He walked through the dark hall that connected where he was staying to the rest of the house, which was left in darkness. The blinds that Isabel had put up had little to do with fashion and a lot to do with privacy in the case that someone got it into their mind to stop by and take pictures, one of Isabel's biggest nightmares. Jeremy remembered being present when she and Cole had gotten into a small argument over whether or not they'd be putting up curtains. Cole hated the idea of blinds or curtains but he'd lost that battle quickly.
He rummaged around their fridge and grabbed some yogurt as breakfast. As he was eating it, Isabel walked into the room. Despite just having woken up, she still looked like she'd walked off the set of a fashion magazine. Her blonde hair, which had grown out very quickly and now reached her mid-back, was tousled. She wore pajama pants and a crop top that looked like a well-thought out fashion choice instead of the clothes she'd slept in. She was the kind of beautiful that was unreachable. It was part of the reason, Jeremy was sure, Cole had fallen for her to begin with. "Good morning," Jeremy greeted. She crossed her arms and leaned against the counter, her eyes piercing him for a long time before she spoke.
"You're not going to break down crying, are you?" she asked in her usual challenging manner. Isabel wasn't the one to go to for a shoulder to cry on which served him well at the moment. He grinned, shaking his head. "Good," she said with finality, "because she wouldn't be worth it."
They stared at each other for a while. Jeremy decided that was her own way of trying to make him feel better about the entire thing. "Thanks," he finally said, unsure. She shrugged, taking a spoon out of one of the drawers and digging it into the yogurt he had in his hands after she'd sat on the counter. They ate in silence until Cole came running down, yawning but looking alert. Jeremy was sure Cole had slept as much as he had but somehow he still managed to act as though he'd slept for hours. Touring had, essentially, fucked both of their sleeping habits beyond repair.
Cole was grinning when he walked in on them. "What's the way?" he asked before kissing Isabel deeply. She couldn't help but grin back at him. For a moment, Jeremy couldn't help but feel like he didn't belong in this moment. It was too personal for him to be here, though he was sure that Cole and Isabel didn't feel that way. He put the yogurt down beside them.
"I have some stuff to take care of."
Cole sat on the counter beside Isabel, sharing her spoon.
"As long as you're not late for your party," Isabel told him, raising a perfect eyebrow.
"It was supposed to be a surprise," Cole pouted.
"You guys don't have to throw me a party," Jeremy said quickly.
Isabel rolled her eyes. "Please. You need it more than anyone right now."
"Besides," Cole said, taking the spoon from her, "the last time we had human contact was the house warming. It's starting to get quiet around here."
Jeremy began to object but stopped himself when he realized that the choice had already been made. He ran a hand through his blonde hair and sighed. He left only after Cole and Isabel had begun to forget that there was someone there, grabbing his leather jacket along the way.
NARKOTICA had ended, technically speaking. They didn't even go by the same name anymore but that didn't mean they were immune to the fame that had once made them what they were. Their new band was doing well enough to sell but this time they'd been careful about the lime-light. This time, they weren't just reckless kids who had nothing to lose and everything to gain, not like when they'd first begun. Still, NARKOTICA had left behind a mark to the people who so feverishly followed it and Jeremy was beginning to see that now that he was walking around on his own. He'd been stopped a couple of times, mostly by girls who wanted to take pictures with him. At first he thought he was imagining the whispering and looks he was getting but, more than once now, he'd caught people trying to sneak pictures of him, nervously trying to hide it when he turned to look at them.
This was the part he didn't miss.
Unlike Cole, this kind of attention had never appealed much to him. If anything, this kind of attention had been the worst part of it all. He'd always been the worst when it came to interviews and his days had been spent smoking pot just to take the edge of being around too many people off. His anxiety had never been stronger than those days on tour around big crowds and people that didn't care too much about anything. All of it had been too exhausting for him; if it hadn't been for the music, he would have stopped.
He grabbed a smooth pebble and threw it at the water, watching it skip before it sank.
He'd never really needed drugs, not in the same way that Cole had needed it before a show, when things got bad, when he wanted to have fun but couldn't get out of his own head. The problem with Cole had always been that he couldn't get out of his own head; every problem was too big, every emotion too strong. The problem with Victor had been that all he'd ever wanted to do was have fun without consequences; every problem was no problem and every emotion wasn't strong enough.
Jeremy had never needed anything like that; but, he wasn't immune to it, either. Drugs were always there, always available when nothing else was. They were at every party, at every concert. They were hidden in the bras of dedicated fans and the pockets and purses of famous and rising stars. But Jeremy had never avoided the problems by just going away. He took the punches as they came. He'd realized, early on, that he had to ground himself because it was too easy to get swept away. He'd learned to have fun without always being drunk or high.
He took a deep breath and let it out. He wouldn't mind something to take the edge off now, though.
"Nice day, eh?" an older man asked as he sat down next to Jeremy.
"Yes, sir. Always, in California," Jeremy smiled in his usually relaxed way.
There was a long silence. Although neither of them was saying anything, Jeremy was sure that the man was inspecting him. He turned to look and, sure enough, the man looked away as soon as he did, acting very interested in a palm tree.
"This place is nice," he said awkwardly. Jeremy nodded.
"It is," he concurred, amused despite himself.
There was another long silence. "So, uh... are you an actor or something?" the man finally asked. Jeremy shook his head, unable to not smile.
"No, sir. I'm a musician."
He nodded though Jeremy could sense the slightest bit of disappointment as the man realized he didn't recognize him after all. "Musician, eh?" Jeremy nodded, grabbing another pebble and watching it skip. "You famous?" he asked.
Jeremy actually laughed at this. "No, sir. If I was, I'm sure you'd recognize me."
This seemed to be a good enough answer as silence settled again. The man took out a book and was reading when Jeremy turned and spotted a group of teenaged girls across the street that were eyeing him the same way cats would eye a laser before pouncing. When they saw him looking at them, their eyes seemed to light up as they smiled widely. As quickly as he could, he grabbed his jacket and made him way to his truck.
The sun was just beginning to set as he left. The passenger's side seat of his truck was filled with bags full of clothes and Ramen Noodles because he hadn't actually felt like buying anything where he'd have to put any effort into cooking, not that he was good at cooking to begin with. He wasn't exactly health-conscious, regardless.
There was a loud DING as he drove in silence; he'd forgotten he had his phone. It begun to ring and he answered it. "What's the way?" he asked, knowing it was Cole.
"Your bachelor party is in motion, my friend. Where are you?"
"Isn't that for people who are getting married?" Jeremy asked after a small silence.
Cole paused for a while. "No. Isn't that someone who isn't married? Or someone with a college degree or something? Well, in this case, you are the bachelor and you, my friend, have a buffet of beauty to pick out from tonight. I'm talking fame and glory, my friend."
"I really don't need fame and glory right now, Cole."
"Well, listen, you're going to need some kind of hole to stop brooding."
"I'm not brooding."
"You're brooding. You're the broodiest brooder of all the brooders. Get over here, ja? It's your party."
With that, Cole hung up the phone.
The sun had set by the time Jeremy pulled into Cole's driveway and sighed loudly. The driveway and lawn were littered with cars. Inside the house, he could see strobe lights and music was already blaring. Jeremy rubbed his chin. "Christ," he mumbled, looking ahead of him. He pulled out his phone, which was filled with text messages and notifications.
He stopped scrolling through them when he saw one in particular that caught his eyes.
Star: Can we please talk? I love you.
He stared blankly at the phone in his hand, unable to look away from it while not really looking at it. There was a feeling that began to surge up in him as he looked at the text. He hadn't felt it in a while and he hadn't expected to feel it now, but he did.
Anger.
It wasn't just anger, though. There were other feelings there, too, but anger was the stronger of them all. He almost answered the text, but he didn't know what to say and he tried never to speak out of anger or spite. He was feeling both ways right now.
He put his phone in his pocket, starring at the house.
Tonight wasn't such a bad night for a party after all.
Walking into the living room was almost like walking into the past. It was a scene he'd visited too many times already. There was just barely enough room to walk; making his way through the crowd meant contact with someone else. He didn't truly know half the people that were there though, of course, Jeremy assumed that was the point seeing as though there were girls everywhere. Some people were dancing, some were already drunk off their asses. Others were on the couch or just lying on the stairs, clumsily grabbing on to each other and somehow he knew this wasn't the most of it. This was just he beginning of every party thrown by Cole, ever.
He saw Leyla smoking pot by the counter and made his way over to her, since she was the only one he recognized. Before he could reach her, he was thwarted by two girls groping each other and slamming into the counter. Leyla looked up with bot her eyebrows almost disappearing into her hairline and Jeremy couldn't help but laugh. She noticed him and nodded, tearing her eyes away from the girls who were now exposing things that people who weren't completely high might find indecent.
"And this is just the beginning, yeah?" Leyla asked him when he came over. He grinned, nodding. Without even thinking about it, she handed him the joint she'd just rolled up. He looked at it for a second, unsure, but then gave in and took it, holding it awkwardly. "If you're going to waste my spliff," Leyla started but she was lighting it and he took a drag without thinking too much about it. He went o the fridge, which was now fully stocked with beer and alcohols of all kinds. He took out a beer, opening it against the counter.
"Want one?" he asked Leyla, who was now rolling up another join for herself.
"I'm good," she finished, holding it up. "No one ever told me what they occasion was."
Jeremy smiled. "I got cheated on."
Leyla nodded but didn't seem to sympathetic about the situation. "Cheers, man," she told him with a shrug. "To moving on with your life, then?" He nodded, raising his beer.
It was only a couple of hours later that Cole showed up and, by that time, Jeremy as drunk. Cole, surprisingly, was more sober than he was. Cole grinned when he found him leaning against the counter by himself, staring at his cup. "Not the kind of glory I was talking about, Jeremy," he laughed. Jeremy smiled when he looked at him, almost barely registering the words. He ran a hand through his hair.
"I don' think this was a good idea," he laughed.
Cole was grinning. "This was the best idea."
But Jeremy shook his head, unsure of what the idea was anymore, exactly. "Kind of feels like old times," is what he finally said. Cole's smile faltered just for a second and he looked around and Jeremy could understand what he was looking around for. Somehow, Cole still expected for Victor to just appear out of thin air and be there with them, just like old times. For some reason, Jeremy found himself laughing at that and wrapped his hand around Cole's neck.
The party had gotten much more risque but Jeremy just didn't mind as much anymore. All he could see were a blur of lights and bodies, the music pounding. He could smell only the strong smell of lit joints that intermingled with the sweat and alcohol. No one here was sober (except maybe Cole, ironically).
Well, why the fuck not? was all Jeremy could find himself thinking as he stared hazily at a girl sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth and staring down at her hands. Everything was fine, he kept promising himself, but every once in a while his mind would keep going back to that text and he'd grab another drink, unsure of what it was, exactly.
"You're gonna have one hell of a fucking hang over, my friend. And here I thought that was my job," Cole was saying over the music. Jeremy could only laugh at that. "You gonna hook up or what?"
Jeremy saw that he was nodding toward some random girl dressed in a leather black dress. She looked beautiful and dangerous, her eyes painted as dark as her hair. It was, Jeremy dared to say, the shortest dress he'd seen all night. Still, he looked away and shook his head. There were odd moments of clarity in which the party wasn't so glamorous after all, though the hazy moments made him forget that. Now, however, he was in one of the sobering clarity phases.
"I think I'm turning in," he grinned instead, swaying a little.
"You serious?" Cole asked, his face grave. Jeremy was about to answer when a very drunk Isabel materialized out of nowhere, grabbing him and yanking him away to kiss him, to which Cole did not object in the slightest. He spared a glance back at Jeremy, pulling away for one second like he was going to say something, before Isabel attacked his mouth again. Jeremy laughed, making his way through he crowd again and trying to find the hallway that led to his room.
The strobe lights and all of the dark clothes were almost disorienting, but he finally found himself stumbling through the hall, which was far enough away from the rest of the house that the music wasn't as loud.
Had he left the lights on? he asked himself as he opened the door, stumbling in. "Fuck," he groaned. Being away from the music and the smoke, he was now sure he'd come to regret this tomorrow. If anything, he was already regretting it. Emotions and drugs were a dangerous mix. He turned at a sound he thought he'd heard. It took him a while for his eyes to finally focus on the source of it and even then he wasn't sure what he was looking at for a while.
"Hey," he slurred slightly, thinking that maybe he was looking at some kind of drunk hallucination or, at least, someone who was dangerously out of place in this environment. The girl had gotten up from the edge of his mattress on the floor, staring wide-eyed at him. "Sorry, but this isn't part of the party area," he heard himself saying.
"Sorry," he heard her answer back, her voice soft but clear. He could only stare at her, partly trying to make sense of what she was doing there looking like that. She looked familiar to him but he couldn't really place where he'd seen her before. She had short, curled light brown hair and stood with the uncertainty of someone young that wasn't just yet comfortable with their place in the world. She was wearing a white dress with red floral print on it. Everything in her posture told him that he'd been staring at her too long. He looked into her large honey eyes.
"It's just... my room," he said stupidly. "Are you, uh, lost or something?"
She looked embarrassed as she shook her heard vigorously. She glanced at the door nervously like the idea of going back out there was the only thing worse than staying in here. "Sorry," she said again, tugging down at her dress.
"You look... You get... Are your parents here?" he stumbled over his words and watched as she turned an interesting shade of red. He ran a hand through his hair, which he realized was longer than hers and had somehow become loose from the bun he'd thrown it in before leaving.
"I'm nineteen," she said just as softly and unsure, though he sensed just a hint of insult. He stared at her still, unsure whether or not she was telling the truth. He decided to just settle for nodding; there was no way he'd actually be able to tell right now, regardless.
"Right," he finally agreed.
"I'm... I'll leave," she said, still glancing nervously toward the door.
He smiled. "Not into the party, huh?" he asked. She shifted uncomfortably.
"No, not really," she said after a while.
He stumbled over to the mattress and threw himself on it. "Right. Me neither." He turned, looking up at her. "You can stay if you want. I promise I won't touch you." She seemed to consider this for a very long time until she finally sat down beside him, still seeming to want to keep as much distance as was possible between them.
"Thanks," she said.
They were quiet for a while. He felt the mattress shift and turn as she lie down beside him. He turned to look at her as she looked at the ceiling, still seeming uncomfortable and like she wanted nothing more than to disappear. There was a look in her eye of immediately regretting her decision to lie down but she stuck to it, which Jeremy couldn't explain why he found it so amusing. She shifted a little, seemed to consider sitting up again, but ended up just staying in the same position. They lie there for a while until Jeremy had almost forgotten she was there and begun taking his shirt off. When he looked at her, she was looking away toward the kitchen but he was sure she was flustered. "It's hot in here," he explained for the sake of not coming off like some kind of pervert. He stood, mumbling fuck and walking over to the kitchen, running the water an drinking it directly. "So why'd you end up over here?" he asked.
"Some-" she cleared her throat, "-someone grabbed my butt."
He laughed which resulted in water getting into his nose which ended up with him trying to laugh while coughing heavily. "Someone grabbed your butt?" he laughed when he finally composed himself. "That's why you don't wear little dresses to rock star parties." He'd said it jokingly but he saw that she looked mortified when he looked back at her. He stopped the water, not drunk enough to not feel like a complete asshole for saying something that stupid; it wasn't her fault if some asshole had decided to touch any part of her body without her wanting to.
"There's nothing wrong with it," he said stupidly, "just don't do it again if you don't want to be touched."
He stopped when he realized how much worse that actually sounded, which if he wasn't so high wouldn't have been that long.
"Um... oh," was all she said.
He opened one of the cabinets and took out one of the glasses in there, filling it and handing it to her before he lie back down and turned to look at her. "I'm not saying it's right. Whoever touched you without you letting them's an asshole. But... assholes are everywhere." She nodded, looking at the glass in her hand as she did. "Should learn how to punch," he mumbling, closing his eyes. She stared at him like the idea was crazy but he just smiled. Take a class or something. I don't condone violence but anyone who hurts you should always be punched right in the face. Remember that."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I had to re upload this; it kept showing up all funky on my computer (sorry to anyone who was having any issues reading it as well). My goal is to complete this story; I can't promise when I'll be done with it or when I'll be posting new chapters, although I hope that I've completed it by the end of this year. Unfortunately, however, I am very busy and my schedule is pretty hectic. Still, I hope that you can be patient with me and enjoy reading it. My purpose in writing this story was really to get in some practice and get better as a writer so if you have any helpful critique, feel free to share it :)