I just realized how hard it is to write a story set in Seattle when the closest I've ever been to Seattle is Vancouver. When I was seven. Dx Second closest? Toronto/Philly. I'm an east coast girl, what can I say?
This probably won't be that great, as I'm forcing myself to write it through writer's block and have no real idea where I'm going with it.
--
We're laying sprawled across what some might call a roof and others might call a fire escape outside Carly's room, limbs tangled up in one another as we stare up at the sky, hands brushing up against each other as the sound of the city screams out below us, even at two in the morning.
It's nice. As closed off and untouchable as I try to act, I have to admit that I love all the nights we spend out here together. I love laying back and watching the sky, and I like it even more when I'm with somebody, anybody and especially her.
Okay. Sappy, sensitive moment over.
"That one looks like a pumpkin," I say, pointing up at the cloud that honestly does look exactly like a pumpkin. Not that very much is needed to meet the standards for looking like a pumpkin, but still. It looks like a pumpkin, god damnit.
Maybe I just want it to be Halloween and I'm deluding myself because it's the middle of summer and Halloween isn't for months.
"No it doesn't, it looks like a face," She tells me matter-of-factly, reaching beside her for the bag of baked Lays we brought out with us. I wanted ham, she wanted baked Lays, but as it turned out, I'd already eaten all the ham she had in the apartment.
All three pounds of it. And a piece of bacon, too. I feel pretty accomplished that my stomach hasn't exploded yet.
"How on earth does it look like a face? It's a pumpkin," I say simply, shifting my leg under hers, before realizing how freaking warm she is, and how freaking not warm I am, and then I move it back.
"There's the nose and there's the.. there's no arguing with you, is there?" She finally comes to this realization through a mouthful of chips, after six years of best friendship.
"Nope!" I tell her cheerfully, groping blindly beside me until I find my pack of cigarettes, pull one out and light it, taking a deep drag.
"Must you?"
"I must,"
We sit in silence as I take drags, blowing the smoke back out over my head and watching it drift away, before I add indignantly, "Hey, these taste like nutmeg, okay?"
Hey, it makes perfect sense to me. Who wouldn't want to smoke a cigarette that tastes like nutmeg? Nutmeg is nutmeg, for god's sake. And even I, who has been rather indifferent to nutmeg for the greater part of my sixteen year old life, can fully understand the pure genius and absolute bliss induced by a cigarette that tastes like nutmeg.
Okay. No, not really. That's taking it a bit too far. But still.
"Then go eat some nutmeg,"
"Wouldn't that, like, hurt?"
She shrugs. I can't see it, but I can feel her body move with her shoulders, which is just as good.
Seriously though. How do you eat nutmeg? That's like, taking a thing of cinnamon (you know what I'm talking about. Those little salt shaker-esque things that have cinnamon in them instead of salt or pepper or whatever) and dumping it in your mouth. It sounds good until you try it and it gets in your nose and you're sitting there and you feel like somebody set your nose hair on fire, and instead of realizing your agony, your best friend sits there and laughs at you. I suppose that she would've expected I would've
Okay, maybe not. I'm probably the only girl who would do something like that, but you know what I mean. It's the thought that counts. Besides, most people learn their lesson about consuming things that are supposed to only be for baking after they try to drink vanilla when they're kids, because, honestly, everybody does that. If somebody tried to tell me that they haven't, they'd lying.
"And that cloud looks like a pumpkin, damnit," I repeat, shifting so that my head is on her shoulder.
"So I've been convinced,"
Fuck. It's no fun arguing with her once she's realized that I'm brilliant and nothing can ever change that.
Oh my god I want some tuna fish salad.
"Do you have any tuna?" Want. Want want want want. I'm going to explode if I don't get any tuna fish salad right now but I'm going to explode if I eat anymore. It's an explode-explode situation, and frankly, if I'm going to explode, I'd rather have some tuna first.
Who wouldn't want to die an explosion and tuna fish salad related death? Like, seriously. How cool would that be?
"Sam, I have to eat too you know,"
"Meaning?"
"Meaning, you're practically eating me out of house and home," What does that mean, anyway? I never really figured that out.
"No, I'm eating your house and your home,"
Well if I could, I would. Don't doubt the power of my stomach. I could do it. I just choose not to because I kind of like Carly's apartment, and I kind of like Carly, and I kind of like Carly not living in a box.
I can eat my own apartment instead. My mom wouldn't mind.
"And besides, we don't even have any tuna,"
I partially untangle myself the best that I can, sit up, and stare at her. "What?"
What blasphemy is this?
"I.. Don't have any.. tuna?" She repeats, looking at me as though I'm unstable or a chimp in desperate need of anger management. Except, actually, wouldn't a chimp in need of anger management be considered pretty unstable?
I feel myself deflating, and I give her the saddest puppy eyes look that I can muster.
"But.." I'm heartbroken. My world just fell apart. I can't wait until morning to get some tuna. And yes, for the record, I do realize how odd it is to eat tuna fish salad for breakfast, but considering all the rest of my eating habits, I'm well past the point of caring what's considered odd or criteria for being committed to a mental hospital. Except eating tuna fish salad for breakfast or three pounds of ham aren't exactly criteria for being put in a mental hospital, but whatever. Most of the other things I do probably are.
She laughs at me, the same way she did when I tried to eat cinnamon, then tells me that I'm adorable and kisses my cheek and I feel a bit better.
Then she grabs what's left of my cigarette and hurtles it over the handrails and it plummets to its doom on the 2 am streets of Seattle. The poor thing. It never had a chance. Ignoring the fact that I was pretty much done with it anyway.
"Thank you, Carly, that's just what I needed,"
"You'll thank me when you don't get cancer,"
I sit on that for a moment, then shrug.
"Okay, even you can't say that that doesn't look like a bird to you," She says, pointing up at some new cloud that's blown over my head that looks exactly like a tree.
"Carly, that's a tree,"
She turns and looks at me, giving me a death glare, like, "Just admit that it looks like a bird so my life be complete". Yes, my admitting that she's right about a cloud that is obviously not a bird will complete her life. I'm not the only one with issues, see?
"I mean, why Carly Shay, you're right, you're brilliant, that looks exactly like a bird,"
"Thank you," She smiles at me, leans over and kisses my cheek again, and all of a sudden I have chills.
It must be the wind. That's what I tell myself, anyway, on a perfectly still 70 degree July night.
--
As it turned out, by the time morning rolled around I didn't even want any tuna. The mere thought of it makes my stomach turn now, like the way most people do after they gorge themselves on something they love until they absolutely hate it. Except my sudden hate was brought on before I'd even had any. And yes, I am aware that I'm actually talking about how much I hate food.
Maybe I just thought about it so much that I got sick of it. I wouldn't put it past myself.
"Hey, Sam, do you want some pancak--"
I cut her off with a pained moan that must be loud enough for her to hear even from halfway across the room, because she doesn't mention pancakes or any sort of food again, and even goes out of her way to not eat in front of me.
"I told you all that ham would catch up with you,"
"Shut up," I moan, flipping through channels and gagging whenever a commercial for anything remotely resembling food, which, for me, is pretty much everything.
The room falls into silence, save for the blare of a show on the history channel about the history of meth and the sound of Carly's fork knocking against her plate, as loud as an earthquake or something. I feel like I'm hungover. Food hangover. Oh boy.
Five minutes pass, and then she's sitting next to me, head resting against a pillow and a blanket pooled around her feet, even when it's as hot as it is. It's one of those weird Carly things. Whenever she sits down and there's a blanket nearby, it's on top of her before I even realize that there was a blanket at all, no matter what the weather's like.
"Are you like, mute now?" I ask, looking over at her curiously.
"You told me to shut up," She tells me, pouting.
I sit there for a moment, not sure if I should think she's adorable or eat her brains.
Oh dear god. Don't think about eating. Don't. Don't. Fucking. Do it.
She's adorable.
Much better.
"Well.." I stop for a moment, losing my train of thought, before I blurt out, "You know what I meant,"
We sit in silence again, flipping through channels while I clutch my aching, bloated stomach.
"Hey, do you wanna go to the football game tomorrow?" She asks, and I can feel her shifting beside me. It's not really a game, it's just a scrimmage , but whatever, I don't have anything better to do.
"Why, Carly Shay, are you asking me on a date?"
"You wish,"
I grin back at her sheepishly, and she throws a pillow at my face. I bite it, and then gag. God, so much for not thinking about food.
Yes, I do consider pillows food.
--
While I was walking home, I realized how lonely I am. Which is dumb, because I'm really not a very needy person. I'm pretty independent and everything, but it just hit me while I was walking through the park, supposedly going back to my apartment but walking in the wrong direction.
I sat down on a bench, even though it'd started to rain and I was wearing white, stared at the lake in front of me and chucked things into it and reveled in my newfound state of wetness.
It's dumb, really, but I get like this a lot. I have these moments when I'm by myself for too long or I go too long without sleeping or both and I just sit and think and my mind brings me to conclusions I'd rather not think about.
I guess it's why I spend so much time with Carly.
Well, no, not really. I adore her. She's my best friend. But that's part of it, too.
When I'd finally made my way back home, soaking and my hair frizzing from the humidity, I dumped my bag in the living room, walked to my room and cried and masturbated until I fell asleep, and by the time I woke up at four in the morning, I had no idea what I was so sad about.
--
I'm sitting on one of the bleachers, burning my ass off on the metal and besides Carly, there's only three other people here, but whatever. I kind of like it. As much as I like going to concerts and big games and everything, the sound of everybody screaming and bubbling over with school spirit gets on my nerves sometimes.
This is one of those times.
Sure, there's people cheering, but it's all the same team, so it's just girlfriends cheering for their boyfriends and friends with benefits and just their plain old friends, and that's much better, so I join, screaming for Bobby Duscani whenever he takes a snap.
Carly looks at me for a moment, absolutely baffled by my sudden show of spirit, and probably wondering why it is that I'm cheering for my ex boyfriend, because apparently most girls end up hating their exes or something, but I guess I'm just not most girls, and I guess she knows that by now, because she starts cheering for him too.
Bobby was actually the first person that I ever came out to. We were dating at the time. Which I guess makes the fact that we don't hate each other even weirder, but he's just Bobby. He smiled, hugged me and told me it was cool, we were cool, and that was that.
I guess I've always known that I was gay or bi or whatever I am. Okay, no, definitely gay, considering Bobby. Considering that I can't even remember the last time I was attracted to a guy.
I watch him run the ball in, throw it on the ground and then turn around, grinning, with his hands in the air. I grin at him, wave, and look like a huge dork in general, but he's a good guy and we're good friends, so he waves back at me, completely understanding my dorkiness and the fact that that's just how I function.
I'm actually glad I came.
They all line up again, and I can practically smell the testosterone and sweat dripping from them, even from hundreds of feet away on the bleachers. I lean over, tell Carly this, and smile when she laughs, her hands over her mouth and her eyes all crumpled up.
Again, she's adorable.
I look up at the sky for a moment, adoring the way the sun feels against my skin, even though I must be horribly sunburnt and I should be in agony. I actually like sunburn. I like everything about summer.
When I look back at the field again, Bobby's running back, and then he's standing, about to throw a pass as his defense crumples and falls apart, and I start to cheer for him again, screaming and caught up in the moment, even though it's not like it's a big game. It's not a game at all.
That was the last time Bobby Duscani ever walked.
We all watched the tackle, watched Bobby as he fell to the ground, ball flying out of his hands, but none of us thought anything of it except it was a bad hit. We all cheered as Tim walked away, looking so incredibly proud of himself that he'd just knocked the quarterback to the ground, and only once Tim had jogged ten yards away and Bobby was still on the ground did we stop our cheering, start whispering amongst ourselves, asking why he wasn't getting up.
He wasn't getting up.
And by the time the ambulances came, the paramedics and their orange stretchers, none of us said a word.
Why wouldn't he just get up? His legs were right there, and they were all pointing the right way.
While they hauled him off, slammed the doors shut and raced away with my ex boyfriend, with my friend in their stupid fucking truck, the few of us on the bleachers looked at each other, as if that would do anything. As if it would tell us what was wrong with him, as if it would make him better.
He didn't get up. He'd never get up again.
Bobby Duscani was paralyzed.
I walked home alone at five PM that day, the back of my neck sunburnt and peeling and my legs burning while I stared at the trees, breathed in the fresh air and the sound of all the earliest crickets.
I didn't know then that he was paralyzed, that he was never going to walk again, but I still asked myself why the hell it happened to him. I just thought he was unconscious, or maybe that it was going to be one of those things where he'd get back his legs over time. Maybe he just cracked a rib and it hurt too much for him to stand back up again, but I still asked the god I don't believe in why he would do something like that to a good guy like Bobby Duscani.
Because, really, Bobby Duscani is a good guy. He's a good person. He's the kind of football player who wouldn't hurt a fly, who plays football because his father put him up to it when he was a kid and he loved the game.
And then, if Bobby could get hurt like that, when he's as good of a guy as he is, what would happen to somebody like me?
I sat in my room that night, still asking myself why. Why Bobby?
Why did I have to sit there and watch it?
I smoked cigarette after cigarette, didn't stop even when my stomach started to turn and my mouth felt dry. Didn't stop as my tongue started to burn.
I just smoked cigarettes until I couldn't feel a thing, until my head was spinning and the look on Bobby's face as he fell was distorted and twisted and I could tell myself that it was a dream, that he was fine, it was just a sprained ankle or something. I could tell myself that this whole day had been a dream, that I was dreaming then, even when I dropped my cigarette on my arm and burnt through my skin.
It's all just a dream. Bobby's fine, he's fine. Really, he's fine.
I smoked until I ran out of cigarettes, and then passed out in a nicotine induced stupor.
--
"Bobby's paralyzed," Carly tells me, her body leaning against the locker next to mine, like it's no big deal. And I guess to her it isn't, and I guess it shouldn't be to me either, but still.
I stand there, my arm hanging in the air and my hand in my locker, even though I can't even remember what it is that I had to get anyway. What it was that was so incredibly important that I had to go to this stupid locker, as though if I hadn't come, if I hadn't known, Bobby wouldn't be paralyzed. It's not like he's my best friend, and it's not like he's my boyfriend anymore, but he's my friend and I care about him and now he's in a fucking wheelchair for the rest of his life.
She must catch onto something, because she asks softly, "Are you okay?" and I still don't say a thing, still don't bother moving my arm.
We stand there for a moment, the only two people in the hallway. I guess the bell must have rung. I should be in class, but that's never been all that important to me.
I look over at her, and she looks me up and down, the way I shake just the tiniest little bit, and then says, "C'mon," as she grabs hold of my arm and guides me towards the door.
We climb into my beat up pickup truck, and I don't give a crap that the tires squeal in protest as I hit the gas too hard while I back out, and I don't give a crap that the speedometer reads forty as we fly off school grounds, the 5 MPH sign catching my sight in the corner of my eye.
I don't know where I'm going, and I don't care, and I don't think she does either, because she just sits there, her arms wrapped around her stomach as she glances around, probably looking for cops.
"Can you pass me my bag?" I ask when we finally get stuck at a stoplight, my foot twitching against the gas pedal.
She doesn't ask why, just reaches back and flails her arm around until she finally catches hold of my checkered, beat up messenger bag and hands it to me. It takes me less than a second to find the pack of clove cigarettes I wanted, and I pull a cigarette out, light it and inhale. I sit there and hold the smoke in while I stare at the stoplight, and when it finally turns green, I hit the gas and exhale at the same time, my head swimming while the nicotine hits my system.
She doesn't complain, doesn't even ask me to open a window while I drive and smoke, until we're out in the middle of nowhere, and then I finally stop. I finally pull over, hands still on the wheel as I lean my head up and stare at the ceiling.
"Are you okay?" She asks again, even though it's pretty obvious that I'm not. It's so obvious that Carly Shay is skipping class with me and we drove out to go knows where and she isn't even complaining about all the smoke in the truck.
And then I feel guilty, remembering roadtrips when I was younger when my mom would smoke and I couldn't breath, and I roll down the windows, watching smoke billow out, until I follow it and sit down in the dirt.
I can't even completely put my finger on why this bothers me so much. I'm not in love with Bobby and I never was, and I never will be.
Maybe I care too much. Maybe I'm scared.
As much as I hate to admit it, the whole thing really just scares the shit out of me.
Things change. Things change in the blink of an eye, like the construction of Bobby's spine or how one day I had a dad, and the next he was gone. Things always fucking change and I just want them to stay the same, because it feels like I can barely keep up as it is, and when I'm finally comfortable, like I was in my dad's lap or when Bobby would run up to me, pick me up and twirl me around in the air like guys do to girls in movies, it's gone again. Like how I used to hate cigarettes and how they made my mom hack and cough in her sleep, and then with my first drag, my first stupid experimental drag, I was just like her.
I'll be just like them.
I hear the other door slam shut, and then Carly's sitting next to me, cigarette in hand and her head on my shoulder. It says something that I don't even question the cancer stick in her hand or the smoke she blows out.
It says something about our friendship that I didn't bitch slap her for going through my bag and taking my cigarettes.
We sit like that for a while at the side of the road, passing cigarettes back and forth and taking drags and we don't say a word the whole time, and not a single car drives by behind us.
She leans over, kisses my cheek and plays with my hair, mumbles that it's going to be okay into the skin on my cheek, and then stands up, holding my hand and pulling my halfway up with her.
I look up at her, half squatting, my hand in hers, and then sigh and give into her, standing up and looking at her.
And then I sneeze.
She looks at me, almost like she's dumbfounded while she bites her lip, and then she bursts out laughing. I look back at her, her eyes crinkled up and her mouth curled into a smile, like there's some joke that I don't get.
She doesn't stop, and then I smile, and it slowly turns into laughter as I get the imaginary joke, and we stand there, holding onto each other and laughing, until she grins at me, ruffles up my hair like I'm a puppy, and then I'm looking at her for a moment, smiling just the tiniest little bit.
The next thing I know, she's running and I'm chasing her, and we're laughing like lunatics all over again.
"God damnit, slow down, my chain smoker lungs can't keep up with your normal smoker lungs," I shout, and she slows down, turns and looks at me, and I pummel into her, falling on top of her and then she's under me on the dirt and the same chills that I had the other night come back, but it's just because Bobby's paralyzed, it must be, and we lay there with our limbs tangled up and panting.
I roll off her, finally, and then we lay on our backs and stare up at the sky, our hands brushing against each other.
"That one looks like a sweatshirt," She tells me, holding my hand and pointing it at the cloud above our heads.
"Nuh-uh, it's a dinosaur," I inform her, moving her hand and making it trace around the spikes sticking out of it's back and it's head, and then add, "Duh,"
She looks over at me, and I look back, wondering what the hell she's got that grin plastered across her face for, until she's on top of me and then I'm pretty sure I know what it was about.
"Sweatshirt," She says firmly, pushing her hands on my shoulders like that makes her right.
I grin at her and squirm out from under her, and then I'm pinning her against the dirt the same way she was, and say, "Dinosaur,"
Carly does the same thing, telling me that it's a sweatshirt, and I just look at her and laugh.
I'm mid-laugh when I feel her lips against mine, sweet and gentle and nothing like any of the boys I've ever kissed, and it's the shortest thing in the world, really, but those chills just turned into a freezer and I'm an icecube. "Sweatshirt,"
I don't even remember falling asleep, just that eventually, after we'd argued about clouds and smoked another cigarette, it was dark out and she was shaking my shoulder gently, telling me to wake up, that we were home, and when I looked over at her, she was sitting in the driver's seat of my truck.
I laughed at nothing through a groggy body and even groggier mind and climbed out, shouted goodnight and stumbled into my apartment like a drunken wreck.
It was just a dumb little kiss, and friends kiss all the time, and fine she's a (very attractive) girl and I like girls, but it was just a kiss and she's just my friend, so I didn't think anything of it.
But it wouldn't stop spilling into my mind when I laid in bed and fingered myself to sleep.
--
"Hey you," She says from behind me, her hands around my waist and her breath like mint against my cheek. I've got one hand on my locker and she's got her foot brushing up against mine and I can feel it through my beat up canvas shoes.
"Hey," I tell her, leaning against her even though the goosebumps and chills her touch bring out tell me that I should be doing exactly the opposite, because she's my best friend and best friends aren't supposed to be the ones who make you feel things like that.
It's a nice feeling though.
"What're we doing this weekend?" She asks, and I'm standing here and the fact that she kissed me has burnt itself into my mind and it's there again when she talks, and it's driving me absolutely insane because she acts like nothing's wrong and nothing ever happened.
Nothing ever happened. Friends kiss each other all the time and they don't drive themselves crazy over it, so why should I?
I shouldn't.
I won't.
I am.
"I dunno,"
She stands there for a moment and doesn't say a thing, breathing on my neck and I'm afraid for some weird reason that I've said the wrong thing, which is just plain stupid because she's Carly, not some girlfriend or some stupid crush.
What on earth is wrong with me?
It was just a stupid kiss, Sam, get the hell over it.
"Come on," She finally says, tugging on my arm and pulling me towards the door again, and school's ending in half an hour anyway, so it's not really that bad that we're skipping again.
And then we're sitting in my truck again and she's got her feet on the dashboard and she says, "Take me anywhere," and I listen to her, shoving the gas and driving us away from that goddamn school.
My bag's sitting in her lap and she's looking through it, and then she's got a cigarette in her mouth and she's breathing tobacco smoke everywhere and then everything feels normal again, even though just the fact that she's smoking means that's it's absolutely not.
"Don't you have any cloves?" She asks, cigarette idle and hanging in her mouth. I reach over, take a drag and hand it back to her.
"Nope, mom smokes lights," I tell her with my hands hanging lazily off the bottom of the steering wheel while I blow smoke through my teeth.
Carly sits there, looks at the ground and clenches and unclenches her toes, and I should be looking at the road but I'm looking at her and I'm trying to make it better with the fact that it's her toes and not her face.
They're purple. Purple is pretty. I like pretty. I meant to say purple but I said pretty, but purple and pretty are the same thing, so it's good enough for me.
"Where are we going anyway?"
I shrug, hands still barely on the wheel, as I realize that I really have no idea.
She keeps asking questions. She asks a lot of questions.
"You're the one who wanted to leave in the first place," And then I've pulled over under a tree on some road off route 18, my legs on the dashboard and my head tilted over at her.
She looks back at me, even while she's taking a drag of my cigarette and that ends in her blowing smoke in my face, but I don't really mind. Which is weird. People tend to hate when people blow smoke in their faces, but whatever. I'm just special.
"This is true," She's climbing out of my truck and she takes one last drag and throws the butt on the ground, and then she's pulling herself into the bed and I follow her because I can't think of anything better to do.
The metal feels cold and foreign against my skin, but I don't mind, because apparently there's a lot of things I don't mind, and I'm resting my head against the cab and there's just the slightest breeze but other than that it's actually really hot.
"Did I tell you I have a boyfriend?"
That's news to me. Since when is there something about Carly Shay that I don't know?
"Nope," I tell her, pulling out the cigarette I just realized I'd pushed behind my ear at the end of lunch, tucked underneath my hair so teachers wouldn't notice. Not that too many of them would mind; I've taken to taking smoke breaks with Ms. Ferrara under the tree by the parking lot, talking about history and philosophy, which actually isn't all that awful.
That's Sam speak for 'I like it'.
It's quiet for a moment, and she's not gushing about how amazing he is and I'm not asking, and considering the whole kiss thing (god, didn't I promise myself I wouldn't think about that anymore?) it should be one of those awkward silences, but it isn't.
"You're a better kisser though," Carly tells me, lighthearted and laughing a bit, but somehow I make it into a compliment (which it is) and convince myself that there was some deep rooted meaning behind it (which there isn't). I'm just crazy.
"That's because I'm amazing,"
"It is," See above for what I do to that.
Okay, fine, I developed a crush on my best friend over the last couple of days, but it's one of those 'oh my god she kissed me and it was amazing' kind of crushes, not a legitimate crush. Don't try to tell me you haven't had one of those before. Unless you've never kissed somebody you didn't like, in which case, you're a lucky bastard.
"Well guys are all bad kissers," I tell her, blowing smoke out my nose and twisting a piece of my hair around my fingers.
"That's just because you're a lesbian," She says, leaning over and plucking my shitty light cigarette out of my mouth and taking a drag.
"I am not," I say, grabbing my cigarette back before she's finished her drag as revenge, grinning at her so she doesn't beat me.
We sit there in silence, watching the wind blow through the trees and it should be awkward again, but it isn't because we're best friends. When you're best friends with somebody like I am with her, nothing is awkward anymore.
"Then what are you?"
I'm the kind of person whose friends know her better than she knows herself, and it sways me that she doesn't tell me what my sexuality is.
"It's complicated," I say vaguely to the wind, because I don't want to be one of those girls who says she's a lesbian and then turns around and dates a guy. Honestly, that just bothers me. I don't want to say I'm bi, either, because then people just think that I'm faking liking girls.
I like guys, okay, I just haven't met one I like enough to date yet, okay? Well, no, that came out wrong, I've dated guys before, I've just never been emotionally attached or anything. And I know I said I was a lesbian the other day because of the whole Bobby thing, and he's a great guy and everything, but maybe he just isn't my type. Maybe I do like guys. Maybe I don't.
It's complicated.
It's good enough for her, because she drops the subject, drops all spoken words and wraps her hand around mine, her fingers between mine, and it's good enough for me too so I let her and I welcome the chills and the way my breath catches in my throat.
--
It's 12:30 and it's lunch for half my grade and smoke break for me. Me and Ms. Ferrara. Exciting, I know.
Seriously though, I do like it. It's become part of my daily ritual, not some kind of regular unwanted interruption. And honestly, even though she's a teacher, Ms. Ferrara is pretty cool. She's in her twenties but she's really smart, which explains the high school teaching gig. Most of the others are old and wrinkly and they have years of experience. As if being old and experienced means you're smart or better at what you do than somebody who's twenty six.
"Do you ever wonder if what you're doing has a point?" She asks, her face pointed down at the ground but her eyes looking at me and the cigarette in my mouth.
"You sound like you're suicidal, you know that?" I say, smiling and blowing out smoke as I talk.
"Well, no, not like that, but you know what I mean?" The sentence could've gone either way, but she made it into a question. That's what I like about her. She doesn't act like she knows everything because she's a bit older than me, not like the play most adults and anybody who's anybody's senior try to put on.
Maybe I'm just over-analytical. I notice the little things everybody does and I try to figure out what they mean because I have nothing better to do and I put my own twisted thinking in there too, so the things that don't mean a thing end up meaning everything.
"There isn't supposed to be a point," I start, pausing for a drag, before I continue, "It's just developed, you know? It used to be all about survival and being able to eat or whatever, and then we got it all handed to us and now we sit and think about these kinds of things,"
I'm not done, and she can tell, so she doesn't say anything and I look up at the clouds and find one that looks a bit like a car.
"It's about being happy. We aren't all going to change the whole world and there's no use trying, so it's not worth it to waste your time in misery when the only thing you can change is yourself. Maybe you'll change the people around you for a while, but when you're gone they're gonna go back to the way they were, and if they don't, it's because they changed themselves."
"If it's about being happy, then why do you smoke?"
"I wouldn't be here right now if I didn't, would I?" I say, smiling a bit and she smiles back at me and I forget for a moment that she's my teacher.
"True,"
"I don't know if it's your cup of tea or what, but I know that if I can find somebody I want to be with forever, or for the rest of my life or whatever, I'd quit. I'd want as much time with them as I want. Hold on to that happiness, you know?"
"Isn't that selfish?" She's smart.
"In a way. In the end though, the only thing you know you'll always have is yourself. I'm not going to do something somebody else wants me to do just because they're there, because they'll be gone soon enough,"
"Selfish," She says decisively, but I'm not done yet. She'll know what I mean, damnit.
"It's all about you. If I'm doing something that's going to kill me, fine, I'll live while I can and I'll get the most out of it alone, or I'll love somebody and if I'm lucky they'll stick around," I never talk like this.
"So love's everything, huh?" She asks, leaning against our tree and stretching her arms.
"Love is my happiness," It's true. I'd never normally admit it, but it's true.
"You're a smart kid. But you're an idiot for that," Ms. Farrara says, smiling as she looks up at the leaves and I look at the side of her face.
"I know," I shrug, taking my last drag and smoking my cigarette down to the butt as the bell rings and I put it out on the sole of my shoe.
"Smart for knowing it though," And then she's gone, walking back to our brick and steel prison, but her words hold onto her presence while they hang in the air, and I look down self consciously at myself.
--
"Hey, pass me the bottle, would ya?" I ask, through a half fake drunken slur with a cigarette in my hand and my head against my pillow. It's me and it's Carly and a minikeg of Heineken and a couple of bottles of vodka and that's about it, really.
Not that we're really going to need the beer, considering the half empty bottle and the way her face is turning red and her eyes are glassy and she looks at me with a stupid smile and tries to throw an open bottle at me.
God only knows how I manage to catch it without getting covered in vodka.
"It'd be fu.. funny if that spilled on you," She laughs, flicking her lighter and taking a drag of her cigarette. And it's actually hers for once, not mine or my mom's. "Cause then I could set you on fire and you'd be like.. whoa,"
Brilliant. Sometimes drunk people say the most beautiful, deep and insightful things. She isn't one of them, apparently.
"Hilarious," I say in the most monotone-esque monotone I've ever heard myself talk in, tipping the bottle and downing whatever's left. Vodka doesn't even burn. Not for me. Most people say it does, but for me it just gives this sickening aftertaste of alcohol and then it's gone.
It used to burn when I first started drinking, but that was a long, long time ago.
I close my eyes, wait for the twinge in my stomach to go away, and then it's gone and I just sit and wait for the half bottle of vodka to start hitting.
She's a lightweight and she's not very smart about drinking, so she's already unscrewing the cap on the second bottle.
"You really don't want to do that," I tell her, the same way I always do, even though I know she'll never listen, but at least this way she can't say I didn't warn her when I'm holding her hair and she's puking her guts up.
"I don't feel it yet though," It takes her three tries to say the word 'yet'. How much drunker can you get?
"You don't feel it right away. C'mere, and put that down," I always have to do this. I have to talk to her like I'm an adult and she's a little kid playing with a car lighter. She looks at me for a moment, all puppy dog eyes and dying innocence, and then she decides that I'm right with her head in my lap while she hands me the bottle.
She lays there for a little while, and I sit there and realize how heavy the heads of drunk girls are and take sips of vodka and watch the time float by.
When half the bottle's gone and half an hour has gone by, she tells me that the room's spinning and my head's just starting to feel blocked and heavy, the way it does when I'm just getting into my sweet spot, past tipsy but not too far gone that I'm miserable.
"Why do you drink so much anyway?" She asks, looking up at me with her finger around a piece of my curled blonde hair.
I look back down at her, smile a bit and shrug, even though I know exactly why, I'm just not drunk enough to tell her. It's stupid and vulnerable or whatever and it involves me admitting that I actually have feelings, which I try not to do around her.
She's my best friend, and I know I always say that nothing is awkward with her, but there are some things I just can't tell people. It's easier to talk to myself or hug my pillow and cry over it all when the time comes and then forget about it than have it stuck in somebody else's mind.
"It doesn't even feel that good," Carly slurs, rolling over and curling into herself between my legs.
I sigh and run my hands through her hair. It's my way of telling her that she's not going to feel sick like this for too long. She's learned things like this by now, what all the stupid little touches mean and why I offer them up instead of the words that most other people do.
I'm not very good with words. Everything comes out jagged and slurred and so, so wrong. All the sentences are overused and the words lost their meaning in the throats of all the people who choke them out when they don't mean a thing.
"I like the feeling," I say, but I'm not sure if it's to her or the room at large, like I'm trying to reassure the alcohol that I still like it, like I would an insecure friend upon finding out an acquaintance doesn't like them as much as they thought.
It's quiet again after that, even the crickets and the steady stream of rain seem to have shushed themselves and given way to the sounds of a small city in the dead of night, which I honestly like more anyway. It's quiet for the next half hour while I finish the bottle and set it down on my hardwood floor, and only then is the silence broken.
"Sam?" Her voice is soft again, sober and tired, like the alcohol didn't make her sad or sick, it just sucked the life out of her and now she's left with this broken voice.
"Mhm?" I move to lean on her head, but then she's sitting and looking at me, with her bare legs brushing against mine, her face set like there's something she has to say that's going to change my life.
"Purple elephants," She's dead serious when she says this, but once I've smiled, she bursts out laughing the way only drunks and the saddest people do. Way too loud and at all the wrong things, but it just makes me laugh along with her, because her laughter and the way she holds my wrist in her hand are infectious.
She's still laughing with a drunken, lopsided grin on her face when she leans over, takes my face in her hands and looks right at me, just long enough for those chills to come back and for my throat to catch in my throat as though I'm allergic to her touch, and then she's kissing me again.
It's nothing like the other day in the field. She's still soft but she needs something now, or maybe it's just the drunk horny girl that needs me and Carly Shay is disgusted with herself right now, but the alcohol on her breath tastes sweet and welcoming so I kiss her back.
She's got her hands in my hair and her tongue in my mouth, the way I always wished somebody would kiss me, and she's leaning over me, surprisingly stable for somebody who's had as much to drink as she has. And I don't mind it, really. I don't mind the way my chest feels tight and my skin tingles wherever it brushes up against her, or the fact that she makes me feel all of this and a bag of chips and she's just satisfying some drunk craving.
I always think like that. I need to stop being so negative.
I don't think that maybe things will be weird in the morning until she has her hand up my shirt, resting on the ribs that stick way too far out for somebody my age, and then I finally give her the gentlest push away from me.
"Carly, stop, you're drunk," It's the simplest, easiest thing I could say, but it's so fucking hard when she was just touching me and now she's only sitting there, body swaying back and forth with intoxication.
"So..?"
I look at my blankets for a moment, entertain the thought of forgetting everything and just kissing her again, because my god do I want to, but the look on her face tomorrow and my fear of losing her over one night of just feeling okay scares me off, and I can do nothing but repeat myself.
"Look at me," She says, and she's got her hand under my chin and she's tilting my head up so I'm looking right at her. She looks at me like it's the first time she's ever seen my face and then smiles, that soft tiny Carly smile that you know is sincere while she tells me, "You're beautiful, you know that? You're just sad,"
It's true. I'm just sad.
I've never breathed a word of depression or actual sadness deeper than shitty breakups or Bobby Duscani's broken spine, but she can still tell.
I wish I could do that. I don't know a thing about how people feel and it bothers me that they can all read me like an open book. And I guess I can do the same things, but the feelings and meanings are so foreign that it seems like it's written in some long lost language. Somebody knew it once, but it sure as hell wasn't me.
"I know," I tell her, because it's true. It's about the only thing I do know anymore.
She leans over, kisses me again, and pushes me back against my pillow with her knee between my legs, but it's soft and sweet and gentle this time, like it was that day in the field, her kisses long and light. In the moments where she inches away from me and I lay under her, breathing in her air like it's a luxury I may or might not have to pay for at some point, she tells me, word by word between kisses, "And. I. Make. You. Happy."
You do Carly. You do. You read me like a book and you know things like this before I've grasped them, because you're not scared of feeling like I am.
She pushes her hand into my pants, makes awkward circles over my underwear and I welcome the feeling it brings. It's not even the pleasure, it's that I feel okay. It's the way it feels having her body this close to mine, the way the chills she's made me feel have turned into this absolute wall of pleasure and feeling, and it's not as scary as I thought it would be, and the feeling of her hand between my legs is only secondary.
I close my eyes, lean my head up at the ceiling when her lips find my neck, and when I've opened them, I realize what's happening because it's happened so many times before.
"Carly," I hear my voice crack when she bites my neck, but I bite my lip and talk through my teeth because I'm not letting this happen again, "Stop. You're drunk,"
She listens to me, looks up at me through drooping eyelids and then her arm's around my stomach and her face is nestled between my neck, my shoulder and my pillow, and her breathing slows as she falls asleep.
Hours later, when we both roll into each other and groggily pull ourselves up, realizing how awful everything looks the morning after, she asks with her hair sticking up in all the oddest angles, "What happened last night?"
She looks at me, and I can't quite pick up on what it is, but she's telling me that she remembers absolutely everything. She remembers kissing me and she remembers that I kissed her back, her hand in my pants and the way my back arched against her body when she'd touch me just the right way.
She doesn't say a word about what just happened. It must be one of those mutual lies friends tell, the forgive and forget kind of thing, where we both know the truth and it's easier to pretend it never happened. It's so much easier to put the feelings away and pretend they were never there, that it was just the alcohol that made me kiss her back like that, that there's nothing worth looking twice at. It's easier than admitting that she makes me feel a thing at all and her admitting that she did anything that she did.
"Nope," I say with a groggy smile, and she smiles back, thanking me for playing along. "Do you want some coffee?"
She nods, lays back down and I walk outside, close the door, lean against it and look at the bright purple mark on my neck in the mirror on the wall. And for a moment, I want to turn around and walk back in there, to kiss her and tell her to say that she doesn't feel a single thing that I do. I want to sit on the floor and cry to myself with my knees pulls to my chest and not make a sound so she won't hear me and all these fucking feelings will just leave me alone and everything can be normal.
I want to, but I don't.
I just can't. The alcohol's gone again and it'll take much more than what she makes me feel to break me.
I don't cry. I just walk to the kitchen with my hand on my neck and boil a pot of water, pour little mugs of coffee and put the third in the fridge, trying to burn the feeling of her lips against my neck into my mind, so the way she looked at me is worth it.
--
"Would you rather be happy for a little while and then let it go or spend your life on the fringe of it, but never really get there?" I ask, leaning against our tree and taking deep drags from my cigarette while rain pours down on the dirt around us. We're safe under here.
Ms. Ferrara gives me a knowing smile, then looks back down at the ground, her eyes closed under her blonde hair.
I should really start calling her Amanda when I'm not in class with her. At least in my head. Ms. Ferrara makes her sound old and wrinkly.
"So you found your happiness, huh?" She says, smiling out me and I just catch it out of the corner of my eye. I guess I really do wear my emotions splashed across my face like neon pink paint and I'm the only one who's colorblind anymore.
"Just answer the damn question, miss psychology major," I snap, but I'm smiling so she knows I'm not really being all that serious.
"You know I can put you in detention for that, right?"
I sit on that for a moment, try to think of something to come back with, before I tell her, "You know I can probably get you fired for smoking on school property, right?"
"This is true," Ms. Farrara. No, Amanda. Amanda says, taking a drag on her cigarette, before she says, "Live by your own philosophy, Sam,"
I turn and look at her curiously, and she looks back, smiling a bit, and says, "Don't let it get away. Chase that happiness of yours, because otherwise you're always going to ask yourself if things could've been better,"
"Who said I was talking about me?" I ask, but she's right and she's telling me what I already know, and it makes me bottom of my stomach jump up like I'm not crazy for it.
She gives me one of her knowing smiles, and says, "I'd rather be happy and lose it than spend life wondering what could've been,"
We stand in silence after that, smoking our cigarettes and watching the rain, and when the bell rings, she leaves, but I stay, watching the rain falling all around me and how not a single drop touches me. Nothing touches me because I'm hiding under my tree like a little rain's going to kill me. It's no wonder I feel the way I do; I sit on all the feelings I try to bottle up and forget until I drive myself into a place like the one I'm in now.
I stand there for a another moment, burnt out cigarette butt held in my hand and I'm pretending there's something left to smoke, like that's why I'm standing under her and running away from life and happiness.
Fuck. Stop stalling, Sam.
I'm throwing the filter on the ground, and I take a tentative step out from under the tree.
I have never felt so alive while being brutally attacked by falling water.
--
"Dude, you have to try these things," Carly tells me, holding out only god knows what coated in neon green in a clear plastic wrapper with one of those biohazard signs printed on the side.
I look at her oddly, because it tends to only be my thing to eat things with biohazard signs on them.
If she's discovered the joy of the activity, who's going to call 911 when I swallow pesticide by accident?
"It's candy, smartness, and it so fucking sour I can't feel my tongue,"
Now I'm interested.
"Oh my god, are you fucking serious?" I'm genuinely excited by this, and I snatch the candy from her hand and stuff it in my mouth, preparing for something so epic it's life-changing.
And now I'm disappointed.
"Doesn't it feel like it's burning a hole in your tongue?" She asks, grinning and sticking her own now green tongue out at me, and I'm not sure if it's because she thinks that there's actually a hole in it or because she wants to show me how amazing green tongues can be.
"It's just sweet. You just ruined my life," I tell her, sucking on my ridiculously sweet candy and wishing that I had her taste buds.
"I think I did that a long time ago," She says, grinning at me. "And if you hate it so much, give it back, at least I like them,"
I miss elementary school when people didn't eat things that had already been in people's mouths.
"You realize I'm already, like, sucking it and stuff?"
"So?" She asks, and she sounds like me with her newfound love of anything resembling edible and her disregard for common sense.
"Like, my spit's on it and everything," I say, but it's another thing that people stopped caring about by middle school, when licking your food to claim it stopped working.
"Because I've never had that in my mouth before,"
I'll admit, it sways me for a moment, because I thought that the fact that we kissed, drunk and sober, was supposed to be the kind of thing that we aren't supposed to talk about for at least another six months when we can laugh at it, but she's talking about it now and I don't mean to let it, but it all pours back into my mind, like the way she tasted like vodka and something sweet and the way she was breathing in my ear.
I have nothing to say to that, and she knows she's won, because she sticks her hand on my mouth and plops the candy into her own.
Fuck, Carly, stop doing this to me.
"Only us," She says, chuckling and sipping her coffee. I guess her common sense came back. She's not like me anymore--mine left about nine minutes after I was born and I haven't been able to find it again since.
"Only us,"
--
I'm sitting on her bed, watching the lights flickering sporadically and listening to the crash of thunder and ridiculously large rain drops hitting the ground outside, and Carly's twisting locks of hair around her finger like she's completely unaware of how gorgeous she looks when she does that.
"If the power goes out, I'm going to kill something," She tells me, watching the light on her desk and I'm watching her face and the way the shadows change whenever there's a flash of lightning or the lights go out for a second. I can get away with it too, which honestly I'm more than just a little happy about.
"What, are you scared of the dark or something?" I ask, laughing and turning my gaze to the ground and pretending that my feet are just incredibly interesting when she turns her head and looks at me.
And the feeling of her gaze, for the first time in all the years we've been friends, the feeling of her looking at me even if I'm not looking back, gives me chills and goosebumps as though it's something that should be remembered.
"No. But it's still creepy," She says defensively, and I'm looking back up at her and she's smiling at me like there's some joke hanging in the air.
There's a crack of thunder, and I'm about to laugh and ask if she's scared now, but she's jumped into my arms, our limbs all crooked and awkwardly twisted together and we're way, way too close, and her breathing like a car engine makes it feel like we've crossed an invisible, unspoken line of mutual agreement on just not touching each other. Just don't get too close and everything will be so, so much simpler because friendship is always easier than admitting anything.
She tilts her head up to look at me, to open her mouth and try to say a word, but the lights cut out and whatever she was about to say gets lost in the darkness and then it's just her breath, minty and sweet and absolutely sober against the skin on my neck.
The feelings are all wrong when they race across my body, the way my breath catches in my throat at the slightest touch from the girl who's supposed to be my best friend, nothing more, and the way all these feelings are there on my skin but they're completely unprecedented, completely unreasonable. It feels right though, in the strangest way, and I hardly let myself breath, like the oxygen deprivation might make me able to live in this moment a little bit longer.
It's the kind of thing that lasts only a few moments but feels like a lifetime, because it's one of those things that used to be absolutely nothing but now it's everything.
She doesn't say anything, and it's another one of those mutual lies between friends being formed when she kisses me again, tentative and scared without the block of alcohol making everything so much easier. And I'm the one who wants it so much, who feels all of these things and who's driving herself crazy over them, but I'm just as scared to make the slightest movement against her lips, as though it's a cruel joke and she'll know everything if I just kiss her back.
Her fingers twisting around my hair like she did to her own just a couple of minutes ago must be what changes everything and then I'm kissing her back, the softest motions of my lips brushing against hers, and I'm trapped in this feeling of surrealism, the world swimming around my head.
When I feel my hand in hers, her fingers laced between mine and her lips clasped tight on mine like she's scared to let me go, I swear that I'm dreaming and I'm dying and it's the feeling of surrealism, the same one I felt watching Bobby Duscani carted away on a stretcher that makes me realize that I can't hold onto a lie forever, or even the truth really, because things change.
I can feel her breathing change just the slightest, realizing what's happening, and she holds on for just another moment and I can tell, somehow, that I'm losing her and I'm losing it all. That she's given me this feeling and it's next to ecstasy and now she's taking it back, scared just like I am that things are going to change, as if they haven't already. Like we haven't crossed some line that we can't walk back over and pretend that nothing ever happened anymore.
She's breathing on my lips now, her breath catching in her throat like mine and the tips of her fingers resting against my cheek, and she's looking at me, I can tell. Even in the dark I can tell that she's looking right at me, praying to god that I won't let things change just yet. That she knows it'll never really be the same, but she's just not ready yet.
Or maybe I'm just crazy. Maybe that's just what I'm thinking, nearly shaking and feeling my heart cracking in my chest because I want her so much more than she wants me.
There's another crack of thunder, but she doesn't jump into me again, and then the lights flicker back on and her hand's gone and so's her whole body. She's standing with her hand in her hair, and she asks if I want some ham, like the girl I just kissed wasn't her and nothing happened. Like nothing changed.
Carly Shay, you can't stop it now, not when you keep doing this to me. You can't stop the change. I don't even know what's going to happen or if this is it, but it's already changed. It's already gone too far to pretend any more.
"Sure," I'll keep playing your game, Carly. I'll keep telling your lies because it's all I know. Because if I say a thing against you and the mask you're wearing, you'll take that mask and all our mutual lies and up and leave.
--
It's the saddest thing I think I've ever seen, looking at him laying there with his breathing ragged and broken and in time with the sound of the machines watching his heart rate and the fuzzy lined metal frame drilled into his body to keep his spine as together as it can be, like it'll make a difference and undo the damage.
"Bobby?" I say his name softly, like if I even speak too loudly he might just fall apart. He's a strong guy, really, the kind of guy who can bench four hundred pounds no problem, but it's like he's been broken and he's just barely together, and maybe if I breath too much of his air, all the stitching will come undone and he'll fall apart like a poorly made rag doll.
A smile graces his chapped lips, and his eyes open the tiniest little bit, "Hey Sam," and it's like a weight lifts off my chest, because he's still the same Bobby, it's just that his body's failed him now.
I twist my fingers nervously around on my hands, shoved firmly in my lap like they've been glued there, and I watch the rise and fall of his chest, wondering what's been going through his mind these last couple of weeks.
"How's it going?" He asks, lifting his hand a little bit as though he wants to touch me, but then it drops back to the bed and his eyes fall closed again, and it's just supposed to be below his waist that his body's ruined, but it breaks my heart watching the fingers on his hand trembling.
"It's.. it's good," I stumble over my words the way I've only ever done around the people that give me chills, and not the way watching him breathing and suffering does. I'm at a loss for words, looking at one of the strongest people I know laying in a hospital bed and unable to lift his hand when a month ago he could take that hand and lift my whole body off the ground. "How're.. uhm,"
I realized halfway through what a dumb question that must be, but he just smiles like he always does and tells me he's doing okay.
It's quiet for a moment, save for the steady hum and beep of the machines, and I'm watching him and his twitching fingers until it's like there's frozen water in the cracks in my heart and it's coming so much closer to breaking, and then I just have to reach over and hold his hand in mine to hold me together.
His hand is warm and soft, the same way it always has been, and it makes my whole body warm, like a reminder that some things stay the same, and his fingers curl against my own.
"The food sucks though," Bobby tells me with a bit of a chuckle, the metal frame on the top of his body shaking and bobbing with his movements until it's exhausted him and his mouth falls shut again.
He was supposed to win scholarships and go on to play in the NFL.
That water in my heart's freezing again between the cracks.
I smile a bit, and let my eyes wander up and down his body, from the jut of his hip bone up to his defined cheekbones and tanned skin, his chapped lips and the scar on his right cheek.
"How's school?" He asks, his thumb moving against the skin on the side of my hand.
"The usual," I say, and I don't mean to sound so vague and distant and lifeless like I do, with my two word answers and my refusal to look him in the eye, but I just can't. "Everybody misses you,"
He smiles at me, and then up at the ceiling with his eyes closed.
It's quiet for a while, and Bobby just lays there, his hand around mine, and it's kind of nice, really. It's nice being able to just sit with him and have somebody who understands that there's more to some things than just words.
"Sam?" He finally mumbles, his voice hoarse as though he hasn't spoken in days.
I tilt my head towards him, squeeze his hand and feel my heart throb in my chest.
"No regrets,"
"No regrets, man,"
I'm looking down at him, at the football star without his legs, and I'm realizing that for once, I really ought to live by somebody else's words, that I should take them to heart because wouldn't Bobby Duscani know something like that now?
He smiles again and squeezes my hand.
No regrets.
--
"Carly, what are you anyway?" I ask out of nowhere, after sitting and watching her and trying to pick apart her body language and the subtlest of movements, all the while chewing my poor lip to pieces like it would make anything any easier.
"Uh, a girl?" She tells me, throwing her shirt over her shoulder and onto my head before she throws herself back into her drawers, searching around for some long lost shirt or some sort of inspiration for an outfit.
"Oh my god, would you stop? You look fine, put the shirt back on," I tell her, sitting on her bed and holding the crumpled and probably slightly stretched out shirt out to her like a peace offering, grinning sheepishly. She can probably tell that I'm about a second away from slapping her and dressing her myself. After I'm done staring at her cleavage, anyway.
Shut up, you would too.
"No I don't, I feel fat," Carly whines, holding her hands over her stomach as though she doesn't have the most perfect body. Which she does. She just doesn't admit it. She's self conscious. She just doesn't admit that, either.
I think it's kind of sweet, honestly.
We stay like that, her standing with her hands over her stomach and me sitting on her bed, practically glaring at her and ax murdering her with my eyes, until she sighs and picks a shirt off the ground, pulls it over her head and announces that she wants a smoke.
I look at her, shirt baggy and crinkled and looking so incredibly out of place against her skinny jeans and half done makeup, and shrug like I don't want to walk up to her and shake her and kiss her and tell her to stop avoiding it.
She runs her hands through her hair like she's exhausted while she walks across the room, throws open her window and pulls herself onto the window sill, so one of her legs is hanging off the edge of the building and the other's curled into her chest.
I watch her for a few moments from across the room, until I pull myself up and then sit myself back down on the ground next to her and ask, "Can I have a drag?"
She shrugs and hands me her cigarette, and again I'm reminded of how I would think about our lips touching the same thing like we're indirectly kissing when I was younger when I press it against my lips and inhale tobacco smoke.
"No, but seriously, what are you?" I ask, blowing smoke out my nose while I talk and looking up at her, amazed at the courage it took to actually ask such a simple question.
"What do you mean?" Carly asks, reaching down and taking her cigarette back. She puts it back in her mouth but doesn't take a drag, just turns her head and looks out the window, down at the city street and the light illuminates her face in all the most beautiful ways.
I'm caught then, stumbling across all the different words and phrasings that spill to my head and all the possible outcomes, all the looks she could give me and all the way I could make things just plain old weird. Honestly though, there's no way to ask your best friend why she keeps kissing you or if she's gay without making things awkward, and when I realize that, I'm not sure if it makes me feel better or worse or what.
"I mean.." I let myself trail off, looking out the window and chewing my lip and wishing I had a cigarette in my mouth so I had an excuse to stop talking. "What are you? I mean, you keep kissing me and straight girls don't normally.. well, unless they're paid, but.."
She looks down at me, cigarette in her mouth and smoke blowing out her nose, and I look back up at her because I'm not going to look away again and miss something.
Carly sits down on the ground next to me, one hand still holding her cigarette and the other twisting through my hair, and I think she's starting to realize the effect it has on me, because she gives me the softest smile, kisses my lips, the softest one yet, and tells me, "It's complicated,"
I look at her, tongue tied and blushing and absolutely dumbfounded, and I want nothing more in the world than to lean back over and kiss her again, to tell her not to stop, because it's like she's a drug and she's turned me into an addict and now that I've had a taste, I can't give it up. I can't give her up but I don't have the courage to; it's all flown out of my mouth with that stupid question and it melted against her lips.
She smiles at me, then crawls back onto the window sill and smokes the rest of her cigarette, and I just sit there and taste her lip gloss on my lips.
I think we were supposed to be going to a party, but I can't remember anymore, and she doesn't say anything, just sits on the window sill and smokes cigarettes, and when I'm confident that I can stand up again, I sit next to her and do the same until there's crickets humming outside and the sun gives way to another warm summer night.
--
It's 3 in the morning when she calls me, crying hysterically, and I ask groggily what on earth happened. And I don't mind that the one night I finally got to sleep before 6, she woke me up, because we have this thing where we promised we could always call each other if something was wrong, no matter what time it was, and honestly, I really do love hearing her voice. Which is ridiculous. But still.
"Do you ever feel like everything's too much, y'know? And you try to be this perfect person and you have all these tiny little problems until one day it hits you that you're just a fucking wreck and it's all too fucking much? And.. god, Sam, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing anymore. What the fuck am I doing? What the fuck am I fucking doing?" She's crying and choking every couple of words, and I'm absolutely stupefied, because honestly, what do you say to somebody when they say something like that and you don't even know what's wrong and you're barely awake?
"Carly.. Carly, stop, don't cry. What happened?" I ask, because it's all that I can think of. I'm rubbing my eyes, forcing myself to sit up and groping blindly for a cigarette.
"God, does it even matter? What the fuck hasn't happened, Sam? Everybody thinks I'm so perfect, y'know? Carly Shay is so fucking perfect but I can't keep it together. I can't do a fucking thing,"
I breath smoke out my nose, then tell her, "Carly, don't.. It's okay, okay? Come over, okay? Just.. come over, it'll be okay," I stumble over my words like I always do, and I try to tell her without actually telling her that I care, that nothing's going to hurt her or anything.
She hiccups, and then she's quiet for a moment, save for her heavy breathing, and she finally mumbles, hoarse and exhausted, "Okay.. okay, I'll be over in.. I'll come over," I open my mouth to tell her I'll wait outside, but the line goes dead.
I sit there on my bed, my room filled with smoke and stare at my phone, at the numbers on it that tell me that it's quarter after three and the picture of me and Carly that's set as my wallpaper, and then I sigh, staring up at the ceiling and listen to the rain and thunder outside my window.
I don't know what I'm doing either. I really, really don't. And she's right. I do feel like everything's too much.
God, stop wallowing in self pity. I need to stop. Right now. Absolutely nothing is wrong.
I need coffee. Right the fuck now.
So I make some. I stand in my kitchen with my cigarette in my mouth and watch the numbers slowly change on the clock on the microwave and wait for my water to boil, even though I honestly don't even like hot coffee. I hate hot coffee, but I need something to do and coffee seems like a logical solution. Coffee and cigarettes are all I need in life.
And when it finally boils, I pour it over the five heaping spoonfuls of espresso coffee, pick up my mug and walk out of my apartment, down three flights of stairs, out the front door and I sit myself down on the steps under the awning in my pajama pants, a pack of cigarettes and I lighter in my bra, and I sip my coffee while rain hits the sidewalk in front of me.
Who else would I do this for?
Nobody. I'm ridiculous. It's like I'm her lap dog or something. I don't really mind, but still.
At three twenty five, Carly walks up to me, soaking and her eyes red, looks at me and sits on the stairs next to me, lights a cigarette and sips my coffee, her head on my shoulder.
"You okay?" I ask softly, my hands in her hair like she always does to me, but I'm terrified of touching her like I was terrified standing next to Bobby Duscani in the hospital, as though if I move too quickly she's going to break. And I'm realizing that maybe I always act like this around people because I see little pieces of myself in them, that it's like I'm already broken and somebody's hidden the pieces in all the people around me, and watching them break and fall into the misery I'm realizing I've been swimming in for so long helps me find myself.
Or maybe I'm just sick and twisted and incredibly fucked up for thinking something like that.
She doesn't say anything for a moment, just keeps her head on my shoulder, and then she asks, her voice still hoarse like she'd been crying on the way here, "Were you ever like this? When you.." She trails off, because she just isn't ready to admit that she's gay or bi or whatever it is that she is that makes her keep kissing me, and I know because it's exactly the way I was when I was eleven years old, crying into my pillow at night.
"Yeah," I tell her, leaning my head on hers and twisting pieces of her wet hair around my fingers.
She's quiet again, like she's just realized she's finally admitted something she didn't mean to even though I knew perfectly well that she wasn't straight. And I guess it must be a bigger deal to her than it is to me, because we sit there for another fifteen minutes before I finally move and lean my back against the metal railing at the edge of the steps.
She looks at me, throws the end of her cigarette out into the rain and opens her mouth like she's going to say something, but nothing comes out.
It's me that kisses her this time, leaning over on my knees with my hands in her hair with Seattle city lights shining down on us and lighting up all the little puddles on the ground, and it's soft and sweet like the way she kissed me before, and when she doesn't move against me, I regret it. And then she's got her hands on my head,
It's a minute or two before it goes from one of those cute little kisses to her having her tongue in my mouth, and then I'm standing up and she follows, her lips still on mine and she's breathing hard through her nose and I must sound the same way as I take tentative, blind steps backwards and she follows, a hand around my waist and the other in my hair and all those chills that she always makes me feel are just unexplainable now, the way she gives me goosebumps and makes the hair on my arms stand on end is simple impossible to describe with just words.
She pushes me up against my truck, parked out in the street, and I'm soaking but I honestly couldn't care less with her hand on my hip and straying up my shirt like it did the night we were both drunk, but it feels so much better now because I can't taste the vodka on her breath.
And I'm thinking that maybe, finally something might work out the way I want it too. That after so many years of being an optimist at heart and getting let down for it, something might finally, finally pay off. Carly grabs the door, pulls it open and when she pushes me back into the cab, my knees give out and then she's on top of me, her hand pulling my shirt over my head and her lips on my neck.
Honestly, I'm terrified of speaking, of even breathing too loudly in case she changes her mind, but I can't help but let out a choked gasp when she pushes her hand under my bra and bites at my neck.
I can feel my head swimming, and I must have rolled us over because then I'm on top of her, my hands at her waist and unbuttoning her cutoff shorts, and the whole thing should be weird and it probably is but I'm too caught up in my own euphoria to realize or think twice about it.
"Sam," She mumbles, her voice cracking, and then her shorts are at her knees and my hand's under her panties, making little circles around her and tentative thrusts inside her, because I've never really done this with somebody I actually gave a fuck about.
And then I lay there, propped above her while I kiss her neck and listen to her breathing and all the little moans she makes, until they escalate and she finally arches her back against my hand and then lays back down, quiet save for her breathing.
"You're beautiful, you know that?" I finally tell her, breathing in her ear, trying not to acknowledge the fact that she's laying under me and her face is slightly pink and the way she's breathing and that I did that, but something like that just can't be ignored.
Carly looks up at me, and for the first time, I can't read her expression. She looks down at herself, brushes her hand against my cheek and I smile a little bit, feeling my cheeks burn and my skin tingling like it always does when she touches me.
And finally, something actually worked out the way I wanted it to. Finally, finally, finally.
I don't know where it comes from or what makes me say it, but then I hear myself saying, "I love you," and I've said it so many times before, but it holds some kind of weight in the air like it never has before once it's left my lips.
It's another minute or two before she says something, mumbles softly, "Sam?" and I look at her, kiss her cheek and smile again, some post-sex affection like I've always wanted to but never really could.
"I'm not like you, Sam," She finally says, and I have no idea what she means, but I can feel my stomach twisting and curling around and making the ugliest feeling surface in my mouth, like I might throw up or die or both, because when somebody says something like that to you it never ends well.
It's quiet for another minute, because I honestly have no idea what I'm supposed to say or do anymore, and we're still tangled up across the seats in my truck, but it feels awkward now, the way it's never felt with her, not warm and fuzzy and comfortable like it did two fucking minutes ago.
"Sam, I can't, okay? I just can't," And the way she keeps saying my name makes my chest hurt, and somehow, it reminds me that it's Carly who's saying this, not some other girl who doesn't mean a thing, and I can't just pretend it's some kind of bad dream and I can't trap myself in a feeling of surrealism like I normally do whenever something bad happens, and I can't stay there until it goes away because this is Carly.
She mumbles something else, some incomprehensible words that might be an apology, like that'll do any good, and then she climbs out of the pick up, her hair sticking up and her clothes wrinkled.
Carly Shay walks off into the darkness, past the streetlights and I can't see her anymore, but I still keep my eyes on the shadows she disappeared into, as though she's going to come back and tell me that she just made the biggest mistake, that she can, she can, she can.
Nothing ever really works out like that in the end, though. And I know she's not going to come back, that I just lost the girl who's been my best friend for so many years, because things change. Everything changes. Carly Shay and Samantha Puckett could never be friends forever, and I couldn't just keep living some kind of dream for the rest of my life.
And all the water that kept falling into the cracks in my heart just froze. Sam Puckett, the girl with a heart like a rock, who never let anything really get to her and could never really be sad, just cracked. That rock heart of mine finally just broke in half like a boulder.
It was five thirty by the time I took my eyes off where I saw her last, pulled my knees to my chest and cried the way Carly did when she called me, all choking noises and hysterical sobs, and I honestly felt myself shaking against the beat up leather seats.
By the time it was six and the sun was almost completely up, I wiped my eyes and looked back up at the streetlights until they flickered off, ignored the way my eyes stung and opened my car door, hanging my legs out the side and just barely brushing them into some gas filled puddle.
I'll be okay. I've gotten through everything else just fine. I'll be okay. I swear, I'll be okay.
I just told the biggest lie.
--
So, this is what I've been working on the last month or so. Stayed up 3 nights writing it.. not in a row or anything. xD I think total I spent something like 15 or 16 hours on this at least. Started it in April, had no new ideas, left it alone until a few days ago, and finally finished it tonight. I had a couple more scenes planned out, but the ending came in the middle of writing the scene before it, and I just wanted this done.
I had no idea that this was going to end up like this when I started.
:3 I'm actually kinda proud of it, honestly. Well.. let me know what you thought, if you want. (: Thanks for reading.