Nothing But Loose Ends
“It had been a week since Perry left town with her family and Riley had fallen back into most of his old habits hard. In truth, it only took him a few days and from that point on, the days melted into one another. There had been an ongoing party at his house that, just like his days, seemed to never end. The only thing that had stopped him from drinking was passing out, and whenever he woke up, the party was still going. The people around him - friends from school mixed with people he’d never seen - all cheered when he made his latest appearance. He was still drunk from the night before and immediately started drinking again. In his heart of hearts, he knew that the cheers were just because he was the guy hosting the party and that no one there actually cared if he was awake or not, as long as the party kept going. That didn’t matter to Riley, though. Not in his drunken state. That was the point. It made Perry’s absence easier.
While Perry was able to stay on the same level as Riley at any party, she offered him a choice to spend time sober. Or, at least stoned. Being totally sober was boring as hell. With her gone, though, even though he knew that it was temporary, he felt every bad thing ten times worse. So he numbed it all in the only way that he knew how. He’d done just about every drug in his stash, and even one or two that had been brought to the party by others. He’d stayed consistently drunk. The only one of his vices that he didn’t give into was fucking someone at the party and, in all honesty, that had less to do with some kind of commitment to Perry that he could keep even in his most fucked up state, but rather because she was better in the sack than anyone at the party now. Hell, she could outshine ‘em all with just a blowjob. That made the idea of fucking anyone else boring.
While most people were in the yard and on the first floor of the house, there were a decent amount scattered through the second and third stories. They were mostly people who needed to find privacy in order to have sex, which meant that they were some of the newest to the party. Those who had been there for days were taking care of their business wherever they were. They were too fucked up to care about onlookers. Riley passed a couple on a bed in one of the many guest rooms in the house and stumbled through an open window onto a flat part of the roof. It was a common place for him and his friends to hang out during big parties like this and, sure enough, he found some familiar faces there.
A bottle got pushed into his free hand, so that he was now holding two. He took a swig from each and stumbled over to the edge, looking down at the pool and the people around it. He turned back to his friends, grinning. “I could make that jump,” he told them.
“You say that shit all the time,” someone replied. Riley couldn’t make out where the voice came from but it sounded like a challenge to him. He laughed and drank more.
“What? You think the don’t sew wings into--” He had to look down at himself to see what he was wearing. “Tailored suits?” His clothes were stained with what looked like vomit and he couldn’t remember putting them on or how long he’d been wearing them. He laughed again, picturing the image his drunken mind had come up with. “I can do it,” he repeated, dropping both bottles onto the roof. They both rolled off and he heard them smash on the ground below him. Some people yelled angrily up towards him, others shrieked in surprise. Just as he was about to throw himself towards the pool, he felt someone grab hold of his sleeve to stop him.