Promise You Paradise

I slipped on my heels and I pushed myself out the car, the loud music was pumping from the two story house, and my sister looked absolutely mortified, but hey she also looks smoking hot. "Come on Hay, smile a little, you know you’re just as excited as I am." I nudge her a little and smile down at her. She blushes and her hands go down to the end of her dress and she pulls at it. Seriously, my little Hay Hay looked so adorable.

"I’m still a little uncomfortable with the dress," she says throwing a look towards the trunk of the car, where I’ve thrown the backpack that has our change of clothes in. I start shaking my head, there’s no way she’s changing into something else, plus there was nothing good in the bag, it was just comfy sleeping clothes. "Fine," she mumbles, but I saw a smirk come across her face. That’s my twin right there, innocent, not a hundred percent I’m sure. "Fine," she repeated. "But in return, Bay, you’re not allowed to say one curse word for the entire duration of the party."

I could already feel the f-word dangling from the tip of my tongue. How am I going to survive an entire party without that word, it’s my favorite, I can use it for just about anything. It’s the most flexible curse word ever. "Deal." I say with a sigh, this is going to suck. "Come on cutie pie" I wink at her and extend my arm, she links hers through it and we walks side by side towards the entrance. The party was long underway, big groups of people were loitering around the yard, some of them playing games that would probably result in injury. I noticed a group playing the president game, and just as we passed four out of the five tackled the remaining one to the ground. I felt Hailey jump a little, but then she laughed, when the fifth one was revealed laughing on the grass.

We entered the house and the smell of cigarettes and alcohol wafted towards us, Hailey scrunched up her nose. I laughed and walked farther looking around in hopes of finding our friend, Lucy. She should be here already, we walked towards the kitchen and I spotted her. The brunette wave of curls bouncing up and down as she danced to the rhythm of the background music, while she poured an entire bottle of beer in a red cup. I scrunched up my nose as I got closer, I hate beer, before we got too close to her she noticed us and came bouncing our way, her arms opening to engulf the both of us in a hug. She slurred her hello in my ear and planted a kiss on my cheek. "You made it," she shouted over the music before spinning Hailey around, who flushed and looked down, her free hand trying to control her skirt.

Lucy and I met in Geometry class, shocker I take Geometry, and she’s just utterly lovely. "It’s open bar!" she swooned dramatically before grabbing her cup and taking a swig of her beer. I laughed and asked Hailey what she wanted, before moving towards the bar. There was four other people there, one girl and three guys. I waved hello, before grabbing to cups, making a Cherry Vodka for myself and a plain Coke with a dash of JD in it, not Hailey will notice it, but a couple of more and others will. Yea, yea, I know it’s such an awful thing to do, spiking her drink, but she gets way looser and it’s not like I’m giving her too much.
I went back to Lucy and Hailey to find Lucy exclaiming about how cute it is that we’re some-what matching, and I had to laugh at Hailey’s reddened face, but I know it wasn’t that Lucy was making her uncomfortable, it’s just she’s not accustomed to hearing others compliment her like I do, and Lucy was just like that. Straightforward and gorgeously sweet and always trying to make people happy. I handed Hailey her coke and started sipping at my own drink, when Lucy let out a shriek and told us that we should go outside. I thought back about the groups on the front lawn, nah, inside was better, but then Lucy grabbed a hold of me and pulled me towards the back, Hailey following suit.

The backyard was huge with a pool in the middle of it, people were draped all around it, some of them dancing and others swimming, or sitting on the lawn chairs. The backyard was impressive to say the least. I noticed a group of guys playing beer pong and a mixed group sitting on the lawn playing spin the bottle, well that game is going to end well. Lucy ran to one of the boys, her skirt bouncing up and down as she went. I decided to head over to the pool, normally I’d be dancing, but this was my first party and I barely knew anybody here. I slipped off my heels and dipped my legs into the pool. Hailey stood next to me, clearly not wanting to sit down since she was wearing the dress.

And it was because of her the next sequence of events occurred, since she chose to stay standing, it was much easier for us to be noticed. It happened really fast, one second I’m swirling my toes around and the next I felt a heavy body crush against mine and I fell face first into the pool. The weight stayed on top of me for five seconds before it disappeared and I managed to swim to the surface only to find myself face to face with Dimples, and needless to say, I was furious. I was about to let out a string of curses before dunking him back down into the pool, but I caught a glimpse of Hailey and I swallowed down every reply that had popped into my head. I licked my lips and smiled up at Matt. "I guess we’re even now huh." I spoke through my teeth and moved away from him. I was so getting him back later. I pushed myself up, hearing a whistle out of Matt before I planted my now wet butt on the concrete. Great, just super-duper really. "You owe me a drink Dimples, please escort yourself to the bar and bring me a Cherry Vodka, thank you very much."

He pulled himself out of the pool and leaned real close, smirked and pecked my cheek before got to his feet and shook the water off of his body just as a dog would. I rolled my eyes. I was not going to be mean, because being mean equals me cursing. I took a deep breath in and slowly let it out. I looked up to see the other guys walking towards us, Brian chuckling to himself after patting Matt on the shoulder, I guess I’m going to have to think up some vengeance on him as well. "Brace yourself." I heard Hailey say, and noticed she was speaking to herself. She might not have even noticed she spoke it out loud, I followed her gaze to Snakebites. Hmmm, he is cute. "Yo fellas!" I called out as they got near, Jimmy sat down between Hailey and me and threw his arms around me. I liked Jimmy, and I think Hailey does too, even though Jimmy was a bit overwhelming.

Brian sat down at the other side of me and Johnny joined by his side, but Zacky stayed standing. I noticed that a lot about him, he’s always in the background. I thought about Hailey liking him. What if he didn’t like us? I mean he never expressed it, but he rarely does anything to speak to any of us, I mean even his apology last week came as a total shocker. "So, what’s up guys?" I ask, just as Matt joins, kicking Brian so he can make space in between. He squeezed himself there and handed me my drink. I raised it in toast motion and thanked him.

"We heard there’s a party and we crashed it" Brian spoke first.

I laughed. "I doubt you’re crashing it." I motioned around. "It looks like the entire school is here anyways."

"And everyone’s enjoying themselves better than you two" Jimmy interjected.

"What do you mean? A girl isn’t allowed to dip her toes in water for enjoyment?"

"Not a party!" He shouted.

"Then why are you all sitting here? Shouldn’t you guys go and find girls to dance with?"

I realized my mistake just a second too late, Jimmy’s eyes already widened and he was clapping like a seal. "Yes, oh yes, let’s dance!" He jumped up and went to grab me, but stopped and decided to head for my sister instead. I was about to protest, but it was lost in the air as he grabbed Hailey and spun her around. I jumped to my feet and was about to cut to grab Hailey, when I realized she was having fun, so I stepped back and smiled. I felt arms wrap around my waist, and at first I was expecting it to be Matt, because he seems to be the boldest one in the group, and he’d definitely take another chance at annoying me, but as I was swung around I found myself staring into dark brown eyes. "Hey," Brian smirked, and I let him pull me away from the edge of the pool where a bunch of other people were dancing. I moved my eyes towards Jimmy and Hailey who stayed near the other guys. I barely heard the sound of the music, but I tried my best to move with the rhythm that Brian had. It was just really unexpected. "So, you two are an odd set of twins, you know." He said, throwing a glance at Hailey.

I an arched eyebrow. "I hope you mean that in the most positive sense ever, or I’ll knee you right now."

He laughed. "Yea, I don’t mean in an offending way, it’s just that you two are very different." He twirled me around and pulled me closer to him. "You’re well, you just said you’d knee me, you’ve beat up Matt, and you, although I haven’t heard any out of you yet, curse almost as much as we do."

"Almost? And I was trying so hard to be a part of your community." He let out another laugh, and I realized I haven’t heard him much at all either. He throws a few comments here and there, but the real chatty one was Jimmy and Johnny, believe it or not, Johnny can talk your ears out if given the chance. Matt was more of the "I’m going to try really hard to piss you off, and just chuckle it off" type, but he matched my sarcasm perfectly. Actual conversation though, no, that was the Js’ job.

"They like her, by the way, I know you’re protective of her, so I just wanted to tell you that."

I looked away to hide my smile, that’s probably the most perfect thing someone could’ve told me. The guys were quite bouncy around me, so to know that they all liked my sister. "Oh, what’s Jimmy doing?" I pulled away from Brian. She was dragging Zacky towards Hailey. "Oh no…"

"Wait," Brian grabbed my arm. "Look…"

Jimmy positioned Zacky in front of Hailey, she was so nervous, I could feel it. "She’s going to flee" I heard myself say, but it seemed like Jimmy noticed as well, and he grabbed her and pulled them close. The slow movement of his lips formed the words ‘dance, now’ and he started jumping in a circle around the both of them, and that’s when it happened. Zacky grabbed Hailey and actually started to dance, it was awkward, and didn’t even make much sense with song. "Holy crackers" I exclaimed, to which I got a weird look from Brian.

"Crackers?"

"I’m not allowed to curse today, alright. Deal with my cheesiness." I let a smile adorn my face and grabbed Brian, pulling him towards the dancing crowd and started where we let off. Maybe it was just that I felt really happy to see my sister being a part of the group, especially being accepted by Zacky, who she clearly had a bit of a crush on, but I was joy-filled as I threw my arms around Brian’s neck and planted a kiss on his lips.

Notes

Thank you for the comments.
The no cussing thing was an actual challenge from my co-writer Raven, who thinks I say the f-word a lot, and she's right, I totally do.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter and more lovin' is appreciated.

_Artemis Love