| |
Jordan
“I’m starving, dude.” Rick shoves his hands in his jean pockets and pulls out a fist full of stray bills and change, scattering it across my coffee table. “Order pizza or go out?”
I put my t-shirt on and shake out my damp hair, and then flatten it with a thick grey beanie.
“I don’t care.”
“Are you going to be like this all night?” Rick slides quarters around the wood surface of the table, like claws scraping across my skull. I cringe as I replace the thin leather band that hangs around my neck, hooking a point-tipped black Sharpie marker to the necklace and letting the pen rest against my chest. Where it should be.
“Be like what?”
“Mopey and pathetic.” He turns his head and gives me a quick glance over, like all of me is mopey and pathetic.
“I’m not moping. I’m pining. There’s a difference in definition,” I say, flopping back onto the couch.
“You and your words.” Rick shakes his head and then studies me.
I wrap my hand around the sharpie marker. Me and my words. Nothing else.
“Okay, that’s it, dude. Get up.”
“I just sat down,” I protest, and it doesn’t take much effort for him to yank me to my feet by my shirt. I’m tall, but I’m not massive like he is.
“I’m gunna make you a deal. No, a bet.” He pokes me in the chest, and I shove his hand.
“I’m not a gamblin’ man”
Rick scoops his money off the table and points to the door. “You take more risks with your head and your heart than anyone I’ve ever known, Jordie. Gambling isn’t just done with money. Now go.”
I stumble, and not only with my feet. Words stutter across my tongue, unable to argue, and Rick’s thick black-as-night eyebrows go up in self-satisfaction. He has me there.
“Fine, you win. What’s the bet?” I throw a hoodie on and follow him out the door, double checking for my keys and wallet by patting the back pockets of my jeans.
The hallway creaks and cracks as we jog down the winding flights of stairs.
“A ball game. First to twenty-one. If you win, I’ll put up with your whining about Annie all night. If I win, you go to that concert with all your angsty charm and score yourself a new lady. Of my choosing.”
We both stop with a thump of feet on stairs.
“Why your choosing?”
“Because you choosing your own women hasn’t exactly worked out.”
“No way.” I shake my head, and he laughs. It’s not a normal Rick laugh—this is the one he uses on the court during basketball season. That taunting, mocking sound that makes me feel like less of a man. I hate that laugh.
“Why, Jordie? You scared you can’t beat me at a little one on one?” He grins over his shoulder before jumping down the last four stairs to the second floor landing, bracing himself on the walls with his long arms.
Even though Rick’s methods are a tad barbaric, there’s this part of me that’s buried so deep under thoughts of Annie that I think maybe it could help. A random girl. A random night. A possible small reprieve from the torture that is living inside my head.
“Okay, asshole. You’re on.” I finally move again, chasing him down the rest of the stairs. His laugh echoes up the shredded stairwell.
“Atta boy!”
7:06 PM
The unusually warm April air sticks to me as we walk to The Aftershock, and I don’t feel any better about going, but a bet is a bet, and I don’t back down on my word. Rick has been trying for four blocks to convince me that hooking up with some random girl is the best way to get back at Annie. After all, I just turned eighteen, as if I’m one step away from dead, and sex is all that will keep me alive. What I don’t tell him is that I don’t want to get back at her. I want to get her back. Whatever random girl he hooks me up with tonight isn’t going to change that.
We pass an old coffee shop that’s more like a hole in the wall, and as the door rushes open, flooding the sidewalk with the smell of caffeine, I curse sensory memories.
Annie and I met at this coffee shop. She worked here before Freshman year, the year I moved in with my brother. She was listening to her headphones while she made espresso shots that smelled as smooth and rich as she was. I wrote her a poem on the cup... and every time after that until she agreed to go out with me. Eight cups of coffee to say yes. But I didn’t stop there. Words flowed over me, poured out of me, to get to her. She was my muse. My poetic goddess. I loved her from the moment she tucked a strand of thick black hair from her perfect face and gazed up at me through thick dark lashes. One look. That was Annie's power.
The first time she took me to her house, she refused to meet my eye. Her nerves dug up my curiosity. I didn’t know that she had cut all the cups and framed them in clusters of four.
Four poems, four poems, four poems.
More poems.
Every word I wrote from that moment forward was for her, and every time she shuts down on me she takes them with her. I haven’t written anything proper in months. I want to, but it comes out disjointed. I put pen to paper almost every night, but I can’t think on paper. I think best on metal, or plastic, or wax coated cups turned upside down, containing my heart like a spider–waiting in the dark to die.
Rick shoves my shoulder, which is his way of letting me know I zoned out and need to come back from whatever universe I'm hiding in. By his expression, he was talking, and I didn't hear him.
"Sorry, man." I shrug, and Rick shoves his hands in his pockets, watching his feet. The free spirited fun of our basketball bet is gone. My heart sputters because Rick only says important things while staring at his moving feet.
"It's really better this way. I think you should find a girl that’s fun. They’re not all like Annie. I sort of wish she was going out of state to college. Leave you alone or somethin'." Rick tilts his chin to the amber sky, meaning his comment requires no response, but I really want to tell him that college isn’t my worry...Monday at school is much more immediate. I see the judgmental look on all the guys’ faces already.
I grab at the black permanent marker around my neck and uncap it as we pass an old chipped rail. I stop to pick at the blue flakes pulling from the metal like peeling skin. It’s neglected and uncared for.
The first time I ever wrote on a metal rail was with Annie, in the park we used to walk through when we first started dating. It was nothing like this one. It was new, fresh, young. It was shiny and silver. It felt cool in my hand on that hot summer day. The first time I kissed her, the small of her back pressed into the metal of that rail. She had tugged on the waist of my shorts, glancing through lashes, licking her lips, making me crazy even then. I’d never been more nervous for anything in my life as I was for that kiss.
I shake the memory from my head, but the crushing pressure in my chest refuses to leave. Gripping the chipped railing with one hand, I lean over and put the pen to the metal. I write. I force it out, and it feels good.
The sweat of a thousand palms.
Eating, peeling, dissolving flesh.
The frightened smiles of a thousand nervous lips.
In the heat of a summer night I shed my skin and choke out a whisper...
Just kiss her already...
Rick looks over my shoulder and yanks the beanie on my head down over my eyes. “I don’t know how I’m friends with you.”
I clip the pen back into its lid and adjust my hat. “We play basketball together, and our dads went to prison at the same time. We’re kindred.” I sarcastically link my fingers together showing how connected we are and keep walking to the small basement club that plays all ages shows. He shoves me sideways into a wall. Gripping the Sharpie, I twirl the base of the pen around until the little leather rope cuts into my skin. I let go, and it spins wildly until it returns to its resting place against my chest. I wonder if I’ll ever stop spinning. If there will ever be a place for me to rest.
“How do you even think up that stuff, anyway?” Rick ignores my statement. For how much I like words I don’t really like to talk and neither does he. Especially about my father going to a fancy prison for greedy bastards. At least Rick’s dad went to prison for his family, not to make himself richer. Our dads leaving is a 'Head Down' conversation we don't like to have often.
“I don’t make it up. I don’t think about what I write. I just put the pen to it.”
“And bleed onto the page...” Rick lowers his voice to sound like he's agonizing over his words. I laugh, knowing he has no clue who he’s quoting.
“Basically.”
“Loser.”
“Uh...How many girls have you taken to see my writing?” I raise an eyebrow, shoving my hands in my pockets, so I don’t get the urge to uncap the pen again. Rick’s eyes get wide. He doesn’t answer me. I know he’s shown girls the things I write on lampposts, bathroom stalls, and backs of stop signs. Most of what I write is about the world’s obsession with love. My obsession. “That’s right, so shut up.”
We round the last corner on the way to the Aftershock club, and I’m stopped abruptly by another body in my way. Rick jumps back, but I’ve got nowhere to go. A girlish squeak hits the air as I absorb her body into mine, grabbing her shoulders so she doesn’t fall. A sharp inhale sucks my focus to her pale, wide-eyed face. She sees the world through coffee brown eyes, from behind waves of rich chocolate hair, and under caramel-colored freckles sprinkled across her nose. Words pile on top of each other in my brain as I take her in.
A world of sadness, locked away. So cold, the bars that slit her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice like silk. Her gaze shifts down, lids obscuring those bars in her eyes and what she hides behind them.
“My fault. Are you okay?” I still grip her shoulders, but her hand presses to her chest as she nods.
“I’m fine.” She seems to use words in direct opposition to me—keeping hers tightly locked up while I let mine spill from my cornucopia soul.
I drop my hands, stepping back.
“Sorry,” I say again and turn my back to her.
“She’s it,” Rick mumbles as we walk away, and I straighten my back.
“What?”
“She’s the one. You lost the bet. The girl is my choice. I choose her.” Rick claps my shoulder and rounds the corner. I steal a glance over my shoulder, but the girl’s face is hidden by a fountain of crooked waves. She hugs her green hoodie tighter around her, keeping her head angled down. This girl is all locks and chains and barbed wire fences.
She does not appear to be the random hook-up type. Not that there is a set list of features or anything.
“But you haven’t even seen any of the other girls!” I call after him.
Rick turns and throws his hands out. “You think she’s cute.”
She was more than cute.
“Yeah, but—” But what? Rick doesn’t hear my mumbles. I yank the Sharpie from its holder and scratch it along the chalky brick wall of the Aftershock.
“Don’t question my brilliance, dude.” Rick points to me snapping out of my trance. “Now get over here. I need my ticket.”
I walk away from the thought I left on the wall, but it follows me into the club.
Reluctantly, I hand Rick a ticket.
I wish I had given Annie that ticket. I wish she’d taken it. I wish she didn't lie. I wish I didn't keep secrets. I wish my dad was free, and my brother didn't work so much. I wish I didn’t agree to this ridiculous bet.
I wish a lot of things, but they all seem to get caught up in the wind and blown apart, each word like a dandelion seed floating alone, no longer part of the whole. No longer sure of where it will land. Or what its new purpose will be.