This is my second "seddie" story in a week...I must be inspired by the iOMG trailer! :) WHO ELSE IS AS STOKED AS I AM? (Well, I'm actually trying not to get my hopes up, but that's pretty impossible...)
ANYWAY, I would love, love, love for you guys to let me know what you think after you read this! :)
Enjoy...
Her cellphone ringing wakes her up and she immediately regrets her decision to buy that Lil' Wayne ringtone…his voice is quite horrifying coming out of a dead sleep. At first she panics, thinking that she'd overslept, yet again, and Carly was calling from school to ask where she was, but when she looks at the clock, it reads 2:36.
Are you kidding me? She picks up the phone and looks at the screen to see whose name is flashing across it: "Fredderly." Benson? Is he serious with this? 2:36? This better be so good…
"What do you want, Benson?" she tries her best to sound angry through the exhaustion that she knows must be in her voice.
"SAM!" he yells so loud that she has to pull the phone away from her ear. "I think you live here…"
"What are you talking about?"
"I mean, I'm not sure. It really loooooks like your building, but I could be totally wrong," he holds out the word "looks" for far too long and raises his voice at least 3 octaves. "I'm so lost…which is weird, right? Because I'm like, an awesome navigator!" For some reason, he seems to find this statement funny and bursts out into hysterical laughter.
She's confused by his giddiness. He's rambling on, talking much louder than he normally does, but she's stopped listening, trying to process what's happening. He sounds like he's…no. There's no way. He couldn't be…could he? Not Freddie. He wouldn't. He's way too much of a stick in the mud...he wouldn't even know what to do with alcohol if it was sitting in a cup in front of him!
She gasps as she hears a banging sound coming from the living room. It shakes the whole apartment and for a split second she thinks it's an earthquake or something crazy like that.
"Freddie?" she says into the phone, but he's already hung up and she instantly knows what the sound is. She launches herself out of bed, in her shorts and oversized t-shirt, and takes off for the front door. The banging doesn't stop until she yanks it open and there, in all his drunken glory, stands Freddie Benson.
"SAM!" he offers her the same greeting as he had on the phone. "I was so scared that this wasn't your apartment and someone else would answer the door," he dissolves into laughter with the last word of the sentence before gasping. "Were you asleep? What are you wearing?" He asks the question like the idea of her being asleep at two in the morning was totally ridiculous.
He's yelling everything he says and Sam slaps her hand over his mouth. At this rate, every neighbor she has will be calling the landlord to complain tomorrow.
"Get inside, Benson," she says, dragging him inside by the elbow, Freddie laughing the entire time. "Shut up!" she hisses, "You're gonna wake up my mom and, trust me, neither of us want to see her without make-up."
He stops laughing and takes her face in his hands. "Sam," he says, suddenly serious.
She pushes him backward off of her because he reeks of vodka. "What?"
"I think…I'm drunk."
"Really? How shocking," she rolls her eyes and reaches out to steady him as he stumbles backwards.
"I don't know what happened."
She stops her annoyed sighs because he sounds genuinely confused as to how he got to this state, like he has no memory of his actions. The laughter has stopped and now he just looks disappointed, hurt even. "Benson…"
"I don't drink," his brow furrows and she thinks that he looks a little like a lost puppy. She almost wants to hug him. Almost. "I don't drink, I don't. I just screwed up. I screw everything up!" he swings his arm around his body and she grabs him again to keep him from falling over.
"Freddie…chill, you're fine, okay?"
"No, I'm not fine." He shakes her from his arm and stomps into the kitchen. "I'm not, Sam! I'm messed up." He flings his arm around yet again. Well, a melodramatic drunk is better than a mean drunk. His hand collides with the stainless steel refrigerator, making yet another deafening bang, and his face scrunches up in pain. He opens his mouth and she knows what's coming next, so she throws herself onto him and covers his mouth with her hand.
"Benson, how about you go and be messed up in my room okay? If my mom wakes up, she'll slaughter you." She pulls him along by the wrist and he pries her hand from his mouth.
"Good! Let her! I deserve it…MISS PUCKETT!"
Her hand is back on his mouth with a smack and he immediately sets to trying to pry it off again. She sends up a silent prayer of thanks for her being stronger than him. It's a struggle because he seems determined to stay in the living room, but she manages to pull him, inch by inch, into her bedroom and shut the door behind them. But with the slam of her door, she hears another one, further down the hall.
"Shhhh!" she hisses at her drunken friend and for the first time all night, he obeys and puts one finger over his mouth. She turns away from him and presses her ear against the door, listening for her mother's footsteps on the creaky floor of their hallway. She hears nothing, but waits for ten seconds just to be sure.
"Freddie, just—" she turns to tell him to sit down or something, but he's already sprawled out on the floor, flat on his stomach, "just lay on the floor. Whatever, that's perfect, as long as you're quiet."
He doesn't answer and she assumes he's passed out. She sighs and looks at the clock: 2:54. Great. She crawls back into bed and, trying to ignore the fact that she's now totally awake, thanks to Freddork's escapades, she shuts her eyes. Another big sigh as she fights the urge to open her eyes again because she's determined to force herself back to sleep.
"Sam," she hears about ten minutes after she's decided to give up and just lay there with her eyes open.
"Yeah?"
He's quiet for a long time and she starts to think he's just too drunk to make sense or mumbling in his sleep. But when he responds, she knows that he's completely coherent; a little loopy, but he's knows exactly what he's saying. "I drove here."
It takes her a moment to register the significance of his statement but when she does, she sits up straight and looks at him. His eyes are shut tight, like he's trying to brace himself for whatever she's about to say. He knows. He knows what he's done. That's how he died, Freddie's dad. He drove drunk one time, just one. Freddie always emphasized that point whenever he gave Sam and Carly lectures about drunk driving; his dad only did it once, but once was all it took. Now's he gone, leaving Freddie fatherless and his mother a bundle of nerves. Their family was ruined forever.
Sam's chest starts to feel weird; it's almost like an empty feeling, sort of hollow but full of fear at the same time. It's kinda like she's transparent and someone has their hand stuck right through her. It's hard to pinpoint and she doesn't like it. She hates the feeling because she knows why it's there. She quickly racks her brain for other ideas, but there is only one option. Freddie had just admitted it; he wouldn't have said he drove here if he didn't realize what it meant. It was all making sense now, Freddie calling himself 'messed up' and saying that he screws everything up. It clicked now, why he had said he deserved to be killed. That's what he tried to do.
"Freddie," she immediately regrets speaking because her voice comes out small, and strained, and scared, and not like her at all. "That's like, the stupidest thing you've ever done. Ever, do you know that?" She wants to keep going and really lay into him, but she can't. She can't think of anything else to say and her throat feels like it's closing up.
"I know," is all he says back.
She scoffs and looks up at the ceiling, denying the moisture forming in her eyes the chance to spill over. It's not supposed to be like this; she's the messed up one, not Freddie. Freddie has it all together: good grades, a mom who loves him, a bright future. She should be drunk on his floor, not the other way around. She should be the one lamenting over what a failure she is, not him. She closes her eyes and desperately wishes that she could just switch it all around right now, that maybe God could do a miracle for her and magically move them from Sam's room to Freddie's, putting her on the floor and him on the bed, neither of them remembering a thing. Everything is just reversed and it makes her dizzy. She opens her eyes and the room stops spinning, but they're still in the opposite places of where they belong. It makes her heart hurt and she gets dizzy again because she shouldn't care this much, she really shouldn't.
She looks down at Freddie on the floor. "Just…just sleep it off," she says, rolling over to face the wall and pulling the blanket over her head. She's not sure if her statement was meant for Freddie or for herself.
"Hey," is the first thing she hears when she feels the warm sun on her, coming in through the window, but through the sleep clouding her brain she can barely register the word. Well, through the sleep or lack thereof.
"Hey!" It's a little louder this time and she rolls over slowly to face her mother, standing in the doorway in an orange, leopard-print jumpsuit. "Who's the kid?" She jerks her head in the direction of Freddie, still face-down on the floor and Sam's eyes follow.
She sits up and rubs her eyes. "Freddie, Mom." She says the name and waits for her mom to remember, but all she gets is a confused look and a raised eyebrow. "Oh no, it's fine, Mom. I mean, you've only met him like, a hundred and seventeen times."
She leans closer to him and squints her eyes, trying to decipher whether or not she's actually seen the boy passed out on her daughter's floor before. "Huh," she says after a minute or so of examining, seeming to have decided that she doesn't recognize him, "You sleepin' with him?"
Sam turns to look at her mother with an exasperated look. "Yes. Yes, I am. That's why he's fully clothed, on the floor. Gah, Mom!"
Her mother holds her hands palms-out in front of her. "Hey, it's whatever. Just get to school, alright? I don't want Principal What's-his-face calling me about you not showin' up, again." She turns to leaves, but yells over her shoulder, "Mama don't have time for that!"
"Whatever," she yawns, but crawls out of bed. Before she leaves, she stick's a purple sticky note on the back of Freddie's right hand—"Went to school, be back at lunch. There's coffee in the kitchen. It'll help with the hangover, trust me, nub."
When she comes home after 4 hours of torture, Freddie is no longer sprawled on her floor. She follows the sound of water running to the back bathroom, where she finds him standing over the sink, splashing his face with water. She can smell vomit and has no trouble guessing how he spent his morning.
"Hey," she says, once he's turned off the water. He stands over the sink, eyes closed, water running down his neck.
"Hey," is all she gets in response and he pushes past her to get out of the bathroom, eyes on the ground and still dripping wet.
"Um, hey?" she follows him back to her room where he stands for a second, looking confused before turning in a quick circle.
"Jacket?" is all he says and she points to the living room. What's his problem? He steps around her in the doorway like she doesn't even exist.
She follows him into the living room where he's searching for his jacket and stands in front of him, hands on her hips. "Uh, is there something you maybe wanna say to me?"
His path is blocked by her and he's forced to finally make eye contact. "Like what?"
"Oh, I don't know," she glares at him, "something along the lines of what the heck you did last night? You show up to my house at 2:30 in the morning, hammered, then try to walk out like nothing happened?"
"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" he throws his arms out beside him like he's the one who should be frustrated with her. Her stomach turns. "I'm sorry that I came here and bothered you." He pushes past her, yet again, and continues his furious search for his precious jacket.
"Are you joking? Bothering me? Freddie, you drove. Drunk. What were you trying to pull?"
He doesn't answer. He just lifts up all the pillows off of her sofa, then sets them down again once he sees his jacket isn't there. He doesn't answer, but his silence is answer enough.
She opens her mouth to continue in her lecture but he cuts her off. "Don't make a big deal out of it, okay? Don't turn this into some big thing."
"Too late!" It comes out a lot louder than she anticipates, but she keeps going. "It's already a big deal, Freddork. What would your psychotic mother do if you were dead, Benson?" This seems to faze him for the first time all morning and he stops searching, his back still to her. "Seriously, what would she do? And what would Carly do? What would I do?"
He turns around to face her and narrows his eyes. "Don't pretend like you would care, okay?" He goes back to searching and she feels like she's gone back to transparent, with a fist through her chest.
"What does that mean?" her voice doesn't sound like her.
"It means, don't try to pretend like we're friends, alright? Don't try to pretend like you suddenly think I'm great and we're best buddies! Don't do that to me." He finds his jacket and slides it over one arm before continuing. "We both know you'd be shocked for like, a second, before you'd just go back to your life as a delinquent."
"Stop," she says, but it's so quiet that she can barely hear it, so she knows that he can't.
"I mean, who are we trying to fool? We've never done each other any favors, why do we even try?" He moves toward the door and she suddenly finds her voice.
"Stop," it's still smaller than normal and she hates that she sounds like a scared little kid, but at least he heard it this time.
"Stop what?" his hand is on the door handle.
"Stop. Just stop everything. Stop saying that crap and stop being a jerk! Stop acting like I'm the most horrible thing in the world…I'm mean to you, I get it, okay? And I'm sorry! But don't you do that to me…don't try to make it seem like I don't care about you and we're not friends because that's crap and you know it."
"Do I?" his voice is loud but she knows she can be louder.
"Shut up, Benson! You're like, my best—" she stops and her hand comes up to cover her mouth. She can't look him in the eye anymore. She had never planned to say that, not now, not ever. It was the truth, but she had never wanted him to know it. She doesn't know what to do now so she just crosses her arms and stares into the kitchen. She feels vulnerable and knows she's completely in the open for rejection.
"Really?" His voice has gotten quiet now and when she's finally brave enough to look at him, his face looks like the Freddie that she knows.
She's tempted to hug him and pour out her heart, but then she remembers that she's angry, and hurt, and confused. All she can do is just bitterly spit back his words from earlier: "Don't make a big deal out of it," she says before turning to go sit on the sofa behind them.
His hands go into his pockets and his eyes go to the floor. She pulls a pillow into her lap and studies the floral pattern on it like it's the most interesting thing she's ever seen. "I thought you were leaving? Go!" Her voice sounds mean and she's glad. She wants him to leave. But she's sad, too. Part of her wants to apologize and beg him to stay.
Freddie sighs and leans backward against the doorframe, his eyes still locked on the ground. The silence in the room is so quiet that it's loud and her ears are ringing. She glances up at Freddie as quickly as humanly possible and she can't read him, which horrifies her because he's the easiest person on planet earth to read. 30 seconds pass and she thinks she's going to explode. 45 seconds and she can feel the tears stinging her eyes. 1 whole minute has gone by with neither of them moving or speaking and she can barely remember how to breathe.
Freddie is the first to move, but she can't tell where he's going at first. Soon enough, though, she realizes that he's getting closer and she squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn't want to look at him and she doesn't want to see him look at her. A few seconds pass and she starts to think that maybe her defense tactic worked, until she feels his hand grab hers. He pulls her up off of the sofa, but she refuses to open her eyes. To her surprise, he doesn't ask her to. Eyes still shut tight, she suddenly feels his arms around her. Her eyes pop open and she's forgotten how to control her own arms, but they move on their own to hug him back. He hugs tighter and she does the same. She still feels angry and hurt, but she wants so badly for this hug to last for hours, days even. She wants to just stand there, him and her and no one else, and breathe, and believe that everything will be okay. She wants to tell him. She wants to open her mouth and tell him how much she adores him. She wants to tell him that no one else has ever been as patient with her, or as kind to her, or as understanding of her ramblings as him. None of those words will come, though, so she just clings to him like her life depends on it. She wants to tell him that she absolutely loves him, but she doesn't know how. She doesn't know how because she loves him with everything and she doesn't know how to explain that. She doesn't know how to explain it because she loves him with parts of her soul that she never even knew existed, and how, she thinks, can she explain what she didn't know existed?
He pulls back a little, puts his hands on either side of her face, and presses his mouth to her forehead. She can't remember if anyone has ever kissed her on the forehead before, but she doesn't care because this will suffice.
"Thank you," he whispers into her hair, "for everything."
She almost says it back before she remembers who she is. She shoves him backward off of her and he laughs. "Whatever," is all she can muster, but he squeezes her hand and she squeezes back. He turns toward the door and she starts off toward the kitchen. She hears the door open, but doesn't hear it close.
"Hey, Sam?" she turns to see him standing in the doorway, halfway out and halfway in. "Just so, you know, you're not totally shocked tomorrow at school, I'm going to make a huge deal out of it. Just FYI."
She doesn't allow herself to laugh, but she has to smile. "Shut up and get out, Benson," she says, shaking her head.
He grins and starts to shut the door. "See you tomorrow, best friend!"
She feels her eyes go wide as he shuts the door. He wouldn't…would he? No way. He knows I'd kill him…doesn't he?
She hops down from her perch on the counter, throws the apartment door open, and takes off after him. He's moved quickly and he's already half way down the stairs by the time she's caught up with him. "Freddie!"
"Yes, Samantha?" he looks innocently up at her.
"I swear, if you call me your best friend in public, even once, there will be serious hell to pay."
He winks at her, smirks an evil smirk, and starts down the stairs again. "Sure, sure. Like you'd really hurt your best friend." He places extra emphasis at the end of the sentence and she wants to hug him and punch him both at the same time.
"I mean it, Benson!"
He turns to look up at her again and she can't read him for the second time that day. His face is different than normal and his eyes on hers make her stomach feel weird. He looks at her for way too long before he finally speaks. "I love you, too, Sam."
She breaks away from his gaze and scoffs, awkwardly crossing her arms and shifting her weight from foot to foot. "I did not say that I loved you, Fredweird."
She hears him laugh as he turns and starts down the hallway toward the exit. "It's all in the eyes, baby! All in the eyes…"
What a nub, she thinks, as the turns to walk back to her apartment. All in the eyes, puh-lease.
For a split second, she allows herself to panic, thinking that maybe he really had seen it in her eyes, before she squishes the thought to the back of her brain. No way. Sam Puckett is not that obvious.
Review, if you please? :)
XOX