A/N: Hur hur :')
Dedicated to sexy sexy Molly. WHO I LOVE COS SHE'S AMAZING LIKE! (StrongerThanAMoose is her)
CHILDREN! Vector now has Twitter! She's called VvvVector! Follow her! She loves you all...she's basically me!
Love you.
Enjoy!
"If I were man," Vector suddenly said, eyeing me carefully as I prepared her chai latte.
We'd come back to the cafe after Vector's art show. Though Howard and I had only been there for 15 minutes until Vector ushered us out and back to the cafe. "You've seen my photos, now let's go," she'd said, pulling on the sleeve of my leather jacket much to my dissatisfaction.
When we'd returned, Howard had gone off to sulk and smoke in the cold through the back. He liked sulking. Even if he had nothing to sulk about. Well, he'd had a small reason to sulk. He'd wanted to stay at the school to watch the Senior Jazz Band. Vector had firmly told him "Hell no!" So, he sulked. Sulking was always good, especially with a pack of cigarettes. I'll never be sure when it was that Howard actually started smoking, but whenever it was, we had started to spend a lot more time together smoking on the porch. That could have been what helped me see him differently. Generally, people start to fall out of love after a while of the other not loving them back. Well, that's what I'd always noticed. But I'd known him for so long. My love just grew until it reached it's peak when we shared that drunken kiss at that stupid party. Now, it'd been growing in a different way. I think I was finding more respect for him. Not that I'd never really had respect for him. I'd always respected Howard. He was my best friend. In a way he was my only friend. The only friend I'd had that'd actually stuck with me for so long and never looked back to dwell on what kind of friend he'd found. I don't think we were any actual kind of friend to each other. We'd just always be together. Even if I hadn't decided to be an idiot and fall in love with him, we'd probably always be together as heterosexual life partners or something. We'd practically be married, but not have sex. I could live with that. As long as I knew he loved me and wanted to be with me always, I wouldn't need sex. I'd hardly need a kiss. Well, maybe a kiss now and then. A hug maybe, a small peck on the cheek. I just wanted to hear Howard tell me that he cared about me in some way. That'd be nice. That'd be so nice. My brain had decided to start ranting all the time. Stupid love.
"Excuse me?" I asked
"If I were a man," Vector repeated. "My name would be Lysander-"
"Lysander?" I scoffed.
"Shut up," she said. "My name would be Lysander, I'd have a moustache, I'd wear a leather jacket, I'd have hair like Josh Ramsay, and I'd probably be gay...Wait, I already have hair like Josh Ramsay. Hahaha, I'm funny," Vector laughed, and emphasized the sarcasm on her last few words.
"Who's Josh Ramsay?" I asked, placing the tall glass of chai latte on the bar between Vector and I.
"My husband," she said seriously. "Here, Ill show you." She fished her iPod out of her jeans pocket. Unravelling the earphones from round the orange rectangle, Vector said, "He's the lead singer of Marianas Trench. They're from Canada." She smiled broadly and handed me an earbud. "Listen," she put an earphone into her own ear and hit play.
A few moments later, I laughed and pulled out the earbud. "Is that what you want him to do to you?"
"Kind of,"Vector smirked and stuck her tongue out at the side of her mouth. I always did that as well. She was over here too much.
"You're sixteen, you shouldn't be thinking about some singer of some band slapping you like a bitch so you can take it like a whore."
"But Josh Ramsay's got blue hair!" Vector exclaimed, going through her iPod to find a picture.
"Because that solves everything. So, this is why you're obsessed with blue hair," I said as Vector held up her iPod to display a picture of said singer of Canadian emo band.
"Look at the shmexiness!"
"Alright, I like 'im."
"Good, cos one day I will marry him and it shall be beautiful. AND! They're really good live!" she grinned. "I've watched multiple illegally filmed videos on youtube!"
Listening to Vector ramble about this things she loved was, in a way, like a work out. Really, really tiring, but you felt good about yourself afterwards. You couldn't make Vector stop fangirling, so you had to ride out the entire rant. In the end, you'd feel proud of yourself for not dying. Though, it was always very entertaining listening to her. I loved her because of her strange obsessions. She was into a lot of random Canadian stuff which was interesting, so I learned quite a lot from her. Learning things was always good, even though I didn't really retain information that well.
Vector left when we closed at 9. No one ever wants coffee after 9 so, we had thought it was a good enough time to close. Since, the cafe was only run by Howard and I and the few people we had working, we didn't want to stay up all night like one of those commercial places. I was happy not to be commercial. We wanted our coffee place to be comfortable...God forbid I say "cozy", but that's what we wanted and that's we had. It was well nice, I think. We were popular, but not scary, out of this world, everywhere popular. We had one location.
After locking up, I found Howard still chain smoking like a really poofy guy from the 1920s...Howard wasn't poofy at all though. He was obviously straight and that irked me. You wouldn't think I'd know that word 'irk', but it's one of those nice words that I'd learned from Howard and planned on using it all the time to impress him. See, I wasn't gay. I wasn't really straight either; but I was quite poofy. I was glam rocker-type poofy. I thought it was obvious enough that I was mad to the fuck in love with Howard, but did he notice anything? Uuuh, no.
"Alright, Howard?" I said, sitting beside him on our stupid deck chairs.
"Yeah," He replied, sucking in the chilly cigarette filled air then taking a drag.
"D'you want me to put a record on, or something?" I asked. "I would have been fine staying, you know, it was just Vector. You remember being a teenager, Howard. Everything had to go your way."
"Put whatever you want on." He was still sulking. Damn, he sulked for a long time. I could handle it, but I just hoped that he'd be okay with manning the bar for a few hours by himself the next day.
"Howard, loosen up. It isn't the end of the world."
"Yeah, Vince, I know it isn't the end of the world. I'm just in a mood right now. I don't know why, okay?"
"Okay, sorry, Howard." I sat back in the chair and pulled my knees up to my chest. "D'you want a drink?"
"No."
"Can I have a fag?"
"Yeah," Howard breathed and handed me the pack.
"Cheers." I lit up and sucked in.
I hated smoking. It was disgusting, but it's an addiction. And addictions are a hard thing to satisfy unless you attest to them.
"I miss you," Howard said.
"What? We see each other all the time!"
"Well, clearly, but...ugh I can't explain."
"We talk," I said and Howard looked at me. "We talk up here all the time and smoke, but we're not really ourselves. We sort of learn things about each other that we hadn't known. Things that...we did know, but now we're seeing it in a new light."
"Why? Cos we're older?"
"Yeah?"
"To be honest, Vince, you haven't changed since you were 16."
"Howard, I'm a lot smarter than I was when I was 16. You can't tell, but I've grown up."
"Going out to parties and coming home at 7 AM isn't growing up, Vince!"
"That's not what I meant! You know that's not what I meant! We own a shop, Howard! I know how to run it. I've matured." I was yelling now. Obviously.
"See, we clearly don't spend enough time together anymore. I feel like I don't know you, Vince, and you're my best mate. Okay! I love you and we can't drift apart. It's not right!"
Wait...he'd said that he loved me. Well, no surprise there, it just wasn't the love I wanted to hear. But in that heated rage, I did the stupid thing. I misinterpreted it.
"Howard," I said. My voice was hoarse and still sounded angry. I'd already realized that my first thought was wrong, but did I care? No! So, I kissed him.
BOOM!