I've got several more chapters ready to go, but I'm going to hold out for comments because I am greedy that way.
So if you want more, reviewing is your friend.
This party was going much more smoothly; the whole overall feel of it was much more mellow than the last. In the twenty minutes since I'd walked through the door, I'd managed to see Sid, Peggy, and Jay, the last of whom I made an apology and a promise to that we'd meet up again later, if only at his house. I didn't know why I felt the need to do that, but I didn't care at that moment, either. I was having fun, not worrying about anything.
I spent a little time searching around for the unmistakably head of long blond hair known as Stacy Peralta. He didn't seem to be around, but for some reason, my mood was unshakable. I suppose my inner core regulated it's worry levels when it realized that this was the last party of the weekend. It was summer and school was out, not that the surf rats and skaters went to school much, anyways, but still, most people only threw parties on the weekends. There was an older crowd who did things up during the week, but you had to have an important connection to get into those.
I had just two beers, not feeling like getting overly buzzed. Plus, I wasn't a huge fan of the kind of beer that was flowing there. It tasted more like horse piss than usual. I soon found myself dancing and mingling with the crowd.
Again, I found Jay. He came up, grinning like an idiot.
"Hey Jay," I said, smiling back. He nodded an appreciative 'hey' and continued to dance alongside me.
"Listen, so, uh… I'm gonna be leaving here in a little while with a friend… I'll be back at my place later, okay? Don't wait up or anything," he said, readjusting his hat. There was definitely something mischievous going on with him. I saw that much in his eyes. Still, I didn't have any say in anything or any real reason to ask questions, so I merely nodded the go ahead.
I still tried not to worry; after all, I wasn't Jay's mother or girlfriend, he was a big boy. Something continued to nag at me, though.
I had fun at any rate, though the only person I had to talk to was Sid.
"There's this girl… she's all over me, Lily," he had smiled excitedly. "That like, never happens. And she's got these amazing--" he cupped his hands over his chest. I couldn't help but laugh. He was such an odd guy. He was a good guy, though, and whatever girl was all over him was making his night.
That was all I'd really said to anyone that night. Soon, the repetition of dancing alone grew old and I was ready to leave. It was around eleven when I started heading for the door. On the porch sat the one person I did not want to see, and I'd give any idiot three guesses as to who it was.
Tony Alva sat, looking somewhat pissed off, on the porch. He held half of his face in his hand and didn't say anything. It took me a second, but I noticed that there was blood on his hand that seemed to be coming from his face. He looked up, I assume he heard someone behind him. When his hand no longer covered his left side of his face, I had to wince. He had quite a gash under a forming black eye. Even in the strange, whitewashed glow of the porch lights I could see that much.
"God," I said, not sure why I even extended the care, "Are you okay?"
He scoffed and realized who I was. "What do you care, bitch?"
Ignoring this remark, I realized that Tony might actually need stitches or at least a rag to keep the blood from flowing so freely. I used to beat myself up a lot when I was learning to skate, so my mother and Jay, though that seems an odd combination, had taught me how to dress wounds well.
"You look really hurt… you need to keep pressure on it," I instructed, feeling some odd sense of obligation to help this heartless bastard who'd been awful to me for half a decade.
"Some fucker popped me one, good," he explained, pressing his bandanna to his face. "Think I need stitches?"
My moment of concern for Tony was fleeting. "Yeah, I do," I said, stepping down off the stairs. He mumbled something along the lines of his dad killing him for being out.
"Thanks, Ingram," He said, calling me by my last name. It was the first time he'd said 'thank you' to me in years and it earned me a strange sense of satisfaction.
I walked home to Jay's house, the usual feeling of creepiness of walking alone replaced by the hot summer night's air and the good feeling that had been more or less tattooing itself into me all night. For that walk, I worried less about where Jay was, why Tony had been nice, whether Sid was getting any, where Stacy had disappeared to… it all just fell away.
That was the strange thing about me. I was always a kaleidoscope of different things, but happiness so randomly falling upon me was rare, so I intended to enjoy it.
When I got to Jay's house, the lights were all off. That likely meant that I would be alone, seeing as how usually, Jay Boy would be up and bouncing all over the place if he was home. That wasn't all bad, seeing as how I wanted to sleep.
I went inside and made my way to his room; I changed into his Zephyr shirt and a pair of flannel pants. It wasn't even close to cold, but they were sleep-type clothes, and my body was in need of some more good sleep. The damned bed was so comfortable, as I'd said before.
I fell asleep fast without feet or elbows sticking into me, thankfully. This, as it was the night before, was short lived. It seemed that while sleep was easy to come by, hanging onto it was the hard part.
Forgoing any traditional nonsense of, oh, I don't know, turning on a light or tiptoeing, there was but a warning call of "Arrrgh" then the weight of a body on me. What a world.
"Jay, God," I said, rolling him off of me. Peering at the alarm clock the sat on his nightstand, I recognized it to be half past three in the morning. Where had he gone for hours on end and why did he smell so terrible? One had to wonder these things.
"Not so loud," he mumbled, face down in the pillow.
"Where've you been?" I asked, sitting up. I mentally reminded myself that it was none of my business.
"Out," he replied, groggy. "Sleep now, baby?"
I blinked at him a few times in the dark before switching on his lamp. Jay Adams had never, nor did he have a reason to, referred to me as 'baby'. He writhed under the new brightness and groaned.
"Why'd you call me that?" I asked him, rolling him over to look at me. Dressed only in boxers and a bandanna wrapped around his forehead, he looked rather confused.
"Call you what? Can't we just sleep?" He whined, covering his face with his arm. I grew more frustrated with him by the second with no real cause to do so. I could tell he'd been drinking, which explained what he called me. I guess it just bothered me that I'd given up my plans for him, but he couldn't do the same.
"Where were you, Jay?" I asked, pulling him into a sitting position.
"I had some drinks and went to these girls' house and we all got pretty gnarly now I have this killer fuckin' headache so can I go to sleep, please?" he begged, laying his head on my chest. Jay's definition of getting 'pretty gnarly' was definitely sex. I pushed his head off me.
"You're disgusting, Jay," I said, crawling out of bed. "I'm not sleeping next to you when you've got sex all over you and God knows what else."
I had issues with Jay's hygiene on a normal basis, let alone when he'd been all over random girls. The thought alone was just… washable.
"Lily," he reached for me but came short, "come back to bed…"
"I'm just going to sleep on the couch tonight, Jayboy," I said, grabbing a pillow. He grabbed my hand in his.
"Lily," he hummed, drawling out the 'ly', "I need you. It was nothing, just some harmless fun." Jay could be so damned whiny when he wanted to be.
"Why you mad, beautiful?" He asked, pulling me down onto the bed and whispering in my ear. I shuddered. Everything in me was saying I should stop this, that Jay was very drunk and didn't know what he was doing. Be that as it may, I allowed him to keep it up.
"It was just a little fun. Shouldn't have made me all jealous with Stacy," he said, resting his head in the crook of my neck. The whole situation was progressing too fast for enjoyment, and at any rate, I knew I shouldn't be enjoying it. It was not the first time he'd come onto me in a drunken state. It'd happened quite a few times over our years together.
It boiled down to the fact, I rationed, that I gave so much attention to Jay that getting some back from him, in any form, usually hit home. I had a hard time resisting light advances like kissing and sweet-talk, even when he was drunk.
"Made you jealous?" I asked, pushing him back. I was an idiot to argue with him anytime, but especially when he was drinking. He was stubborn as hell without adding fuel to the fire.
"Yeah," he scoffed, slurring just a little. "Ditching me to hang with that fucker. Could have stayed here and slept in."
He just breathed warmly against my neck. I could smell some kind of bitter liquor on his breath and I winced.
"You have to sleep now, Jay," I said, rolling him over and placing him under then sheets. "We'll talk tomorrow."
He reached up and caressed my cheek with just his fingertips. Sitting up, barely, he kissed my lips softly. Still two inches from my face, he whispered, "I love you, Lily."
I suddenly felt nauseas in every way possible. He hadn't really just said that, had he? I was begging him, silently, not to have just said that. This was a new level of strange with him. Through all the drunken episodes, he'd never said that. He'd threatened to kill me, told me I reminded him of Christmas trees, asked me to shower with him… there'd been any number of things that didn't make sense that came out of his mouth, but he'd never said that.
"You're drunk," I said, pulling the covers over him.
"Fuh-uck!" He whined, dragging his hands over his face roughly. "I've been drinking but I'm not… I'm not drunk…"
He was, despite his efforts to convince me otherwise, drunk. I had to mentally separate Jay from his slushy flirtation that he wouldn't remember the next morning.
"Goodnight, Jay," I said, heading for the door. He was still protesting my not sleeping in the same bed as him.
I slept on the couch. I couldn't deal with the thoughts in my mind at the moment. Part of me felt excited when Jay had said that, almost even returning the sentiment. I had trouble admitting that part to myself. The more rational part of me was just exhausted with his antics. The rational part realized that this was what things were always going to be with Jay; a never ending cycle of me vying for his attention and he for mine. We were never on the same page.
Either way, I was going to have to tell Stacy that Jay and I kissed and what happened that night. I dreaded that because, though it seemed contrary to his good nature, I was sure he wouldn't understand why I hadn't left. Then there was that miniscule part of me that had wanted it, anyways.
Confusion, thy name is Lily Ingram.