𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓 : 3.9k

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𝐊𝐘𝐋𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐔𝐆𝐋𝐘 𝐀𝐒 𝐅𝐔𝐂𝐊 𝐉𝐄𝐄𝐏 never really crossed Gwen's mind, but after ending up in its cramped backseat, she was fairly certain that she must have missed a Hazardous Waste sign on the bumper. Gwen and Moon were being slowly crushed against the Jeep's doors by a very sweaty Brucks, who had called dibs on the most undesirable seat in the car: the middle seat — for obvious reasons, of course. Yasmine had only avoided this tragic fate because it was her birthday... lucky bitch.

Yasmine's birthday was actually the whole reason they were all in a car together in the first place. She had planned some huge rager by the lake that evening in order to ring in her Sweet Sixteen. It was going to be a perfect night — if they even made it there in one piece. The combination of noxious fumes and Kyler's treacherous driving had Gwen questioning if she was going to have to spend Yasmine's birthday in an ER somewhere.

The moment they pulled up to the lake and the car was in park, Gwen couldn't get out fast enough. She shoved the door open and clawed her way out into the fresh air. She pulled in a deep breath and let it go in a sigh of relief.

"Finally!" Kyler announced, voicing Gwen's thoughts exactly.

Yasmine giggled. "Your driving sucks, by the way."

"Yeah, and when was the last time you cleaned your car? I'm pretty sure I saw a rat try to untie my shoe at one point," Gwen tacked on, her nose scrunched in disgust.

"Oh, don't worry. I threw all my shit into the trunk when I heard that you ladies were riding with us," Kyler assured her with a smile that was trying really hard to be charming.

But was Gwen impressed? Not in the slightest.

"Wow, and they say chivalry's dead..." she muttered beneath her breath.

"Whatever, dawg," Kyler smirked, completely unbothered. Gwen opened her mouth to berate him further, but was cut off before she could utter another judgmental word.

"No effing way..." Yasmine gasped, her voice threatening to be drowned out by the latest pop hit already booming from the edge of the lake. It appeared as if the party had arrived without them. A whole slew of unfamiliar faces littered the area surrounding the crackling bonfire.

Well, mostly unfamiliar.

The spikey, blue mohawk that stood above the crowd was the focal point in Gwen's mind. This wasn't just any group of party-crashing losers; this was Eli and all of his social outcast friends. Gwen wanted to smother the butterflies that erupted in her stomach at the mere sight of him — a sensation she hadn't experienced since the most hopeless of her middle school crushes.

"Oh, cool! How did all these people get here so early?" Moon chirped, clueless as usual.

"Seriously, Moon? Do these look like people I'd invite?" Yasmine asked with a roll of her eyes. She let out a frustrated sigh and tossed her pin-straight, blonde hair over her shoulder before turning towards the boys. "Kyler, go tell these losers to get out of here."

"Yeah, for sure," Kyler nodded, taking a step towards the party. But a single step was all he took before coming to a complete halt. Gwen's frown deepened as her eyes bounced between the back of his head and the party in front of them. "Wait..." he trailed off with a nervous chuckle.

"Hello? Are you gonna go say something or should I?" Gwen huffed, pushing her way to the front of their little group.

"Um, you know what? Let's just find another spot. Or we could go home or whatever. Y'know what I mean?" Kyler suggested, suddenly riddled with all kinds of anxious energy. If the shifty eyes and fidgeting hands weren't enough of a sign, Kyler's next words confirmed Gwen's suspicion. "I'm just not really feeling this..."

Not really feeling this? When had Kyler ever wanted to miss out on a party?

Never. Not any time that Gwen could recall, that is.

She scoffed incredulously. "You're kidding, right? I mean, you can't be serious." Her head swung around towards the party, searching for whatever... or whoever had spooked this boy so bad. Again, her eyes immediately landed on Eli and his insane hair, practically unable to focus on anything else when he was around.

Only this time, Eli seemed to have noticed her, too.

Even with all of the craziness happening around him, Gwen was able to spot the way his big, blue eyes lit up. Some delusional, optimistic side of her hoped that it was because he saw her. But there was only one way to be sure.

"I think we should just stay," Gwen announced, turning back to face the others. "This was our spot first. If we walk away now, they've won. And do we really want that?"

There was a beat of silence as the group mulled over her words. She really thought she had them, but then...

"Yeah, no. I'm outta here."

"Yeah, this is all you," Brucks agreed, roughly dropping the cooler at Gwen's feet and causing a shocked little noise to escape her. She could only watch in utter disbelief as the boys piled back into the Jeep.

"You guys are pussies! You know that, right?" Yasmine snapped.

"Whatever," Kyler said, dismissively. "Brucks, let's roll."

Then, with a final slam of his door, Kyler cranked the car and started pulling out of the makeshift parking spot. In her frustration, Gwen kicked one of her boot-clad feet through the gravelly lot, sending a hundred little pebbles pelting against the front of Kyler's stupid, customized Jeep. But just in case that message wasn't clear enough, her middle finger in the autumn air pretty much summed up everything she was feeling.

Once they were just a couple of echoed tire screeches, Gwen finally crossed her arms tightly over her chest. "And there goes our ride," she sighed with a shake of her head. "Assholes..." she muttered beneath her breath. She rolled her eyes over towards Yasmine, really resonating with the pissed off look on her face. Gwen glanced sideways, expecting to see something more akin to disappointment on Moon's face, only to find her halfway down to the party already.

"Moon, what the hell are you doing?" Yasmine whined, a second away from stomping her foot like a child throwing a tantrum.

"I'm just going to go get a beer!"

"We have beers!"

Not that Moon even cared about that logic. Nope, she was already intermingling with all of the uninvited party guests, too distracted to even hear Yasmine. Gwen couldn't help but giggle at her as she turned back towards Yasmine, who was very clearly not amused by the whole ordeal.

"C'mon, Yas," Gwen said, patting her friend on the arm. "I know this isn't the birthday party you imagined, but... we have beer and good music. We could at least try and enjoy ourselves."

Yasmine's scowl softened slightly as she glanced noncommittally between Gwen and the cooler. "Fine," she gritted out, clutching the blanket in her arms tighter. "I guess I could have one drink."

"Hey, that's my girl!" Gwen cheered and wrapped an arm around Yasmine's narrow shoulders. "Now, shall we go manipulate some boys into carrying this cooler down to the fire for us?" This proposition had Yasmine's dimples peeking out — finally.

She was quick to nod in firm agreement. "We shall, Gwennie!" she declared in a goofy British accent, making them both burst into laughter as they descended the hill.

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Unsurprisingly, it didn't take too much flirting at all to convince a couple of loser boys to carry a cooler down a rather precarious decline. In fact, all it took was some batted eyelashes and a question asked nicely for once. Who would've thought?

But once all of their belongings were consolidated into a corner of the party, one small realization had Gwen's world crashing down. At some point between their arrival and their settling down, Moon had approached Eli. And from the looks of it, they weren't just a couple of old friends catching up and sharing long-forgotten stories. They were full-on making bedroom eyes at each other over the light of a crackling bonfire!

Before she could think twice about it, Gwen tried to hurry over to them, to put a stop to whatever the hell she was looking at. She wasn't about to let Moon ruin this... thing with Eli that Gwen had been building up in her head for months. This wasn't how things were supposed to go. He was looking at her when they first arrived, not Moon!

...Right?

Unfortunately, Gwen was intercepted at about the halfway mark between her and her target. She must've been so blinded by jealousy or rage... or both, that she didn't even notice someone was in her path until she nearly body-slammed them to the ground. Gwen reeled back, spewing venomous words at the poor, clueless freshman who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"God! I thought it was common sense to move out of someone's way when you saw them coming. Or is the concept of a side-step just a little too complicated for you?"

She could've been as mean as she wanted, but she was too late.

By the time Gwen tore her eyes away from the sputtering dork in front of her, Eli and Moon were officially all over each other, their lips locked in a kiss that she had no chance of breaking them out of. If it weren't for the music bumping loudly nearby, she was pretty sure anyone could hear the shrill shattering of her heart. Had she been reading the situation with Eli wrong this entire time? She had just presumed that the shy, nervous thing was a good sign. She had built her entire foundation atop it, actually, thinking that he only acted like that because he was just so into her. But if this was how Eli acted around girls that he actually had feelings for, then Gwen never had it right in the first place.

She thought she heard the freshman actually manage to get words out, but she had already begun her migration over to the nearest cooler and she really didn't care enough to ask her to repeat it. More than anything, Gwen just wanted to forget that this night ever happened. She wanted to move on with her life, pretend like Yasmine's party hadn't been ruined, like Kyler and Brucks hadn't deserted them with a bunch of the school's biggest dorks, and like her crush on Eli had never existed in the first place.

The first step to forgetting all of that?

Another ice cold beer.

And for the first time that night, it seemed like fate was finally on her side; one, single bottle of beer could be seen floating in the sea of melting ice. Gwen had happened upon the very last one—a bible-level miracle at a high school rager. And she wasn't about to let this gift from the party gods slip through her fingers.

Gwen's hand shot into the cooler at the speed of light, wrapping around the frosty, brown glass. But right when she was ready to bring it up into the muggy night air, there was another hand greedily attempting to tug it away from her. Her eyes flashed up from the drink she still had within her stubborn grip. However, she was unprepared to meet the familiar, yet foggy, face of Eli's friend, Miguel.

Gwen didn't even know the boy that well, but she knew a drunk when she saw one and Miguel was plastered. His dark eyes had yet to really focus on her, despite being close enough to smell the alcohol on each other's breath, and even the gentlest breeze had him swaying precariously. It would have been hilarious if he didn't have an iron grip on the one thing Gwen wanted most in the world at that moment.

"Sorry, Miguel. Finders keepers," Gwen shrugged before trying to pull the bottle from his hand. When his hold didn't falter in the slightest, her lips flattened into a firm line.

"Yeah, and I saw it first," Miguel snapped, snatching it back and dragging her along with it.

Gwen's pretty face easily melted into a scowl. "Trust me. You didn't," she stubbornly gritted out, yanking the bottle back. "Besides, I really don't think you need anything else to drink tonight."

His eyes rolled dramatically. "Oh, and you do?"

"After the night I've had? Obviously." Even the smallest amount of vulnerability from a girl like Gwen was enough to stun Miguel, who seemed to go into a period of genuine shock over the—albeit minor—confession. And she was more than happy to utilize his distraction to her advantage. She used her free hand to pry his fingers away from the bottle, jerking it out of reach as soon as she could. Miguel desperately tried to steal it back as soon as he noticed it was gone, lunging toward her with grabby hands.

But Gwen was too fast and he was way too drunk and thus, uncoordinated. She slid out of the way just in time for him to tumble forward, clumsily collapsing onto the sand where she once stood. The humiliation of it all, coupled with the sound of Gwen officially cracking open the last bottle of beer, had Miguel shooting a glare over his shoulder at her.

"You're not the only one having a shitty night, y'know..." he muttered, finally admitting defeat and simply flopping over into a sitting position on the sand. Miguel had no choice but to look up at her, now perched atop the cooler and daintily sipping her drink. Still, he missed the discreet shift of her eyes towards him and then swiftly away from him, afraid of being caught doing anything that might qualify as staring.

"Not that you care, but..." Miguel continued despite her silence, his fingertip tracing lazily through the sand. "I think my girlfriend might be cheating on me."

And while his assumption usually would have been correct, Gwen was suddenly very interested in the night Miguel Diaz had had. Because as far as she knew, his goody-two-shoes girlfriend, Samantha LaRusso was no cheater... Unless something, or someone, had changed that. Whatever the case, Miguel's misery was the perfect distraction from the jumble of emotions that had made her own mind very messy all of a sudden.

"And what makes you think that?" she asked, keeping her voice flat so as to sound as nonchalant and detached as possible. She even threw back a relaxed gulp of her drink for good measure—like she was only asking out of polite obligation. She couldn't risk missing out on this one-of-a-kind piece of gossip just because Miguel had picked up on her ulterior motives.

"She's not replying to my texts."

Gwen's brows knitted together, but she had to physically restrain herself from scoffing or just storming off from the conversation entirely. "I don't know, Miguel. Doesn't exactly seem like concrete evidence," she muttered, absentmindedly drawing a broken heart into the condensation on her bottle.

His eye roll didn't go unnoticed. "She hasn't had the guts to introduce me to her parents yet, but I... accidentally caught her and her whole family having dinner with this other guy," he explained, unable to look her in the eye as he divulged this information. "And now, she hasn't been replying to my texts all day."

Gwen didn't bother holding back her snort. "Sam brought her side piece to a family dinner?" What other boy would she even know to bring to meet her family, anyway? The only reason a boy like Miguel even had a chance with a girl like Sam in the first place was due to her unexpected, but extremely gratifying, plummet from the school's social graces. So, it wasn't like she had boys piling up at her door, desperate for a date with her—not anymore, that is.

For there to have been another boy in the picture at all would have been hard to believe, but a boy so far into a relationship to deserve a dinner with the LaRussos?

Impossible.

"I-I didn't recognize him," Miguel shrugged. "I don't think he goes to school with us."

Ah, okay... The story was suddenly starting to make a little more sense. Sam had seemingly locked down one of the only other people on Earth who wouldn't have an issue with her life as the school's pariah. Gwen had to bring the bottle to her lips again just to hide her amused smirk.

But it seemed as if the party gods weren't done with her just yet. Through the crackling light of the bonfire, Gwen spotted none other than Sam LaRusso and her mystery boy bouncing down the hill hand in hand. She had seen through Sam's cutesy, flowery dresses and dimpled grin for a while now, but she was suddenly very interested in shattering that façade for Miguel.

Who was she to turn down drinks and a show, after all?

"Would this... boy from another school happen to look like a mustier, and somehow even shorter, Zefron?" she inquired, knowingly. It took Miguel no time at all to follow her stare before his jaw fell open at the new couple's rather indifferent debut. Even Gwen had to applaud Sam's audacity; cheating was bad enough in private, but to flaunt it like this? An interesting move, indeed.

Miguel had gone completely silent beside her—yet it was noticeable enough for Gwen to turn and check on him. And if the flared nostrils and rapid rise and fall of his chest weren't enough of an indicator, the pure, drunken rage in his eyes was burning hotter than the blaze in front of them.

"You should probably go say something," Gwen said in a stage-whisper, a satisfied smile tugging on her lips when he blindly obeyed her advice and began rounding the fire. She wouldn't have been surprised at all if he had walked right through the flames just to make it to the confrontation even quicker. She, on the other hand, opted for a lazy stroll, swirling the beer still left in the bottom of the bottle as she lingered just over Miguel's shoulder.

The perfect spot for eavesdropping and impromptu instigation, if the situation called for it.

By the time she actually made it over to them, the conversation had already taken a turn for the worse. "Miguel, relax," she heard Sam sigh. "This is Robby. He works for my dad."

"Oh, with your dad. Okay, that makes a lot of sense," Miguel spat, scornfully. A soft spot that Sam had no clue she was digging her thumb into. Gwen almost felt bad for him. Almost.

As if on cue, though, Yasmine burst from the masses of teenagers and made a beeline for Gwen. "We have to go. Now," she demanded, her manicured nails digging into the muscle of Gwen's arm. She reeled back to argue that she was right in the midst of eavesdropping on some absolutely spectacular drama, but once she caught sight of Yasmine's wobbly lower lip, her defensiveness fell flat.

"Yas, what happened?" she murmured, grasping Yasmine's shoulders gently.

"Can we just leave?" she huffed, stomping her foot against the sand. "I'm having the worst birthday ever and I just want to go home. Please."

The crack in her voice on that last word was enough for Gwen to fish her phone out and send a text to one of the only people she could trust to pick her up from a party like this without any prying questions. She received a reply mere seconds later and her head popped up with a gentle smile. "Okay, he's on his way to get us now."

Even though Yasmine offered up a weak curve of her own lips, it was immediately overshadowed by an abrupt thud against the sand, blunt and painful. Both of the girls' heads whipped around in time to see that boy with the horrid hair—Robby—scrambling off the ground.

"Hey, man. You wanna try that again?" he huffed, doing his best to get in Miguel's face.

Sam was quicker than he was, though, stepping in between the two of them with raised hands. "Don't!"

But the alcohol and sheer jealousy coursing through Miguel's body combined right as she stepped in front of him, putting her right in the way of his fist as it shot out for Robby's face. It landed squarely across her jaw instead, the force of it sending her toppling backwards. Gwen's hand flew up over her own mouth, momentarily trapping her shocked gasp. She certainly wasn't hurrying over to help Sam up or anything, but she hadn't really meant for her to get socked in the face.

Her looks were kind of all she had going for her at the moment, after all!

"Sam, look, I'm sorry–" Miguel started.

She had leapt to her feet with a stunning amount of resilience. She was probably being fueled by a mixture of anger and adrenaline, too, if Gwen had to guess. "God, you asshole! What the hell was that?" she roared, slapping Miguel's helping hands away from her.

Yeah, definitely anger and adrenaline.

Yet, even with such potent emotions and hormones flooding her mind, Sam managed to soften her voice into something more disappointed, almost motherly in its chiding. "My dad was right about Cobra Kai..." she murmured with a shake of her head. "Good luck at the tournament. I won't be there."

She stomped back up the hill with that boy, Robby trailing at her heels like a mindless little lap dog. Gwen watched her go, her mouth still hanging open from all the theatrics of the conversation. And even though she would have expected Miguel to be doing the same, she could feel his eyes, boring into her and making her cheeks burn. They both knew that Sam might have just broken up with him as a result of her immature goading, but to be fair, Gwen had never expected it to go this far. If she had known it was going to end up with Sam getting punched and Miguel getting broken up with...

Well, she probably still would have done it.

But intentions are important!

So, she held her head high and linked her arm through Yasmine's before announcing to no one in particular, "I think our ride's here."

It probably wasn't, but she wasn't about to pull out her phone and check before she could get away from this stupid little blame game she found herself right in the middle of. The two girls followed in Sam and Robby's footsteps, marching in-step with each other all the way back up to the gravelly driveway.

Her dad pulled up a few minutes later with a little pink cupcake, which he delivered politely into Yasmine's hands not even a second after she climbed into the car. He couldn't help himself; he was just too excited to give it to her. He used a Playboy lighter to illuminate the glittery little candle on top, the sight of which prompted Yasmine to snap a staged picture for her Instagram story before she blew it out.

Somehow, the chaotic events of the evening washed away as they drove home with the windows down, listening to some generic pop song on the radio, and letting the cool, damp air stick to their skin. They would certainly have to deal with the consequences tomorrow, but while they could still ignore them, they did and it was lovely.