Meet Me Halfway

Chapter 39

"You want me to spend one of my only Saturday's off, baby sitting so you can go to some rager?" A snarky Roger sarcastically asks Alice as he held a babbling Charles in his arms.

"It's one night Dad." Alice chuckled as she stood in front of the living room mirror fixing her mascara. "And I haven't been out in so long."

"I'm only messing with you honey. Just wish you had given me a little more notice." He expressed as he continued to feed Charles his bottle.

"Not even I got much notice. FP only told me about it on Thursday."

"So a party, huh?" Roger suggestively prompts with a questioning expression. "How'd FP swing that one round Fiona?"

"Well, her and Forsythe are away for the weekend so Gladys kinda took advantage when she planned it, I guess." Alice theorised, before inserting her mascara brush into the tube and locking it, finally satisfied with her make up for the night.

Once done, she proudly observed her outfit and reflection in the mirror, eyeing up the simple black bodycon with a white long sleeve shirt underneath and her trusty lace up combat boots. Her beautiful blonde mane was half tied up with the other half falling down gracefully over her shoulders. It was a simple yet stylish look, and a true ode to her roots.

"Okay, I'm ready." She chirped, turning on her heel to find her father briefly smiling.

"Have fun honey."

She carefully strolled over towards her Father and Charles, lowering herself and planting a kiss goodbye on her son's chubby little cheeks, making him babble adorably as he wiggled in his Grandfather's arms.

•••

The second the party had kicked off, the kegs from the football team had came in, the trailer reached its unofficial capacity, the music became deafening and red cups and liquor for flowing, FP knew he was in for a wilder than wild night.

The crazy thing is, he wasn't expecting such a massive turnout or wild atmosphere that almost resembled a Friday night at the Wyrm on unemployment cheque day, and God only knew how he was going to deal with the ramifications in the morning, but right now, all he cared about was getting buzzed enough to not care.

Gladys however, seemed more interested in making a complete show of herself and going to extremes. No reservations, no second thoughts whatsoever, at least that's how it looked from his view in the corner as he stood by Fred, Hermione and Alice, and the cringe he felt was hard to suppress, but the immersion of the current conversation and surroundings helped.

"Uhm, what's in this stuff?" Hermione wondered as she stared down in unease at the liquid in her red plastic cup. It seemed to be a mystery mixture of an ombré substance, brought into the party through a punch bowl by none other than Marty Mantle.

"Tastes like Jack and cough syrup." Fred pointed out, scrunching up his face in displeasure after taking a sip of the strange man made alcoholic drink.

"Because I think it is." Alice steadily groans, frowning down at her cup before taking another sip for further inspection. "Yep. JD, lemonade, Gin and cough syrup."

"Woah!" FP yelped out in concern with brows raised into his forehead, reaching for cup and carefully taking it out of her hand. "Can you even drink that?" It wasn't an overreaction, not in his eyes anyway, but with her still breast feeding it was only natural he'd worry.

"It's okay, I pumped enough for three days, and it leaves the system in two."

"Didn't think you were the party type." Fred prompted focusing on FP, swiftly wanting to change the conversation. "Thought we were just gonna head up north to go fishing."