After the Party Read online

  After the Party

  A.K. Ritchie

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actually persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by A.K. Ritchie

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this e-book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorised electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Cover Photo by Jc Siller

  ISBN 978-1-7779061-1-5

  ISBN 978-1-7779061-0-8 (ebook)

  For my family and friends who knew I could do it, even if I didn’t.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  My first black eye of the year came only seconds after midnight when the band began playing everyone’s favourite song. I stopped my search for Will long enough to take in the scene, to smell the stale beer and body odour. I appreciated those kids—the ones pressed against me, the ones I saw every weekend, the ones who accepted me when I showed up uninvited. Caught up in it all, I forgot about Will and absorbed the music. The voices singing together, the vibrations of the bass. Everyone surged toward the stage, screaming the band’s lyrics back to them.

  When the crowd shifted again, the blonde guy in front of me tumbled backwards, his body knocking the plastic beer cup from my hand before his elbow collided with my cheek. He crashed to the ground and disappeared as the crowd filled in around him.

  Ignoring the sharp pain, I pushed two boys out of the way and reached down to grab the guy’s sweater. The DeKay House etiquette said if someone fell, we picked them up. His honey-coloured waves were easy to spot in the sea of black clothes. A blue-haired boy and I linked our arms beneath the guy’s and hoisted him to his feet. The moment he stood the crowd rushed in, their feet stomping down in the exact place his fingers had been.

  The pain in my face yanked my attention away from the situation. Since the guy seemed stable, I let go of his arm and moved through the mass of people, hand clutching my cheek, to find Will and get out of here.

  “Hey,” the guy shouted, over the band. “Your face.”

  I turned to tell him not to worry about it, but stopped when I saw him properly. He wasn’t just some random blonde guy.

  I’d seen Chase Reid many times, but never without his guitar. Only the week before I’d watched him jumping around and sweating on a stage downtown. In the year since I found Forever July’s music, I’d never missed one of their shows. I’d seen him in clubs and venues all around town, but he didn’t belong at The DeKay House. He was from a different scene, a different world.

  I waved him off, before turning toward the stairs. I needed to be outside in the cold air. I needed to find Will so I could go home.

  All my expectations for New Year’s Eve crumbled. The best I could hope for would be to come out of the night without my eye swelling shut. A few hands patted my shoulder and back as I passed them, but they kept their focus on the band. I used the shaky railing to climb the stairs of the old punk house. The pain in my face and the humidity of the basement made my head feel light, as if I was drunk, not mostly sober.

  I made it into the graffiti-covered hallway at the top of the stairs. I pulled the phone from my pocket and sucked in a deep breath of cooler, drier air as I unlocked the screen. The only message was Kay, saying she’d made it home already—and she had put water and Tylenol next to my bed.

  Then Chase Reid’s voice came again. “Hey!”

  I glanced up—he was standing on the top stair, sweat plastering wavy strands of hair to his forehead. He looked like the Chase that appeared on stage. I didn’t know what to say to a guy like that, a guy like Chase Reid. I didn’t know why he was slumming it in a punk house. Chase belonged in proper bars and clubs, not houses that should be condemned. The DeKay House had become a place for those with nowhere else to go. But he wouldn’t have been the first to come to a show at the House to say they’d done it once, to see how the other half partied. I didn’t want anything to do with his slum tourism.

  I ran my thumb over the spot where his elbow collided with my cheek. The skin beneath my left eye was smooth and hot to the touch.

  “You’re Peyton, right?” He asked. “Peyton Young?”

  “Yeah. How’d you...” I trailed off. I tried to focus on the ache instead of thinking about the fact Chase Reid knew my name.

  “I’ve read your blog,” he said.

  I tugged at my hair, trying to hide my flushed face without being too obvious. I tried to gauge his reaction. I’d made a suggestion about the band I couldn’t imagine he would like. I pointed out that Chase Reid couldn’t handle lead guitar as well as vocals.

  “Can I get you some ice or something?” he asked, nodding his chin toward my face.

  “It doesn’t hurt.” I didn’t want to talk about my face anymore. To figure out why Chase Reid was speaking to me, I asked, “Sorry, what were you saying? About my blog.”

  “You made a solid point about my band in your post.” He stepped up and shifted against the door frame to let someone into the basement, but he never took his eyes off me.

  I tried not to look away, wanting him to know I was listening, despite my pathological fear of confrontation.

  That post went up weeks ago, right after the band played at the Horseshoe Tavern. I had stayed awake until four in the morning, trying to detail my thoughts on the entire thing: about how Forever July had become one of the most popular local pop-punk bands, how they’d landed themselves a decent record deal with a great label, and how their lead guitarist, who also held the position of vocalist, couldn’t do the band justice. I wrote about how he, Chase Reid, couldn’t do the band justice if he refused to give up lead guitar.

  It never occurred to me that any member of the band would read my blog. I was sure none of them knew I existed. We didn’t have any of the same friends. Outside of shows, we didn’t hang out in the same place. But there stood Chase Reid, in a crumbling punk house letting me know he read my blog.

  “If I’d known you were going to read it—” I stopped myself and shook my head.

  “You would have still written the same thing?” Chase asked. He hadn’t raised
his voice. It didn’t waver. There was no sign if he was on the angry side or the annoyed side of the unimpressed scale.

  “I would have still written the same thing,” I admitted, pressing myself against the wall, shoulders braced for whatever he might say next.

  An excited holler came from the kitchen, and a bunch of people cheered. It would have been the perfect reason to escape, but I didn’t want to move. Kay had gone home early and Will had disappeared. I didn’t know who to run to.

  “You weren’t wrong.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and went on, “You said we needed someone stronger on guitar. It’s a slap to the ego, honestly. But we decided to switch things up to see what would happen. As you probably already know, it worked. So, we made our rhythm guitarist our lead.”

  “Mitchell, right?” I asked. From the videos on their website, I knew Mitchell’s guitar skills outweighed Chase’s. Chase’s polished vocals worked and he had great range, but Mitchell needed to take the burden from him, to carry the music. Chase needed to focus on the lyrics and his vocals. Actually, in the first draft of the blog post, I made the direct suggestion that Mitchell take over the more intricate guitar pieces, but Kay said it felt like pushing the critique too far, and to let the band make their own decisions. At the time, the suggestion annoyed me, but standing in the hallway with Chase Reid I was grateful to Kay, saving me from awkwardness yet again.

  “Yeah. Would you be willing to listen to a track we recorded? Let me know if you think it works?” Chase took the phone from his pocket and waited.

  The question threw me. The blog was where I expressed all the thoughts I couldn’t say out loud. No one at the DeKay House knew of it. It became a place I expressed things without having to face the audience. I assumed no one cared to hear my opinions, so I could go off without consequence.

  The party kept moving on around us, but Chase still held the phone in front of him, an eyebrow raised. “I know you just saved my fingers from being totally obliterated down there, but could you do me one more favour? In the spirit of the holidays and all that?”

  People don’t always enjoy hearing the truth, and when they heard it, their responses didn’t always come out rationally.

  “It’s a new song. You’d be the first to hear it,” he said.

  I pressed my lips together, hoping the word ‘yes’ wouldn’t slip out. It would be an honour to be the first to hear a new Forever July track. Their self-titled album, released before they were signed to the label, occupied a spot in my top ten albums of all time. It embodied a sense of melancholy I craved in my music. With their track record, I knew the new song would be excellent and I would love it, but if I’d been wrong about Mitchell’s abilities, the truth would come out. And the night was already a disaster.

  “I really need to find my friends,” I told Chase. “Another time?”

  The corners of his mouth tugged downward. He shoved his phone into the pocket of his jeans.

  “How about this?” he asked. “I’ll put you on the list for our next show in a couple weeks and you can give me your honest feedback then.”

  I tried to keep my voice light. “You want me to write a review for one song?”

  He let out a deep chuckle and said, “No. Let us know, in person, if we still suck. If you’re cool with that.”

  “I highly doubt it’ll suck.” I attempted to smile, but the aching in my cheek doubled.

  Chase laughed again. “So, is that a yes?”

  My phone rang and we both glanced down at the screen. A picture of Will and me stared back at us, faces pressed together, glistening from post-mosh pit sweat, eyes bloodshot from too many beers. I muted the call.

  “I didn’t expect that,” Chase said. His words came out high, like a question.

  “Expect what?” I asked, turning the screen of the phone toward the ground.

  “You and Will, I guess,” Chase said. His smooth forehead creased.

  “You know Will?” I asked.

  Chase shrugged. “I used to come here all the time with my brother. I know Will well.”

  Everyone who went to the House knew Will, his quirks, his moods. No one minded his attitude. They chalked it up to Will being Will. It never bothered me that people knew all those details about him, but for some reason, I didn’t want Chase to know. My stomach tightened. “I should go. I should call him back,” I said, staring at the phone in my hand.

  “Thanks for helping me down there.”

  “Someone goes down, you pick them up. Those are the House rules.” I gave a small wave, then turned and headed toward the front door.

  I yanked my coat from the pile on the uneven stairs with one hand as I called Will back with the other. The phone rang against my ear as I pulled the door open.

  Icy air wrapped itself around me as I stepped out onto the porch. My teeth chattered, making the pain in my cheek double, maybe triple. The weather had been mild last week, but it turned bitter during our night at the DeKay House.

  “Peyton,” Will’s voice yelled at me through the phone. “Hunter’s having a party.”

  “What? Where are you?” I listened for familiar voices on the other end, but I couldn’t make out any distinguishing details.

  “I’m at Hunter’s.”

  A lump formed in my throat. I swallowed it away and listened to Will shouting at someone for another round of shots, something stronger. His words slurred. I didn’t want to go to Hunter’s. Will got out of hand when he was around that group of friends and I didn’t like how he acted when he drank too much.

  “Alright. I’ll see you in a bit,” I said, even though I had no intention of showing up at Hunter’s party. It was better not to argue, not to ask why he didn’t take me with him. By morning, he’d forget he’d called me at all.

  On top of it, I didn’t have enough money to get an Uber all the way to the east side of town, especially on New Year’s Eve. The rates would be inflated until at least three in the morning, when the majority of people had already turned in for the night. I didn’t even know how I would get home from the DeKay House.

  Unsure of what to do, I started walking, and called Kay. It rang and rang, but kept going to voicemail. Despite the snow, I sat down on the curb and pulled the coat tighter around me. Every time my fingers reached for the cellphone in my pocket, I had to remind myself I had no one left to call. To top it off, my charge was down to 2% and I could feel the tears start to well in my eyes.

  New Year’s Eve held so many expectations for me. I’d expected the night to make up for my lack of Christmas celebrations. I’d never had a real Christmas, and my first two years being out of my childhood house, I just wanted my own version of holiday celebration. But Will and Kay went to be with their families and I stayed alone in the apartment for three days, waiting for someone to return.

  The sound of steps on the sidewalk caused me to duck my head so whoever it was wouldn’t see the tears and the swelling beneath my eye. With the toe of my shoe, I pushed down the fluffy piles of snow until they were flat and marked with my tread. The person stepped off the sidewalk and stopped right in front of me.

  “Hey,” Chase said when my eyes met his. Despite the cold, he wore only a sweater, with the hood over his head.

  “Hey. Waiting for a cab.”

  “You’ll be waiting for a while. I’ll give you a ride.” Chase extended a hand. “I basically broke your face. It’s the least that I can do.”

  A lopsided smile crossed his face as he wiggled his fingers. I took his warm hand and he pulled me up from the curb. When I was on my feet, Chase said, “And I hope you know, I’m going to force you to listen to that new song I was telling you about.”

  I wiped my cheeks dry with the sleeve of my jacket. “I think I can handle that.”

  2

  When I first moved to the city, I remember walking home from the bus station to the room I found from an ad online. I saw a hand-drawn sign stuck to a lamppost. It read, Punk Show. Thursday. DeKay House. The address was
crammed into the tiny space along the bottom of the flyer. I had to squint to read it. The most enticing part of the poster were the words no cover charge. The first night I showed up at the DeKay House, I had expected little more than a place to hang out for the night.

  Five minutes after I walked into the DeKay House, Kay approached me with an energy drink and asked me my name. She said she noticed I was alone and asked if I wanted a tour, asked me what my story was. I gave her some version of the truth and she accepted it. Before the night came to an end, she offered me her couch for the night so I didn’t have to walk home alone. Within a week, after she met the intense woman I’d rented the room from, I’d officially moved into Kay’s spare bedroom.

  Kay strolled into our living room with a mug in one hand and a bag of frozen peas in the other. Day-old eyeliner smudged straight across to her hairline.

  Despite being sober by the time I got home that morning, the day dragged like any other would have after a DeKay House party. My stomach roiled. My head ached. I flinched when Kay tossed the frozen peas in my direction. The movement made me notice the plastic wrap covering her bicep.

  “What did you get done? And when?” I asked, nodding at the new tattoo on her arm.

  Kay grinned and curled up into her Lazy-Boy, twisting her body so I could see the colour added to her tarot tattoo. The black cloak of Death stood out against her pale flesh. The various shades of red in the roses added splashes of colour to her mostly black work tattoos.