𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬

𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐰𝐨

I'm always pushing you
away from me,
but you come back
with gravity
-Phoebe Bridgers

⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙

My phone buzzes, the third time in ten minutes. I groan and check the screen: it's Emily. I'm missing our weekly meeting for the first time in almost two years. She's worried. Violet, are you planning on coming in, today? Please respond so that I know you're alright - Emily.

I sigh, stuff my phone back under the blankets. And then Frankie comes in. She's on my bed, jumping around so that my whole body is shaking. "Today is the day you stop wallowing!" she shouts, ripping off my comforter. And then she's across the floor, opening the blinds. I groan. It's too bright outside.

"But I'm not done, yet," I whine. "I need at least two more weeks of wallowing."

"If I allow two more weeks, you'll flunk out of University and I'll be out of a roommate. So get up, buttercup. It's a beautiful day, and I have the cure to your misery."

I sit up, throw my legs over the edge of the mattress and scowl. My hair is a rat's nest. I can feel it matted to the side of my head. There's crumbs on my sweatshirt and I've lost a sock somewhere in my bedsheets. "What now, Frankie?"

She smiles. "Well, I'm not sure if you're aware, but Valentine's Day is next weekend, and that calls for Sigma Chi's annual stoplight party." I roll my eyes, but she presses a hand to my nose. "But you haven't heard the best part! That place will be crawling with miserable, sad and lonely singles, like ourselves. It's the perfect place to get our mo-jo back!"

"I don't want my mo-jo back, and you seem to be doing fine without it."

Frankie whines. She's grabbing onto my arms and shaking me back and forth. "Wake up, Violet. You're miserable! And it's really bringing down the vibes in here. When's the last time you've even hit the showers? You need to get out of this room—blow the stink off."

I swat her away from me. "Get off of me," I groan. "And I showered this weekend."

"Girl, it's Wednesday. Time to refresh." She turns her nose up at me, but I collapse back into my pillows. She's shaking me again. "Come on, Vio—you're my best friend, and I'm heartbroken too, remember? Can't you just come to the party for me? Please, I need you."

Her bottom lip juts out, and she looks at me with dark puppy eyes. I sigh, because part of me wants to sprint to that party. A bigger part of me wants to find the biggest bottle of Jack Daniels and drown out this hole in my chest. But I can't do that.

But I also can't leave my friend hanging.

"Fine," I grumble. "But only for a bit, and then it's straight back to wallowing."

"Eek," she squeals, and she wraps her arms around my neck, rocking me back and forth. "Thank you, thank you, thank you! You won't regret this, I promise."

✩ ✩ ✩

The stoplight party is the biggest party of the year. We walk in droves along Fraternity Row, all piling into the Sigma Chi house. Bass is thumping so hard my teeth clatter, and Frankie is pulling me by the arm.

We stop beside a group of boys I recognize from the football team. I raise an eyebrow as Frankie begins introducing us. "Violet, this is Aaron—he's the team's running back." She leans into my ear. "I have no idea what that means, but hot."

And then she's off, nestling into the side of a man with tree trunks for legs. Aaron pinches his face at me. "Aren't you Dalton's girl?" he asks, and that's enough for me to book it out of there. I glance back at Frankie once more, but she seems content, so I sulk to the back of the house.

There's a row of plastic tables covered in trash bags. It's piled with drinks, and there's a trough filled with green liquid, which I can only assume is some deadly concoction they call Jungle Juice. I frown at it.

Someone nudges my arm. I turn to see Khalil. "You thinking of pouring a glass," he asks with a laugh. I shake my head. "Yeah, didn't figure so...I'm surprised to see you here."

"Yeah." I look over my shoulder, motioning to Frankie now taking shots with half the football team. "Frankie didn't give me much of a choice."

"Did she force you to wear that outfit too?" His tone is biting, and I look down at my shirt. It's fluorescent green, which at a stoplight party suggests I am single, and ready for the taking. And it was Frankie's suggestion, but I probably could've fought her on it. I cross my arms over my chest. "You know, I couldn't have even bribed Dalton to come."

And that makes me feel like shit. The way Khalil says it, makes me think he wants me to feel like shit. I stare back at the juice, and my stomach flips.

Khalil doesn't say anything else. He just slinks away, back to his boys on the baseball team, all in matching green shirts, which is apparently okay for them to wear. I frown, seeing Khalil in green, too. I wonder what happened to Talia—I wonder if Frankie is aware. I wonder if Frankie is the cause.

I sigh, sulk back to the drink table. My eyes lock onto a bottle of whiskey. I pick it up, just to press the lip to my nose. It smells like Tenny. It smells like us.

⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙

March 2016,

My head was foggy. My cheeks were warm. My throat burned from the whiskey going down, but it settled in my chest like a warm hug. The room was humming. Gavin Peters snaked his arm around my waist. His lips were pressed to my ear, taunting me to follow him upstairs.

And I was buzzed. Reckless without care. So, I did as he asked.

We were tangled in bedsheets—someone's bedsheets, whose I didn't know. He was on top of me, panting and sweating. Part of me wished he was Tenny. Part of me didn't care. I felt warm. I felt small. I felt nothing, at all. He finished, flopped onto the mattress beside me until I put back on my clothes and stumbled back down the stairs.

I saw Tenny's face. There, at the bottom step, he'd been waiting for me. The expression in his eyes, when he saw Gavin teetering behind me, it was betrayal in its purest form. But my brows furrowed, there was confusion all over my face because he couldn't be angry. Not at me. He had no right to be. Because we weren't anything.

Me and Tenny were not anything but us.

There were no labels. No rules. No expectations. That was by design, an unspoken agreement—because it made things easier. It made things fun. It made us, stay us.

But if that was true, then why was there a hole where my heart was meant to be?

And why was Tenny staring at me as if I'd ripped his from his chest?

...
Author's Note:

Has anyone been to a stoplight
party, irl?

We had them, but no one actually followed the rules. 🤔

Thanks for reading!
Xx