Chapter 2: PROLOGUE
He locks his motor vehicle once he exits the sliding door, ensuring that the windows have tinted down to the point of someone being able to see their reflection (as safety measures for car companies to use on their new models). He sees that the house is lit with only one type of colour -fade yellow. The fairy lights twinkle like stars, though not too bright for someone's eyes to hurt severely, enough to make the party look aesthetically pleasing. Tucks into the pocket of his car keys he goes before making a straight line towards the entrance of the house, ringing the doorbell with a secret code (it's really just morse) that the hostess recognises.
The door swings open and revealing herself in a striped, black-and-white jumpsuit, is the hostess, who has a champagne flute in her hand and in it is a bubbly substance. She smiles, not appearing tipsy like any time she goes to some party to get drunk. No, this is not her party to ruin. This is to celebrate the return of her parents from the war and them retiring to spend more time with her and her siblings. The hostess, Stephanie Howell, wraps an arm around her best friend's shoulder and kisses him on the cheek. She's able to do so because of her five-inch heels and she smiles.
"Thanks for coming, Ansel," She speaks.
Ansel Roth, her best friend of many years that they can even remember, is a rather tall man. Six-feet-three, he's the school band's bassist - Charlie's Demons (it's still an unknown reason why the school accepts such a name to go for state competition, however, they can't care less if the band keeps, ironically, rocking it and winning each of them) -, tawny brown and has perfectly full, pinchable cheeks that produce dimples whenever he gives his fullest smile. Ansel is part of a family that has ambition in the art world. His father is a prodigy painter that recreated the Starry Night by Van Gogh to the tip of a paintbrush, while his mother is a prodigy for music, and fancy enough, they met during her reception of recreating Mozart's. Since then, they clapped their eyes and hearts together, years later reproducing children of three.
"Why would I miss it?" Ansel asks as if he's offended, shrugging off his jacket and hooks it in the closet by the door and he rubs his cold hands onto his black skintight jeans. "Your parents are very lovely and I'm sure they love me too," He smiles. "...Right?"
Stephanie smiles. "Of course they do. The moment they saw you saving me from choking on some sand, pretty sure they see you as my saving grace," Stephanie wraps her arm around his' before walking together into the foyer, where the rest of their friends - and Syaz -are. "Guess who's here, guys?" Stephanie announces Anselm's presence and Richelle practically hops onto Anselm for a hug, pretending that she hasn't seen him for a very long time when they had seen each other this morning. Stephanie rolls her eyes. "Quit shoving your love for Anselm down his throat,"
"Yeah," Syaz rolls his eyes. "He did get out of a recent relationship, remember?" He sings, before drumming on Anselm's arm once Richelle hops down and waltzes off to the front door with Stephanie to greet other guests (mostly their school friends who know her parents). "How are you?"
"Fine," Anselm smiles.
Syaz scoffs. "Anselm, it's me. I know what happened with you-know-who,"
"You're really a Harry Potter nerd," Anselm sighs. "And no, I don't… really want to talk about her," He sighs, walking to the kitchen to fix himself a non-alcoholic concoction while Syaz is following him behind. "Yes, I saw her post on Andronius," -the twenty-second century's version of Instagram -"And I don't really care. As long as she's happy, I am perfectly fine," He pulls out a huge bottle of soda water and pours it into the glass of ice and pumped caramel syrup. "I am perfectly fine…" He grabs a knife, staring at his reflection briefly before pulling out a piece of lime and cuts it into half. "I am so freaking fine!"
He stabs the wooden cutting board and holds the edges of the kitchen island with anger. His knuckles are visibly lighter brown, clenching his fingers to exert anger. Syaz, on the other hand, sighs as he places a hand against Anselm's shoulder. "Mel…" Syaz coos. "It's not hard, I'm sure. The way you guys ended… it was torture," Syaz hugs Anselm for a bit before hopping onto the kitchen island for a seat. "We both know that your relationship wasn't actually real. You guys agreed that it had to be an experiment."
"But why does it still hurt?" Anselm speaks with a broken tone. "Why does it feel like… I care about her? She couldn't care less about me when we were together but… maybe secretly, I was hoping that the experimental relationship could've blossomed into something real," Anselm sighs, standing up and rubs his teary eyes. "I've always felt like I'm much better off without a girlfriend, but seeing her with one, it felt like reality did a check on me and confirmed that I'd be forever alone," He bites his inner cheek and eyes at the side, scoffing but makes a squeaking sound as his teeth vacuum in the flesh. "Do you know that I've always liked Stephanie?"
Syaz blinks his eyes. "A-Are you… confessing?"
"She reminds me of my mum," Anselm shuts his eyes, recognising what he's said. "No, not in that way. I'm saying she cares about me, how I've… always been. It's nice to have that around. Nowadays, people are so stuck up about space travel and such,"
"Have you ever been in a shuttle?" Syaz smiles, trying to avoid the conflict of wanting to tell him that Stephanie likes someone else. "It's sickening. People opt to say that they get air-sick, but I'm not kidding that that's a real thing,"
"Well, Richelle vomited when we had our end-of-the-year school trip to Trep-zone," - commonly known as the space station orbiting Earth that's homing the space army - "And it wasn't exactly a pretty sight," Anselm and Syaz laugh at the visual imagination of Richelle's face reddening and green goo exiting her mouth because of the air pressure building up in her stomach. Anselm sighs, sipping his concoction a little and shuts his eyes. "I've been meaning to tell someone this for a long time. Stephanie can't know, alright?" He looks at Syaz seriously, knowing that Syaz isn't really good at keeping anyone's secrets to the heart or even to his grave. "I am serious about this, Syaz. If you spill the beans about his, I will murder you,"
Syaz blinks his eyes. "Cross my heart, hope to die," He nods.
As they are about to smile, they hear a loud commotion occurring from outside of the kitchen. Anselm places down the cup and rushes out of the room with Syaz, finding a leather-jacket lad pinning himself on Stephanie against the decorative table in the foyer. The impact of this is the glass statue shattering into pieces onto the ground - from the way it looks, Stephanie had tried to grab the item. Anselm registers that vision of what's to become in front of his eyes, and he sees that Lance Whitehead, the uninvited guest (as he recalls), is trying to make a move on Stephanie. Anselm looks around, finding that Richelle is nowhere to be found as it makes sense since she's escorting the party guests to the backyard.
"Get off of her!" Anselm pulls Lance from Stephanie and Lance crashes to the ground upon stumbling against his left feet. He looks at Stephanie, who is being comforted by Syaz. "Are you okay?" He asks; Stephanie looks visibly shaking. He grits his teeth and looks at Lance, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him onto his feet. "What are you doing here?"
Lance coyly smiles. "I heard… there's a party," He looks at Stephanie, who gives him the dirty eyes. "What's a party without the rebellious man in the whole town to crash it? What's this party for…?"
"None of your goddamn business!" Stephanie barks, but Syaz holds her back.
Anselm can smell alcohol intensely coming from Lance's breath. "How many have you had been drinking?" Anselm pushes Lance off. "Get out of this house!"
Lance wiggles his finger. "Nay-nay, I am not going to leave," He pulls out a small bottle of strong alcohol. Anselm's always known that he's a drinker that's often supervised by his parents, but how was he able to come here without looking like a piss-and-wind? He chugs the bottle and throws it at the wall, causing to erupt some unwanted attention. In comes the other guests and Stephanie's parents. "Ah, the lord and lady of the hour!" He says, slurring. He, with his two left feet, walks over to them and burps, laughing then. "My, how impolite!"
Anselm sighs and pulls Lance by the collar and drags him across the foyer, opening the door. Anselm is surprised by the sight of the shortest person he can meet who is holding a gifted box. She's looking at Anselm and then looking at Lance, and her eyes widen at the sight of Lance being drop-dead drunk and how Anselm is treating him.
"Get your hands off of him!"
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rnythingale Hope you guys liked the chapter! This is my first story on this website, so please do leave some comments on how I can get to know about this community :)
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