RONALD
House parties had a pattern.
They always started the same way—loud music, cheap alcohol, people trying too hard to look like they weren’t already drunk. Conversations overlapped, laughter came too easily, and everyone moved like they had something to prove.
And then, after a few hours, it shifted.
I leaned against the wall on the second floor, a bottle hanging loosely from my hand as I watched the scene unfold below me. It had been barely two hours since the party started, and already, bodies were pressed together in ways that had nothing to do with dancing anymore.
A girl was straddling a guy on one of the couches, her fingers tangled in his hair as she kissed him like she was trying to consume him whole. Another couple stumbled past the staircase, laughing breathlessly, hands
