1: In An Angry, Drunken Haze

A/N: Date/time/country in which you started this?

"Three years, Sawyer!" I cringed as she turned to me, soda dripping down the front of her shirt. Sam was wide-eyed as he stared at the both of us, trying his hardest to not burst out laughing. "You too, Sam!"

Millie appeared as though she was on the verge of cracking both of our skulls together hard enough to tear a hole in the fabric of the universe. Sam meant to pour his soda on me, not Millie. But he missed and now she was livid. Rightfully so.

"Sorry?" He shrugged, snorting in his attempt to hold back his shit-eating grin. Sometimes I wanted nothing more than to punch that stupid face of his into oblivion.

"If you don't back the fuck out of my face right now, I'm going to slap the shit out of you." Millie threatened, the death glare on her face unmatched in intensity. Seemingly realizing just how serious she was, Sam saluted to us and ran off to join his friends. I could see Dennis doubled over with laughter, and Caden covering his mouth to hide his own. Brian just watched.

Slowly, Millie spun on her heel to face me, soda staining the front of her pink button up. She was taking deep breaths, probably in an effort to keep from screaming out her frustrations. "Three. Fucking. Years."

She was referencing the grudge that Sam and I had with one another.

Three years ago was when it all began, and neither of us were able to let go of the brimming rage we felt towards each other ever since.

It all started two weeks before our freshmen year — which was when we met for the first time.

Millie's older sister, Keira, had been planning on going to one of the last parties of the summer. Millie really wanted to go too, practically begging for Keira to let the two of us join. I was more nervous than anything, but I didn't want to let Millie go alone.

Keira was practically a sister to me, though not by blood. She raised the both of us when our actual parents were too neglectful to care. Their parents were always too childish to pay attention to them. Mine were far too caught up in their work and appearances.

I remembered every detail of that party, because I didn't end up drinking much of anything. The alcohol was warm and tasted cheap, burning my throat in an unpleasant way. It wasn't exactly a good memory despite being my first proper encounter with beer.

After a few sips, I just stopped drinking altogether. There were a lot of people at that party, the house belonging to one of Keira's friends. But Millie and I were two of the youngest.

She loved to drink, and pairing that with a low alcohol tolerance was a worrying endeavor.

That night, Millie drank two beers and was beyond trashed. At some point, she went off to find Keira. When I tried to stop her, she said that it was about 'lady' things. So I let her go.

There was music playing, and though I didn't exactly know why, I still recalled a particular lyric: she said your lips tasted like they did way back in July... that lyric had been on repeat in my mind for weeks after. I ended up searching for the song and adding it to one of my playlists. Beachboy by McCafferty.

I was sitting alone on the stairs, staring blankly into my red solo cup. Every so often I would swirl it around in my hand just to watch the whirlpool of unknown liquid still once more. Then I saw him in the corner of my eye.

He was looking at me from the bottom of the stairs, through a gap in the railing. His blonde hair was once more curly, skin less tan, and height even less impressive than my own. At the time, I had no idea who he was or what he wanted. All I knew was that he wouldn't stop staring at me.

So I stood up and walked down the stairs, only to be shoved to the side once I reached the bottom. Sam had knocked me straight into some girl, who in an angry, drunken haze decided to dump half of her vodka bottle over my head. I tried to apologize, but I was too busy attempting to rub the vodka out of my eyes.

Through blurred vision, I tossed my cup into a nearby garbage can and searched desperately for a bathroom. Thankfully, I quickly found one and began flushing my eyes with water, trying to be gentle despite the burning. When I lifted my gaze to the mirror, I found that my skin was red and my eyes were bloodshot. But I could see better than before, even if it was still a bit blurry.

Which was probably how I noticed two different things. Two people making out in the bathtub, and Sam — who I still didn't even know the name of at the time — watching me from the hallway. His brow was furrowed and his hands were tucked into his pockets.

Refusing to look at him for a moment longer, I turned to the couple in the bathtub. The girl was giggling, and the boy simply pulled away from her to look at me quietly. He had olive skin and dark-brown hair. Back then, all I did was apologize and rush out of there. I never thought that I would see him again.

I was naïve in a lot of ways.

However, I also didn't think that I was ever going to see Sam again.

I didn't think that I would one day know his name. That it would become such a common name in my day to day life.

That I would continue to loathe him for the next three years.

When I left the bathroom, he was nowhere to be found, leaving me to return to the staircase and sit with my head in my hands. I had a headache forming, and my eyes were still burning slightly. If I had known that I was going to get vodka poured over my head, I would have at least closed my eyes first.

My hair reeked, and I just wanted to go home.

I didn't know how much time went by before I heard someone heading down the stairs. All I expected was for that person to carry on past, but that simply didn't happen. Instead, they sat down heavily beside me.

My head lifted, finding a giddy boy at my side. He slung his arm across my shoulder as though we were lifelong friends. And then he hollered into my ear, "I just lost my virginity!"

Hating the fact that he was touching me — especially when he most likely hadn't washed his hands — I pushed his arm off of me and tried to make sense of what he said. "What?"

But he didn't even seem to care, his brown hair was still unruly from someone's hands running through it. There was no way that he was any older than I was, only resulting in more questions surfacing. As a person who almost never thought about sex, it seemed insane that a fellow fourteen-year-old had already lost his virginity.

"She was soooo hot!" His words seemed to all jumble together as he slurred them, clearly way too drunk to be speaking, let alone having sex. "Aren't I the luckiest?"

"Sure..." Was all I managed, wishing that he would stop yelling so damn loud. It was making my headache worse. Honestly, I just felt bad for him. He was young, hammered, and most likely taken advantage of by some older, horny girl.

As I was trying to come up with some sort of scenario to let me get the hell away from there, I watched as the boy's expression suddenly lit up even more. Following his gaze, I spotted that same blonde boy from before. He wasn't making eye contact with me.

"Sammy!" He grinned dumbly, jumping to his feet. He tripped on one of the stairs and slid down the rest of them on his ass. When he came to a stop, he didn't even seem to react to the likely pain, too busy throwing himself onto Sam and hugging him. "I've got so much to tell you!"

"Are you okay, Dennis? You just fell down the stairs." Sam had said to his best friend. Back then, Dennis was taller than him as well. Paired with his unusually broad shoulders, he made Sam look incredibly small.

"I'm fucking fantastic!" Dennis hollered in return, as though he wasn't literally yelling into Sam's ear. That was when Sam began to take him away from the stairs. But Dennis stopped him. "I want to say bye-bye to my friend!"

When he turned around and waved to me, Sam still blatantly avoided my gaze. He simply waited patiently for Dennis to finish the display so that he could hopefully get some water into his drunken friend's system. "Bye-bye random dude! Thanks for listening to my triumph!"

A while later, Kiera found me with Millie in tow. Apparently Millie had thrown up on some girl's shoes, and if we didn't get out of there as soon as possible, we were going to get into a lot of trouble. On the ride home, with Millie passed out in the backseat, Kiera asked me why my eyes were so red. I just told her that I didn't want to talk about it.

And that was three years ago.

Next thing I knew, I was seventeen, and things only seemed to get worse.

Sam and I's endless ocean of enmity only seemed to become more well-known throughout the years. During freshman year we ended up having a couple classes together, and when we ran into each other in the halls, it only resulted in a massive argument. I was pissed at him for nearly blinding me and never even bothering to apologize for it.

Hell, he even deliberately passed up the opportunity more than once.

Ever since, our hatred stayed strong. Dennis was still Sam's best friend, and that boy that I found in the bathtub was the third member of Sam & Co: Brian. Recently they had garnered a fourth, Caden, but he didn't move to our town until last year.

I ended up walking with Millie to the girls' bathroom, offering her my sweatshirt so that she didn't have to wear a soda-stained button up for the rest of the day. Though she was still clearly pissed about what Sam had done, she didn't talk about it after. We simply went about the rest of our day as we always did.

She had every right to be furious about the whole situation. It was because of Sam and I's rivalry that she was never able to find more friends, nor have a normal school day. Most of the time she was too busy trying to break up altercations between us to focus on other things.

But still, she put up with me. For that, I was grateful.

When the school day came to an end, Millie drove us to her house. We went down to her basement — otherwise known as our favorite place to hang out — and I watched as she indecisively sifted through her obscene dvd collection. Her favorite genre was teenage 80s dramas, specifically those directed by John Hughes.

There was no doubt in my mind that we could both quote all of his movies by heart, and even though I would never have wanted to watch them if I was on my own, I still sat through her obsession when I was with her because Millie was like the sister that I never had and I loved her for that.

So that night, we watched The Breakfast Club for the quadrillionth time on the couch in her basement, often speaking the lines along with the characters.

Little did I know that it would be the last time we hung out like that for a long time after.

•O•O•

I hope that you all enjoyed the first chapter! Have a lovely day! <3