family friends

17 - the past

Y/N's POV

!!TW: abuse!!

Samantha and I met Alex back in college because their dorm room was down the hall from us. The three of us immediately clicked and soon we were the golden trio of stupid, ambitious college students who somehow aced classes and still partied like crazy. I can't really explain how we made that work, but we did.

During our last year of college, we all went to a huge party off campus that we had been invited to through a friend of a friend. There were so many people there that no one even noticed us--well no one except Rachel. Alex had gone off to the bathroom and hadn't come back, so Samantha and I assumed we were on our own for a while. We made our way over to the bar where we were handed drink after drink until both of us were stumbling around drunk. At some point, Samantha went off with some guy and I was left sitting at a table near the pool, drunk and alone. I wasn't upset or anything, I just wasn't used to being without my friends at parties. 

When Rachel approached me, she handed me a glass of water and took my other drink from my hand. I didn't really care. I just sipped at the water and stared at the girl in front of me who was watching with some sort of focused curiosity. After a while she finally spoke. 

"Where did your friends go?" she asked, sipping innocently at the drink she took from me.

"I dunno. I'm sure they're off doing something fun." I didn't mean it to come out scornful, but my words seemed to slice through the air. She nodded.

"Hang out with me instead? You don't need shitty friends who leave you behind," she gently caressed my arm as if comforting me, but I was angry.

"What do you know about them?! They're amazing! They can do things on their own just like I can!" She smiled, clearly not upset at my outburst. "Sorry. I know what you mean. It's just that they're different. They're here for life."

"You're really lucky to have people like that. I guess I'm just so used to fake friends who use me that I forget good people exist." I nodded, sipping on the water again. "Well, I'm Rachel and I could really use some good friends, so you wanna stick with me for a little while?"

And we did stick together. The entire night I stayed by her side and she showed me around the place. She explained that it was one of her friends throwing the party, so we could do whatever we wanted. After a while, she asked if I wanted to see the hot tub and I followed her into the house and through empty hallways until we got to a little hidden garden with fairy lights and a steamy hot tub sitting perfectly in the middle.

I asked if we were allowed to be there and she assured me that no one would even come back here and they wouldn't care if they did. We didn't have swimsuits, so we just stripped down to our undergarments and climbed into the bubbling water. The conversations we had in that hot tub were eye-opening for me. We exchanged stories about shitty guys we had dated and she told me that she enjoyed dating girls a lot more, even when it didn't work out.

I had never really thought about dating girls. It wasn't that I was opposed to it--I just had never considered it to be a viable option. When I told Rachel this, she moved closer to me and held my face in her hands. She asked if she could kiss me and I was so caught up in the moment that I just nodded and closed my eyes, obediently opening my lips to her. She pulled me onto her lap after a while and we stayed like that, our bodies moving in one rhythm, for what felt like hours.