This story is back for the summer! I told y'all that the second I got off for summer break I would write you a new chapter, and as soon as I got home I logged on to FF.

Reviews are very much appreciated.

you're out of line and rarely sober

Dylan Marvil was numb.

The feeling had long since gone out of her toes, her legs, her stomach, and her head. The only things she knew were the glass of vodka-spiked Sprite in her hand and the pulsating beat of Poker Face by Lady Gaga.

Her second Legacy was already turning out to be a lot wilder than her first. The McAdams twins were the only sober kids at the party as they ran around their estate in New Rochelle, trying and failing to keep hundreds of drunken teenagers in line.

From the moment Dylan's hand had been marked with orange highlighter, signifying that she had been approved and had made it into the Legacy, the whole night had turned into a blur. She only vaguely remembered the limo ride from Claire's, parting from her friends, listening to Josh tell her not to let a sip of alcohol touch her lips, and what looked like her sister running half-naked across the dance floor with some random senior.

Dylan felt a rush of cool air as somebody pushed their way through the gyrating bodies. Dylan tried to focus her vision and see who had interrupted the hardcore grinding, but standing still for even the tiniest second made the whole room spin. It wasn't until somebody grabbed her arm and dragged her out of what resembled a mosh pit that she realized who it was.

Dylan looked deep into Derrick Harrington's caramel-tinged brown eyes and felt a sudden urge to vomit. Whether it was her Grey Goose cocktail or the fact that Derrick had once again ditched her for Massie, she couldn't tell.

Derrick gently removed the glass from Dylan's firm grip. "Dyl, if you drink any more, you're gonna die of alcohol poisoning," Derrick teased.

"Don't think you can go around calling me Dyl," Dylan slurred, reaching for her glass. Derrick held it ever-so-slightly out of her grasp. "Only friends can call me Dyl."

"I think we need to talk," Derrick sighed, taking her elbow and steering her into one of the three gilded elevators that led from the foyer-turned-dance floor to the other levels of the house. The bright white lights on the elevator's walls pierced Dylan's dilated green eyes, causing her to moan and slump to the floor.

Derrick swore. "Shhh, it's okay," he murmured, sounding a little panicky. "We'll find a room and you can sit somewhere and we'll talk, alright?"

Dylan muttered something unintelligible that sounded vaguely like, "Screw you."

The elevator doors dinged open and with a few manly grunts, Derrick managed to lift Dylan into his arms and carry her into the nearest bedroom. He gently let her down onto the big, silken queen bed and sat down next to her, staring down at her flushed cheeks.

"Should I go get Josh?" Derrick asked, his brown eyes echoing the pattern that Dylan's were making as they rolled around, taking in her new surroundings. "Since, you know, we all know how much you like him now." Was it just her, or was that a hint of bitterness in his tone?

Dylan hazily looked up at him. Tanned face, bright eyes, berry-coloured, chapped lips. He was so gorgeous. So perfect. Even when he was about to break up with her, even when he was cheating on Massie Block, even when he didn't make the best decisions in the world, he was perfect.

"The past couple of months, Dyl…" Derrick sighed, his fingers playing with the strands of copper-red hair that had fallen out of her updo. "They've been great. Wonderful, even. I never thought it was possible to like two people so much at the same time."

Dylan hiccupped.

"I like you, Dylan. I really, honestly, do. I always have, and I probably always will. But the thing is…"

He trailed off again, staring off into space. His eyes were no longer following hers. His eyes were following a different girl now, one who was probably having good, clean, alcohol-free fun two stories below them, one who was both better and worse than Dylan at the same time.

"I'll always belong to her, Dylan," Derrick whispered, his eyes going bloodshot and glittery. "I can't afford to lose her. I can't cheat on her anymore. I can't stand to look in her eyes and feel guilty any longer. And I know that she knows that something's up. Do you understand what I'm saying? We can't see each other anymore. This has got to end tonight."

He might as well go ahead and tell her that she was nothing more than a homewrecking whore, but no. Derrick was ever the gentleman, trying to let her down gently when she had already crashed.

He leaned down and carefully kissed her on the forehead. "We're gonna be good friends, I know it."

Dylan let out a lazy giggle. That was such a lie. There was no way in hell that they were going to be friends. The second Derrick walked out of this room, it was going to become all about Massie again, that wavy-haired brunette bitch. And Dylan would have…nobody.

"I'm gonna go find Josh, okay?" Derrick said, his voice sounding like it was coming from the end of a very long tunnel. Dylan tried to say something to stop him from leaving, something to indicate that she did not want Josh here, that she only wanted him and nobody else, but her senses were far away and beyond her again. She felt the familiar waves of sleepiness wash over her that typically indicated that she was about to pass out. But as much as Dylan tried to fight it, Derrick had already left.

Dylan slowly closed her dull emerald eyes, ready to succumb to her body's wishes. But as soon as she closed them, they snapped back up again. Salty tears now clung to her mascara-covered eyelashes.

Dylan giggled again. She was crying over Derrick Anthony Mason Harrington, a boy that hadn't even deserved her time in the first place. She had wanted him to pick her over Massie when it had been obvious from the very beginning that Massie was his first priority. What had she expected from this relationship, anyway? This had all started when she was drunk and ended when she was drunk. Dylan's giggles grew into full-blown laughter.

As soon as she got home tonight, she was going to ask her dad to send her to rehab upstate. It was the only way to stop herself from making any more ridiculous mistakes like Derrick.

Dylan sighed, letting the last of her laughter escape her. Whether she lay on that silken bed for seconds, minutes, or hours, she didn't know, but it seemed like a very long while before Josh finally entered the room.

He sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed, his mouth pressed into a thin line and his dark brows furrowed.

"I'm sorry."

Josh's brows furrowed even more, if possible. "What on earth do you have to be sorry for, Dylan?"

"For…" Dylan didn't even know where to begin. What to tell him first? That she regretted kissing Derrick when she and Josh had still been kind of together? That she felt beyond guilty for making Massie, one of her best friends, paranoid and miserable for the past month? That she wanted to go to rehab and put this whole mess behind her? That she still liked him, always had, and always would, even though they were more like friends-with-benefits than a true couple?

She could have said one thing and meant it all. But it wasn't worth revealing her illicit affair with Derrick just to make things right again. It would have just beyond screwed things up.

"I messed up, Josh," Dylan croaked, saying it the best way she knew how. "Did some things I shouldn't have. And I need you to help me make them right." Dylan feebly lifted her right hand and held it out, waiting patiently for Josh to take it.

Josh turned around, a warm smile on his face. Dylan couldn't believe that she had given up Josh, her Josh, for that asshole Harrington. "Of course, Dylan."

Their hands, both equal size, wove into each other as he lifted her off the bed and led her out of the room.