It was sickening.

The faint smell of vomit coming in waves from the slightly ajar bathroom, followed by sounds of retching and sobbing; the beer, spilt haphazardly on the floor, clinging to the bottom of her shoes and leaving behind sticky footprints; the music, some weird remix of 2010 pop songs, booming around the house and shaking the pictures on the walls; the dim lighting, barely enough to see a foot or so in front of her, making her light-headed and sleepy.

It was sickening. Sickening and boring.

She stumbled down the stairs, trying to make out a familiar figure in the half-full living room before realizing she had only come to this party tonight so she wouldn't see anyone familiar. It was an almost suffocating realization. The air was too warm, too thin, too crowded– there was no one here to save her, and she could only blame herself.

She shoved her way through the living room and the kitchen, desperately reaching out for the door handle and yanking it open. The cool air hit her face, blowing her hair back off of her shoulders and calming the flush in her cheeks. She felt her heart rate slow and her breath even out as she took another step into the back yard.

There were only a few people out here, and for the most part, they all were keeping quiet. There was a small group sitting by the fire pit, having a deep one-in-the-morning talk. A couple sat on the edge of the pool with their foreheads pressed together, sharing a private smile. And sitting in a small circle of chairs on the far side of the lawn was Mel, Mike, and Cindy, casually talking while sharing a joint amongst themselves.

She took another deep breath to settle the uneasy feeling in her stomach. Once she had calmed down enough to move again, she strolled over to the trio and took the seat beside Mel, who instinctively wrapped a loose arm around her shoulders.

"There you are," Mel smiled. "I was wondering when I'd see you tonight. I was worried you'd gotten tired out."

"Of parties?" Madeline asked. "Never." Mel offered her the joint, but Cindy started speaking, taking Maddie's attention away before she could accept the joint.

"Where are your friends?" Cindy asked.

Maddie looked around, as if expecting to find Luna or Jason nearby, before looking back to Cindy and shrugging. "Don't know, don't care."

"Aw," She pouted. "I wanted to meet them." Madeline didn't respond– she gave Cindy a tight-lipped smile while she adjusted the position she was sitting in.

"What do you mean you don't care about your friends?" Mel asked with a somewhat humorless laugh in her tone as she turned into Maddie, her arm slowly slipping down Maddie's shoulders.

Again, Madeline shrugged. "They didn't come tonight. They're not important right now."

Any hint of a smile fell from Mel's face as she studied Madeline over, searching for whatever answer the girl was withholding. Madeline misread the situation and placed her hand on the side of Mel's face, attempting to lean in and kiss her. However, Mel had swiftly angled her head away and created more space between the two of them.

"Maddie, are you alright?" Mel asked, concern denting her brows.

"I'm fine," She answered monotonously. "Are you gonna kiss me?"

Mel glanced over to Cindy, who only raised her eyebrows in an opinionated way before quickly looking in the opposite direction. Mel tried Mike next, but he had already busied himself in staring off at whatever Cindy was staring off at.

Mel sighed, "Madeline, when I suggested that you kiss other people, I didn't mean quite so literally."

"You kissed me first," She said defensively.

"Once, and I didn't know," Mel paused, biting her lip as she struggled to find the right thing to say. "I didn't know that this would be the result."

"I don't know what you mean by that," Maddie responded.

Once again, Mel looked over to Cindy and Mike for help, but they pretended as though they hadn't been listening to the exchange. The two were quick to make a quiet excuse as to why they had to leave, forcing Mel to talk to Maddie alone.

Mel thought carefully before speaking next– she was too high to have any truly logical thought, but she couldn't sit by and let this continue on any longer. She kept her eyes on Madeline as she thought. The girl looked unbothered as she watched a group of guys set up a game of beer pong on the table by the side of the pool.

"Madeline," Mel started, waiting to continue until the other girl was looking at her again. Madeline's head turned slowly, a ghost of a smile on her face. "I think you need help."

"Help?" She questioned, her brows dipping down. "Like liquid courage?"

Mel shook her head, her lips remaining pursed. "No, not that kind of help, Maddie." She reached forward and took Madeline's hands into hers. "Help like therapy. Whether you want to admit it to yourself or not, you're depressed, Madeline."

Madeline flinched, pulling herself further back from Mel and letting her hands slip out of the girl's hold. She felt her breath hitch for a moment and her heart rate picked up again. "That's not true," She argued, anger flooding into her tone. "Y-you can't just say things like that-"

"Madeline," Mel said calmly. "What you're doing isn't healthy. Isolating yourself from your friends, getting high every night, sleeping with a bunch of different people. You're just making it worse for yourself when you finally grow tired of pretending."

Her hands shook at her sides and her heart thudded in her chest like it was trying to break through her ribcage. The familiar, sickening feeling washed over her again. The air was too warm and too thin again, and the pungent, overbearing smell of lavender came as the wind swept Mel's hair forward.

She needed to get out of here.

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Madeline shot out of her seat, shaking her head disdainfully at Mel. "I don't need to hear this from you."

Mel stood up with her, her hand clasping around Madeline's to keep her from leaving. "Yes, you do. You need to hear this from someone." She brought a hand to the side of the girl's face, gently tracing the shape of her cheekbone with her thumb. "You're not okay, Madeline. You're just not."

Her stomach ached with a sensation worse than butterflies or bugs– it felt like piranhas were swimming inside of her. Tears pricked the corner of her eyes, but she was not going to cry in front of Mel in the middle of a party. The touch of Mel's hand, the look in Mel's eye, the smell of Mel's hair– it was all too much. She was upset and angry, and maybe just the slightest bit sad, all at once and it was too much for her to stay any longer.

She decided she hated Mel. Mel wasn't supposed to have opinions about her. Mel wasn't supposed to judge her. Mel wasn't supposed to tell her she was broken. Mel wasn't supposed to tell her she needed fucking therapy. Mel wasn't supposed to do anything– she was just supposed to be there. Mel was supposed to just be there and not say anything, not do anything– not care.

Madeline wriggled her hand free from Mel's hold once again and pulled back. "I have to go," She breathed out, her voice getting stuck in her throat. She turned on the balls of her feet, briskly making her way back into the house, ignoring Mel's shouts for her to come back.

It was a sickening feeling. It wasn't even a feeling, it was just numbness.

Everything felt numb and she wasn't sure she liked it.

She ran into the kitchen and barged through the people clustered by the door. They bit back at her angrily, but she ignored them and continued pushing her way to the front of the house. She had safely escaped the large gathering in the center of the living room and the front door was within sight when she stopped suddenly, paralyzed by the familiar face she hadn't expected to see tonight.

Their eyes locked from across the room, and she watched as the smile fell from his face and the look of something between annoyance and frustration took its place. He and one of his friends had just split off from a larger group of people, sitting in one of the side rooms. He made small movements in her direction, and, for some reason, she found herself advancing towards him as well.

When they were close enough to almost touch, she realized she hadn't prepared anything to say to him. She kept her mouth shut and waited for him to speak first, which he must have picked up on.

"What are you doing here, Princess?" He asked.

What was she doing here? She swore she knew the answer to that question when she got here earlier tonight. But now, she was too confused to even remember. She only felt something close to regret that she had come in the first place.

"It's a party," She said finally, shrugging her shoulders casually.

He hummed before assessing Madeline and glancing over her shoulder, as if expecting to see someone else with her. "Did you lose Luna?"

"Luna didn't come."

"Luna didn't come?" Madeline shook her head. "You came by yourself?" She nodded.

He glanced over to his friend, Cameron, who said nothing and shrugged. Carson sighed before addressing Madeline again. "Do you have a ride home?"

"No."

He looked conflicted for a moment before another sigh escaped his lips. He turned inwards to Cameron and said something to him quietly. Cameron nodded his head and smiled, giving his reply while patting Carson's shoulder twice. He backed away and headed back in the direction they had come from, returning to the side room with the rowdy group of friends.

"Come on," Carson said, holding his arm out in the direction of the front door. "I'm taking you home."

"What makes you think I want to go with you?"

"I don't care if you don't want to go with me, I'm not letting you stay here by yourself."

"I don't need a babysitter," She bit out. "I can handle myself."

"Yeah, I'm sure of it," He responded, rolling his eyes. "Come on, out."

He placed his hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her in the direction of the front door, muttering goodbyes to people he passed without ever fully stopping. Once they had made it to the sidewalk in front of the house, he let go of his hold on her.

"My car is a couple blocks down," He said, nodding his head to the left. "Are you alright to walk?" He took the nod of her head as a satisfactory answer and started off in the direction of his car, assuming that she was following him down the sidewalk.

Only a few of the streetlights actually worked, so the street was pretty dim, and other than the fading sound of the music coming from the party house and the sounds of their feet against the ground, the street was dead silent. Carson had slowed his pace, shortening his stride, which Madeline hadn't noticed until he was half a foot behind her. He loomed behind her like he didn't want to be next to her, but half-expected she would run back to the party and would need to stop her.

Madeline hadn't said anything– she wasn't really sure what to say. She hadn't planned on ending tonight with Carson of all people, and she hadn't made up her mind about how she felt about that yet.

Carson was... well, he was Carson. He was stiff as a board around people he didn't know or didn't like, and that usually happened to include Maddie. Somehow, that thought was comforting enough– he wasn't overly thrilled with having to take her home, even though he offered, and it was most likely due to the imminent threat that if Dylan found out that Carson knew Maddie was at the party and left her there alone, he would probably wake up in a hospital bed.

So, he wasn't taking her home because he cared– he was taking her home because he had to.

"You looked pretty upset when I saw you," His voice broke her from her thoughts. She glanced out of the corner of her eye and found Carson to be looking at his feet. "Did something happen?"

Her head swiveled forward, her hair falling forward and creating a curtain around her face, hiding any signs of emotions or anxiety. She felt the all too familiar twitch of nerves bundling in her stomach once again, and the lump in her throat returned at the memory of Mel's words. Because, if she was honest with herself, it wasn't just Mel's words. It was everything.

Maddie shook her head, blinking back the tears and swallowing the lump down. "No," She responded finally, her voice coming out with more rasp than she had meant. "Nothing happened."

She took his silence to mean he was satisfied enough with her answer – or that he never really cared about her answer in the first place – and focused her energy on using the toe of her shoe to kick a pebble in front of her.

"Why did you come alone?" His voice was closer now. He seemed to have gotten over his fear of getting too close to her, because now, he stood directly beside her, his eyes already glued to hers.

His eyes were a lot darker at night, she concluded, faintly aware that she hadn't responded to his question in an appropriate amount of time and was full-on staring at him. She couldn't bring herself to care. His eyes held a certain amount of sincerity to them that felt too wrong to be true; the rest of his body was lax and displayed no signs of outward concern. His eyes intimidated her in that way– she could almost be fooled into thinking he cared.

Madeline looked away, "I wanted to."

She couldn't tell if Carson was still looking at her or not, and she decided against turning back to him to check. He didn't respond at first again, filling the silence instead with a long sigh as he shoved his hands into his pockets.

Madeline busied herself with counting her steps now, fairly certain that their conversation was over and happy enough for it to stay that way. Carson could give a pristine report to Dylan – Maddie was still an evasive train wreck, but other than that fine – and feel like a hero for fifteen minutes for driving her home.

"Do you want me to beat him up again?" His question came as a surprise to her, startling her enough to look up at him. The straight line of his lips remained and the facade of sincerity still lingered in his eyes, which he kept trained on whatever was directly in front of him. "It's been a while since I've kicked his ass."

Carson never specified who the 'him' he was talking about was, but Madeline understood anyways. She let out a small laugh, a ghost of a smile on her face now, as she expected Carson's lip to curl up. It was only when the moment of humor passed and he remained stoic that she understood he hadn't meant it as a joke. "Are you actually offering?" She asked.

He shrugged, "Clearly punching some sense into him didn't work the first time."

"Don't beat him up," Madeline said quickly, quiet enough that she hadn't realized she said it at first. But she did, because she felt some sort of need to defend Damien again, even though she was sure she was over the entire thing. When she turned her head straight again, she was able to spot Carson's car now, just a few more meters away. "Once was enough."

He pulled the car keys from his pocket, stretching out his arm to unlock the car. Madeline split away from him to enter the car from the passenger side as he made his way to the driver's seat. "Obviously not, but whatever," He muttered.

"Should you be driving?" Madeline asked suddenly once Carson had put the key in the ignition. He turned to look at her, "What do you mean?"

"We were at a party."

He leaned back in his seat, reaching for the seatbelt with his right hand and locking the car with his left. "I hadn't had anything to drink yet."

Maybe it was because of how loud his voice seemed now that they were in a closed off space, but his tone had seemed more bitter than before. She couldn't really blame him– if she was him, she would also be irritated about having to bring someone they don't really care for home instead of getting to stay and drink.

"Oh," She responded, her shoulders slumping as she relaxed into the seat. She only watched him with caution for a little longer before turning to look out the window, her eyes feeling heavier by the minute.

Carson opted to remain quiet for the drive, turning the volume of the radio up only enough so the car ride wouldn't be completely silent. Madeline didn't feel like talking either, and instead absently watched the objects that whizzed by her window.

She felt the car slow as he pulled into her driveway and picked her head up from the window in time to watch Carson turn off the car and get out from his side. Before she could open her door on her own, he had already come around and opened it for her. He held out his hand for her to take.

She rolled her eyes, "I don't need-"

"-a babysitter," he finished for her. He pushed his hand out further, urging her to take it. "I know."

She grabbed his hand with a scowl and allowed Carson to help her out of her seat, and didn't reject his touch when his other hand came to her back, guiding her towards the front door.

"Are your parents home, Princess?"

"Probably not," She answered, aware that Carson had yet to let go of her hand as he led her up to her front steps. "I can get the rest of the way myself." She attempted to pull her hand from his, but his fingers curled around her hand, keeping her locked next to him.

"I'd like to see that you get in alright," He said. So, his hand stayed around hers as he guided her up the front steps with caution. Even after they had reached the top step and he had removed his hold on her, his eyes remained, watching her every move in a painfully obvious way.

Madeline bent down and picked up the spare key from under the 'Welcome' mat, and unlocked the front door, letting it swing fully open before turning to look at Carson. "Are you coming in?"

"I wasn't planning on it."

"That's not an answer."

"Did you want me to come in?"

Madeline sighed, "Well, there's a few more flights of stairs I have to climb. Considering how dramatic you were about those four steps, I just assumed you would want to help me up the rest of the stairs."

Carson nodded his head and followed behind Madeline into the house, shutting the door behind him. She had already started up the steps, and he was quick to follow after her, making sure to walk directly behind her in case she lost her balance.

He drew back once they had reached the door to her room. She wrapped her fingers around the door handle, gently pushing it down and opening the door. Carson was neither looking at her or her room. "You can go in," She urged.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," He responded, a frown settling over his lips.

"What if I fall and hit my head while trying to get into bed?" She prompted.

"I'm sure you can handle yourself."

"Probably, but it could happen," she continued. "What would you tell Dylan then?"

His eyes locked on hers again, an expression she couldn't quite pinpoint. He seemed a little taken aback that she had caught on to why he had insisted on taking her home. But she was smart enough to know better– he couldn't convince her that he cared due to the actions of a single night, that was certain.