The Window, by Shopgirl42
Sarah lives next door to a gorgeous guy with mysterious friends. What is this red book that they left behind? Why are they so different from everyone else?
He never closed the curtains. Sarah sighed and looked through the two layers of glass, twirling a strand of hair around one finger. He was there, back to her, long hair dropped over his eyes, fingers gently stroking the taut strings of an acoustic guitar. Spider-like legs strung across the couch, skinny arms holding the instrument close to him. The softest strains of melody fought their way through the glass to her apartment. It was a song that seemed familiar, but she was sure was nothing she had ever heard before. Was that possible? There was a calming feeling watching him; he never looked up, never took his focus from the music. At first she had watched from the other side of the room, stealing glances once in a while. Now, she found excuses to cling to the table by the window, shamelessly watching him play. She closed her eyes and listened.
"Sarah!" She jumped straight up from the chair, heart in her throat, hands shaking. Of course, she swiftly remembered, she had left Kate alone with her brother. "Sarah, aren't you forgetting something?" Sarah raced into the kitchen to see Toby ruthlessly beating up her best friend with foot long black sticks.
Sarah shouted, being careful to keep that unmistakable tone of authority in her voice. "Toby! Leave Kate alone!" The eleven year old grinned innocently up at his sister.
"I was just showing her my karate moves!" Sarah, not fooled, gave him a parental glare. With a giant sigh, the boy stomped off into the other room. "Fiiiiiine, I'll just watch TV then." Sarah grinned at the retreating form.
"I don't know how you do it," Kate commented as soon as Toby was out of hearing range. "I can't stand my brothers for five minutes, and all they do is play video games all the time." Kate grinned, slouching into a chair and leaning against the kitchen table. She withdrew a silver elastic from her pocket and began smoothing her brunette locks into a tight pony tail. "You need to get out, Sarah Williams. Don't make me drag you." Sarah grinned at her well meaning friend.
"It's only three days a week. Besides, I feel like I owe it to Karen. After all that went on when she and my dad first got together, and when Toby was born, she really came through for me during college. All of those issues..." Sarah wandered to the kitchen window, staring blankly outside. She could almost hear Kate rolling her eyes behind her.
"Your past is your past, girl. Move on. It's time for Sarah to have a little fun." This was the tone that Sarah was afraid of; the tone that meant that Kate was about to drag her friend out to some loud and unfamiliar environment. She groaned, and looked at the wall clock above the stove. Two more hours until Karen whisked Toby away.
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This was not the comfortable, family bar that Sarah had hoped for. It was a loud, obnoxious college bar, with too many intoxicated people. Kate was in her element, instantly picking up on the frantic rhythm of the music and immersing herself in the crowd. Sarah did what she always did, and found the nearest unoccupied wall space. Watching people as they interacted with one another was always more fun than doing the interacting yourself. She saw a drunk girl nearby being helped from a bar chair to the ground by a tall blonde haired guy, who didn't look like he was much more sober than she was.
"That's the last time I drink three shots of tequila in a row," she slurred, stumbling. The blonde chuckled, his shoulder length hair settling softly. They picked their way through the dancing mob. Sarah, seeing the opportunity, rushed to the table where they had been sitting and grabbed a place. Finally, a vantage point where she could watch without feeling awkward.
"Something to drink?" A voice to her left startled her. She turned to see a black haired college girl balancing a beer bottle in one hand and a tray in the other and trying to make eye contact.
"Oh—um, rum and coke?" Sarah stumbled over the words in the same way that the table's previous occupants had made their way across the floor.
"You got it," the girl answered, cracking a piece of gum. Sarah turned her attention again to the dance floor. Through the smoke and flashing lights, she could see Kate, shamelessly grinding with a curly haired freshman. Sarah shook her head. Sometimes she wished she could be like that, oblivious to any sense of embarrassment.
Sarah was not an overly social person, especially as of late. When she was younger, she'd been hard pressed NOT to make friends with anyone and everyone who crossed her path. Somewhere along the road, however, she had begun to retreat into herself and guard her thoughts and opinions more closely. Maybe it had been when Karen had entered their lives. To say that Sarah and Karen hadn't gotten along when Karen had first become her stepmother was a brutal understatement. As a teenager, Sarah had been under the impression that the world was completely unfair toward her; having a prim figure who was attempting to mother her did not help this view. Karen had become a scapegoat for the teenage Sarah, who wanted nothing more than to live in a life of fairy tales and wonder.
Thinking about Karen always made Sarah closely examine herself. She held her hands out in front of her. Finger nails that she tried to grow long, painted a pale pink; pasty skin that never tanned, no matter what the season; long dark hair that was impossible to keep straight. When she was younger, her wardrobe had consisted of a few pairs of well worn jeans and a number of styles of peasant shirts and sweaters that brought out her vivid green eyes. Now, she still wore the jeans, but the peasant shirts that had matched her dream world were replaced by shirts with spaghetti strings or emblazoned with logos. She wore lipstick but little other makeup, and seldom took more than 10 minutes in the morning to enhance her appearance.
A tall guy with huge sideburns bumped into her seat.
"Oh, sorry!" He stumbled, turned, and headed back into the mob. Sarah smirked, wishing she were at home, watching her guitar guy out the window. She shifted her gaze and noticed that the drunken girl and blonde guy had left a book of some sort on the table. Strange, she thought, bringing something like that to a place like this. They must have been really out of it. Probably on something. She started to reach for the book, curious.
"Here ya go!" Sarah jumped at the insistent voice. The black haired girl placed the rum and coke in front of her. Startled, she smiled and rummaged around in her purse, thrusting a wad of bills at the waitress. The music changed and she glanced out toward the dance floor again. Kate had changed dance partners, and was now singing the words to a song that Sarah had never heard, but that everyone on the floor seemed to know by heart. She wondered if Kate would notice if she snuck out.
Alcohol, she chided herself, that's what she needed, so she took a large swallow of her drink. She remembered the book, and eyed it once again.
"You're not having fun!" Kate had returned, pouting playfully at her friend. "Cmon, come with me, have fun!"
"I'm having fun," Sarah argued, "really!" Kate grinned, unable to reason in her slightly intoxicated state, and returned to the dance floor, throwing one last happy look at her friend.
"Well okay, if you promise!" Sarah grinned at her giddy counterpart, sighed, looked at the glass in her hand, and downed the remainder of the liquid. She closed her eyes tightly against the bitter taste, and blinked away the dizziness. Her eyes roamed the room, resting on a guy across the room, leaning against the wall and holding a beer bottle in one hand. My God. It was him. Her window guy.
He was leaning nonchalantly against the wall, examining the room as if a plate of glass separated him from it. The goings on did not affect him; he simply observed. His gaze lifted and met Sarah's for a moment... she held her breath and her mouth opened slightly. Then he was looking in another direction again, and she let out a sigh. The fingers that she was used to seeing caressing the strings of the guitar were wrapped insignificantly about the beer bottle. He smirked suddenly, and Sarah saw a group of people approach him.
Warmth was beginning to seep into her from the rum. She felt heavy and lightheaded at the same time. She felt she needed to talk to someone, just to be social. She was supposed to be social, wasn't she? She glanced at guitar guy. He was surrounded by a group now, two guys and two girls, laughing in a circle. The girl who had approached her before did so again.
"Can I get you another one?" Sarah nodded, grinning. She handed over her empty glass and strained to hear what the crowd across the room was saying. No luck. Way too much noise. Frowning slightly, she eyed the book again. There was no way she'd be able to concentrate on it in this environment. Mentally she calculated the size of the purse she'd lugged along with her. It would fit. That was the nice thing about being an artsy person; you could get away with carrying huge bags around without receiving strange looks. Looking around the room as if one of the partygoers would be suspicious at the book's mysterious disappearance, she nonchalantly stuffed the leather bound volume into her bag.
Spotting the waitress carrying her drink from the bar, Sarah decided to get up and meet her. She should be finding people to talk to, after all. She carefully stowed her bag behind the chair, hiding it slightly, and walked over to the girl. Swiftly paying for the drink, she downed the sweetened liquor and winced as she felt it rise to her brain. It now seemed imperative that she find Kate.
Her friend was wrapped in the very center of the throng of people. When Kate spotted her usually reluctant friend, she squealed with joy, and immediately grabbed both of her hands with her own. Both of them were soon moving to the rapidly paced rhythm that saturated the room. Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah spotted her guitar guy and his group of people. They were walking toward the doors of the club. Too bad, Sarah thought.
When the colors began to spin a bit even when she was standing still, Sarah realized that it was time to sit again. Laughing now, she dragged Kate from the floor and toward the table where she had been sitting.
"Shit, that was great," Kate grinned. "That guy, the tall one, he's so hot." Sarah giggled. She had no idea what her friend was talking about, but it didn't seem all that important.
"I saw my guitar guy!" Sarah blurted out. This set off another round of giggling. Kate's eyes grew round.
"You have a guitar guy? Who is he? Why didn't you tell me? Does he know tall guy? Cuz he's hot." Sarah couldn't speak, she was laughing so hard.
"I don't know, he's artsy and skinny and lives next door... I see him all the time. I'm such a stalker. It's really bad." But Kate grinned.
"Go talk to him. See if he'll make you a song. He's a guitar guy, he has to be able to make you a song." The conversation deteriorated as sleepiness overcame the need to talk about the male species.
"Let's find bed," Kate said simply. Sarah nodded carefully, turning around three times before spotting her purse, and slinging it over her shoulder.
"Mmm, bed," she agreed. By the time Kate had said goodbye to her friends of the night, the club had emptied except for a few stragglers who wanted one for the road. Sarah blinked at her watch; 4am. Thank God tomorrow was Sunday.
At that moment, a crash signaled an arrival by the door. Sarah vaguely recognized the drunken blonde guy from earlier, and two other guys who may have been in the group surrounding her guitar guy.
"Cmon," Kate was saying, "Les go." She dragged Sarah by the arm toward the door. As they left, Sarah could hear the guys arguing with raised voices.
"What were you thinking, leaving it out like that?"
"I was helping Lizzie walk, you ass. Give me a break. I only left for a minute, and when I came back it was gone. Shit."
"Well we'll have to find it; ask the bartender to keep an eye out. God, what if... no, we'll find it. Dammit."
Curious about the angry men in the bar, Sarah was tempted to approach them. But Kate was pulling on her arm, and her eyes were half closing already. They would have a long enough walk in the cold night air without taking any more time to talk to strangers.
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So whatcha think? Is it a promising start, or sorely lacking? This one's not going to be so 'distant.' Lemme know! :-)
Sarah lives next door to a gorgeous guy with mysterious friends. What is this red book that they left behind? Why are they so different from everyone else?
He never closed the curtains. Sarah sighed and looked through the two layers of glass, twirling a strand of hair around one finger. He was there, back to her, long hair dropped over his eyes, fingers gently stroking the taut strings of an acoustic guitar. Spider-like legs strung across the couch, skinny arms holding the instrument close to him. The softest strains of melody fought their way through the glass to her apartment. It was a song that seemed familiar, but she was sure was nothing she had ever heard before. Was that possible? There was a calming feeling watching him; he never looked up, never took his focus from the music. At first she had watched from the other side of the room, stealing glances once in a while. Now, she found excuses to cling to the table by the window, shamelessly watching him play. She closed her eyes and listened.
"Sarah!" She jumped straight up from the chair, heart in her throat, hands shaking. Of course, she swiftly remembered, she had left Kate alone with her brother. "Sarah, aren't you forgetting something?" Sarah raced into the kitchen to see Toby ruthlessly beating up her best friend with foot long black sticks.
Sarah shouted, being careful to keep that unmistakable tone of authority in her voice. "Toby! Leave Kate alone!" The eleven year old grinned innocently up at his sister.
"I was just showing her my karate moves!" Sarah, not fooled, gave him a parental glare. With a giant sigh, the boy stomped off into the other room. "Fiiiiiine, I'll just watch TV then." Sarah grinned at the retreating form.
"I don't know how you do it," Kate commented as soon as Toby was out of hearing range. "I can't stand my brothers for five minutes, and all they do is play video games all the time." Kate grinned, slouching into a chair and leaning against the kitchen table. She withdrew a silver elastic from her pocket and began smoothing her brunette locks into a tight pony tail. "You need to get out, Sarah Williams. Don't make me drag you." Sarah grinned at her well meaning friend.
"It's only three days a week. Besides, I feel like I owe it to Karen. After all that went on when she and my dad first got together, and when Toby was born, she really came through for me during college. All of those issues..." Sarah wandered to the kitchen window, staring blankly outside. She could almost hear Kate rolling her eyes behind her.
"Your past is your past, girl. Move on. It's time for Sarah to have a little fun." This was the tone that Sarah was afraid of; the tone that meant that Kate was about to drag her friend out to some loud and unfamiliar environment. She groaned, and looked at the wall clock above the stove. Two more hours until Karen whisked Toby away.
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This was not the comfortable, family bar that Sarah had hoped for. It was a loud, obnoxious college bar, with too many intoxicated people. Kate was in her element, instantly picking up on the frantic rhythm of the music and immersing herself in the crowd. Sarah did what she always did, and found the nearest unoccupied wall space. Watching people as they interacted with one another was always more fun than doing the interacting yourself. She saw a drunk girl nearby being helped from a bar chair to the ground by a tall blonde haired guy, who didn't look like he was much more sober than she was.
"That's the last time I drink three shots of tequila in a row," she slurred, stumbling. The blonde chuckled, his shoulder length hair settling softly. They picked their way through the dancing mob. Sarah, seeing the opportunity, rushed to the table where they had been sitting and grabbed a place. Finally, a vantage point where she could watch without feeling awkward.
"Something to drink?" A voice to her left startled her. She turned to see a black haired college girl balancing a beer bottle in one hand and a tray in the other and trying to make eye contact.
"Oh—um, rum and coke?" Sarah stumbled over the words in the same way that the table's previous occupants had made their way across the floor.
"You got it," the girl answered, cracking a piece of gum. Sarah turned her attention again to the dance floor. Through the smoke and flashing lights, she could see Kate, shamelessly grinding with a curly haired freshman. Sarah shook her head. Sometimes she wished she could be like that, oblivious to any sense of embarrassment.
Sarah was not an overly social person, especially as of late. When she was younger, she'd been hard pressed NOT to make friends with anyone and everyone who crossed her path. Somewhere along the road, however, she had begun to retreat into herself and guard her thoughts and opinions more closely. Maybe it had been when Karen had entered their lives. To say that Sarah and Karen hadn't gotten along when Karen had first become her stepmother was a brutal understatement. As a teenager, Sarah had been under the impression that the world was completely unfair toward her; having a prim figure who was attempting to mother her did not help this view. Karen had become a scapegoat for the teenage Sarah, who wanted nothing more than to live in a life of fairy tales and wonder.
Thinking about Karen always made Sarah closely examine herself. She held her hands out in front of her. Finger nails that she tried to grow long, painted a pale pink; pasty skin that never tanned, no matter what the season; long dark hair that was impossible to keep straight. When she was younger, her wardrobe had consisted of a few pairs of well worn jeans and a number of styles of peasant shirts and sweaters that brought out her vivid green eyes. Now, she still wore the jeans, but the peasant shirts that had matched her dream world were replaced by shirts with spaghetti strings or emblazoned with logos. She wore lipstick but little other makeup, and seldom took more than 10 minutes in the morning to enhance her appearance.
A tall guy with huge sideburns bumped into her seat.
"Oh, sorry!" He stumbled, turned, and headed back into the mob. Sarah smirked, wishing she were at home, watching her guitar guy out the window. She shifted her gaze and noticed that the drunken girl and blonde guy had left a book of some sort on the table. Strange, she thought, bringing something like that to a place like this. They must have been really out of it. Probably on something. She started to reach for the book, curious.
"Here ya go!" Sarah jumped at the insistent voice. The black haired girl placed the rum and coke in front of her. Startled, she smiled and rummaged around in her purse, thrusting a wad of bills at the waitress. The music changed and she glanced out toward the dance floor again. Kate had changed dance partners, and was now singing the words to a song that Sarah had never heard, but that everyone on the floor seemed to know by heart. She wondered if Kate would notice if she snuck out.
Alcohol, she chided herself, that's what she needed, so she took a large swallow of her drink. She remembered the book, and eyed it once again.
"You're not having fun!" Kate had returned, pouting playfully at her friend. "Cmon, come with me, have fun!"
"I'm having fun," Sarah argued, "really!" Kate grinned, unable to reason in her slightly intoxicated state, and returned to the dance floor, throwing one last happy look at her friend.
"Well okay, if you promise!" Sarah grinned at her giddy counterpart, sighed, looked at the glass in her hand, and downed the remainder of the liquid. She closed her eyes tightly against the bitter taste, and blinked away the dizziness. Her eyes roamed the room, resting on a guy across the room, leaning against the wall and holding a beer bottle in one hand. My God. It was him. Her window guy.
He was leaning nonchalantly against the wall, examining the room as if a plate of glass separated him from it. The goings on did not affect him; he simply observed. His gaze lifted and met Sarah's for a moment... she held her breath and her mouth opened slightly. Then he was looking in another direction again, and she let out a sigh. The fingers that she was used to seeing caressing the strings of the guitar were wrapped insignificantly about the beer bottle. He smirked suddenly, and Sarah saw a group of people approach him.
Warmth was beginning to seep into her from the rum. She felt heavy and lightheaded at the same time. She felt she needed to talk to someone, just to be social. She was supposed to be social, wasn't she? She glanced at guitar guy. He was surrounded by a group now, two guys and two girls, laughing in a circle. The girl who had approached her before did so again.
"Can I get you another one?" Sarah nodded, grinning. She handed over her empty glass and strained to hear what the crowd across the room was saying. No luck. Way too much noise. Frowning slightly, she eyed the book again. There was no way she'd be able to concentrate on it in this environment. Mentally she calculated the size of the purse she'd lugged along with her. It would fit. That was the nice thing about being an artsy person; you could get away with carrying huge bags around without receiving strange looks. Looking around the room as if one of the partygoers would be suspicious at the book's mysterious disappearance, she nonchalantly stuffed the leather bound volume into her bag.
Spotting the waitress carrying her drink from the bar, Sarah decided to get up and meet her. She should be finding people to talk to, after all. She carefully stowed her bag behind the chair, hiding it slightly, and walked over to the girl. Swiftly paying for the drink, she downed the sweetened liquor and winced as she felt it rise to her brain. It now seemed imperative that she find Kate.
Her friend was wrapped in the very center of the throng of people. When Kate spotted her usually reluctant friend, she squealed with joy, and immediately grabbed both of her hands with her own. Both of them were soon moving to the rapidly paced rhythm that saturated the room. Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah spotted her guitar guy and his group of people. They were walking toward the doors of the club. Too bad, Sarah thought.
When the colors began to spin a bit even when she was standing still, Sarah realized that it was time to sit again. Laughing now, she dragged Kate from the floor and toward the table where she had been sitting.
"Shit, that was great," Kate grinned. "That guy, the tall one, he's so hot." Sarah giggled. She had no idea what her friend was talking about, but it didn't seem all that important.
"I saw my guitar guy!" Sarah blurted out. This set off another round of giggling. Kate's eyes grew round.
"You have a guitar guy? Who is he? Why didn't you tell me? Does he know tall guy? Cuz he's hot." Sarah couldn't speak, she was laughing so hard.
"I don't know, he's artsy and skinny and lives next door... I see him all the time. I'm such a stalker. It's really bad." But Kate grinned.
"Go talk to him. See if he'll make you a song. He's a guitar guy, he has to be able to make you a song." The conversation deteriorated as sleepiness overcame the need to talk about the male species.
"Let's find bed," Kate said simply. Sarah nodded carefully, turning around three times before spotting her purse, and slinging it over her shoulder.
"Mmm, bed," she agreed. By the time Kate had said goodbye to her friends of the night, the club had emptied except for a few stragglers who wanted one for the road. Sarah blinked at her watch; 4am. Thank God tomorrow was Sunday.
At that moment, a crash signaled an arrival by the door. Sarah vaguely recognized the drunken blonde guy from earlier, and two other guys who may have been in the group surrounding her guitar guy.
"Cmon," Kate was saying, "Les go." She dragged Sarah by the arm toward the door. As they left, Sarah could hear the guys arguing with raised voices.
"What were you thinking, leaving it out like that?"
"I was helping Lizzie walk, you ass. Give me a break. I only left for a minute, and when I came back it was gone. Shit."
"Well we'll have to find it; ask the bartender to keep an eye out. God, what if... no, we'll find it. Dammit."
Curious about the angry men in the bar, Sarah was tempted to approach them. But Kate was pulling on her arm, and her eyes were half closing already. They would have a long enough walk in the cold night air without taking any more time to talk to strangers.
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So whatcha think? Is it a promising start, or sorely lacking? This one's not going to be so 'distant.' Lemme know! :-)