Braver Than I Used to Be

Chapter Fourteen

On Friday I went through all the clothes that I never wore since I spent a lot of time in pajamas and uniform. I settled on jean shorts and the nicest spaghetti strap shirt I could find. It was cute, it was white, loose and went past my waist, and it had lace flowers. It was a little bit see through, but I put on a black bra and I was satisfied. I put on some sandals and pulled my hair up in a ponytail after I straightened out my waves. Ray and Matthew both wore jeans a button down. I swear these two were meant to be best friends.

We pulled up to Victor's house and he had saved us a spot in the driveway. There were cars parked all along the street. Victor walked us to his backyard and it was packed with people. The front of the house was covered in trees and shrubs, so it covered most of the house, but the backyard was huge and open. There was a raised patio with a grill surrounded by a group of men yelling at each other about when to turn the meat. When you walked down from the patio there was a long inground pool with water sprouting out the middle and looping back down. Past the pool was a fire pit surrounded by built in seating and additional chairs to accommodate the extra people.

"Why don't you guys have a pool?" Matthew said.

"We do, we just never go in the backyard." I said. "Our house is unkept, no one services the pool or cleans the backyard or anything. Only the front yard gets done."

When we first bought the house, my dad had the backyard looking like a dream. Pool was serviced weekly, patio was freshly painted and furnished, along the fence were flowers in woodchips. We didn't have a firepit, but he had cement laid in the back-half of the backyard and had a covered little patio built with a projector and screen for us to have outdoor movie nights. After my mom started changing, we stopped going in the backyard because she didn't want to go out and wouldn't let us go either. She always thought we would fall in the pool or break something. Eventually we just forgot about the backyard all together.

"This is a nice backyard." I say to Victor, "You know, when you told us about the whole car thing, it sounded like you couldn't afford a car."

Victor laughed, "You see, the way it works is I had a savings account for my car, but once things happened, I opted for private school. My parents wouldn't give me both. So, my savings now pays for my school. My parents weren't handed things growing up, so neither are we."

"Got it."

I noticed a DJ just about done setting up close to the patio. Before we could get to where Victor was taking us a loud, intoxicating thumping vibrated through the ground and everyone started cheering.

Victor led us to a long table filled with an assortment of drinks. There were bottles of soda, juices, alcohol, water bottles and stacks of cups all lined up neatly.

"Drinks?" Victor shouted. "You can have a drink or a drink drink."

I looked to Ray and he nodded, "Don't forget the rule, three drinks max on the mixed drinks."

Victor poured me and Matthew a mix of rum and what I assumed was coke, I didn't get a good look at what it was he was pouring. He offered a cup to Ray, but Ray didn't drink when he had to drive.

Two women walked over to us and stood next to Victor. They both resembled him, one had thick, tightly curled hair and the other had long straight hair. All three of them had the same skin tone and black hair.

"Are these the twins you told us about?" The one with the curly hair said. The three of them stared at us.

"Yup, these are them."

"And the boyfriend?" The straight haired one nodded towards Matthew.

"My name is Matthew." He said and shook their hands.