“Oh?” Fuck you, butterflies.
He shakes his head quickly. “Not like that… not like, in a creepy way.”
“Oh.” The first “Oh” was a question. This one was a semi-disappointed, semi-guilty statement.
“So I think I have you worked out.”
“You do?” I ask, clearly surprised.
“Well,” he says, eying the corner of my room where I ended up sleeping last night. “From what I know about you, which isn’t much… and the facts that I’ve accumulated from the small amount of conversing we’ve done… I think I’ve come to the conclusion about who you are. Well, not so much who you are… but what you do…”
“You talk a lot,” I blurt out.
He laughs, this deep, gruff, warm chuckle that emits from his mouth and floats to my ears, then races down to my stomach and again… Fuck you, butterflies. “You’re the first person who’s ever said that,” he says.
“I am?”
He nods slowly. “So… you’re drunk at nine a.m.… not once, but twice now, and you seem to be tired during the day, which means you don’t sleep at night, and whatever has you drinking is something you’re more than likely ashamed of…” He points down my body, past the oversized shirt I’m wearing, pausing for a moment on my bare legs, and then he looks away. “So you work nights, sleep days, and you’re ridiculously drunk in the morning, which I guess is your night… and I don’t think you’re a hooker, so—”
“What the fuck?” I spit.
“And you have a mouth on you, which yeah… I gotta admit… kind of hot.”
“No!”
“No?”
“I’m not a hooker and you can get out now!”
He raises his hands in surrender, then winces and rubs his right shoulder. “Hooker wasn’t my first guess, anyway.”
“I’m scared to ask.”
Cringing slightly, he says, “Stripper?”
“Seriously. Get out.” I point to the door, but he just chuckles, releasing another set of butterflies inside me. Yeah. I definitely hate the way he makes me feel.
He crosses his legs at his ankles and makes himself comfortable on my bed. “I think I’ll stay.”
I pick up a cushion off the floor and throw it at him. He blocks it quickly but then grunts, his hand on his shoulder again.
“Get out!”
“Riley,” he says, all amusement gone. “I was kidding.”
“No you weren’t!”
“You’re right. I wasn’t. But it’s good to know you’re neither of those classy professions.”
I leave him in my room and grab the wine from the fridge, ignoring the judgment in his eyes when I walk in, unscrewing the cap and taking the first sip. He lies down on top of the covers while I half close the blinds, hoping he takes it as a message to shut the hell up and go to sleep. I like him better when he’s not talking. I like to just look at him. And Hello, Guilt.
“So yesterday…” he says.
I sit down on the cushions and grab the pen and paper.
“I was kind of an asshole and I apologize…”
He’s ending his sentences with an open invitation for me to finish them for him but I can’t. And I won’t. He wants to talk, I’ll listen. Apart from that, he’s on his own. In fact, I don’t even want to listen.
After a sigh, he adds, “But I kind of bared my soul to you a little bit. You don’t think you owe me anything in return?”
And now he’s just annoying me. “I’m giving you my bed. I don’t think I owe you shit, Banks.” I throw the paper and pen down and focus on the bottle in my hand. And by focus, I mean focus on emptying it.
“You know my last name?”
I roll my eyes. “We went to the same high school.”
“I know that, Riley, don’t patronize me. It’s fucking annoying.”
I ignore his anger… or welcome it… I’m not sure. “Of course I know your name,” I tell him, my voice softer. “You’re the Dylan Banks. Mr. Popular. Half of the ‘It’ couple.”
“The ‘It’ couple?”
“Yeah… you and Heidi, right? I assume you aren’t together anymore…”
“What makes you say that?” he asks, his voice so low it’s almost a whisper.
“Because if I were your girlfriend, I would’ve been waiting for you at home, counting down the seconds until you showed up. I wouldn’t be letting you sleep in the back of your truck and I sure as hell wouldn’t be letting you sleep in another girl’s bed.”
He’s silent for a long time. So am I. But I know he’s awake because I can see and hear his breathing get faster, heavier… and then stop. “Good night, Hudson.”
“You know my name?”
“Of course I know your name, Riley. You’re the girl next door…”
Five
Dylan
I could come up with a hundred different excuses as to why I’m lying in a random girl’s bed while she sits on the floor watching me, not bothering to hide that she knows I’m watching her, too.
I could say I was tired because I didn’t get to sleep last night, or that I wanted to get out of the garage, or the house—where Eric was once again entertaining the same girl. I could say that I was bored, or lonely even, and that I just wanted to be around someone. Even if it meant being in the same darkened room not speaking or even acknowledging each other. But like I said, they’d just be excuses because the truth? The truth is that I’d waited up all night, almost on the edge of impatience, anxious for the loud music to sound so I had a reason to knock on the door. See, I had it all planned. Music would play, I’d get mad, then come marching over here hoping for the same outcome as yesterday. I’d yell, she’d offer me her bed, and the rest didn’t really matter.
When the music started, I smiled… then I panicked. Because I had no idea why I was smiling.
I listened as the song ended, then started again, all while I stood in the garage fucking around with the engine and trying to convince myself that whatever curiosity I had about her… that’s all it was: curiosity. And by the third replay that curiosity was enough to have me dropping my tools and walking over to her house. I was nervous, to be honest, because unlike yesterday, I wasn’t running on exhaustion or annoyance. Though, I wouldn’t tell her that.
She opened the door, looking worse than she did the day before, but that’s not what caught me by surprise. It was the fact that she wasn’t surprised.
I span some bullshit about not being able to sleep but before I could finish, she’d already offered me her bed. I told her I thought she was a hooker, and then a stripper… which got the reaction any sane person would expect. What can I say? It’d been a long time since I’d had a one-on-one conversation with an attractive girl. Not that I was trying to impress her, but I wasn’t trying to unimpress her either. That’s not even a word. Heidi—she would’ve called me out on that in the most patronizing way. Riley, though—she’d probably laugh at me, call me an idiot, but do it in a way that had me laughing with her. Maybe. Or maybe she’d throw something at me. Either way, I’d take it.
And now I was comparing them like it somehow mattered. It didn’t. But it mattered that Riley liked me, at least enough to tolerate me, because as strange as it seems, I enjoy the semi-darkness and the silence we share. But most of all, I enjoy the unspoken understanding between us, the one that says “Hey, we’re fucked up. One gets drunk. One gets mad. And we don’t even care why or how we got to be like that but it doesn’t matter. We don’t want to know. Let’s just be fucked up together but apart.”
So.
Maybe I’ve thought about her way too much.
Maybe I haven’t stopped thinking about her since I wrote her that stupid note.
And, maybe, going by the way she keeps looking at me from whatever she’s scribbling in her notebook, she’s thought about me, too.
* * *
I don’t know how long I’ve been lying here watching her. An hour, maybe two.
She has this routine, I’ve worked
out, where she takes a sip of her God-awful wine, looks up, and then smiles. After a moment, she’ll scribble something down, tear out the page, fold it, then place it in one of the many jars that line her wall. She does this a few times before looking over at me. There’s no smile when she does. It’s the opposite. And just like the reasons of our fucked-up-ness, I don’t want to know why. The longer I watch, the less she smiles, the less she writes, the more she drinks, and the more she looks over at me. After a while, there are no more smiles, no more writing, just silent tears streaming down her face—tears that reflect the sunlight.
Everything in me stills—everything but my fingers itching to reach out and touch her.
Fuck.
It’s selfish—I know—but I don’t want to speak. I don’t want to ask. At least not yet. Because I know what will happen if I do. She’ll tell me the truth and will want the same from me. I’ll give it to her. Floodgates open. Snowball effect. And the next thing we know we’re in deep. Too deep.
I don’t want deep.
I want the horizon.
I want the calm.
She downs the rest of the wine between breaks of her sobbing, gripping the bottle to her chest. She doesn’t even care that I see it. Maybe because she’s seen me at my worst and left it alone, she expects the same from me.
She falls asleep, or passes out, which in her case could be either. Her body lays still, curled in a ball, her breaths shallow, and maybe it’s messed up for me to feel grateful that she’s out. Not because I don’t have to deal with it, but because I have a feeling this is her way of searching and finding the same thing I’m looking for: The Calm.
Quietly, I get out of her bed, grab the blanket by her feet and place it over her. She exhales loudly, almost like a sigh and I stare at her sleeping form, just for a moment.
I try to remember the color of her eyes, and the only thing I can come up with is sad.
Her eyes are the color of sadness.
My gaze catches on the notebook placed next to her head, and even though it might be wrong, I still find myself giving in to the curiosity and reading the words that caused her tears to fall.
If I told you to jump, would you ask how high? Or would you just jump? If there were no reason behind it, would you still take the leap? What if I told you that at the end, there would be nothing? What if you made a splash on the world and lived in an eternal state of floating? Would you make waves? What if you couldn’t float? What if air lost the battle, and you lost the war? Would you want to know what was on the other side? Would you care? Or would you just jump… because I was the one who asked you?
Six
Dylan
It almost becomes a joke, I convince myself, waiting until I hear the music playing so I can knock on her door and pretend to be pissed while she pretends to be irritated I’m there.
It’s a game. Because I’m not mad and she’s not annoyed. I know this because she’s never surprised to see me show up at her door.
Over the next few days, we set a routine.
Me knocking. Her opening. Us in her room. Me in her bed. Her in her corner.
I sleep. She writes. I watch. She cries.
We never ask why.
Sometimes we’ll talk, which always ends in a bunch of humorous insults and the occasional throwing of a cushion. Two days ago, she kicked me out by saying her mom was coming home soon. I hadn’t even realized how long I’d spent there. She didn’t seem to mind.
Then, yesterday, there was no obnoxious music/invitation.
Yesterday fucking sucked.
Riley
Dylan knocks on my door halfway through the first play of the song. He doesn’t bother with any pleasantries, just pushes on the door, steps around me and marches up to my room where he unplugs the speaker and then turns to me, his hands on his hips. “You left me hanging yesterday,” he says.
I try to remember what all happened the day before but the morning booze already in my system has my memory a little hazy. “My mom was home,” I tell him.
He nods and rubs the back of his head while his gaze wanders around my room. Finally, he sighs, his head jerking toward the bed. “Can I?”
I shrug. “You still having trouble sleeping?”
He makes his way over to the bed and sits on the edge to remove his shoes. “A little.” He climbs under the covers and pulls the blankets to his chin. “Why are you home during the day, anyway? You’re not in college or something?”
“No,” I answer, taking up my spot on the cushions.
“You don’t work?”
“No.” I pick up the notepad and start to write.
Why is he here?
“So you’re what? Taking some time off?”
Why do I like that he’s here?
I shrug in response.
He shifts in the bed until he’s facing me. “How drunk are you right now?”
Why do I like that he’s here?
I hate that he’s here.
“I like you better when you don’t talk.”
He stifles a laugh into the pillow and I narrow my eyes at him. I don’t know why he thinks it’s funny. It’s not. If he keeps talking, keeps asking questions, I’ll revoke the privileges of my bed which I’ve so kindly offered for the last week and he can get the hell out. I’m grumpy. Not because I’m drunk, but because he’s not the only one who’s been losing sleep. Guilt can do that—make you lose sleep, I mean.
“Hey, Riley.”
I roll my eyes at him, trying to make it as obvious as possible that I wasn’t kidding. I really do like him better when he shuts the hell up.
He laughs again, then quickly recovers. “Can you adjust the blinds? I’m already in bed and it’s so warm and cozy.”
I get up and do what he asks because the quicker he’s asleep, the sooner I can go back to drinking. When I’m done, I sit back down in my spot, grab the bottle and take a long, well-earned swig.
“Hey, Riley.”
“Jesus Christ! What?”
“God, you’re feisty.”
“I’m sorry.” My words come out in a clipped tone. “This isn’t part of the deal.”
“The deal?” he asks incredulously.
“Yeah. You. Here. Talking and asking questions. It’s not part of the deal.”
He’s silent a long time before he shifts again, putting his left hand behind his head now, his face toward the ceiling. With his voice low, he says, “I was just going to say, after I crash for a couple hours, I’d like to take you out to lunch or something. Just to say thank you, I guess.” He clears his throat. “I’ve never once seen you eat while I’m here. I thought it would be fun. Maybe get some cake to celebrate your birthday…”
I take my time trying to form an appropriate response. I take too long.
“So?” he asks.
“So… I can’t.”
He sighs. Long and loud and with obvious disappointment. Not at my answer, but at me. It should hurt. It should make me feel something, but it doesn’t. Maybe because I’ve done nothing but disappoint people for the past year and a half.
“I’m actually sleeping okay,” he admits out of nowhere. “My brother moved some shit around in my old room and put a mattress on the floor. I don’t come here to sleep, although it helps. I come here because you don’t ask questions and being at home… I guess I get scared that my dad or brother are going to ask me something I don’t want to answer and it becomes a bigger deal than it is. They were both Marines so it’s like… the thing that connects us all together. My brother and I don’t have much else in common. In fact, I don’t think we really know each other at all. So I’m here hiding out because I don’t want to risk it.”
I take another sip. Write another sentence.
I hate that he’s here.
I like that he’s here.
He continues, “None of my friends know I’m home. I haven’t told them. So, I guess you’re the only person I have right now—which is dumb—because up until a week ago, I didn’t e
ven really know you. So I’m sorry if I’m asking the wrong questions. Pushing the wrong buttons. Because I completely get why you’re pissed—”
“I’m not pissed,” I cut in, my voice barely a whisper. His words hit me hard—right in the feels—I totally get it. “I’m not used to having anyone around,” I continue. “And it’s been a while since I’ve had to talk to anyone besides my mom so—”
“Does your mom know you drink?” he interrupts.
I scoff and bring the bottle to my lips. “Who do you think supplies me with it?”
“You do realize how fucked up that is, right?”
“Says the guy sleeping in his neighbor’s bed because he can’t deal with reality.”
“We’re such a fucking mess,” he says, and I can hear the humor in his voice.
“That’s because you’re pushing the wrong buttons,” I joke.
“It’s like the worst form of slow dance.”
“A horrible act of foreplay,” I add. Then choke on my own breath.
He laughs. “Foreplay, Hudson? Really? Are you planning on this leading to sex? Because it’s been a while and I’m down for whatever.”
“Shut up.” I throw a cushion at him. I was going to throw the bottle of wine but I like it too much.
“Quit throwing shit at me.”
“Quit making me want to.”
“So what do we do now? Make out?”
“Shut up!” I tell him, but I’m laughing.
I add another note to my stream of thoughts.
He makes me laugh.
He chuckles with me, low and deep.
“Dylan?”
“Yeah, Riley?”
“The lunch thing…”
“Mm?”
“I’m not really up for leaving the house…” I admit.
“I can bring us something back?”
“And the cake…”
“How many candles?”