Afterglow

Stories

### Chapter 1: frigid

You'd think nothing would be worse than finding out your boyfriend cheated on you with your sister.

You'd have thought wrong.

It was returning back home with your tail tucked between your legs after thinking you'd finally escaped their world of toxicity and fake smiles with money dripping between their teeth and insults swimming in champagne gilded breaths.

Stuck stranded outside of the airport whilst consequently freezing my ass off as the sky spit bitter, smog catching snow, I shivered in contempt waiting for the car that my dad had ordered to arrive, just to take me to the one place I absolutely dreaded returning.

When said car finally did arrive, I sought shelter in its warm interior, uncaring if I trudged in muddy snow sludge from the outside.

It was in the sleek black town car that I slipped my headphones in once giving directions to the driver and escaped to my own world of a shuffled playlist that always seemed to drown out the monotony and harshness of the regular world, but I could still hear my words hanging in the air, like a promise and a curse all at once.

"The address is twelve hundred Laymon Lane, Bayfield Academy."

I shivered as the words passed my lips.

Soggy, half-melted snowflakes drifted down the window of the town car in a lazy, lingering path that matched the pace at which I wished to return to the one place that I'd ever called home.

One long year and still those ice capped skyscrapers that stood like gallant knights in the distance brought with them the promise of heartache and still born memories threatening to break through the walls that I had pulled high in my mind the moment I got out.

I blocked out the screeching horns and squealing brakes from the constant traffic around the small car that was chauffeuring me back to my own personal hell, tuning back into my music.

A blessed distraction and salvation all in one, I survived on a diet of scintillating guitar riffs, haunting vocal runs and chilling lyrics that filled the space in my mind where all of my family drama, among other things, should have resided.

After my sister pretty much stole my boyfriend, I gouged myself on a litany of slow and painful ballads that could make even the hardest criminal shed a tear.

When my parents split and I decided to go and live with my father in California, thousands of miles away from the only home I'd ever known, I had tormented my eardrums with raging punk rock that had me drumming my fingers to the beat long after the songs had ceased playing.

Today, though, the music failed to soothe my aching nerves.

Today was the day that I would stroll back through those large marbled doors into the foyer and smell the Chanel perfume wafting off of my mother's fake chest in droves as if she were trying to hide the facade of happiness with it, somehow trying to make everything seem perfect and beautiful when our lives were anything but.

It was easier to face my father after I'd stumbled across their well kept family secret, as he was always too busy doting on my new stepmother Ellen and her growing belly to notice anything suspicious about me and my behavior, but my mother was far more observant.

Before I chose to live with my father she would breathe down my neck at any chance she got.

We were a split apart family, with one daughter so burned she decided to live across the country rather than face the toxicity, and the other so jaded she just so happened to steal the other's first real boyfriend.

I sighed as I realized the problems I was bringing home with me far outshone and eclipsed the ones I had left home with.

The song switched over and a sigh of relief fell from my parted lips, my mind imagining the cloud of fog that I would have produced had the window been opened to allow the chilly new winter air inside.

January was the beginning of the second semester, and senior year was about to come to a quick ending, but of course I couldn't have finished it out in California.

No, I was too much of a troublesome bother, what with my father about to be inviting a new life into the world with his new barely adult wife.

If I wasn't so wrapped up in the other events that had happened in California, the ones my parents had no idea I'd found out about, then getting kicked out might have just hurt my feelings...

The driver slammed on the brakes and my head hit the back of the plush seat causing one of the earbuds to fall out and dangle helplessly against my chest.

I was stuck between two worlds- one a fantasy that I could escape to and wallow in, while the other was harsh, painful and all too real, but one that I would nevertheless have to enter sooner rather than later.

"Come on, it's a green light asshole!"

Back to my fantasy world, it was.

I scrolled aimlessly through the pictures I had taken with my friends in California and remembered our tearful goodbyes.

I had a honey sweet boyfriend back there, Ian, but long distance was far too heavy for a pair of seventeen year olds, especially with the load of baggage we each carried into the relationship even before we added a few thousand miles between us.

The breakup was sweet and amicable, if a bit inconsequential and surface level, as was most of the relationship itself.

It was more of an intense friendship if anything.

The town car lurched forward slowly as the lull of slow traffic kept the rubber tires turning, the fumes from the obscenely loud garbage truck ahead permeating the carefully curated air inside while the roar of its engine obstructed my next song in my head.

I leaned my head against the cool glass, my dark brown locks squishing against the iced window and locked my vision on the pair of light brown almond shaped eyes that stared back at me through the half transparent reflection of the window.

My sister had once commented that she wished she had the same kind of eyes until she'd overheard my ex boyfriend tell her he preferred blue eyes, and then she was permanently on the side of cerulean.

I rolled my eyes at the memory.

It wasn't long before the soft roar of the engine and light rocking of the stop and go traffic lulled me into a restless sleep and before I knew it I opened my eyes and the skyscrapers of New York City were long gone, instead replaced by towering pines dusted with plush white snow and imposing mountains in the distance, their beauty offset by the haunting garish building that the town car was dangerously creeping closer and closer to.

My home.

It hadn't changed in the year and some odd months that I'd vacated the premises, still gray brick and marble columns filled with the soul sucking money that my family had acquired through the generations.

My mother hadn't worked a day in her life, but my father took over the business the second he turned twenty-one, something he never forgot to remind me and my sister of constantly and incessantly.

Accounting wasn't the most exciting job in the world, but when it came to owning the country's largest firm in the financial realm, my father took home the cake in making it sound even more boring than one could have ever imagined.

My mother kept the house and her bank account padded with the divorce settlement a larger sum than a monarch would have needed to run a small country, so pulling up to the small mansion that only housed two people normally seemed excessive.

It was excessive when it was a full family of four in attendance, but the gross waste of space and resources of my childhood home finally hit me stepping out onto the slick, glossy pavement iced over with a thin sheen of frozen rain.

A permanent frown fell upon my face as I took in the dark evergreen pines edging the property, the landscaping impeccable despite the season being the dead of winter when everything was supposed to be, well, dead .

The needles of the pines dusted in fresh powder sparkled in the falling sunlight and I had to shield my eyes just as the double doors of the pseudo mansion opened and down came my mother and sister, her boyfriend of one and a half years in tow for the welcoming party.

Oh, joy.

I hadn't laid eyes on Holden Masterson in one long year, but it wasn't long enough for me to forget the way his golden brown hair shone in the sunlight or how his muscular figure crafted  by his years on the lacrosse team did certain things to my mind that should have been illegal.

His casual designer outfit was hidden by a large black overcoat and his eyes were covered with a pair of glasses that only added to his appeal.

An entire year, though, and somehow that massive betrayal hadn't disappeared, no matter how many miles had separated us.

I averted my attention from the nauseatingly happy couple and flitted my gaze to my mother's natural blonde hair flipping to the side in agitation as she realized that I wasn't making a move to greet them at the steps and that she would actually have to step on the driveway.

Even ten feet away and I could smell my mother's disapproval of my outfit and hairstyle from where I stood.

I'd dressed casually with my legging clad legs plopped into a pair of black fur ankle boots, the large black pea coat the same one she'd bought for me for Christmas the year before.  It had been shipped, as we couldn't do in person holidays.

We got a FaceTime call, and that was it, that was Christmas from my mom.

My driver hauled one of my bags upon his shoulder and began walking towards the house which cued me in on the fact that I hadn't moved since spotting my family.

Great.

One reluctant step after the other took me away from the blessed sanctuary of the enclosed car that was my only escape, my feet stomping reminding me of a death march.

Maybe I could have made a break for it and stolen the car and drove it all the way back to the airport, but I was only seventeen and all of my bank cards would be frozen in a second if I ever tried to run away.

Plus, I didn't have anywhere to run to.

My dad didn't want me, so back to mommy dearest it was, even if I didn't want either of them anymore.

It didn't matter what I wanted.

"Katrina Lane Randolph, you get over here and give your mother a hug!"

Her voice came out high pitched and somewhat happy, so I obliged, intentionally keeping my eyes away from Holden and Sloane, my 'sister'.

I really could put air quotes around her name, because we weren't really blood related considering I was adopted.

Apparently, my parents didn't think they could have a baby after they were first married so they went through the adoption process with me but the moment the papers were signed and I was officially a Randolph, Sloane was conceived.

I was the dark haired, dark eyed, dark skinned adoptive daughter of the famous finance moguls and Sloane was the perfect blonde haired blue eyed daughter they had originally wanted in the first place.

It wasn't like I was treated like Cinderella, quite the opposite really.

In trying to make up for the fact that I wasn't blood, my parents treated me to almost everything I could have ever wanted growing up, leading to hordes of jealousy problems with Sloane.

They didn't realize the monster they were creating whilst doing it so I couldn't blame them much, but it was like once they split up, all bets were off.

It was like we had to choose sides, and I chose dad's.

I chose wrong, apparently.

I should have chosen neither and moved in with my best friend Vera instead.

My mother's hug was stiff and cold, and I was wrong about the Chanel perfume.

This time it was Dior.

Her golden locks loaded down with copious amounts of hair spray tickled my face and I was desperate to escape her embrace.

Holden somehow caught my eye as I pulled out of the hug and damn if those blue eyes didn't still try to make me feel something other than anger, but  I steeled my resolve and planned to get his image out of my head, no matter what.

I'd hunker down and study all semester, focus on reading and music.  Anything to keep myself from remembering that I was still desperately searching answers to why he did what he did, despite the fact that he was wrapped up in my little sister's arms.

Speaking of my mother's carbon copy, even right down to the exact same type of hairspray to hold their blonde manes down in the frigid winds.

"Sloane."

She blessed me with an oh so warm side hug, only briefly letting go of Holden in order to do so.  She hadn't changed one bit.  We were a cold family, hardly any emotions shown between us, so it wasn't unusual to go such long periods without seeing one another.

I gazed out at the cold grey air and huffed out a puff of breath that satisfactorily curled in a plume of fog and drifted up towards the equally bleak sky, evaporating into nothing and escaping the current reality I was trapped inside of.

I was truly grateful for the world that I was born into, and I had loved my family once upon a time, but it was suffocating having to be surrounded by a sister who hated my guts, an ex that I wasn't over because of the way our relationship had so abruptly ended (via a drunken text that he had cheated on me with said sister), and a mother who was less emotionally available than a Pop Tart.

Don't forget the secret...the weight of an enormous secret that suffocated me just by giving it space in my brain to exist.

"Can we go now, I need to talk about Lacrosse practice with Taylor and Evan and I want to hang out before Lachlan's party tonight."

My body visibly tensed at the sound of Holden's voice, but mainly because of the names that he'd uttered.

I hadn't seen or spoken with my fellow classmates aside from my best friend Vera for the entire year that I was gone, and I almost put the last name that had dropped from Holden's lips out of my mind the entire time I was away, but there was a gnawing nuisance that allowed that name to keep popping up in my memories.

Lachlan Brooks, the only other guy that I'd given a second thought to in my entire time at Bayfield Academy, mainly because his family owned the entire damn campus, but also because of his annoying desire to point out the fact that I was adopted to anyone who had ears, and his incessant teasing about my boy troubles was the cherry on top of the bitter cake that summed up my feelings about the boy.  The teasing didn't start until after Holden cheated one me, so at least I couldn't say he'd bullied me all my life, but six months before I left for California was more than enough ignorance to last a lifetime.

"Oh, a party!  Can Katrina tag along?"

I ground my teeth together.  My mother knew I preferred being called Kate over Katrina, but she always ignored that.

"I'm good mom, I actually want to unpack what I'm keeping here for the weekends and get ready to move in to school since I'm sleeping there Sunday night."

I wanted to add because I wouldn't want to be caught dead at Lachlan Brooks' party seeing as how I hated his guts but I couldn't say that.  My mother worshipped the Brooks' and if she knew how far my resentment ran for that entire family then she probably would have had me disowned.

"Are you sure?  I'm having a friend over, I wouldn't want to disturb you."

Meaning she was going to have a man over.  Great.

"I'll lock myself in my room, it'll be fine," I commented, my voice bored and monotone, my mood quickly turning sour as my blood boiled.  She had no idea that anything was even remotely wrong, or maybe she did and she chose to ignore it, typical of our family.

She didn't know that I'd actually be inviting Vera over and we'd be spending the night in the pool house, specifically the hot tub on the screened in porch, I'd already texted her and told her the plan.  A bottle of vodka and a swim was exactly what I needed to start the shittiest semester of my life off right.

My mother seemed like she was about to push the issue, but seeing the uncomfortable looks on Sloane and Holden's faces, I decided it was best for everyone if I ended this little reunion.