Enemies with benefits

(Newly edited) Bonus chapter: drunk in love

Some of you eagle eyed viewers ( *cough cough* @GabbyKennethP @AurianeBear ) have noticed that this bonus chapter was taken down. I did it for my EwB secret project but I think it's alright to rerelease it now.

Why did Ezra go to this stupid party? He was tired, miserable, pissed off and quite simply, not in the mood.Most of his sour mood could be chalked up to a fight he'd had with his dad earlier. One A- in an English test (the only bad score he'd ever gotten) and his dad flipped his shit. Years upon years upon years of perfect scores, working himself ragged, sacrificing his spare time and sleep to maintain it all. Did his dad appreciate any of that? Had Ezra's hard work ever been acknowledged? No, of course not. However, as soon as Ezra slipped up a little bit, his dad was suddenly invested him.

Normally, a bad grade would've resulted in some snide comments or a lecture filled with vile condescension, but his father needed a punching bag for the day. His father's girlfriend -who he treated like shit- broke up with him and now he was sad and wanted her back. Too little, too late. Of course, with his father now in a bad mood, Ezra was the one on the receiving end of his father's frustrations and anger.

Whatever.

He didn't want to think about it anymore.

Or at least that was the plan, but, just to add to his shitty day, the party was dead. The boy he'd came with -Jordan Park- was smoking weed out back, the other people there were boring and Ezra didn't know them very well. They kept videoing themselves dancing and smiling for their Snapchat stories then, as soon as the phone went away, they would stop. Most of them were just sitting and drinking in small groups. Fucking hell, it sucked.

Ezra wandered round the house for a bit, to see if anything interesting was happening. Joanna was there and she was certainly interesting, but Ezra was looking for more of a wouldn't-try-and-destroy-his-life kind of interesting.He absentmindedly went to the backyard of the house. He ran into Sophie just as he was about to leave through the back door. She smiled at him and he gave a simple "hey" in response.

If Sophie was here, surely that meant Colby could be here too.

Shit. Ezra didn't need to run into him right now. He couldn't handle the guilt of what he'd done. How could he face Colby? They no longer spoke to each other and Ezra was not blind to the disdainful looks Colby would send his way. He'd came here to escape drama of his own home only to run head first into the drama he'd created from school. He really screwed himself over.

Ezra turned around to ask Sophie if Colby had come to the party with her. When he looked, he saw that Joanna and Sophie were disappearing into a room together. Now, he definitely couldn't ask Sophie about it without seeing Joanna. No way was he risking that. A fight with his father, Joanna and Colby at the same party, fortune did not favour him at all.

He grabbed a beer and decided to go outside for some air.

He sat on the party host's patio and laid his head back against the wall of the house. It wasn't very comfortable and it was cold outside, but whatever. The night was welcome; just him, the stars and the big black sky.He didn't really think of anything in particular, he didn't really want to. Thoughts just naturally came and went without much consideration or reflection, it was not a night for serious thinking.

He wasn't sure how long he'd sat there for. A few songs that had been playing inside had been and gone, they were muffled, but Ezra was sure at least five songs had played. Songs tended to be between three to four minutes long so that means he'd been sitting there for roughly twenty minutes, maybe. He could pull out his phone and check, but that was too much effort.

Something rustled in the darkness. It scraped and banged its way along the side of the house, about to round the corner that Ezra was sitting. It must've been a person or a very large animal. "Fuck." The mysterious thing muttered. Okay, it was a person. Whoever it was, was sniffling and clearly weren't in the right frame of mind from the amount of times Ezra heard them slam into things.