Just for This Year

Chapter Twenty-Four

Thursday
October 31

The Day It Happened: Part 2 of 5

Sam took a sip of his drink, the bubbles filling his mouth. He had initially started the night sipping one of his seltzers, but he decided against drinking anymore. His mind was hazy, and he wasn't sure why. Everything had him on edge, which wasn't typical for him at parties. He didn't want to drink while he felt like this. And so, his drink of choice tonight was just a Diet Coke. He had it in a red solo cup, feeling the need to put up the illusion that he was drinking liquor.

He couldn't ignore the fact that the feeling was the same as the night of October 10th, 2019.

Part of him wanted to scream that something was wrong. But the other part just thought he was being ridiculous. Nothing was going to happen. He also couldn't get a certain sandy-haired boy off his mind no matter how hard he tried. Nobody here could even come close to catching his attention, not after he kissed Charlie.

Before he could stop himself, his fingers were tapping his screen and moving on their own accord. He stared lazily at the screen, unbothered by what he was doing. It hasn't registered what he was doing until it was too late. His phone started to ring, which promptly snapped him out of his trance.

His eyes bulged when he saw who he was calling. Shit. Shit. Shit. He frantically hung up the call, hoping it just would go unnoticed.

Sam gawked at his phone for a few seconds before stuffing it into his pocket, as if it would erase what he just did.

As far as Sam was concerned, that did not just happen.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

An hour later, Sam had completely forgotten that he called the boy at all. It was easy to forget while playing drinking games. He managed to convince the people next to him to drink for him subtly, not wanting to get kicked out of the game for technically cheating. He made sure the games kept going, not wanting the party to ever dull out. People seemed to be having a good enough time, sending back shots and drunkenly taking blurry pictures.

He hadn't seen his sister in a while, but he was sure that was just because she was likely trying to win her game against Estelle. Quite the competitive one, his twin. He saw Ashton and his friends somewhere around as well. A big part of him wanted to promptly kick them out, but the other part was trying to be decent since Lila seemed to get on with them. He just couldn't stand how smug Ashton always was. Not a single part of Sam wanted Ashton in his house— ever.

"Sam."

Oh, shit.

He knew that voice from anywhere. He could pick that voice out of any crowd, no matter how big. Slowly turning around, Sam felt as if he was dreaming. It didn't feel real that he was here. He squeezed his nails into his hand to make sure this wasn't some dream, and surely enough, it wasn't.

It took him a few seconds to formulate words, because they hadn't seen each other in weeks, really. Sam wanted to instantly apologize, but he first had to get over the fact that Charlie was there at all. He felt a warmth flood his body, as if he finally came home.

"Charlie, you came," Sam breathed out as he soaked in the sight of the boy in front of him.

"You called," Charlie said in a voice so soft that Sam nearly melted.

Sam was frozen momentarily before he began to sputter out a response. "Can... can we talk?"

"I was hoping we could, yeah," he replied with a slow nod. He gestured up the stairs and Sam nodded.