Her curtains are charred.
“What the hell happened?” Johnny asks through laughter of his own.
Claire crosses her arms, huffing before nodding her head to her boyfriend and his three friends who are tangled in a pile on the floor. “Ask these idiots.”
Steph lays on Claire’s bed, barely sucking in oxygen as she rolls around in hysterics at whatever happened up here.
All the boys glare at her. Well, except for the boy standing next to me.
“It’s August’s fault!” Lucas yells, “he tripped Claire.”
August’s jaw drops, “we were messing around you protective asshole.”
“Nuh-uh,youwere messing around,shegot tripped,” Lucas retorts, kind of sounding like an eight-year-old who’s getting into a fight on the playground.
“Still not understanding here,” Johnny says.
Rolling her eyes, Claire picks up a candle and thrusts it in our direction. “August and Iweremessing around, he tripped me and I landed on mybed,” she sends a pointed look to Lucas before continuing. “Lucas lost his damn mind and tackled August, so Miller tried to pull him off, which then made Blair jump into action to get Miller off of Lucas.”
My head is spinning.
“The four of them ended up in a big pile on the floor and knocked the candle off my desk… hence the burnt curtains.”
Oh.
“So they caused a small fire,” I state, just to be sure I’m on the same page.
Claire nodsher head.
“That’s it?” I ask, looking around the room and seeing no other damage.
“Oh my god, it was priceless,” Steph finally chokes out. “I thought they were gonna piss themselves. I’ve never seen a group of men so scared.”
All I can think of in this moment is how fucking ridiculous they all are. I mean, who else would experience something like this? Literally no one. No one but these people have these kinds of problems.
But they’re good problems to have.
Despite how pissed Claire seems to be, I know that within a couple hours she’ll be over it, and the whole group will be back to their twisted version of normal.
I don’t think I’ve ever met a group of people so god damn absurd in my entire life. It seems like there’s always something going wrong, and yet they love each other to pieces anyway. They have this weird way of brushing things off and moving on in life, like no matter what happens, they have each other and that’s all that matters. I guess in a way that’s true, if you have people in your life that love you unconditionally, everything else just kinda falls into place.
“Aren’t you glad I dragged you into this mess?” Johnny smiles, pulling me into his side, draping an arm over my shoulders.
“I was just trying to help!” Miller whines.
“And I don’t want to hear it,” Claire chides, “you had just as much a part of it as anyone else.”
“But-“
“She said stuff it,” Blair cackles.
Claire’s eyes snap towards Johnny’s would-be twin, “don’t make me come over there, Nicholas Blair. I will call your mother.”
August snickers, shoving Blair towards the brunette with fire behind her eyes.
Pun intended.
“You don’t even know who my mother is,” Blair retorts, stumbling away from Claire.
