143

Ch12

I don't know how I ended up here. Really, though, I had no clue as to how my cousin, Renee, managed to squeeze one of her dresses on me, and then drag me to this party. Oh, and it wasn't just a party, it was a Christmas party, which meant that aside from one of her little dresses, I also was sporting a totally ridiculous Santa hat. Basically it was Christmas trying to be Halloween where all the birds dress up in costumes/festive attire and look like a total slag while they're at it.

Aside from all of that making the night be a potential nightmare, the party was just filled with people that I went to school with. Not that I hated them or anything (aside from dufus, of course), but I really hated school before uni in general so I wasn't overly pleased to see almost my entire graduating class at this dumb house party. On the other hand, I really wanted to show them how awesome I've been doing. University made me feel good, and – damn it – I wanted to show it off! Except I knew I'd hate the attention if anyone actually commented on whatever I was hoping they would comment on.

I'm confusing even to myself.

I had been home for the holidays for a few days now, and I'd thoroughly enjoyed the down time. I got to sleep in, my mum and aunt made dinner every night, and I got to spend some time with my cousins who were visiting for Christmas.

"Adelaide, make sure to socialize! Don't just follow me around." Renee said just before we stepped over the threshold to the large brown brick house that I swore was familiar.

"You make me sound like a total loser." I mumbled beside her, making sure no one else would hear.

"Renee! You made it!" a guy that I recognized from my calculus class exclaimed. I knew he was a year older than me, so he must have known Renee back when she used to live here. That was almost eight years ago, but I guess she kept in touch with a few of her old friends.

Her mum was my mum's sister, and they used to live nearby before her parents got divorced and her mum remarried. That's when they all moved to Ireland where her stepdad was from. I was seriously jealous. There she was happily living with her mum and her stepdad in a beautiful, exciting place, and I had to stick in this tiny town with my mum who worked too much to even consider finding a date for herself. It's not that I wanted a stepdad or anything, I just wanted to live in a cool place too. That's probably why I got so excited when I was accepted at uni in London. I knew it just had to be more exciting near Big Ben.

"Hey, Andrew! You remember my little cousin, Adelaide, right?" She ignored my comment and went to hug the big ball of muscles that was waiting for her.

He glanced at me with a big toothy grin, and I took a slight step back. It's not that I was intimidated, I was just kind of sceptical of him and his smile that seemed a little too friendly. He wasn't scary, he actually looked like the type of guy to forget to put on deodorant. Whether that was because he liked his man stink, or if he truly forgot, I couldn't tell.

"Yeah! For sure. It's nice to see you, Adelaide. How's it going?" he asked in a friendly manner, which actually surprised me. He surprised me even more when he stepped closer and didn't actually reek of man stink, but rather some expensive brand of cologne.

"Pretty good. Just living the university life." I said with what I hoped to be a friendly smile. If anything happened at this stupid party, maybe I could at least make a new friend.

He nodded in agreement shooting both Renee and I another one of his friendly grins.

"Uhh...thanks for inviting us to your party, Andrew." I said, not knowing what to say next.

He chuckled as we all made our way into the living room where a lot of the party was as well as where the music was blasting from.

"This isn't my party. It's actually – "