A Little Night Magic
The bar was warm, the air so thick with stale bodies and cigarette smoke that it hung motionless in a curtain above our heads. In contrast the beer set neatly on a mat before me was cold, so cold that tiny droplets of condensation clung to the outside of the glass, making my hand clammy when I lifted it to my lips. I savoured every mouthful, feeling the cool liquid traverse my insides and settle around the cold knob of anger and hurt that was settling in the pit of my stomach. Each mouthful helped ease it slightly in my mind, but none could erase it. The beer was only a comfort, something to help me forget, it would not solve my problems.
My problems? I should say my problem. One soaring great problem that loomed so large on the horizon it blocked out all light and left me here, sandwiched between a drunk and a loser, wallowing in my own self pity.
I could still picture them now, standing before me, her long hair trailing over her shoulders, pushed back absent-mindedly with her free hand. Her lips, so smooth, so soft, those lips that had touched mine, what? A hundred? A thousand? times over the last few months? And now there they were, hung before me, set in a pure white face, like two small flower buds amid the new-fallen snow, (a clichéd simile if ever I used one) crushing my heart as if it were made of no stronger material than glass.
"We're in love"
And now my mind lets me see the rest of the picture, her right hand threaded delicately through the strong fingers of another. Another who had thought himself her brother until only a few weeks before. Another to whom I had lost not only my best friend, but now, it seemed, my girlfriend also.
Scout.
Floppy fringe, ready smile, girlfriend thief.
Insults were the only place I could think to turn, but they didn't seem to be easing my pain. No amount of cruelty could help ease the torment that was now, as I speak, or rather write, coiling itself into a tight ball inside of me. Being squashed, suppressed, ignored but not forgotten. Feelings like that should never be shown, not here in front of a dozen strangers who would barely notice if I fell off my stool dead, never mind if I burst into tears. No, especially not here.
They were the kind of feelings you keep from the public eye, the kind that tend to creep up on you in unexpected places, like watching a film, or reading a magazine, or curled in the protective arms of a person you'd never expect, in a bed that doesn't fit you both, in the bright orange glare of the streetlamp outside the bedroom window. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Silently I lift my glass to my lips again, before replacing it on its mat and letting my head fall into my hand. The dim lights of the room behind me are reflected in the mirror behind bar, as am I, mouth drawn, face pail, eyes sad. Hypnotically I watch my reflection as it draws a long breath, letting it out slowly through down-turned lips, before wiping its face, trying to rub some energy into its lifeless features, it sighs again when it doesn't work, eyes watching me, watching it, watching me.
I never saw him walk toward me, the first I knew of his presence was when he settled himself on the newly-vacated bar stool beside me, face lively and open, eyes up, devouring the room. Quickly he shot out a hand, motioning the bartender from the other side of the room.
"Barcardi and coke if you may" The barman snorted. The air of the snob seemed to cling to this being like mist; the accent only cemented the fact. English. My, Rawley was really scraping the barrel now.
My eyes travelled back to the reflections behind the bar and watched as the newcomer shook a cigarette from the packet in his jacket pocket and lit it expertly, taking a long drag before holding the packet out to me.
"You look like you could use one" His tone was a matter-of-fact. Slowly I turned my head back to the real figure beside me and was caught up in his eyes. Two electric blue pools of ice, fringed with lashes so pale they were barely there. I swallowed hard, the reaction to his gaze startling me slightly. Finally, I remembered his offering and held up my hand.
"No thanks," My voice was hoarse from the hours of under-use as I'd been sat here drinking myself into oblivion "I don't smoke"
Silently he lifted an eyebrow, before shrugging and snapping the packet closed, returning it to its pocket.
The barman returned with his drink, he sipped it idly and I turned my attention back to my own glass, tracing lines across the condensation with the tip of my index finger. It was a while before I looked up at him again and was startled to find him staring intently back at me.
"You're that townie kid that hangs out with the queers from school aren't you?" The question in his voice was barely audible; he'd already made his mind up.
For a second I stared at him.
Ryder. Ryder Forrest.
The moment he'd sat down I'd known somewhere in the back of my mind that I'd met this guy before. It was only now, when he remembered my identity that I remembered his. This was the guy who'd made Jake and Ham's life at Rawley hell by spreading all those rumours. This was the guy that so enjoyed beginning arguments with my friends over nothing. This was the guy who normally won.
"They're not gay" My voice was low, harsh.
"Gay, straight, they're still queer to me" As he spoke he waved his hand flippantly, half-smoked cigarette still held between his two fore-fingers, glowing gently in the dim light of the bar.
"One of them just ran off with my girlfriend"
The words startled us both. I hadn't meant to say it. Hadn't meant to start the conversation down that dangerous road. I didn't even know the guy. No, what was worse, I did know the guy. I knew he wasn't the kind who was going to show sympathy over a townie mini-drama. He was the kind who wouldn't give a shit.
"Not that sweet little blonde thing I've seen you with?" The concern in his voice was surprising. He seemed genuinely shocked at how someone could do that to me. But was it genuine? I asked myself, taking a closer look at his face, or was it one of those acts that he was so good at?
Finally, unsure of the answer to my own question, I looked away, nodding mutely.
"That's harsh…" Thoughtfully he adopted an American phrase, taking another long drag on his cigarette and letting the smoke curl slowly from between parted lips.
There was an edge to his voice then that I couldn't read. A kind of strange jubilation. If I'd known then what I know now I would have been shocked. If I'd known that I'd been right, I wouldn't have believed it. Jubilation was exactly what that edge had been, happiness that I was now young, free and very much single.
Now I've told you that, you'll know exactly where this story is heading.
You'll know its heading to a small single dormitory bedroom, on the second floor of Rawley boys, where two figures are pressed up against each other against the solid wood of the locked door.
You'll also know that one of those figures will be me, filled with such pain and anger I long to be loved, and the other figure will be Ryder, the inner workings of his mind unknown, as he kneels before me, mouth expertly working at my groin as I slip over the edge.
The ceiling is bare, painted a snow white so it seems to glow in the dim light of the room. It reminds me of those plastic stars you can get from toy stores, the ones that seemingly glow in the dark as they collect the light of the daytime and carry on radiating it even when the lights are switched off. That's what I'm doing now, I'm storing, hoarding my feelings, giving them off in unexpected ways, at unexpected times, when there are no other feelings to drown them out.
I am crying. Silently. Heavy, painful tears that originate at the sides of my eyes, clouding my vision, before winding their way down already drowned cheeks. Some fall onto the pillow beside me, others drip though my slightly parted lips while still more dust the back of a heavily sleeping figure beside me, breathing steadily in the silence of the Rawley night. He doesn't stir at my touch, doesn't turn when I press my wet face into his shoulder, seeking warmth, human contact, finding it eases the pain slightly.
His skin smells warm, musty, a faint trace of yesterdays cologne still clinging to it, mingled with the more animal scent of sweat and sex. I lose myself in it, forgetting, remembering.
I remember the way his hair felt against my stomach.
I remember saying gently as he tugged me up strange stairs, hand laced through mine, a self-satisfied smile on his face:
"I've never done this before…" My voice was quiet, nervous, but he only smiled and stopped to kiss me gently on the mouth. Right there, in the middle of the main staircase at Rawley School, in the middle of the night. It was a kiss that told me not to fear, I kiss that said he would be gentle, that I wouldn't get hurt, a kiss that told me everything would be alright. It was only later that I wondered whether the pain that kiss spoke of was physical or emotional.
My thoughts move on, to watch me in third person as I lay my head back along the door, tipping my face to the ceiling as I feel my orgasm rising. And then his lips once again on mine, searching, and although I won't know it until later I taste myself on them, thick and salty, intoxicating.
I wake just before dawn, ceiling glowing above my head. He has turned away from me so he does not see the tears as they have fallen during the night, continuing into my wakeful state, silent sobs raking my body, the image of her in my mind.
I will not be there when he wakes, curled naked in a bed that is only suitable for one. I can only guess at how he reacts to this, the annoyance, or perhaps relief he feels when I am not there to greet him with a good-morning kiss. Perhaps that is the way he wanted it to be, expected it to be.
One time.
If only it had been so simple.
The next day flew in a blur of activity, home seemed unfamiliar when I arrived, my room empty, bed made, unused. The picture of Bella on my bedside table that had spurred me to the bar the previous day was simply an image, there was nothing heart-wrenching about the smile on her face, the twinkle in her eye, the way her hair fell over her face in a snowy waterfall. It was only a photograph after all.
School was a bore, same old classes, same old teachers, I barely scrapped through without falling asleep, my body crying out for rest under the shackles of both mental and physical exhaustion, but once home, curled atop my own familiar bed, sleep would not come. There was somewhere else I had to be.
The bar was warm, the air so thick with stale bodies and cigarette smoke that it hung motionless in a curtain above our heads.
He was already there when I arrived; long jean-clad legs curled around the stools four wooden ones. He sat straight, confidence almost oozing from his pores, a startling contrast to the man sat beside him, hunched so far over his half-full pint-glass it looked as if he might crush it any second, Ryder was not at home here.
It was a long time before I plucked up the nerve to move forward, out of the doorway and into the murky bar air. He turned when I did so, a wide, self-satisfied smile on his face. He knew it was I; he'd known I'd be there. For a moment a pang of irritation took hold of me, his confidence was unnerving, I didn't like to be second-guessed, then his blue eyes found mine and it melted. Along with every other rational thought, feeling and sensation in my body.
There was only him, and the swift nod of his head to indicate that we should leave, and his hips swinging slightly as he led me from the room, and the sweet taste of his lips as slowly he lowered me onto his small bed.
The routine was the same, us falling asleep in one another's arms, me waking close to dawn to pad home through the slowly waking town, my room, empty and unused, school books waiting, school dragging, home unsatisfying, Ryder welcoming. That night we cut out the bar, there seemed little need for it, I simply arrived at his dorm-room door, walking casually through Rawley campus as if I owned the place, just like everyone single one of these stuck-up snobs did. Some even waved to me, pretended I were one of them, assumed they knew me from science class, or soccer practise or had seen me lounging on the lawn with the others on warm summer days. They were all wrong. If any of these people had seen me before in their lives it would have been to walk round me, look right through me, dismiss me as an outsider. I try and hide my distaste.
Ryder is different; he treats me like I ought to be treated, as a person, not just a townie. In his arms I can be whoever I want to be, I am whoever I want to be, I lose all sense of space and time and thought and am instead swept away by sensation. Slow, gentle, perfect, passionate sensation that fills my soul and sets me free, free of Rawley, of Bella Banks and Scout Calhoun, of Will Krudski, Hamilton Fleming and Jacqueline Pratt. Restricted only by the confines of Ryder Forrest. Ryder, and his lips and his hands and the smell of his skin and the taste of his mouth and the curl of his smile and the slickness of his tongue and the brashness of his teeth and the strength of his arms, and the sweet, sweet release that sends me skittering and clawing over the edge of time, emotion and feeling, tumbling inside his arms like I've never felt before. And then sleep. Sweet exhaustion takes over and I slip into slumber with his face close to mine, his hands on my back, legs curled through mine like creepers entwined on a wall, and dream of places and people I've never known before, filled with promise and joy, causing me to wake with a smile, slipping form his embrace to welcome the cold bite of the Rawley morning with open arms and return to reality with a kind of sense of well-being I'd never experienced before.
Or perhaps it never really was that perfect. Perhaps I only wished it to be.
Time passed, mediocre days followed by extra-ordinary nights. Now, looking back, it still amazes me exactly how much time did pass under that same routine. At the time it seemed like hours, days perhaps, but in reality it was close to a month. A month of nights alone with Ryder, a month of early morning walks through Rawley, a month of weariness so strong the only time I felt truly awake was on the brink of sleep, a month without Bella.
Gradually her memory was fading. She was not the first person I thought of when I woke in the morning, her smile did not greet me when I closed my eyes to sleep at night, my heart did not clench every time I passed the gas-station, or Friendlys, or the river, or any other place I'd ever spent time with her. She became a shadow, a ghost of the past, one that could only be viewed out of the corner of the eye, for if you were to look right at it, it would disappear completely.
However as Bella's memory receded in my mind, the memories I built around Ryder grew and grew. His would be the face that met me with a smile as I closed my eyes, his arms would be the ones that held me as his lips found mine. He was no ghost. He was true, real, there.
"It's ironic," I remember saying one night close to the end of that month, when words did not seem out of place during our nightly meetings.
"What is?" His voice was deep, warm, filled with sleep and sex.
"What you told me that first night about the guys I used to hang out with at Rawley" Already they were past tense.
"What do you mean?" His eyes that had been formerly closed, slit open, interested.
"Well, you know, you seemed sickened that they could be…" I paused, hoping he'd catch my meaning "And you're…"
He was on the defensive in a second, eyes wide, head lifted off the pillow to meet my eyes
"I'm not gay if that's what you're hinting it" His voice was a persistent whisper, as loud as he a dare let it go in the silence of the New Rawley night.
"But…" I was genuinely confused.
"Shit!" He was on his feet, naked body glinting in the moonlight that gently filtered through the half open curtains "Where the hell did you get that idea from?"
For a moment I was speechless, mind racing, hopelessly trying to add two and two to make three. Silently I stared at him, meeting his eyes, unsure of what to do, before finally I held my hand out to him.
"I don't know Ryder, it was stupid of me" I couldn't lose him, not now "Come back to bed…?"
For a moment he wavered, before he stepped forward slowly.
"As long as we've got that straight…" Forcefully I held back a smile it his unfortunate use of words, before his hand found mine and I pulled him toward me. Closing my arms around him as our lips met, passionate and searching, mouths, tongues, caressing. Mind wandering. Reality prevailing.
It was only four days later when everything changed.
The day was warm, too warm to be comfortable. It was the kind of heat that seemed to press down on top of you, thick and humid, causing you're muscles to ache and you're head to thump, sweat trickling across the skin no matter how little you did or wore. Normally in this kind of weather I avoided the outdoors, preferring the cool sanctuary of my bedroom and my thoughts.
Today, however, mom was on the warpath. The heat was getting to her, like it was getting to everyone, and tempers were high. She'd sent me into town to pick up some groceries for her, but really she just wanted me "…out of her hair…" as she put it. I didn't mind, when anyone is in that kind of mood it is best to avoid them.
I took the long way into town, passing the edge of Rawley campus and taking the street between Friendlys and Bella's Dads gas station. The closeness of her to me didn't affect me any more; I'd begun to build a protective barrier around me to help against those types of feelings, and up until now it had held pretty well.
Well, up until now it hadn't had much to hold against.
She was sat on the front stoop, alone, I noted. Glass of warming lemonade in her hand as she observed the street in front of her. For a moment I considered walking right past, ignoring the casual way her head lolled to one side in the heat, the long sigh and the rush of air through delicate lips. Even from this distance I could imagine how it would feel against my own skin, cool and sweet against my face, perfect.
My steps toward her were tentative, as steps toward the past normally are. She didn't look up until I were only a few paces away from her.
"Hi" The word was hoarse, blanketed by the tears that fell heavily down her face. I didn't try to conceal my shock.
"Hey," I crouched to get down to her level, not bothering to close the meter or so gap between us, not ready to do that yet. "What's the matter?" I felt as if I were talking to someone I barely knew, an old acquaintance found crying by the roadside, you stop, offer your help and move on. Yet this was the girl I'd been in love with, the girl I would have gladly given my life to if she'd let me, the girl who'd cheated on me with another guy, the girl who broke my heart.
"I'm an ass" The words caught me off-guard. It was like her to do this: become angry and defensive when hurt and upset, yet it never ceased to amaze me that her delicate manner could be overlaid by such brashness in merely seconds. Tilting her head to meet my gaze she caught my surprise and laughed. That kind of preoccupied laugh that people give when upset, full of sideways glances, the evading of gaze, the uncomfort of being shown in such a sensitive state.
I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it again, linking my fingers together in front of me, elbows rested on my knees, watching the tarmac.
"You have no idea what to say to that do you?" Her words were choked slightly by tears, giving them a primal sense of emotion. Startled by her friendliness I made a kind of strangled sound in the back of my throat, opening my mouth uselessly fish-style a couple of times before letting out a laugh that sounded more like a sigh.
"You're right, I have no idea" I was rewarded with another smile.
For another moment there was silence as she ducked her head, serious now, unsure of how to go on, whether she should go on, and what my reaction would be if she did.
"Its Scout," My stomach clenched at the name "We had an argument," I watched as she pressed her lips together, an absent-minded action I remember from the past "I told him I never wanted to see him again"
And what did I feel in that moment? Elation? Pleasure? A kind of warm well-being that comes from getting exactly what you wanted? No, none of those things. The feeling that swept through me as she said that sentence could only be described at sympathy, sympathy you'd feel towards a person you once cared for deeply when they find themselves in a situation such as this. And why was that? I wondered, moving towards her and finally taking the place of the caring friend at her side, arm sliding around her middle to allow her to press her face against my shoulder, stifling tears. Wasn't this exactly what I had lain awake thinking about on those lonely nights pressed against another? Was this not the exact scenario I had run through my head many times before, so I could turn it to my advantage? Get her back? What was different in real life?
It took me a long time to realise it. There was no bolt of lightening from the heavens, no movement of earth beneath my feet, instead it was a quiet thought that grew and grew in the back of my mind, forming an idea, and slowly a realisation.
Ryder.
It all came down to Ryder. Everything, every thought, every movement, every feeling in my life stemmed around and was affected by, Ryder. Even now, my hands playing through the silken strands of white blonde hair, it was not Bella that was affecting the turmoil in my heart. Yes, she had begun it, allowed me to reach this decision but she did not rule it. He did.
"What am I going to do?" She hiccupped through her tears, pulling back slightly from my arm so she could look into my face. Slowly I smiled down at her, before speaking about a problem that was not her own
"Speak to him, tell him how you feel," A simple enough statement that would not be easy in its undertaking, for either of us. Gradually I turned my attention to her own problem "You care deeply for each other, we both know that, otherwise you wouldn't have gone through the bother of breaking my heart"
I said it with a smile, all was forgiven it said, and the relief on her face was apparent.
"You lost your temper and made some silly promises, nothing you can't take back" Sliding my arm from around her I gave her a gentle shove "Go make up"
She was smiling as she stood, looking down at me, her face blocking out the sun in a way that gave her a dazzling halo around her already golden head.
"What were you arguing about, by the way?" I asked before she turned to leave
"You," I allowed myself a faint smile, at least I still affected their lives in some small way "He said you were still in love with me, while I told him that you weren't, but you still cared for me and always will do as I will always care for you"
I smiled "And who won?"
Slowly she leaned down and with a gentle touch of my cheek placed a delicate kiss on my lips, a finalisation, a closure, a beginning.
"Up until now I wasn't sure, but now I know I did"
She walked away then, traversing the street with that kind of deliberate yet illogically light walk that gave the impression that her feet never really touched the ground. I watched as her hips swung her away from me, and her long legs extended over the dry earth and knew I felt nothing. Tonight. Tonight was what I felt for.
Every sense seemed heightened as I walked along the hall and tapped gently against the wood of the last door on the right. His door, a door I seen dozens of times before, a door that I only now realised boasted an elaborate network of beautiful patterns sculpted on its surface. I did not wait for the door to be opened to me and instead pushed against it myself, turning and pressing it shut behind me, sliding the lock across.
He lay on the bed before me, fully clothed, long legs curled around a book that lay open on the bedspread beside him. He looked up as I entered, flashing me a rare genuine smile that made my stomach leap. He didn't come to me anymore, he used to be waiting as I arrived, ready to meet me at the door with a tender kiss and soothing hands, now I was the one expected to go to him, lay down on the bed beside him and meet his lips gently as I had done so many other times in the past. This time however, things were different.
Slowly I walked away from him, lowering myself into the seat by the window, looking out through the leaded glass at the lawns where dark was descending. I didn't speak.
"What's wrong?" A smooth voice began from the bed, accompanied by the clunk as a book was shut. Silence for a moment.
"What is this Ryder? What's happening here?" A creak as the floorboards are pressed with a weight of a tall, blonde male, one footstep, another, before strong hands rest on my shoulders, and a mouth finds my earlobe, warm breath on my cheek. He hadn't had to speak to answer my question.
I pulled away roughly, standing to turn and face him, noting the confusion in his eyes.
"I saw Bella today," A simple line, evaporating the confusion in his eyes and replacing it with something I could not name. Was it fear? Fear of losing me? Relief? That finally this charade can be buried and forgotten? I had no idea. "She told me she wanted me back" A lie.
Something flickered across his eyes; I watched it cloud them for a second before leaving them as pure blue as the sky. He swallowed hard
"And what did you say?"
"I told her I had to think it through" Another lie
"Why are you telling me this?"
"I wanted to know what you think" The truth.
There was silence for a long time, while he came around the side of the chair I had just vacated and perched himself on the arm, avoiding my gaze.
"Go for it" As he said it he matched my gaze, pulling down that curtain of detachment that I had so often seen when he joked with his friends, or picked on the freshmen. Never in front of me, but in front of my former self. The boy who hung around with the Rawley kids in the evenings, the boy with a girlfriend.
For a long moment I watched his eyes. His determination was unshakable. This would not and did not hurt him, it seemed I did not mean anything more to him than these many one-night stands. It was how I feared, yet I'd still had to try, still had to sort it through in my own mind.
I turned to leave.
I'd barely got to the door when I stopped, and said without turning around:
"Aren't you gonna stop me?" My reply was only silence. I turned slowly to find him staring out of the window, unmoving.
"You're a ridiculous liar"
I've spent too long over the course of this story analysing every feeling and emotion I have read in peoples voices, picked up on in peoples eyes, observed in the way they stand or sit or move. Each time I can only guess, only decide that perhaps that shudder of an eyelash denotes that he is happy, or the flicker of the lips shows that he feels anger towards me. I have no way of climbing inside their head, telling you their feelings from behind their eyes.
I can't remember who it was that said "You can only know a person once you have walked a mile in their shoes" In fact, I'm not even sure of those are the right words, or if I have the idea of the phrase right in my own mind. Yet this person, whoever it was, knows what they're talking about. This entire tale has been from my own perspective, so really when I say: "There was anger in his eyes" or something thereabouts, I really have no idea. For anger never really dwells in eyes, in dwells in the soul, the mind, the heart. Along with every other one of the hundreds of emotions humans can feel.
Yet when he said those four words there was one thing that was clear. The elation, the humour, the self-satisfied smugness in his voice that showed me that he knew my game, he'd known all I wanted from him was a reaction, a small sign that would show he cared.
And he did care, that I now know. He'd cared so much he was able to pull on my shoes with no second thought and walk around in them. Treading through the delicate workings of my mind, knowing them thoroughly inside and out. He knew I would turn back, unable, as he would have been in my position, to walk away from the situation, from the other.
He knew he'd have chance to say that sentence, the sentence that realigned our world. Bringing back normality, paving the way for his strides, long and confident and the way his lips melted down onto mine through strong hands, cupping my cheeks.
I'm writing this six months later.
His room is dark, the warm glow of the desk lamp beside me illuminating the pen as it dances across the page, taking on a life of its own, along with the lives of two young boys, entwined in a way no one would have realised.
After that night it was the knowing that re-alighted my world. Knowing that someone cared for me, knowing that I'd have someone to go back to every night. Gradually, however, our seeing one another was not restrained to the night. Days would be spent in one another's presence, moving the relationship away from the restrictive boundaries of only sex, and into other things, hobbies, interests, simply taking time from our busy lives to spend it together. It was a daunting transition, yet one that could be coped with easily together.
Gradually, over time, I got to know my friends again. Spent time with, what are now soon to be, the Fleming's, hung out with Will and his girlfriend at the diner, even got used to the happy presence of Scout and Bella. They still don't know about this yet, so perhaps it is for them that I am writing this story, telling them of how it all began. More likely, however, is that I'd writing this for totally selfish purposes, that this is a story I shall never forget, and will not be allowed to forget once it has graced the lines of this paper.
Here it is immortalised.
Just as it will always be, inside my heart.