underage drinking { alex }

[k!ah]

Mum had sent the paparazzi after me once again. She had said they wanted to revamp the show, and mum had gobbled it right up, sending the calvary straight for her daughter with a wide smile and sparkling eyes. Pulling my coat tighter around my body I pick up the pace, my heels clicking loudly on the cement pathway as I tried to outrun them- but have you ever tried to speed walk in heels this fucking high? #not fun.

The party I was supposed to attend had long started by now, I could hear the music pouring into the street, filling the night with life. The shouts and whizzing of camera's behind me have me cursing, a frown knitting my brows together as I flip them the bird over my shoulder. "Piss off!" I growl at them, disappearing into a crowd of bodies grinding sweatily upon each other. "Excuse me, don't mind me," I push through them, looking over my shoulder once for the camera crew that disappeared among a seen of bowling heads.

Tomorrow I would have a stern talk to my mother. No longer did I wish to be part of this stupid, scandalous, reality TV show that seemed to be her world. That was not my world anymore. I had branched out, I ran my own business, and the sort of publicity that was promoted by Following the Bardot's was not the brand my company needed.

Weaving through the crown I make my way further into the house until I come across the makeshift bar. Clicking my tongue I look through the bottle until I find the pink gin and some sugar free lemonade. Then mixing a generous amount of gin with lemonade and some ice I move to take a seat on one of the sofas, rubbing at the back of my heel where my shoe at rubbed the skin raw. Beauty is pain. Beauty is pain. I remind myself as I tuck blonde hair behind my ear and sip at my drink.

Lucinda, the party's host was my best friend, though our relationship was a little bit on the rocks after she tried to exploit me to gain herself more publicity. She spots me, smiling wide as he raises her drink in my direction. I give her a tight lipped smile, raising my own drink before I pushed myself to my feet, avoiding her approach. Slipping into one of the more quieter room my body sags in relief, and I slip off my heels, looping them through my fingers as I take a seat on the edge of the bed slipping out my phone. 4 missed calls from mum.

Shaking my head I slip it back into my purse and throw myself down onto the bed, looking up at the ceiling. I hadn't originally wanted to come. Seeing Lucinda was confusing, and it still hurt the way she had used me. But she was one of my closest friends, and I felt like I owed to to myself to try and repair what was broken. But maybe I still wasn't quite ready.

[alex 🐺]

She'd gotten used to the increased attention since Emmett died.

Wait, scratch that.

Since Ridley, actually.

Since Mom had become Mayor.

Since Silk left and they finally, finally stopped laboring under the delusions that she was actually coming home.

Everyone wanted to say something - offer some sort of condolences, some sort of words of pity and affirmations that they both had tried their best and it wasn’t good enough. It was nauseating, it was exhausting. It always came out like static and Emie just smiled and nodded, her lip bitten and sore because she had to swallow back everything when Emmett died.

Silk was no different. She was stronger than herself or Emmett had ever been. And she still didn't fucking come back. 

Their pride had been torn in two, cleaved apart and ripped at the seams and no one was talking to each other anymore. Tat and Rora were wraiths in the house, disappearing and reappearing. Harper never fucking came home. And Emerson, well, the house was just another fucking reminder that the other part of her soul had been ripped away from her. At least with Silk, she knew what she was getting from her older sister. She knew that Silk wore her mantle like a second skin, like it was her birthright. Like she had been ready for and bred for this. And she had. But even then - no amount of training can prepare you for the Games.

When she couldn't stand the feeling of antique couch cushions and the weight of the body next to her in an unfamiliar bed, Emie would wander back home, showering and grabbing a fresh set of clothes, leaving a pack of cigarettes and some eyeliner for Tat and Rora. It was too little for them and she was a horrible excuse for an older sister, but it was all she could do. She was barely keeping it together enough for herself, let alone for them.

She told herself that the grief she felt for Silk was just an amplification of the depths of her despair for Emmett, because she couldn't even stop to think about her sister for a second without feeling like she had got everything that she had ever wanted. She had her glory, her moment. She only lacked the will to get it done and wear the crown.

Emerson would miss her. Maybe. Probably. She couldn't admit to herself that she already did. 

The house that she was at tonight was just another blur in a series of days that stretched together. Stumbling through the crowd of people, clutching a bottle of vodka that was her's and no one else's, she pulls on the glass bottle, chasing it with a drag on her cigarette, holding it high above the mass of sweating and writhing bodies so as not to burn anyone. It was always this way at parties - everyone was either a career or too rich to worry about the games and knew how to throw a punch or a knife and any wrong move meant that a table was going to be broken or a window shattered. Emie didn't want to add arson to her long list of sins. 

She weaves her way through the downstairs rooms, picking at a piece of cold pizza before she takes the stairs, her boots echoing loudly on the marble floors. The t-shirt dress that she was wearing barely reached down to her thighs (it was probably Rora’s, let’s be honest) and the leather jacket she had nicked from Silk sat on her shoulders like a cape. She looked good, objectively, if you could look past the bags under her eyes that were purple-tinged with black, the navy blue nails that were bitten to the quick, and the way her cheekbones seemed to jut out from her face. She looked haunted.

She was haunted.

Taking another drag on the cigarette, Emie stumbles through a closed door, eyes alighting upon a figure on the bed. A girl, actually. A super pretty upside down girl. 

“Oh shit, sorry! Is this room taken? A seven minutes in heaven kinda thing?” Emie looks around the room, eager to see a suitor making his way out of the bathroom, zipping up his jeans. “Or….maybe not?”