sing, but I don't flaunt it, that's just embarrassing.

A huge part of me is craving something stronger than weed, but I tell myself it's disrespectful to Jagger and his parents, and keep repeating it as a reason not to, as I have no others.

"Hey, Cat, you good? Your eyes are so red, babe, do you want me to get you some water? I was going to eat some bacon with golden syrup on toast, and some water so I can get you some." Rhiannon tells me, her words coming out fast like she's drunk but I know she hasn't drank a thing.

I raise an eyebrow. "Brrrrooooo, I'm fine. Are you good though?"

My words come out so much slower than hers, I sound like a robot on ketamine.

"Jesus, I'm getting you a glass of water." She walks off and I giggle, I don't know why I'm so giggly but I am, and it sucks.

Jagger and Arianna sing Barbie Girl, with Arianna as Ken and Jagger as Barbie, which as anyone could imagine is very comical to watch.

Sin and Brandon are seeing who could drink more, and I laugh at our abnormal Christmas, which feels somewhat more natural than the pretence most people put on this holiday.

After around thirty minutes of listening to their terrible singing, they decide to egg me on, trying to force me to sing a song.

"Sing Promisicious." Rhiannon tells me, apparently she likes me singing that song, I can't imagine why though.

I roll my eyes, something I totally never do, and let out a deep sigh. I roll another zoot and smoke it out of the window, god knows how much cannabis in my system but clearly a lot as I feel myself walking up to the makeshift stage.

"Shit. Please someone record this." Arianna says, laughing.

I glare at her. "Don't you fucking dare."

They all laugh, and I am handed a microphone. The screen comes up, saying there needs to be two singers, so Sin kindly volunteers.

"I'll be the male, why not." He slurs, clearly he's as drunk as I am high.

The song begins and we begin to sing our lines. The weed in me seems to really get to me, and I feel myself really letting go, despite the banging headache I seem to be getting.

"Promiscuous boy, you already know, that I'm all yours, what you waiting for?" I sing, flicking my hair as I do so.

Sin sings his lines, his eyes looking me up and down as we sing.

The tension in the air makes me feel so carefree and vibey, like all the troubles in the world have temporarily disappeared, this is the effect music has on me.

I think I may have smoked something other than weed, as I feel extremely dizzy for something my body has a very high tolerance for, and very giddy too.

When the song ends, Sin bows as I curtesy, and we run off the makeshift stage laughing. He follows me into the kitchen as I pour a water, and he pours a vodka.

"We go well together, don't we? Like, we mesh well. Is mesh a word? It's a funny word, isn't it?" He laughs.

I giggle, looking at his hair which has became messy, and strands of it stuck to his forehead as he sweated from moving around so much whilst we did our fan-fucking-tastic performance.

"Sure, Sin, whatever you say." I go to leave the room but he taps me on the arm.

I turn around. "What do you want?"

A drunken smirk forms on his face, and I fear what is to come, as it's a smirk I've seen many times, a smirk that always leads to trouble.

"You owe me a kiss, remember, little red?"

My mind flashes back to the moment under the mistletoe, where Jagger so kindly interrupted us, and if they could I swear my cheeks would go red.

He tucks his hair behind my ear like he did then, and I bite my lip out of anxiety.

"Sin...." I murmur, as his face gets closer to mine.

I hear someone open the kitchen door and jump back. I say hi to Rhiannon then head back into the living room, where I tell everyone I'm off to bed.

I go upstairs and take half a pill, only half though as I don't want the side effects to be too obvious. I lay on my temporary bed, turning the TV on.

I turn on Family Guy, as it's the only decent thing airing on TV right now, then lay back, tying my hair in a bun as I can't be bothered to deal with it. I scroll through my phone; looking at my snap memories from the past few days and smile.

It's the drugs making me soft, I don't actually care.

I convince myself that the people downstairs mean little to me, as I cannot care for anyone, because that never goes well.

Whilst I remember, I send a text to Patrick, asking what type of weed this is, as the effect it has had shows it's clearly better than Star-dog.

A knock on the door makes me snap out of my Family Guy trance.

"Come in if you have to." I say loud enough for whoever it is to hear, and a drunk Sin stumbles into my room.

I can feel the effects of ecstasy starting to hit, but he's clearly drunk so shouldn't notice.

"You look like a drug addict on the side of the road."

I roll my eyes, clearly I was wrong. "And you look like an alcoholic outside McDonald's, your point is?"

He sits on the bed and my lips turn into a frown, why is he here?

"I remember," he starts giggling, "when I went to the zoo for the first time."

My head begins to pound, but apart from that I start to feel a hell of a lot happier, so decide he can stay and tell me about his fucking zoo trip.

"I was with Missy. She brought me a ring-tailed lemur teddy, but when we walked through their enclosure, a lemur took it off me. How funny is that?" He giggles like the little kid he must have been in this story, and I can't help but smile along.

"My madre and I, we loved animals. We used to go to the zoo all the time. The ring-tailed lemurs were my favourite too, and I've always loved lions. And frogs, frogs are just great, aren't they?" I ramble, my words seemingly coming out in super speed but he doesn't seem to care.

Sin looks guilty, and hangs his head in shame.

"I killed a frog once. I thought it was a plastic one and I stood on it."

The idea of a frog being killed bothers me so much, that I feel tears come to my eyes. "That poor frog." I sniffle.

Sin starts crying, actually crying, not just having watery eyes, and I can't help but laugh like the sick person I am.

"It's not funny! I've hated myself forever for it."

I think of a younger Sin, putting a frog in a shoebox and burying it in underground, dressed in black, then laugh even harder.

He goes to hit me on the arm but I grab his wrist, stopping him before he reaches me.

"What do you think your doing, piss-pants?" I look him in the eyes, as we're sitting down I'm actually at his level and don't have to look up to speak to him.

His eyes trail from my eyes, (which are rolling back from the ecstasy), to my lips, (which are probably jutting like my jaw).

"The alcohol is making me want to kiss you." He whispers honestly.

I bite my lip, looking at his, then gently let go of his wrist. If it was any other time, the idea of kissing him would make me feel sick, but I'm high and I haven't got any in ages and-

Before I can finish my thought process, our lips find each other.

I push him backwards and place my legs either side of him, straddling him, as our kiss deepens. It's slower than my normal kisses, and I don't like it, so I speed up the pace.

My hands tug at the bottom of his black shirt, but he pushes me off of him.

"What the fuck?" I say angrily, my hand on my hip and my pride damaged.

He shakes his head. "Your intoxicated, Catalina, and so am I."

I frown, and he stands up and cups my face.

"I'm not taking advantage of you, little red."

He places a kiss on my forehead, then leaves the room, with a facial expression I've never seen before.

*******

I wake up with a sore head, a sore throat and a sore body. I try and recall yesterday, but nope, nothing. I see that I have no pills left out of the two I brought, and realise I must've taken them all night, hence my lack of memory.

I have a quick shower, then get dressed and tie my hair up in a high ponytail. I head downstairs to Jagger's main kitchen, as I am really craving pancakes for some reason.

"Hey, beautiful." Sin says cheerily, and I roll my eyes, ever since we had a 'moment' under the mistletoe (or so he says we did), he's been acting weird, but this is next level.

"Um, hi?"

He furrows his eyebrows in confusion and watches me intently as I make the pancakes.

"Look, I know me making pancakes is just so exciting, but can you don't? It's a bit weird having your eyes on me."

He frowns even more, and I sigh.

"No entiendes? Lo diré en español, aunque seguro que esto te confunde más." I speak my birth language, knowing it'll confuse him but also get his attention.

He walks over to me and places a hand on my shoulder, to which I quickly shrug off.

"Lina, what do you remember from last night?"

I bite my lip.

Shit, does he know I took pills?

"Most of it, but not all of it, I was so tired I just went to bed so um, I probably missed a lot." I lie, shrugging, hoping I've covered my case.

He steps away from me and nods gently, and I notice something almost like sadness in his eyes.

"You don't remember." He mutters.

I look at him in confusion. "What?"

"Nope. No. It was nothing. Don't worry. It was nothing." He shakes his head and walks out the room.

Rhiannon, who is also in the kitchen eating a jar of pickles with honey for some reason, looks at me.

"That was weird." We say in unison, then laugh, before continuing to cook and eat our breakfast.

********

DAMN
MY BABIES KISSED
AND ONE OF THEM DOESN'T EVEN REMEMBER

SIN IS THE ULTIMATE SOFTIE GUYS ICL. HE IS LITERALLY SO DESPERATE FOR SOMEONE TO LOVE HIM AND NOT GET TIRED OF HIM N AWE I FEEL SO BAD THAT SHE DOESN'T REMEMBER THEIR KISS

BUT OH WELL!!

I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. It was a longer one!!

- Anonymous A xoxo