She'd almost missed the turnoff into the driveway, an open gate and a short dirt road greeting her as she pulled in. The opal lake peered from behind tall trees and a large house as Lauryn approached a group of cars parked haphazardly in front of its entrance.
Finding her own empty space, she parked and took a deep breath, looking over at her weekend bag resting on the passenger seat. Dennis was supposed to be occupying that seat.
"I have to go in...if I don't we could lose a ton of money." he'd said, pulling on a nice button up instead of a comfy t-shirt, while she'd stuffed her own bag with vacation attire. Problems with his company's network had started coming up the day before and Dennis was in charge of fixing it. He'd been troubleshooting all night and that morning he decided he'd have to go into the office to fix it. His company wasn't doing too well and was extremely short-staffed; she'd constantly begged him to leave before it went under but he feared he didn't have enough time there to look good on his resume. She disagreed, figuring two years was plenty in this day and age.
Lauryn knew just a few of the 12 or so people expected to be there, so suddenly not having her boyfriend around, she was a bit nervous about how she'd fit in. Grabbing her backpack and other bag from her trunk, she approached the large house. The front door was open, likely to let in a breeze with the warm weather. Reaching the entrance, she peered inside.
"You made it!" a familiar voice rang through the house. She turned to see her friend Sandy running to her before almost violently hugging her. "I was so worried you'd flake because of Dennis's stupid job!"
Lauryn had decided to go anyway. She hadn't had weekend off from studying in months and she'd just finished her finals, so she had been looking forward to this trip ever since Sandy had told her she was putting it together. A whole 5 bedroom house to themselves by a lake where they could chill, party, and do what they wanted? She worked too hard to miss out on living the good life when the opportunity arose.
"Come check out the house - it's soooo dope!" Sandy gushed excitedly. Lauryn followed her into a large furnished living room with a hallway holding multiple bedrooms. A glass door displayed a deck featuring a hot tub, and behind that a short path down to a dock on the lake. The setup looked totally perfect for a young group of friends to party.
Two guys emerged from one of the bedrooms. Lauryn smiled, recognizing Dave and Andy, who both had been in one of her classes. Sandy had confided to Lauryn that she had a huge thing for Dave...in fact that was mostly why she had organized this trip in the first place. Meanwhile, despite her current relationship status Lauryn had always secretly thought Andy was cute.
"You guys wanna get on the water?" Sandy asked the group. A chorus of "sure's" and "yeah's" confirmed they were definitely ready, and Sandy showed Lauryn to her room. She found her purple bikini in her bag, frowning as she looked at it. She'd got it just for this trip...it was cut quite a bit smaller than she usually wore; she wanted to really wow Dennis with a sexy little suit.
Pulling off her jeans, shirt, and underwear, she pulled her bikini on and inspected herself in the mirror. While the top was fairly standard as bikinis go, the small strings on the bottom lightly embraced her hips and a sizeable amount of her toned butt was left peering out of it. She felt sexy in it, and it made her happier she'd decided to come on this trip, even if it was on her own. She hadn't felt very sexy recently; school and work had been so stressful for her, it was tough to get into that kind of mood. That and when she was, Dennis was usually somehow working late again.
And she needed that release. Before she'd met Dennis she'd been on the end of a bit of a wild phase. She had gone to quite a few parties where she would get drunk or stoned or both, and sometimes find a guy that would take her to his room to hook up. But of course when she met Dennis she stopped. When they got together, they had done it pretty frequently, however the sex had dropped off - a lot - recently.
She walked out to the rest of the group, who had all changed already. She caught both guys' eyes travelling across her bikini-clad body. Were they...was Andy checking her out? She blushed to herself as Sandy cleared her throat.
"Ready?" Sandy asked.
"Let's do this!" Lauryn replied, smiling. The four of them carried the gear - a cooler with drinks and snacks, inflatables, and sunscreen - down to the dock. The guys got busy inflating the rafts while Lauryn tested the water. It was cool, but refreshing with the hot afternoon sun beaming down on them.
"Alright Lauryn, take your pick: giant flamingo raft, or giant unicorn raft?" Andy asked with a smile holding them both up. She laughed and took the flamingo from him. Grabbing a beer from the cooler, she stuck it in the drink holder on the side. Placing the raft in the water, she sat down into it, managing to only get a little wet in the process. Cracking her beer, she took a swig while lowering her shades. This was it: she'd reached her happy place.
Lauryn allowed herself to close her eyes and lose herself in her thoughts as the warm sun covered her. No worrying about school, work, or Dennis' job; instead she daydreamed about parties, soccer, and the future. After quite some time, she heard voices stirring.
"MICHELLE! HI!!" Sandy yelled excitedly. "...where's Steve?"
"Oh he couldn't make it...he just wasn't feeling very good." Michelle said through a half smile.
"Hey Michelle!" Lauryn called to her friend.
"Hey!" Michelle waved back happily.
"So glad you're here girl! I was really sad Dennis and I couldn't make the river trip. Did you and Steve have fun?"
"Um...yeah! We did!" Michelle replied, still smiling.
"Where's the rest of the group?"
"Oh they're still unpacking...we brought pizza though!"
"Nice!"
Lauryn saw several in the new group walking around in the house, and Michelle seemed to be the only girl that had come with them. Michelle was a star on Lauryn's soccer team, and they got along well enough on the squad, although didn't really hang out outside of that. Lauryn was keen to get to know her better this weekend.
Soon enough some of them started trickling out to the docs in their suits. Two guys walked out holding already-inflated rafts; one in the shape of a giant circular parrot, and the other decorated as a frosted donut.
"How's it goin'? I'm Ted!" the one holding the donut introduced himself.
"Brent." smiled the one with the parrot.
"Lauryn!" she waved from her flamingo.
"Great to meet ya! Alright Brent, ready to pay me?" Ted challenged his friend.
"Ready to get paid!" Brent shot back. Ted set his donut down in the water close to the dock. "I bet $10 Ted couldn't backflip into the donut first try." Brent explained to the confused Lauryn. She cackled at their silly wager, even if she was intrigued to watch. Lauryn had done some gymnastics when she was younger and was competent enough that she could appreciate others' acrobatic attempts.
Ted lined himself up on the edge of the dock with his back to the water. With a swing of his arms, he leaped into the air, tucking the legs flying over his head into his body. Returning to earth he came down with his back right on the side of the donut, falling over the side into the water. Lauryn cracked up at the sight.
"Yes!" Brent celebrated. "Now you get to pay to watch how it's done." Brent set his raft up as Ted had and did his own flip, this time landing dead center of the parrot. Lauryn applauded lightly at the winner, and he flashed a cute smile at her. One of their friends brought a speaker out blasting electronic dance music. Lauryn watch on as the guys continued doing various flips into the rafts through the rest of the afternoon.
Soon the sun began fading and it cooled a bit. The crowd retired inside to eat and warm up. Lauryn wrapped a towel before grabbing a slice of veggie pizza.
"You guys want a beer or anything? We've got tons in the fridge!" Sandy offered Brent and Ted who were sipping from water bottles.
"Ummm well so we were thinking we could get into something a bit different for tonight..." Michelle offered. Ted reached into his backpack and produced a plastic bag with pills in it.
"What's that?" Sandy asked, confused.
"Just our good friend molly..." smiled Michelle. Lauryn felt a pang of anxiety - wasn't that like, ecstasy?
"Oh...wow...um, is it safe?" Sandy continued.
"Oh yeah totally!" Michelle reassured her, "We did it at the river party and it was so amazing!"
"I'm in!" Andy spoke up suddenly.
"Yeah I'll join in too." Dave followed.
"Alright, I guess I'll try it if that's what we're doing!" Sandy said, seeing Dave was partaking.
As the light faded outside, Ted passed around the bag containing singular pills to everyone. Grabbing hers, Lauryn looked at it, the light powder sitting inside a translucent capsule. She had a hard time believing this little bit of powder would make a person feel much different.
"Here we go!" Ted yelled before popping the pill into his mouth and chasing it with the water. One by one the rest of the group swallowed their pills. Lauryn shrugged, "Here goes...something." she thought to herself, tossing hers in her mouth and swallowing with the water she was handed. Sandy looked anxious, but followed suit shortly after.
"So what now?" Sandy asked.
"Now we wait for the good times to roll." Ted said with a chuckle.
Lauryn realized she'd done this pretty spontaneously, and wondered what Dennis was up to. Going to her room, she found her phone. No new messages greeted her; she hated that she wasn't surprised. She wrote out a message to him.
[Lake house is really fun! Miss you]
He was already likely stressed out, she didn't want to add to it with news she'd tried a new drug at a party house with new friends.
Rejoining the party, the crowd had got to chatting in various groups and Lauryn found Sandy.
"This is so wild! I've never done this before...I'm so nervous!" Sandy confided.
"We'll be ok I think...Michelle said it was ok when she'd done it before didn't she?" Lauryn was trying to reassure her friend, as well as herself.
