The World is ugly.
Chapter 1
I needed the air to hit my skin. I needed to get away from the deafening sound of the club's music. I needed to close my eyes. My ears were beating and so did my brain, so I stepped out through the back door. It looked like a private yard, surrounded by a metal grid on which I held in order not to faint for dizziness. I couldn't stand it anymore. I felt the cramps in my stomach and I wanted to vomit, but it simply didn't happen.
A hand that seemed extremely cold touched my shoulder gently.
"Are you alright?" an unfamiliar voice asked me.
"What does it look like?" I answered grumpy.
After breathing deeply a few times, I turned around to let my back lay against the metal grid, and tried to make sense of things. But I lost my breath. He was magnificent. Sublime.
"It looks like… you're sweating and fever"
"It's called hangover" I said in response trying to copy the hostile tone I had used before, because otherwise I wouldn't have known how to react.
"It's called intoxication. The hangover is coming tomorrow" he corrected me this time, hiding a smile. When I looked down I noticed he was smoking weed, and asked for a puff. "It isn't the most sensible thing you can do now, but who am I to judge" he replied, extending his hand to spend the cigar.
"Exactly" I added before giving a long puff. I closed my eyes letting myself go, and expired out the smoke slowly. Probably my pathetic state would be extended, but it was worth.
"Normal girls don't do that" he said resting his hand against the railing, beside me, and I heard his smile.
"Maybe it's because I'm not normal at all" I answered almost muttering. "I don't know what kind of girls you might consider normal, because I know many who smoke weed" I gave another long puff, and extended my hand to return the cigarette, with my eyes still closed. The music seemed to disappear far away into that place.
"Okey, maybe normal girls smoke weed, too. But still, you ain't normal"
I endured the temptation to open my eyes and see how close he was. I accepted feeling the freshness of his breath against my nose.
"Very flattering" I said trying to sound offended, but we both understood I wasn't "You're right, though"
"And you're proud of it"
"You're right again" I replied without even looking at him "I don't wanna be just one more of the rest"
"Then we're two" he said with his strange voice tone "I hope nobody else join us; otherwise we'd be just two more of the ones who doesn't want to be just one more"
"Maths ain't my thing; I wanna be a writer" I responded smiling slightly. I felt so much better.
"Have you ever written something?"
"I used to write much. I used to tell my life by making the characters with different names. I guess I don't seem too creative" Perhaps it was the alcohol in my blood that made me believe nonsense, but this man knew more 'bout me than my own boyfriend. Pathetic.
"I'm pretty sure you must've written something else. Something new, that you've never showed to anyone. If you go to college, somebody is gonna read your essays, you know?"
I couldn't stand it anymore, and opened my eyes quickly. It was as if he were reading my own thoughts. But what impacted me the most while I wasn't seeing him, disappeared when we made eye contact. I even forgot what I was thinking myself.
"I like to begin with a true fact. The rest I leave it to my imagination when I don't like reality"
"Or you leave it to weed"
"Don't give it credit of any of my works. It's just something… casual" I explained slightly indignant. I was proud of my essays and nothing or nobody else had the merit of them.
"I know. I write, too, and don't thank it to weed" he said trying to calm me down, but his closeness wasn't helping at all. And my curiosity for that man was growing more and more every second.
"What do you write?"
"Music"
"It's not the same as writing stories"
"I write the lyrics of the songs"
"Oh, freelance musician and low profile. Pretty poetic" I laughed making fun of him, and walked away from the gate to another corner of the yard, against my will.
"Singer-songwriter in fact, not a low profile. But pretty poetic" he said, adding a bit of sarcasm in the last sentence. "I'm in a band." He moved slowly but surely towards the other gate where lay my back
"Well, at least you don't say 'I've got a band'. The ego hasn't had such an effect yet"
"What do you know 'bout me?" he asked, no annoyance in his voice "you don't know me"
"You don't know me either, but described me perfectly" I replied without hiding my half grin. "Maybe I'll get lucky too"
"Maybe it hasn't been luck, but my instinct" he joked
"There goes the ego again" I joked too
He finished the distance between us in two long strides, and rested his side against the same fence I was in. While holding my breath, I felt him putting a lock of hair behind my ear, and I felt his smirk. Then he took a puff, letting the smoke to the side opposite of ours, and finally laid his head against the fence too, surrendered. I closed my eyes. He was close enough to hear his breathing and feel it against my ear, regular and relaxed, reassuring me so unusually.
"Need a ride?" he whispered. It bothered me he had broken the silence, but he actually hadn't broken peace.
"I've got someone already" I lied in a whisper too, angry by the fact. I would've liked if he had given me a ride home. But I shook it off with a mental slap; I had a boyfriend, that's why I had lied.
"It must be a man" he chuckled and I had to laugh too, because of the irony of the fact. "Feeling better?"
"So much better"
But only the few minutes left in that place far from real world, smoking with him.
Next morning was awful, beginning with the hangover and then the fact that I arrived almost an hour late for lunch with Brent and his parents, with a zombie face and a stomach so not ready to have some food. He asked me what had happened when we went to order our food to the bar, since it was a tapas restaurant, and I told him Danielle had taken me to an UCLA's party without saying a word. He pissed off a little by the fact that I hadn't refused to stay, and I countered explaining there would be hundreds of parties like these when the fall begun, and I wasn't gonna ask him for permission to go.
"But I could go withcha" he stated firmly
"To Westwood? You're coming every Friday to Westwood?"
"Didn't we agree on hanging out every weekend?"
"Don't you trust me? I don't get it, Brent"
"Me neither. I'm just surprised you haven't told me, that's it, I guess" he said, looking at the bar. "It's actually pretty far, how did you manage?"
"A Danielle's friend is from that neighborhood, she picked us up in her car. Listen: we knew things were gonna be this way. I mean, you goin' to the USC and me to the UCLA is obviously goin' to change things. You're having your parties, your new bunch of friends, different subjects, professors I ain't gonna meet… and I'll have mine. And it's different, but it doesn't mean it isn't good, and it doesn't have to change EVERYTHING. We've already talked 'bout this"
"I know. It's just… it'll be weird without you, and I can't stand the thought of you meeting someone else…" I cut him off with my gaze instantly.
"Have we switched roles? Isn't that me who's supposed to be insecure, and you carefree? C'mon Brent, I trust you as you trust me. It'll be fine. Just… do not pretend to always know where I am. You can call and ask if you wanted to, but it's not my obligation to tell you."
"Are you scolding me?" he said funny, so I laughed and surrounded his neck with my arms to kiss him.
Lunchtime was boring as usually. Brent and his dad talked about football, politics and education while his mom and I ate and stare at each other in silence, trying to hide the bad time we were having. I got along with Brent ever since we first met in high school, but his father was a silent man who wasn't interested in me even though I didn't bother him at all, and his mother was a cold woman with acid comments, almost always diverted to me. A great mother-in-law. She had surely dreamed about a kind and sweet girl, English as her preferably, who'd helped her persuading Brent with her own desires for greatness.
In exchange for her selfishness, she got a girl raised in Milwaukee who didn't keep her opinions to her own and smoked 'till two years ago, when her mother-in-law almost pushed her to quit that bad habit. I guess it was the only good thing she did for me. I knew she always hated my pretty long, straight, messy hair, too. But most of all, she hated my arrogant and unfriendly personality –her words, not mine-. I would've loved to tell her about the Oedipus complex: men seeking brides like their mothers. However, for the sake of my relationship with Brent I had supported his high status family, as long as he supported my Milwaukee-mother with delusions of actress.
"You comin' with me today?" Brent asked me after we waved goodbye to his parents, and got into his car.
"Tomorrow's the big day, remember?" I replied emotionlessly.
"That's true. You sound effusive" He said with sarcasm.
"You don't know how much I'm looking forward to wake up early and travel to West Hollywood"
"C'mon. I'll take you home" stated turning on the engine.
"Not for so long" I had to smirk to the idea of sharing a college room with my best friend ever, so Brent nodded and pushed the accelerator while he turned up the sound of the stereo.
"Just for tonight. I bet you are gonna miss your mother's food"
"Hello, University Cafeteria" I faked a smile which made him laugh.