All Yours Somehow

Once inside the house, I could tell this party had been underway for a while. I headed straight to the kitchen, grabbed a cup and poured in what should have hopefully been a shot size amount of vodka and threw it down my throat. I did the same two more times before finally pouring in another shot but this time topping it up with some coke. As I turned around, I saw that John Gomez had been watching me the entire time.

“I forgot how much you used to throw back!” he shouted, walking over to me. Yeah, used to, thanks to your brother, I thought to myself.

“Oh hey John, good to see you. It’s been a while!” I shouted back.

“It has, Hannah, how you been?” he asked, throwing his arm over my shoulder. He reeked of alcohol. But everyone knew the Gomez brothers could drink.

“Not bad, John, not bad. Yourself?”

“Yeah, I’m fucking fantastic!” I could feel his grip tightening around my shoulder and at that point I knew I needed an escape before I ended up baby sitting all night.

“Oh hey look there’s Josh, why don’t you go talk to him for a while?” I said, whilst lifting his arm over my head. I quickly downed my drink and made myself another whilst I was still stood in the kitchen. The past few months reminded me how much I could drink when I wanted to.

I walked through the house, from the kitchen to the main living room, which was packed with people everywhere doing all sorts. From there, I went outside where I could see a lot of people stood around the pool and several girls in bikinis in the pool. I could see a few faces out here I recognised, none enough that I wanted to talk to them. I made my way along the back of the house and back into the kitchen. I saw straight away that Holly was stood with Eric, hanging on to his every word. I laughed to myself, safe in the knowledge one of us was getting what we wanted tonight.

“Care to share what’s so funny?” A voice said next to me.

“Not with you, no,” I said, walking away.

“Oh Hannah, stop being such a god damn spoil sport and enjoy yourself.”

“I am, Stephen, that’s why I’m walking away from you,” I told him without even turning back.

“You gotta admit you still love me!” he called as I got further away.

“URGH!” I let out as I turned around and stormed back towards him. “It has been almost three years, Stephen, THREE YEARS! You have no hold over me AT ALL!” I spat in his face, as a crowd began to gather in the kitchen. I think the volume of the music in the other room had lowered as well. “You’re drunk and if you think I still care for you one little bit, you’d better think again, I DO NOT! Now why don’t you find one of your little band whores to sleep with, like I hear you normally do and leave me alone!” I finished and turned to face the crowd. “Oh yeah in case any of you are new here, he’s in a band! Now...if everybody doesn’t mind, I’m going to do what everyone keeps telling me to do and ‘enjoy myself’”

I down my drink and dropped the cup on the floor, then pushed my way back through the crowd and started to find my way up the stairs to the bathroom. I hadn’t been in the house in over two years but I still knew my way round it perfectly.

“That was...impressive, to say the least!” Someone said as I got halfway up the stairs. I turned around to find John stood at the bottom. I smiled. It was nice to see a familiar face without someone else attached to their hip.

“Thanks, I think,” I said, continuing up the staircase. “You standing there or coming up?”

“Up,” he smiled and followed me.

There was a crowd of people stood around the bathroom, but I knew there was another next to Stephen’s parents room across the hallway, so moved around the group of drunk people. Sure enough, the other bathroom wasn’t in use so I walked straight in.

“Come in, I’m not actually doing anything,” I told John as he went to wait outside.

I went over and sat with my back against the bath tub and let out a slight scream, as John shut the door.

“Was I really stupid for what I just did?” I asked, looking up at him, hovering in the door way.

“No, not stupid. I just think that was a very drunken you saying that stuff!” he laughed. “How much have you drank?”

“How much have you drank?” I mocked.

“Hannah...?”

“Two drinks! I’ve had two drinks!”

“And how many shots?” he asked, coming to sit next to me.

“Er...5 I think?”

“Fuck...Han, we’ve not even been here 45 minutes!”

“Well I had to do something! We’re in Stephen’s house!”

“You know my ex-girlfriend’s here too,” John said quietly. I look at him blankly as I tried to work out who he meant. “I’m talking about you!” he laughed. “But Beth’s here too. Apparently she seeing some guy.”

“What the fuck?”

“I know, right? What a right pair of cases we are!” I laughed when he said this. We sat there in silence for a few minutes. It wasn’t awkward, in fact it was nice.

“So what do we do now?” I asked after a while.

“Get another fucking drink and show them what they’re missing, I say!” he said, standing back up. He held out a hand to help me back up, which I accepted and stood up, with a little bit of a stumble. Back in the kitchen, John grabbed two cups and poured vodka in one, whiskey in the other before topping both up with coke and handing the vodka one to me.

“Oh. My. God.” I heard from behind me, causing me to turn around to see Holly stood there with Eric by her side. “You two totally just had sex!”

“What!?” I said, nearly spitting out my drink, as did John and Eric. “No, Holly, we didn’t.”

“Then where have you been for the last 20 minutes?” she questioned, looking from me to John.

“While I’m completely flattered that you think I could last 20 minutes, Holly,” John said, sarcastically and with a slight laugh, whilst setting his drinking back down on the counter. “Hannah’s right, nothing happened.”

“But you kissed her earlier!” Holly announced, causing John to turn to me and raise his eyebrows. “God guys, come on! Just get on with it already!” she said, walking away with Eric in tow.

“Look, I’m sorry about her, she’s got this crazy idea that if she-” I couldn’t finish my sentence because John collided his lips with mine. Only unlike earlier this evening, I gave him something back this time. After a while, he pulled away and smiled. “What was that?”

“Stephen, 8 o’clock,” he said, with a nod behind my left shoulder. I turned to see Stephen turn and walk away to the living room. “Wanna head outside?”

“Sure, but let’s go out through this way,” I told him, leading to the sliding doors out of the kitchen. Stepping outside I saw a lot more faces I recognised. Sara and Kirsten were still laughing and drinking together. Kennedy, who I didn’t even realise was here, had some girl hanging off of him. Josh was out here, eyeing up every girl in the pool. John and I walked and sat down on a patch of grass slightly away from the pool.

“What’s gotten into you tonight? You know, earlier this evening with me. In there before with Stephen,” he asked, letting out a sigh as he got comfortable. I was definitely wearing my ‘alcohol jacket’ as I felt a lot warmer than I had earlier so I took my denim jacket off and used it as a pillow underneath my head.

“What’s gotten into me is that I’ve been told 3 times tonight by 3 different people to ‘have fun’ or ‘enjoy myself’. Do you know how that makes me feel?” I told him, looking up at the black night sky to avoid eye contact. “Did you also know that five years ago today was the first time Stephen took me out on a date?”

“Five years? Really?”

“Yep. Seems like another world away now.” I said, still gazing up at the stars.

“But that doesn’t explain what you had against me tonight,” he said, quietly as he turned on his side to face me.

“Do you remember that night, it was over two years ago now, me and Holly came to one of your shows. You and I had been on a couple of dates at this point and I had hoped that night it was going to go a bit further. So me and Holly arrived at the venue and watched you play and then came to find you all after. We got to the stage door just as the guys came out. Except you didn’t follow the guys. You had your arm around some brown haired girl and the two of you wandered off around the back of the venue somewhere, without even a second glance in my direction,” I had said all of this without making eye contact once. I knew that if I had, it would have broken me.

“Oh fuck, Hannah, I’m sorry...”

“That’s not even it though, what’s worse than all of that is that just a couple of months later when you came home from tour, who was there for you? Who did you call up when you wanted to hang out? No, scrap that, who’s bed did you jump into, knowing full well it was the easy option?” I questioned, slightly raising my voice, which I knew was a bad idea. Luckily for now, no one noticed. “And who was the fucking fool who let you every. Single. Fucking. Time. John?” I asked, with a lone tear streaking down my cheek.

“Hannah...” he breathed, moving closer towards me.

“So answer me John and truthfully, why me? Why now?” I asked, finally turning my head to face him.

“Truthfully? Because I’m an ass. And because I think that just because it doesn’t hurt me, it doesn’t hurt anyone else either. Because I’m scared of what happens when I’m not here. Because I want you, Hannah, but don’t know how to get it through to you. Because-”

I didn’t let him finish listing what ever he was trying to. Beth was stood at the pool, looking around the yard and she had just caught me and John laying on the grass. I knew there was only one thing to do, the same as he had done for me with Stephen. I lifted my body over his and crushed my lips into his. At first, I could feel the shock in his lips but then I felt them relax and I felt him push back. After a couple of minutes, I pulled away, both of us gasping for breath.

“So what was your next point?” I asked, still hovering over him.

“Because you’re are gorgeous Hannah Frazier and I need you back in my life,” he said, looking straight into my eyes, before bringing his lips back to mine and rolling me onto my back. We kissed for a couple more minutes, with hands going everywhere, before he pulled away. We both breathed heavily whilst continually keeping eye contact.

“Inside?” we both said at the same time. And just seconds later, we were both standing up, and grabbing our jackets and my bag from the ground. John grabbed my hand and we raced into the house. There were still a lot of people in the kitchen, so we made our way through and went up the stair case. He opened the first door we got to that wasn’t the bathroom to find a guy and a girl already under the covers.

“Sorry!” John shouted, as he closed the door. I let out a slight drunken giggle. Apparently we weren’t the only ones with this idea! I led him past the room I knew was Stephen’s, then past John’s to another spare bedroom and pressed my ear against the door.

“Bingo!” I smiled, whilst opening the door and pulling John in. As soon as the door was closed, he pulled me back to him. His arms snaked around my waist as I threw our jackets to the floor. He pulled my top over my head and I undid his jeans. We weren’t strangers to this, in fact it felt like we’d never been apart. It wasn’t long before he was stood in his boxers and I was just in my underwear. Just as I was going to push him towards the bed, the door we were still stood in front of suddenly opened and hit my back. John slammed it shut with one hand.

“Sorry, this room’s taken!” he told whoever it was outside, before moving back to kissing my neck, still with his hand push again the door.

“John?” I heard Eric say from the other side of the door. “Who you got in there with you?” he teased.

“Shit!” I whispered.

“Is that John in there?” I suddenly heard Holly say to Eric, before sounding like she came much closer to the door. “Hannah if you’re in there, don’t you dare come crying to me!”

“Fuck!” I whispered, again.

“We’re not going away out here you know!” I heard Holly say, causing John to laugh.

“John, really the time?” I asked him, getting frustrated.

“Oh come on, you know you’re going to laugh about this later too!” he smiled, still speaking in a whisper.

We locked the door and John moved away from it, pulling me back to him.

“So where were we?” he said, still whispering.

“We’re gonna have to be quiet, you know?” I smiled up at him. “And I think we’re going to have to test out whether you can last the 20 minutes that Holly thinks you can or not,” I said with a wink.

“Oh really?” he replied, pushing me towards the bed. I bounced down on it, pulling him with me.