ᴀ ꜱɪɢʜᴛ ꜰᴏʀ ꜱᴏʀᴇ ᴇʏᴇꜱ // ʙɪʟʟʏ ʜᴀʀɢʀᴏᴠᴇ

1- The Whiskey Whisperer

Whitney Houston's voice filled the room as I watched the record player's needle dance over the disc.
Admittedly, I wasn't too fond of the type of music Nancy had playing for the past two hours, but seeing Nancy twirl around while trying on her dresses, I decided to keep quiet and just hope the music would grow better as I the night went on.
Usually I wasn't really a party animal. Of course I loved meeting up with friends, dancing and having fun, but the kind of party, which we were just getting ready for, just wasn't for me.

Parties like this were often hosted by people like Tommy Hagan or Carol Perkins. You know which kind of parties I meant.
Those, where you could almost smell the hormones of sex-driven teenagers filling up the air. Where you would find people throwing up the seven beers they had just the hour before every corner of the room, and you would always have to rethink entering a room because you could never be sure of what you could run into.

Apart from this, and more importantly, it was the people at the party. Personally, I hated the feeling of being with so many people in one room. It really freaked me out, especially since my friends tended to leave me alone at one point of the night. I could condone even that, but not with greasy, seemingly cognitively impaired teens jumping around.
Don't get me wrong, I had no issue with or alcohol or the effects it has on your body. However I found nothing more irritating than people who couldn't manage exactly those effects and still kept drinking.
And I really had no intention of washing someone else's vomit out of my clothes tonight.

And yet, I agreed to come. Mainly because of my best friend Jon but also as Nancy's emotional support.
Although she didn't like to admit it, she was not entirely over the Steve thing.
I knew she didn't like how things ended between them and seeing each other at parties or on school grounds was still weird. Not just for them, but for everyone else around. They weren't friendly with each other, but they didn't show any signs of aversion to each other either. It was just a lot of quiet and weirdly reserved eye-contact.

In conclusion, I was the one to save her out of uncomfortable Steve-situations, if she somehow was to get entangled in one.

Of course, she didn't say it like that. What she told me was that I just had to get out of the house more. I could've really done without the party but considering my friend was not completely wrong, I caved in.
The song ended and Nancy turned around, eyeing me up and down.
The smile on her face faded slightly.

"Is that what you're gonna wear?"
"Well, yeah.", I replied, shrugging.

Nancy scanned me fully but swallowed her comment, and put her former smile back on.
She turned the record player off, grabbed my jean jacket from the rack and handed it to me.

When I opened the front door, a cool nightly breeze striked my face.
Although it was summer, the air was unusually chilly that night, so I wrapped my jacket a little tighter around myself.
Jon, who agreed to pick us up, had already parked his grey Ford Escort in Nancy's driveway and waved at us impatiently.

"Why is it that you always take forever to get ready?", he sighed as I jumped onto the passenger seat.
I frowned.
"If anything, you were here early."

A little scoff left Jon's mouth as he glanced at me from the corner of his eye.
"I wasn't early."
The leather of the backseats squeaked as Nancy got into the car.
"Yes, you were. I saw you pulling up the driveway 15 minutes ago.", She butted in, causing me to let out a short laugh.
Jon slowly turned around, sending Nancy a death stare.

"You can't take my side for once, can you?"
"Well.." She raised her eyebrows. "You offended us first."

The whole way to Jason Carver's house resembled a personal live concert.
Not once had my best friend, the biggest David Bowie fan, missed the opportunity of turning the volume fully up and singing along, whenever he got into his car.
Much to my own harm, because Jon was really not the finest singer.