Rumored Nights

Alice wasn't quite sure how this happened.

There were a lot of things she wasn't sure of at the moment as they all floated relatively close to the surface of her mind.

She wasn't sure where William was right now after their avoidance had continued into another week.

She wasn't sure why her sister had crawled into her bed in the dead of night without a word of explanation.

And at this very moment she wasn't sure how Skye had gotten her phone number, or why she had agreed to go to a party with them.

"Alice hold still!" Melanie chided. "Do you want me to take your eye out with this pencil?"

Apparently agreeing to a party with her new friends meant arriving on her doorstep an hour early with the contents of their make-up bags following them.

They, being Melanie, Liz, and Skye, had seen a beauty emergency from a mile away, and that beauty emergency was Alice.

A mix of primal fear and girlish glee sped through her as these new friends of hers gathered around her like predators to prey, their weapons being your run of the mill eyeliners and shadows from the local drugstore.

"Do you even own concealer?" Melanie sighed, after seeing none of theirs would match Alice's complexion.

"She doesn't, but I do." A voice behind them all answered from the doorway.

And there like a ghost from the past was Caroline, the same Caroline from Alice's memories who used her as a guinea pig for make-up, the one running out of the house in a fit of giggles on Friday nights.

"I've tried doing this so many times before, but I think all of us combined can pull off a make-over on Alice." Caroline grinned, handing them the assorted tubes of color.

And that's where they continued, smearing, curling, and brushing on Alice who was foreign to all these things.

It's not that she had ever sworn off make-up but rather growing up with her brother and all of his guy friends had outnumbered Caroline's influence over her, make-up being one of the casualties.

This little fact didn't seem to stop her friends from turning her into one of them, clothes included.

"Alright Alice... I think... yeah... you're done!" Liz exclaimed with a flourish.

When they led her over to the mirror Alice decided not to believe it was her reflection she stared at, which then spurred the thought that if she didn't look like herself tonight, she didn't have to act like herself tonight.

.<^>.<^>.<^>.

Pulsing music could be heard from the lawn as the quiet group trooped out of the car like a collection of disguised clowns.

The silence didn't last as members began getting recognized and disappearing farther ahead in the arms of acquaintances.

By the time they made it inside it was only Alice with Melanie and Adam at her side.

"How exactly did we lose..." Melanie paused for a second to count on her fingers. "Five people, in three minutes?"

Sisky shrugged. "Probably something to do with physics and Max's tongue already shoved down Skye's throat."

Sure enough they were already in a corner of the nearby room doing things their parents nor their friends would want to see.

It was an out of body experience for Alice to be standing there in the middle of a high school party surrounded by a bunch of strangers.

Her thoughts from earlier reemerged with force, encouraging her to step out of her shell and be someone different.

In truth she wanted that, she wanted to be a normal teenage girl without a horrible past, without all of these hidden insecurities, and most importantly wasn't in love with her best friend.

The one thing she could think of to light this fuse was one of the many things she had been denied all these years for her own protection.

This was the reason she braved the rowdy crowd, ducked around groping couples, and left her friends behind with a few words to find the kitchen where most reasonably the alcohol was.

Not surprisingly, Alice didn't recognize anyone in the room or by the fully loaded fridge, and she breathed a sigh knowing that if she had she might've never been able to keep up this charade.

"Can you hand me a beer?" She shouted over the loud music to the closest guy.

He nodded, his eyes lingering on her a little longer than she'd like before his hand disappeared into the fridge and reemerged with an aluminum can.

Alice was suddenly quite aware of the low cut shirt she was wearing, matched with a relatively short skirt, both of which were borrowed from Caroline.

Where Ryan made it his job to keep any and every guy away from her, Caroline took it as her mission to do just the opposite and make Alice the object of their attention.

Caroline's objective was a success as she felt the eyes following her out of the room and into the depths of the living room.

It wasn't long before someone put their arm around Alice, causing her to look up.

"Enjoying the beer?" The guy from earlier yelled, a dim smile lighting his face.

She had only just opened it, but for his sake took a sip, letting the cold bitter fizz slip down her throat.

For someone who had never drank before Alice wasn't sure why people drank such a disgusting drink but she didn't bother to care about that after her second sip.

Nothing really mattered to her after the first few sips.

.<^>.<^>.<^>.

Everything was spinning in a haze of oblivious oblivion in Alice's intoxicated mind.

She danced uninhibitedly with the boy from earlier, whose name was something like Dave, though at her level she couldn't be certain.

If going to a party was out of character for Alice, she had broken all the molds by dancing like this with a guy she hardly knew, half occupied with him and the beer in her hand.

Perhaps it wouldn't have gotten this way if before had never happened.

If, earlier to get away from Dave, she hadn't turned a wrong way in this unfamiliar house and run right into William and...

Alice's lips crashed into Dave's in her desperate attempt to stop her mind from going any further into her flashback, but it couldn't stop the image of William with that other girl from intruding into her thoughts uninvited and most unwelcome.

For someone so naive to drinking and already so drunk, her mind seemed capable of still running survival tactics enough to get her away from the perceived danger, where she found Dave once more.

Which is where Alice was found now, hours later and far from herself in the arms of this strange boy.

He offered her something too enticing to deny; an escape from herself.

So when he took her hand and led her upstairs Alice didn't utter a word of protest, letting the world tilt violently around her without a care.

William found himself in a similar place as Alice, but with a level head.

Avery, his girl of the night, did more than hint at what she wanted from him by actually taking his hand in hers and leading him up to the awaiting bedrooms.

Inside he was too numb to care after seeing Alice in a furious lip lock with a guy he was sure she didn't know, the sight tearing him up still.

He wanted to forget like he was sure she was trying to do, to throw all caution to the wind with the promise of not having to think about anything.

Until of course, Avery opened the first door they reached and found it occupied.

"Hey man, get your own room!" A guy's voice stuttered intoxicatedly, before returning his attention to the girl lying next to him.

William would have left them alone except he recognized the converse shoe lying forgotten on the floor... next to the discarded shirt.

"Hey!" Avery exclaimed as he passed by her.

The unknown guy had even more outrage when Bill walked over to Alice, passed out half naked on the bed, but his outrage was nothing compared to William's.

"What do you think you're doing?" He slurred angrily as William took off his jacket and put it around Alice.

"I'm taking her home." He muttered, sitting her up.

William left the party soon after with Alice unconscious in his arms and with a sore fist from punching the guy she was with.

This wasn't the girl he knew and loved.

Despite however startlingly pretty she looked with make-up on he couldn't ignore the smell of alcohol mingling with her perfume or her bare skin mostly covered by his jacket.

In honesty it would've been a turn on for him had the circumstances been different and the guilt not weighed so heavily on him.

If he hadn't been such a stupid boy none of this wouldn't have happened, and the hurt he knew she'd feel later wouldn't exist.

It was all his fault and there was no use denying it.

William knew as he drove Alice home that she would wake up tomorrow with a splitting headache and no memory of any of this.

But this moment right now William wouldn't forget.

It was the first time in nearly two weeks he had been this close to Alice since he kissed her and with her so close once more he knew why he did it as he wanted to right there.

For taking Alice's safety so seriously, William risked it regularly to turn from the road and look at her passed out next to him.

She really was beautiful if he looked past the make-up so unlike Alice, her flushed cheeks softening in the light of passing street lamps.

Moments like that don't last though, and sooner than he thought his car slowed to a stop in front of her house.

William knew where it would go from here.

He'd carry Alice out of the car, wake up Caroline to take it from there, and then leave without a trace he had ever been there.

Then, like he'd been doing this whole time, William would go back to Avery and pretend he wasn't always thinking of Alice.

Because that old saying was too true, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and indeed it had been a jumpstart to his feelings.

William was in love with Alice... and she couldn't stand to be around him.