ILLICIT

Prologue

*song of the chapter: Stolen Youth by Roots Manuva*

Eric coughed heavily and ran his hands through his brown hair as he finally escaped the seemingly never-ending smoke cloud that had engulfed his parent's house. The amount of teenagers that smoked these days was overwhelmingly high.

The tall boy sat down on the steps leading up to his porch and sighed, looking up at the stars in the sky he could barely see through all the pollution that came with living in the city. In his mind, the night of his birthday couldn't have gone any better.

Well, it could've if Carrie had spent more than 5 minutes talking to him before disappearing with Bethany, never to be seen again until now when Eric looked to his right. The white haired girl made herself comfortable beside him before looking up at the sky like Eric had been moments before.

But he didn't have to look at the sky anymore; the only star he wanted to look at was right next to him.

He scoffed internally at how soppy he sounded, he was not about to have a Romeo moment whilst he was supposed to be celebrating his nineteenth birthday.

"I'm really surprised that you're not drinking vodka right now." Eric chuckled, nodding towards the green beer bottle in her small hands.

"Very funny, Eric." The way she said his name was music to his ears.

"I'm sorry, I can't help it. You know I don't mean it." Eric apologised, somewhat sincerely.

"Yeah whatever, you're allowed to be a little mean. It's your birthday after all." She shrugged, finally looking over at him with those sparkling blue grey eyes.

"Actually, that ended," He paused to look down at the watch on his wrist, "three minutes ago."

"Oh shut up." Carrie scoffed, "If you want me to put up with you being a pedantic prick then you're gonna have to stop bringing up vodka around me, the memory of getting my stomach pumped is not a good one."

That actually made Eric feel a bit guilty, it was a bad memory to be fair. Nothing prepares a boy to watch his unrequited crush nearly dying from alcohol poisoning in a field.

She shoved her bottle into Eric's hands before moving closer to him to allow some stumbling stranger to make their way out of the house and vomit on the garden.

"Nice." She commented dryly.

"My mum's gonna beat my ass." Eric frowned, unable to tear his eyes from the girl he didn't even know that had somehow found his way into his party.

"Your mum's too sweet to do anything like that. If there's anything she'd beat your ass for it'd be the time you stormed into Ross' church because you needed to know what cereal he liked." She laughed slightly at the memory of the two boys coming into her house afterwards, Ross red in the face with anger and Eric wondering what the hell was such a big deal.

"I wanted to make his birthday breakfast special." Eric reasoned weakly.

"Everyone knows that his favourite cereal is cornflakes!" Carrie exclaimed.

"No one's favourite cereal is cornflakes, that's unnatural!" Eric argued back.

"I'm so telling Ross you said that." She huffed, grabbing her beer back out of his hand.

The blue eyed girl downed what little liquid was left in the bottle before chucking it out on the grass and standing up. Eric felt his heart flutter when she grabbed his hand and pulled slightly, silently telling him to stand up.