3. "Distant"We went our separate ways and didn't have much to do with each other for about a week after that. I woke up and Jay was gone, leaving his shirt and an empty bottle of vodka behind. For some reason I felt sad, but I didn't expect much more out of him. He had his own life, as empty as it was, and I had mine. So I lived it.
Phone rang and I picked it up. It was rarely anything I cared about, but it was some kind of human contact that didn't depend on me paying money for it. "Bobby?" Jay's voice. Strained, frayed at the edges, not like Jay at all. Heard noise in the background.
"Yeah?"
"Could you come over? They're..." Pause as he put his hand over the phone and yelled at someone. "They're having a party or something."
"Jay, I don't know."
"Please...I don't know how long I can stand it."
Hesitated. He sounded so desperate. "Isn't there someone else you could call?" I tried to push him away. Didn't know what our relationship was yet.
"Bobby, please?" His voice descended to a whine not unlike Gavin's. My arm throbbed. Shit.
"Fine. I'll be there in a few, okay? I have to catch the bus." The cars were hers. Not that I would have driven them anyway. So much easier to die walking than driving.
He sighed in relief and shifted the phone. "Thank you so much. You have no idea."
"I think I do." I said and hung up before I could hear his reply.
The door was already open when I got there, Jay was sitting on the front steps moping and smoking a cigarette. From the amount of stubbed out butts next to him, he had either been really impatient or really nervous. He looked up and saw me and some excitement registered. Not that I expected all that much. He had only called me out of desperation. I only came out of pity.Heard some noise in the living room. Jay looked inside and sighed deeply. "Come on in. Maybe they'll acknowledge your existence."
Ryan and Amir were goofing off on the floor and Paige was sitting on the couch drinking a beer and laughing at them. "Oh, hi Bobby." he said, not taking his eyes off Ryan, who was deliberately shoving his tight pants encased ass up towards Paige. Amir was allowing his shirt to be pulled up to reveal his not very exciting chest.
"Hi Bobby!" Ryan said, smiling, "Join in! Amir's fine!" Amir giggled and batted at Ryan. I stared at their idiocy. Jay inhaled deeply on his cigarette and shook his head.
"Come on, there's always beer." he mumbled, walking to the kitchen.
Except there wasn't. Someone, whose name began with an R and had four letters, had decided to drink it all. Jay sighed and reached in his bag. Came out with nothing.
"You left it at my apartment." I said. He swore and reached for his wallet.
"Guess we'll have to go get some." he muttered. Ryan screamed at the top of his lungs and I heard some slurping noises.
"Maybe out the back door?" I suggested. He nodded grimly.
We walked. Some unspoken consensus had been reached between us that we wouldn't drive. Maybe it was planned on both of our parts. I didn't care. There were at least five intersections with stop signs between Paige and Jay's house and the nearest liquor store. Someone at one of them would have to run it. For some reason, that thought was not as comforting when I was with Jay.First intersection. Jay stopped and looked around to see if any cars were coming. When he saw that there weren't, he crossed his arms and sighed, looking at his watch.
"There are four more." I said. "They'll get suspicious if we're out too long."
"I bet they won't. That there was the beginnings of an all night fuck-a-thon." He walked out into the street in front of a sedan with a harried mother and three screaming kids in the back seat. She wasn't looking forward. Jay stopped and closed his eyes. I walked up next to him and he smiled, opening his eyes briefly to wink at me. Squeal of brakes as she stopped.
"Are you trying to get killed? Assholes!" she screamed, waving her pepto-bismol pink painted nail fist at us.
"Maybe." Jay said simply, then pulled me across the street. She drove off in a smoke-screen of exhaust and screamed curses.
I kicked at a rock and watched as it skidded into the street. "Maybe today isn't the right day for this."
Jay walked on ahead for a little bit, his face tense but blank. "You're right." he said, turning and waiting for me. "It has to be..." he closed his eyes and thought for a moment. "Paige has to see."
"Would you really want him feeling guilty for that for the rest of his life?"
"He's not feeling guilty now, is he?"
"You didn't tell him that you liked him, how the hell is he supposed to know?!"
A screen door slammed open and an old lady in an ugly pea green housecoat waved her cane around in front of her. "Will you fairies go and have your argument somewhere else? You're driving property values down!" she shrieked. Jay stared at her coolly. I recognized a trademark sulk coming on, and didn't want to be around for it. But instead of shrieking his rage and running up to attack her, he turned to me and kissed me.
So different than with Shane, his lips were tender and supple as they clashed with mine. Tongue begged entrance and I let it, tangling mine with his, feeling desire etch itself onto my teeth. Closed my eyes soon after he closed his and just leaned into him, oh gods it had been so long since I had been kissed by anybody without money being exchanged first.
Something hit the back of my head and we were pulled apart. The old woman was standing there holding her cane defensively. "Get off my property, you fairies!" she shrilled. Jay and I exchanged rolling eyes and walked off, keeping an eye out for her cane.
We made it to the store and back without any incidents. Jay had said nothing the entire way, but he occasionally gave me glances that I tried to read some significance into, but couldn't. So I assumed that he had only done it to piss the old woman off.He unlocked and opened the door to the house, sighing unhappily as the thumping noise from upstairs echoed through the house. "It'll be quieter in my room." he said softly. I nodded.
His room was as far away from the rest of the house as it could possibly be. He got out a key to unlock it. "I found them in here once." he whispered as I gave him a questioning look. "And they weren't just visiting."
White. That was all I could see. Everything was just...white. And the room was almost completely empty, except for the bed. I noticed a small framed picture of Paige lying on the floor, the glass covered with lipstick smears. Jay kicked it under the bed savagely. "Fucker." he whispered. Then he ripped open the twelve pack of beer and tossed me one. "I'm going to get drunk, you're welcome to join me." He sat on the floor and started to chug his.
I sighed and sat down next to him. I figured that explaining to him that getting drunk wasn't the best thing to do right now would only result in him yelling at me instead of at the world. But as I thought about it, he had never yelled at me. Yes, he would yell at Ryan, Amir, and even Paige, but for me there was a sort of begrudging respect, even before Paige and the others got together. Maybe because he knew I had another life that I could retreat to. Not anymore.
He opened another can and stared at it slowly before chugging it down almost as fast as the first. "So how did Ryan know that you liked Paige?" I ventured, feeling somehow curious.
His eyes slid closed and he leaned heavily against the bed. "He probably didn't. I never told him. Didn't tell anyone until last week." Another swig and he rubbed at his forehead.
"It wasn't that hard to guess though. I'm surprised Paige didn't notice." I said slowly, unsure of how it would be received. He nodded.
"Ryan probably guessed. Now he rubs it in my face every chance he gets. Sometimes I just wish that I could escape all this." His hand reached under the bed and pulled out the picture again. "I'm pathetic."
I thought it prudent not to think about the pictures that I kept under my bed, Shane, Gavin, Shane and Gavin, a life that existed once before but didn't anymore. "You could always tell Paige." I said.
A laugh that quickly turned into a hurried rush out of the room. I stared after him. He was crying again. Shrugged and opened another beer. The thumping grew louder and more insistent.
He came back a little bit later, eyes red and swollen, bottom lip still trembling. "I don't want to go through my whole life alone." he whispered, then curled up in a fetal position on the bed.
"I don't think anyone does." I said, getting up to sit next to him. Ran my fingers through his over-treated hair, hair that felt like death. He fell asleep a little while later and I got up quietly to go.
Met Ryan coming down the stairs, wearing a sheet like a toga. "Hey Bobby, you still here? You and Jay an item?" he asked, winking suggestively."No." I said simply, and turned to go.
"Hey wait up!" I stopped.
"What?"
"We were thinking of going off to do a solo thing for a while, Amir wants to sing...but we need a drummer. Do you think you could give me some lessons?" My expression must have been enough of an answer because he pulled away and backed off.