Story?
1
Belle crashed into the apartment like she usually does. The crowd turned to her and acknowledged her existence in the drunken, habitual manner partygoers do, a collective “HEYYYYY!” saturating the air. I looked at her across the room from where I stood then back to Zach then I told him I’d be five minutes. He looked at me quizzically but let me go nonetheless. Or rather, I’d already started on my way to Belle.
“Hey,” I half shouted through the awful party music. “Can we talk?”
“I guess, yeah.”
I motioned for the door, guiding the space between her shoulder blades with my hand. I turned back to Zach, who was unsuccessfully fighting off the brutal come-ons of Brittany Garraway, the short and not-ugly-but-not-really-attractive-either sophomore from Who Cares, Tennessee. Zach shot me one of those SAVE ME looks but I was nearly outside.
Cigarette smoke rolled over me like a warm fog. The party inside went mute all at once as I shut the door and entered the vacuum of space. I nodded to the smokers sitting on lawn chairs, and started walking toward the street lined with cars and trashcans.
“So what is it?”
“I just— Hey,” I waved at a classmate on their way into the apartment. “I just think you’re being a little unfair.” We had stopped underneath a street lamp by then so I leaned up against it to stop my swaying.
“What do you mean?” she asked. God, is she really this blind? I looked at her blankly for a second. Maybe it was the rum and Coke getting to me or maybe I was actually mad. Probably the rum, but…
“Look, Belle, I care about you. A lot. And I’m going to care about you for a while probably, and I just don’t think it’s fair, or whatever, to just, you know. I don’t think I should be blamed for giving a shit about it. I don’t think you should get angry with me for trying to look out for you, or for thinking that I am. That’s stupid as fuck, right?” I was off the lamppost now, my spittle peppering her stupid red scarf and she stared at me with that dumb look only Annabelle Murdock could give on this night at this god-awful party with the awful music and Zach inside practically getting raped by the garrulous Brittany Garraway. “And if you’re not going to let me ignore you, then god dammit, let me care about you. It’s all I’ve got left,” and I slumped back against the pole, my breath forming little clouds in front of my face because I just realized how fucking cold it was.
“Cam,” her teeth were chattering. “Cam, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t even know what you’re trying to say.” She was shivering now against the autumn wind. Her scarf obviously wasn’t that warm. I took off my jacket and held it out for her.
“No. I want to go inside.”
“Fine.”
“I think you should go home, Cam.”
I tried thinking of a comeback. “I think you… It’s fucking cold.”
I was back at my apartment. Zach wasn’t home yet. Fuck. “FUCK!” I shouted at the wall, collapsing onto the couch.
“Wake up. Hey, Cam, wake up.”
I rolled my head toward the sound. I was gone. It was a shadow. Probably Zach. But my eyes are tired again.
“HEY. Seriously, look at me.”
Not Zach. Who are you? Oh, use your voice. “Who?”
“Cam…”
“No. I’m…”
“Cam, it’s me.”
Blink.
Stare. Unfocused light filtering through the corneas of my vast regret.
“Belle?”
“There we go. How’re you doing? Good?”
She came into view like flashes of lightning.
“What are you doing here?” I said, struggling to make words follow one another like they normally should.
“I just wanted to check up on you is all. I didn’t mean to be…” and her voice trailed off as she dimmed into blackness.
You stared past me, walking backwards down the driveway of your old house. The gravel crunched beneath your feet and I heard my heart crackle in response. You were smiling. You were smiling like when you smile in pictures, your lips pulled tight against your teeth in an unnatural way, and it hurt to watch you walk away and smile so fake. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t follow you and smooth out your lips and make you more genuine. I bled through my heart suffering the deceit. I couldn’t say anything. I was frozen in hunger, in emptiness. Every step away from me was another step toward my insides imploding. I knew you were just going to keep on walking backwards into eternity and there wasn’t anything I could ever do to stop you or your fake smile from leaving me.
I woke up. Then I was asleep again. No no no no no it can’t end there. What else? What can I do?
2
In the bathroom, I studied the stale snakeskin of the night still clinging to my face. The mirror reflected my shame in ways only my eyes could detect. “Oh, Cameron. Why?” I asked out loud, half expecting my reflection to answer me, but it’s never that obvious.
I opened the door to my room and saw Belle asleep in my bed, curled into a tangle of bed sheets and hair. Of course. The sunlight lazed through the window blinds, her beauty vented and cracked in slats of color: the inevitable messiness of her auburn hair, the freckles set into her creamy skin, the gold-speckled green and light brown iris hiding beneath her closed eyelids. I sighed out my lust and frustration.
“Hey,” I whispered close to her, nudging her shoulder too lightly. Still asleep. “Hey, Belle. Wake up.”
Belle groaned angrily at me as I continued shaking her awake. “No… I’m so tired!” her voice creaked like an old wooden ship. I took a step away from her. “Lay down with me, at least.”
Another step back, “No. Come on, Belle.”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me in. I tumbled over her and landed on the bed, my head enveloped in her hair. I breathed her in and was instantly intoxicated. Some more breaths and I was gone.
“Cam, over here!”
I turned my body and followed the voice without looking up. She was there, I already knew, and she would be wearing old jeans tucked into second-hand leather boots and a tight fitting t-shirt wrapped around her curves. I was next to her then and could feel her smile underneath my skin.
“How are you?” I asked but the answer didn’t matter. I was caught up in the almost of a hug lingering between our bodies. I smiled at her day and knew mine wasn’t as interesting so I’d have to think of something if she asked. She didn’t, and I was back to our almost hug.
Could I will it to happen? I would imagine it for as long as my mind could focus between realities, but that wasn’t long enough to cause a cosmic shift in my favor, clearly. I folded myself into the thought of her wrapped around me like a wedding ring, and I was okay with the idea of her squeezing my waist too tightly and leaving banded imprints across my skin.
“I’ve got to go soon.”
“Hm?”
“I’m leaving,” Belle’s voice entered my reality.
“Okay,” I mumbled. Realizing how blatant the disappointment was in my voice I mustered a smile and hoped she hadn’t noticed. She breathed in sharply through her noise while getting up.
“Bye!” and then she opened up her arms and I was within in her.
She smelled like black amethyst and cigarette smoke and oh my God why am I in love with you? I rolled over in bed, her hair stuck to my wet lips, and I coughed up my exasperation.
3
What am I doing right now? You still love her, you dumbass, and you’re going to just lay here and take it. Yep. And be miserable and lonely for as long as you can imagine. Yeah. Well fuck it. Yeah… Fuck that.
“Belle?”
“Yeah?”
“I think you should go.”
“And why is that, my dear Cameron?” she spoke through a coy smile.
“Because,” and I paused as if I were thinking about the right words to say, but I already knew exactly what was on my mind. “I love you.”
The following silence lasted about ten years. Ten years in which I lied in a petrified state of horror and complete disbelief at what I had just said. Wait, you actually… What?? Belle stared at the slowly rotating ceiling fan above our heads for another five years and then shifted her body to face mine. Abort. Abort. It’s too late to abort. Shit! I turned my head and shrugged at her.
“Cameron, I… I’m sorry,” she said with a slight frown on her face. “I mean. It’s just. Never going to work out between us. Not like that, at least.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m really sorry, Cam.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’ll just go then.”
“Yeah.”
Belle got up from my bed and hopped over the perpetual mess of my room and, almost outside the doorway, spun around and smiled sadly at me. It was such a fleeting flash of teeth and lips I didn’t have time to respond with my own sad, little smile, but then I realized I didn’t want to smile at her at all. Fuck that.
Zach was in the living room watching Firefly on the SciFi channel. I sat down on the couch next to him and got lost in my own thoughts for a while.
“How’re you feeling?” he finally asked, breaking my stupor.
“Good. Why?”
“I dunno. You seem out of it or something.”
I nodded silently in agreement.
“So. Let’s go do something,” he offered, slapping my knee. “C’mon, get up.”
Zach was already grabbing his keys by the time I was off the couch. We left the apartment with Firefly still flashing on the TV screen.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Not really sure yet,” Zach shrugged and opened the door to his Jeep. We both hopped in and soon we were barreling down the highway listening to Wilco’s live album, Kicking Television. I sung along to the first couple of songs with Zach but eventually I just stared out the window and reveled in how everything in front or behind us moved so slowly while everything to our sides fell away so quickly in blurry lines of landscape colors. How can I keep up with it? The world is moving so fast around me and I just want to slow down and breathe for once. Slow down, world, you cruel, cruel bitch. I let out a long, exasperated sigh and looked over to Zach.
“So, what the fuck is up with you and Belle, anyway?”
I was surprised by his bluntness and recoiled a little. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you guys left the party last night at the same time, and then she left your bedroom this morning. What’s that all about?” Why do you care so much?
“She left after… Wait. So she left when I did? I thought she went back to the party.”
“Nope. When you guys walked outside that’s the last I saw of you. So, did you, uh,” Fuck? No. “do anything?” He was looking ahead at the road then, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration.
“Not really, no. I mean, I was so drunk I just fell asleep on the couch and I think I remember her trying to wake me up at one point. She must’ve gone to bed in my room. Didn’t you see me on the couch?”
“Huh. No, I walked in pretty much as Belle was leaving. I actually… stayed over at Brittany’s last night,” he said nonchalantly but with a giant grin breaking his straight face.
“No way.”
“Yes.”
“Wow. And?”
“Well, you know,” he started.
“Do I?” and we both laughed.
Zach spent the next couple of minutes telling me his story in the dramatic and exaggerated way he normally tells stories, and I would laugh or scoff depending on how ridiculous he got. Zach has a way with words that makes you wonder if he’s completely fucking with you or if crazy shit actually happens to him on a daily basis.
“No way,” I said again. Brittany was apparently into some questionable sexual activities, some of which neither Zach nor I had heard of.
“I’m telling you, man, I didn’t even know where to start.”
“That’s… kinda messed up, actually,” I admitted, my face warped in confusion. “How does that even work?”
“It just did. I don’t know. I think you have to experience it for yourself.”
“There is no way I’m doing that, Zach. Nope.”
“Suit yourself. I would absolutely love to be vag-brothers with you, and I’m pretty sure Brittany would be down if you were.”
“I can’t even take you seriously right now,” I smirked, rolling my eyes. “Well, at least one of us got lucky, right? That’s a successful party, I’d say.”
“Depends on how you define lucky!”
“Also depends on your definition of success,” I countered. We both burst out laughing, Zach driving faster down the highway while I rolled down the window and stuck my head out like a dog trying to catch the wind.
4
“So, where the hell are we?”
“You know, that’s a really good question, Cameron, my fellow weary traveler.”
Zach and I had taken a random exit some two hours down the highway and kept on that road for as long as we could, taking a left at the last, lonely stop sign. We ended up at some kind of truck stop saloon convenience store.
