notes: this story features recreational drug use and canon-typical behaviors! set between "if only" and "an anytime invitation" :)
i miss those nights of reckless glory
i'd come back if you'd just call
(tyler childers)
Ponyboy finds them at the Dingo. When they turn their eyes to him, their pupils are blown out, and Izzy Mathews tilts her head at him, curious, when he asks what in the hell they think they're doing.
Vicky Bernal won't even look his way. He tries not to let that get to him.
"Relax," Izzy says, her voice molasses-slow and not half as sweet. She sounds like Two-Bit like this. "What, you never smoked pot before?"
"I ain't one to wander the city afterwards." Ponyboy doesn't have much of a leg to stand on, he knows. He's spent plenty of time getting high on campus and then stumbling home, but he's been careful to not get caught doing dumb things lately. Dropping out of the OSU was probably the best and worst thing he ever did, on account of he thought he was losing his mind most days, though it's true that he felt sick to his stomach about it anyway, knowing how big of a deal Soda and Darry had made out of it, even if Stillwater was only an hour away.
Izzy squints at him like she knows he's bullshitting her. "You're bullshitting me. Who sent you?"
"Nobody."
"Bullllshit ," Izzy says, so much like Two-Bit he has to fight a smile. He glances at Vicky but she's staring out the window, and when he glances that way there's nothing but girls and boys alike flirting around outside.
Looking at her makes him feel all sorts of torn up. A few weeks ago, right before the two girls graduated from Will Rogers, Vicky said she loved him and he didn't say it back. Ponboy kissed her right after, which was probably a bad idea, because now they haven't spoken in ages and he feels a little bit like he might have fucked things up real bad. One small mercy is that it doesn't seem like Vic's told her big sister, because if she had, he's fairly sure he'd be a body buried somewhere already, and not tasked with hunting down the two of them.
Steve was clearly handing off that responsibility to him this afternoon when he stopped by the Curtis house asking if either of them had seen Vicky. When Ponyboy left the house to do his bidding, Steve and Soda were shooting the shit out front, about to work on Lisa Bernal's Pontiac, which seems to be their hobby since '66. Ponyboy could have said no, he knows, but something made him say yes. Maybe because he wanted to get out of the house, or maybe because he wanted to see Vicky again, but definitely not because he wanted a stoned-out Izzy laughing in his face when he scolded them for wandering the Eastside after what must have been a joint or two.
"I'll call Lisa in a minute," Vicky finally says, still not looking at him. Pony doesn't know what he would do if she did. She has the same dark eyes as her big sister, but they fit her face different, he thinks. There's a few drawings of those eyes in his sketchbook, not that anyone but him knows it.
Izzy reaches for her mostly-finished milkshakes, sips at it until there's nothing but the sound of air pulling through her straw, and then puts it down. Her eyes drift between Ponyboy and Vicky, and Pony's tempted to think she's too out of it to really sense the unease, but Vic and Izzy have been best friends since the Bernal girls moved to Tulsa, and as much as Pony would like to think he knows Vicky best (which ain't true, a voice whispers in the back of his mind), truth is that that's always been Izzy.
And Izzy, like Vicky, ain't all that sweet. Especially not since Two-Bit's been gone, sent out to 'Nam the way so many other greasers this side of town have.
Izzy says, "That all you came for?" and Ponyboy tries not to sigh.
"Steve asked me," he says.
"Since when d'you listen to Randle?" she says.
"Me and Steve get along fine." It's the truth, even. He and Steve act more like brothers than anyone, even if it took him a while to realize that.
"That don't usually mean you wanna do him any favors," Izzy says, voice still real floaty, "'less you wanted to just hang out with us, too."
Ponyboy walked right into that one, he knows. Hell, she sounds a little bit like Sodapop did that morning. He waggled his eyebrows when he said it: 'S a good chance to try and catch Vicky 'fore Lisa drags her down to Texas, ain't it? The girls are leaving soon; in a few weeks, probably after the Fourth, Lisa's taking her sister and Steve alike down to Austin, where she's been living the last few years for school. Got a good job at the university, got a chance to get Vicky and Steve out of Tulsa, finally, a chance that Pony's squandered and is trying to wrap his head around, still.
They'll visit, Steve said, or maybe Soda can come down, but given how Pony went and broke Vicky's heart in the middle of May, well. He's not too sure he'll be a welcome figure in the Bernal home moving forward.
He's not sure how to make it right. Maybe he should have spent more time thinking about that while he drove around town looking for the girls.
"We're heading out," Vicky says, and finally she looks at him, briefly, before her gaze skitters away. Pony can feel his face heat up the slightest bit. Vicky, too, looks a little pinker than normal, and she adjusts her button up, tugs at the skirt she's wearing, jean like how Lisa used to wear when her and Steve had first started going out.
"Back to my house," Izzy cuts in, "d'you drive here? We need a ride."
"I have bus money," Vicky says to her, and her eyebrows are up high, eyes wide, lashes dark as ever, and Pony keeps noticing that, he knows, and maybe he shouldn't, but he does.
"Faster if he drives," Izzy says, and then stands, stretches, and pulls her wallet out. She drops a few bills and waves at the waitress, taking an order next to them, and grabs at Vic's wrist. "Come on. You found us, now let's go."
Pony hates that self-satisfied smirk on her face. Izzy's always plotting against him, he thinks. When she saw him and Cathy Carlson on their first date, the news made it to his house by the time he got home, Soda and Two-Bit grinning wide and conniving when he walked in still red-faced from kissing her goodnight. When he couldn't figure it out, Two-Bit folded easily: Little sisters got eyes everywhere, y'know.
Being eighteen hasn't changed her tendency to embarrass him over the girls he likes. Even if with Vicky it's just… It's not that Pony doesn't like her, it's just that he's not sure he can be what she wants. Not right now. It feels a little bit like she's been waiting for him to figure it out, but he hasn't, and he doesn't know he will, and he doesn't know how to tell her that, because he doesn't know how to explain it to himself, either. And he shouldn't have kissed her, he knows, but it's too late. In the moment, the wanting was stronger than the knowing it wasn't a good idea. He misses too, because he's gotten used to seeing her whenever he turns a corner, gotten used to spending as much time with her as Izzy probably does, because, in some ways, Vicky feels like his best friend, too.
Not that any of that matters, of course. Vicky's clearly not in the mood to deal with him, considering how she climbs into the back of his clunker without a word, Izzy throwing herself into the passenger seat without hesitation. She smooths her hair back, hisses when the red strands get caught in her rings, and then sighs when the radio starts playing.
"I wish this was the Doors," she says, a little loopy, and Ponyboy rolls his eyes, trying not to look in the mirror to catch Vicky's eyes afterwards. She's not looking, anyway, so it doesn't matter that he fails.
"When we're driving your car, you can pick the station," he tells her, realizing he sounds exactly like Darry as the words come out of his mouth. He clutches at the wheel afterwards: he feels unrecognizable.
Neither of the girls take him seriously, from the way Izzy snorts and Vicky remains silent. Ponyboy can't help but keep checking the mirror to see what Vicky's doing, but every time he looks she's staring out the window. Her fingers curl over the seatbelt, and he can't help but remember, how he always does, the crash they got into the summer he turned eighteen, that awful summer Curly died. He hates how he can't keep himself from remembering it when he looks at her, sometimes. It feels unfair of him to think that way, when Vic is her own person outside of everything that happened.
By the time they pull up to the Mathews' place, whatever station Ponyboy left it tuned to is playing old hits, The 5th Dimension singing shrill over the waves: We can fly, we can fly, up up and away…
"Ugh, I hate that song," Izzy says, unbuckling before Pony's even come to a full park and ignoring him when he tries to scold her while she gets out of the car. She says, over her shoulder, her hair a flash of red, "You ain't my big brother, Curtis. You coming inside or what?"
"For what?" he and Vicky both say, and they catch each other's eyes for a split second before Vicky shoves the door open. He feels a prickle of anger at that: Vic's not mean to him as a general rule. And this feels mean. (He's ignoring the part of him that thinks maybe he deserves it just a little. But ain't he feeling bad enough about it already?)
Izzy doubles back, leans into the open passenger-side window: "We're lighting up. Figured you'd wanna join."
"I'll pass." He's trying to keep the frown off his face. He sounds petulant even to himself: "Vic don't want me 'round none, anyway."
"'S my house, not hers," Izzy says, and then, thoughtfully, "guess she spends most of her time here, that's true."
"I'm alright," he says.
"Ponyboy, get outta the car," Izzy says, and raises her eyebrows, Two-Bit all over again. "You gotta call Steve anyway."
"He's at my place," he says, "ain't longer than a five minute drive."
"Faster if you call," she says, like she did at the Dingo, and then, like they're five and six again, "c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon."
Pony ain't used to little sisters, it's true. "Christ, Izzy, fine, can you—"
"Let's go!" She waits for him to get out of the car at least; Vicky's already let herself into the house, though Pony didn't see them exchange keys, Then again, it wouldn't surprise him if they gave each other a copy ages ago. Vicky and Izzy are probably each other's longest relationship.
He's about to pass her up on the walkway when she puts her hand on his shoulder. He looks at her, a little surprised. Her eyes are red but surprisingly clear, and her voice, dopey as it sounds, has a serious tone to it when she speaks next.
"You really fucked it up, Ponyboy," she says. "You're lucky Lisa ain't tracked you down."
Pony gulps. "She know what happened?"
"No," Izzy says, "Vic ain't said anything. She's embarrassed. She's hurt."
"I know," he says, "I didn't mean—"
"Don't start with that," Izzy says, and rolls her eyes. Her hand drops away from him. "And don't say shit you don't mean. Why'd you turn her down?"
"Shit, Izzy," Ponyboy says, feeling his face go red, "that's hard to talk about."
"But you like her."
Like feels too small, too juvenile. He met Vicky at a race when she was twelve and he was nearly fourteen, neither of them interested in the opposite sex and far more curious about the race that their older siblings had let them tag along to. (At least that was the case for Ponyboy; Lisa liked hanging out with Vicky even when she was a furious fifteen year old, he knows, so maybe that was just a regular hangout for the newcomers back in '66.) But he's real afraid to say it's something closer to love these days, after years of being friends. Six years of knowing each other. It feels too big, too scary. Maybe a little bit too real.
"It ain't that easy," he tries, instead, and Izzy throws her hands up.
"You men are real idiots," she says, "don't be surprised if she finds herself a steady down in Austin next month. Someone's gonna snatch her up quick, and not even Lisa'll be able to stop it."
"I know," he says.
Izzy stares at him for several long seconds, then tosses her head like Mickey Mouse used to, only of course she's less golden than fiery in the late afternoon light. "C'mon then. Call Steve, have a drink. You didn't have nothing at the Dingo."
"Vic don't want me here," he repeats, and she looks at him like he's stupid.
"So what? I do." She turns away from him, starts up the steps again. He follows her because there's no other choice, really.
He likes Izzy just fine, and, well. He likes Vicky a little more than that. Ain't much he can do to change that.
Once he calls Steve, he wanders back into the Mathews' living room to find the girls sprawled along the floor. Someone put a record on, and Jim Morrison drones in the background while Izzy asks Vic how packing is going.
"It ain't," Vicky says, bringing one hand up to push her hair back. "They ain't leaving 'til after the Fourth, anyway, so I got another couple'a weeks." She says something afterwards, voice low, that makes Izzy straighten up a bit.
"What?" Izzy says, leaning over their old coffee-table a bit—the thing is beat to hell and back, no doubt from Two-Bit being rough on it his entire life, or at least until they shipped him out the summer before.
"I ain't," Vic starts, but then she catches sight of Ponyboy in the doorway and stops. She brings a hand up like she wants to touch her face but changes her mind halfway through the moment, lets her hand drop to the table again.
Izzy twists around, eyebrows furrowed for a split-second until she sees Pony, too. "Oh," she says, "d'you call Steve already?"
"Yeah," he says, pretending he isn't looking at Vicky in his periphery, "him and Lisa are heading out to dinner, said he'd let her know y'all are back here."
"Good ol' Steve," Izzy say, ignoring how Pony and Vicky make the same face at her. He comes over and takes a seat on the couch, Izzy next to him on the floor, across from Vicky. "You think he's gonna pop the question anytime soon, Vic?"
"Lisa'll say no," Vicky says, and looks away from Pony when his eyes jump to her, a little surprised. Even Izzy seems taken aback. "What? Lisa ain't ever been one for tying herself down."
"Her and Steve have been going steady since '67," Izzy tries. Her s's get caught between her teeth, the slightest bit, like how they used to when she lost her front teeth at the same time, back when her and Pony were just kids. "That's ages ago."
Vicky shrugs, biting at her cheek like she doesn't like what she has to say: "She won't say yes. Maybe one day. He's better off knocking her up if he wants to keep her 'round 'til then."
"Ugh," Izzy says, "don't make me think about them having sex."
"Don't say that," Pony says, just as Vic goes, "Christ, now I'm thinking about it, ew," and then the three of them look from one to the other until a smile finally flickers across Vicky's face, quickly transforming into the kind of laughter Pony ain't heard from her in what feels like months.
"I'm just saying," Izzy says, but she's laughing too, "how else're babies made, huh, Vic," and Pony can't help but join in, their dopey laughter a welcome break from whatever silent argument he and Vicky are stuck in.
"I don't wanna think about this," Vicky says, wiping at her eyes, "Christ, that's my big sister."
"She ain't teach you the birds and the bees?" Izzy asks, and starts giggling, "Two-Bit tried giving me the talk once."
"Why," Pony says, and Izzy throws her hands up.
"Beats me," she says, "did Soda or Darry do it for you?"
"Soda," Ponyboy says, and this time when he glances at Vic she doesn't look away. "And then Darry, to make sure Soda didn't say nothing that wasn't true."
"Pull and pray," Izzy says, sage, and Pony feels his face flush red as Izzy grins at him, Vicky throwing her head back to laugh.
"I promise I know better'n that," he says, and Izzy laughs too.
"Lord, but Soda giving you the talk sounds silly," she says, face flushed a little, "you should see him at work when they got him out front. Every girl, don't matter how old or young she is, tries to flirt with him if they can."
"There's lotsa girls in town who got crushes on him," Vic says, and there's something a little sly in her voice when she looks at Izzy, a knowing glint to her dark eyes.
"Well sure," Izzy says, and tucks her hair behind her ear. Pony remembers that nervous habit of hers: she used to do it when her and Vicky were younger than they are now, lying to Two-Bit about where they'd sneak off to, because it sure wasn't the movies with Ponyboy like they claimed. "Hell, I had a crush on Soda too, back in middle school."
Pony makes a face at her, which she returns immediately. Even if they ain't related, Izzy feels a bit too much like family to be admitting that. "Everyone had a crush on Soda when they were twelve," he says, and rolls his eyes for good measure.
Vicky, head resting on her open palm, says, "I didn't."
Izzy says, "That's 'cause you had a crush on Ponyboy," and nods her head towards him, ignoring the way it makes the both of them freeze up.
Pony opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
Vicky says, unnaturally still, "You have a crush on Sodapop now."
"I can recognize a looker when I see one," Izzy says, and shrugs. She's pink in the face, Pony thinks, but he's also thinking about Vicky at twelve and at fifteen and now, eighteen. "Who cares."
"He sure does," Vic says, and looks at Ponyboy for half a second before turning back to Izzy, "y'all spend every shift flirting."
"We do not," Izzy says, fixing her hair again, "how would you know that?"
"Darling, you're red as a fire truck right now," Vicky says, and then stands up. "I'm getting water. Who wants some?"
"Me," Izzy says, hauling herself up for a brief moment and then throwing herself back onto the couch. Vic skirts around the coffee table, and the second she's slipped from the room Izzy reaches out to snag Pony by the collar. Her voice is low: "You got one more chance, Ponyboy."
"What?" He feels wildly out of depth.
"You owe her," Izzy says. Her eyes are narrowed. "If you ain't gonna admit you was lying, you can at least apologize right."
"I don't—"
"Go," she says, and shoves at him a little. He hesitates. She shoos at him like she might dog in the street. "Now."
"You're real bossy for someone hung up on my brother," he says, and then ducks out of the way when she throws a pillow, slipping into the kitchen with her outraged, It's not a crush! following him.
Vic looks up from where she's carefully measuring water in two glasses. Ponyboy doesn't ask—Lord knows he's done sillier things while stoned. She says, "Still saying she ain't into Soda, huh," and Pony smiles like he almost always does when he's around her.
"Guess middle school crushes stick around, huh," he says, but her face twists up, which is fair, because he's still thinking about what Izzy said, too. "Vic…"
"Don't," she says, looking at the two glasses of water again. "You already turned me down once. I don't need to hear it again."
"I don't wanna hurt your feelings."
She snorts. "Little late for that."
"I'm—"
"Don't," she says again, and points a finger at him. Her eyes are dark, eyelashes fanning over her cheekbones when she blinks. She has that heavy-lidded look she always gets when she's smoking. Before he left for school (and before he ever dropped out), they used to drive around town stoned out of their minds, sometimes with Curly Shepard, sometimes with Izzy, sometimes just the two of them.
"I ain't hardly seen you since graduation," he says. He showed up after the ceremony, because her and Izzy did a joint barbecue right after in the backyard, Mrs. Mathews cheerfully grilling up better burgers than Darry's.
"Why d'you wanna see me?" She sounds mean again. He hates it.
"That ain't fair," he says, because he's tired of that. She squares her shoulders, looks like she's about to march out of there, but he puts his hand over hers, curls his fingers around her wrist when she doesn't try to slip away. "I can't change my mind. That don't mean I don't wanna see you. You can be mad at me but it's true. You ain't gotta act like I burned your house down."
"You're a real sweet-talker," she says. If he didn't know any better, he'd think her eyes were shiny because she was going to cry. "That's exactly what a girl loves to hear. 'I don't want you, but I want you around.' Real romantic."
"Vic, you're my best friend," he says, and it feels truer than ever. She deflates a little. Her lower lip juts out, the tiniest bit, when she pouts. She looks young and tender, afternoon slipping into evening easily in the low light of the Mathews' kitchen. "You're leaving real soon, too. You gonna ignore me the next month 'til y'all leave?"
She's shaking her head. She sniffs a little, then takes her hand away from his, rubs at her opposite shoulder a bit. Vicky says, "I ain't going with them," and Pony doesn't know what to say for a moment.
"Whaddaya mean?" he says, finally, and she shrugs.
"I ain't going," she says, "I don't wanna live in Austin. I don't wanna live with Lisa and Steve. I wanna have my own life."
Pony stares a little. "Here in Tulsa?"
"No," she says, quick, "no, my aunties, they're down at the border. I could stay with them. I ain't interested in staying with my daddy neither."
Old man Bernal seems like a ghost, most days. Home for dinner and sleep, Vic left to the city when she really shouldn't have been. It makes something ache inside Ponyboy, thinking about how young they used to be.
"You're just gonna take off?"
She tilts her head at him. Her eyes are surprisingly clear. "Ain't that what you did?"
He almost says it: I left for school. But if he says that, they'll have another argument, and angry as it makes him to think of her picking a fight, he doesn't want that. He doesn't want her to leave, either.
When he says that, she sighs. "You ain't being fair neither, Pony."
"I'm being honest."
"I'm about tired of you being honest," she says.
"Take it or leave it, Vic," he says. He can't keep the bitterness out of his voice: "I'm the only one who's ever been honest with you, ain't I?"
She's glaring at him. She says, "You shoulda just lied to me, then. Last month. Said it was never like that and let's just be friends. You didn't have to—to do all that. And then try to explain it."
"I meant it." He thinks of her in the May light: bright-eyed, wild-haired, laughing in his car. He thinks of kissing her outside of that empty house she lives in, her face cupped in his hands. He thinks of the fear of needing to get everything right on the first try, when he's never been any good at that. "Maybe. Maybe one day—"
"I ain't sticking 'round here for a maybe," she cuts in. "And I ain't gonna go along with what someone says 'cause they think that's the best option. I'm leaving town. I ain't going with Lisa. That's that."
Ponyboy straightens up, because she's looking at him like he's a challenge to her, so unlike how she ever does. He says, "Does Lisa know?"
"She will soon enough," she says. "It don't matter, anyway. She ain't gonna stop me, and neither will you. You can keep your maybes and I'll head down south. You won't have to come looking for me ever again." She grabs the waters and moves past him. He doesn't know whether to follow or not. She looks over her shoulder, says, "You think I'm being mean, Ponyboy? Look in the mirror. You ain't exactly a nice guy, neither."
Izzy doesn't try to stop him when he leaves. It's better that way, he thinks. Maybe it's better not to even bother with goodbyes.