“What the fuck are you doing here with her?” Blythe demands as she corners me in the kitchen. She’s wearing a black denim skirt and crop top, leaving her belly button ring and hip tattoo exposed. I wonder if Elena has any secret piercings or tattoos? I grin, I doubt it. She was too much of a Goody Two-shoes.
The music blaring out of the speaker system isn’t to my taste, but at least it’s not clubland shit. The huge house is full of faces I recognize. The Society children are here, I realize, as I spot Atlas in the hallway, while Quinn and Harlyn are headed towards the kitchen, which means that Belle will also be here somewhere and maybe Sebastian, but I can’t see Elena yet. Serena is in the lounge chatting with some of the other girls from the squad, I can see them look my way every now and again as they talk about me.
“Huh?” I say as I grab a bottle of vodka from the freezer and pour myself a drink. One good thing about rich-kid house parties was the choice of alcohol, I never had to drink warm, flat beer or cheap wine.
“The cheerleader, Tristan,” she jabs a finger in my shoulder. “Is that your fetish now? First that Montgomery slag and now Serena Whittaker?”
Taking a slow sip of my drink, I count to ten. “Don’t talk about Lena like that.”
“Lena?” She scoffs. “So, what? You’re friends now?”
She steps back, with her arms crossed, and I know she’s angry. I never promised Blythe anything, we were never even in a relationship because I could never give her that. I explained that countless times. We got high, we fucked. We used each other. That’s all it was.
“The head cheerleader offered it up on a plate and now you want the whole squad? Is that it?” she snarls, and I know she’s drunk. She’s always nasty when she’s had too much, but it’s not my responsibility to look after her.
I grab a beer for Serena from the fridge and pop the cap off. “It has nothing to do with you, Blip. So, leave it.”
Blythe slams her hand down on the kitchen counter. “Blip? Did you just call me a blip?”
“Did I?” I shrug as I leave her simmering in her rage.
“Fuck you, Tristan. You’ll come crawling back when you get bored,” she calls as I head back into the lounge.
I haven’t even been here for ten minutes and my night is already going to shit. I sit beside Serena, trying not to flinch as she links her arm with mine and leans in to talk to me. She spouts some shit about the squad and their new routine when Lena arrives, under the arm of the meathead.
There’s something about the glint in his eye I don’t like, earlier he looked pleased, like he was the luckiest guy ever, and now he looked…. predatory. And I hated him for it.
Lena is wearing a fitted navy dress with gold buttons, embossed with anchors. It hugs every curve of her body, and it’s making me angry how everyone keeps glancing her way. Didn’t they realize that she was gorgeous before? Were they blind?
Sam’s arm slips from her shoulders and comes down around her waist, as he pulls her in and whispers something in her ear. She looks up at him and nods with a small flirty smile, but I know it’s all pretend. Everything with Elena is an act. Except when she’s with me.
Watching them, I take another sip of my drink, it makes my skin crawl the way he keeps touching her. His hands are on her hip, on the bottom of her back, her arm, and he even brushes her hair away from her face.
“Don’t they make the perfect couple?” someone says, and Serena laughs.
I watch them both as they do some shots with some of the football team before moving into another room. I debated following, but I wasn’t some puppy dog who was going to beg for its master.
“Yeah, they’re definitely homecoming king and queen material,” Serena agrees as she leans into me. “It’s just a shame about all those rumors from last year. Sam really doesn’t deserve all the whispering.”
I take a drag of a joint someone’s offered me, I know Lena hates it, but tonight I’m wound tighter than a coil. Ignoring the gossiping, I try to casually look around and see if I can spot Lena. Whoever’s house this is, liked an open plan, and while I could see into the kitchen, and the finishing room, I still couldn’t spot her or the jock.
A dark-haired girl called Shanice tuts, “Yeah, like I can’t believe that Chelsea thinks anyone would believe her lies.”
“It’s a good thing she moved schools,” Serena says with a smug expression. “I heard that she tried to convince one of the other girls to lie too, the whole thing is just ridiculous.”
There’s something echoing in her words that makes my brain whirr into life. Something that sounded familiar. “What are you on about?”
“Haven’t you heard the rumors about Sam?” someone called Destiny asks as she shuffles closer to us on the sofa.
“Poor boy,” Serena mumbles, with a sad look on her face, but again...something feels off.
“One of the girls from the netball team tried to say he raped her at a party. It was all lies, obviously.” Shanice shrugs. “I mean, look at him. Girls go willingly.”
Laughing, Serena jokes, “She probably just felt like a slut the next morning and tried to justify it.”
I vaguely remember something about this last year, but it was like a shimmer, there one minute and gone the next, so I never thought anything about it again. Besides, I never got involved in the school dramas, so why did something strike me as familiar? “And there were others?”
Destiny rolls her eyes. “No, she said there were others.”
The three girls all share a knowing look, and they remind me of witches cackling
