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chapter eight; lando, ━━━━━
THE MUSIC RICOCHETS LOUDLY THROUGH the speakers. He's standing in the overpopulated living room that's full of people either standing around engaging in conversation or drunkenly dancing and singing horribly off-key to the song that's playing. His eyes wander around the room, spectatingly, as he brings the chilled bottle of beer that's perched in his hand, up to his parted mouth. Tilting the bottle back, he chugs down a swallow of the brewed beverage as it chiseled cooly down his throat.
The party had only begun about an hour ago, but nearly half of the people were already inebriated or creeping on the precipice of it as they seemingly chugged back shots of tequila, vodka and beer. The frat parties were always hectic; fights, drugs, hookups and chaos were inevitable at every occasion and he doesn't doubt that tonight's party would end up like last year's that led to the dean's interference and a stern reprimand when things got a little too crazy after a few people had decided to jump off of the frat house's roof into the pool.
Lando purposefully avoided all of that type of troubled chaos, choosing only to indulge in a few bottles of beer and a couple of shots to satiate him. At first, the primary reason was because of the random mandatory drug tests that coach used to give them to assure that they weren't indulging in steroids or any other hard substances. He's witnessed firsthand a few of his teammates snorting lines of powdery cocaine, but they always managed to come out unscathed at the end of every test. He presumed that it was just coach appeasing the university's rules, just so that he's able to say that he complied to them. And when everyone else found out that they were given leniency from coach about this, they refrained from even bothering to limit themselves at parties anymore, deciding to partake in any drugs or other illicit activities of their liking.
But for Lando, he veered away from the temptation of all that simply because he didn't like anything hindering his cognition. He preferred to be fully aware of things at all times, knowing that a disoriented cognizance would probably result in him doing something insanely stupid like jumping off of a roof into a ground pool.
He's glancing around the room again when he inadvertently meets the gaze of Chani who's standing on the other side with a group of her friends. There's an indescribable expression wanly strewn on her face, though if the downward purse of her thinned lips and the scorned grimace on her face was anything to go by, he'd safely presume that she was still infuriated with him about the abrupt end of their situation.
The night he decided to cease any further development towards a relationship between them was during the movie night. After his conversation with Cleo, he'd come to a harrowing, though necessarily realization that he was using Chani to fill the void of his loneliness. Sure, she assured him that she wasn't looking for anything serious anyway, that she didn't mind things being noncommittal and strictly sexual but Lando couldn't. Sex would only be enough to satiate and distract him temporarily in her efforts, then it would seemingly fade until the loneliness consumed him again and he's back where he started.
