Brighter

Every single time Joe would pull on the string on the single light bulb that would illuminate closest, that was hardly big enough for half a person let alone two whole people, Anny would pull it down and fill the room with darkness again, just to be difficult.

On his sixth try, Joe finally just caved and pulled his legs up against his chest in the corner, sitting inside the pitch black and listening to his and Anny’s breath sound out of sync.

"I know what she was thinking." He finally mumbled into his knee caps.

"Who was thinking?" Reluctantly, Anny gave into conversation and asked, trying to make the shape of her boyfriend out in the darkness.

"Michelle. She has to know by locking us in here, one of us is going to be murdered."

"Or both."

"Yeah." Joe softly scoffed with a tiny trace of a smile. They’d only been encased in the closest for twenty minutes, but they spent the first five of them yelling for someone to let them out and the past ten screaming in one another’s faces. "Anny, why haven’t you just dumped me?" For the first time in what felt like forever, Joe let his guard down and asked in a moment of weakness. He couldn’t see her, but he knew her eyes were fixed on him. "I mean, I’ve been horrible to you."

"It’s not all you," Anny could recognize that she had changed. Somewhere along the line, she wasn’t sure how or when, but she’d become less tolerant, patient, and more aloof. "And you aren’t, like, a bully." She couldn’t believe that she was speaking to him in such a soft and cozy tone of voice, she almost didn’t recognize herself.

"Anny, I’ve been a monster. I’m always brooding and calling you names. This is the first time we’ve talked to each other instead of shout at each other in so long."

"Yeah, I forgot what your speaking voice sounds like." Laughing lightly, she told him, honestly.

"Seriously, though, you desereve better. Why don’t we just break up?"

"Why are you saying this?" Joe had called her ‘crazy’, ‘unreasonable’, ‘bitch’, ‘lunatic’, but in all those moments, he never bothered to just throw her out and end things. Anny was completely thrown for a loop when Joe brought up the idea of splitting apart again.

"Because, I mean, I’m horrible."

"Do you think we should break up?" Realizing that she and Joe still could talk nicely to each other, Anny thought, maybe, they could work through things like Kevin, Nick, and Michelle were trying to prove to them.

"Anny," Pulling up onto his feet, Joe sighed deeply preparing himself for truth as he found his way closer to her, curling up next to a bunch of folded linens that she was sitting next to. "I think, on some unconscious level, I’ve been being such a dick purposely." Finally, he came out and said it.

"I don’t understand..." Anny stared at him under the cloak of darkness and tried to listen without just jumping to conclusions or screaming out her opinion. It had become such a habit lately, that she had to physically bite down on her tongue.

"I just thought....I figured, it would be easier if you dumped me, then telling the truth."

"The truth about what?"

"I did something really bad, Anny....like....four months ago or so, when we were in Toronto....I don’t know why, it just happened and I didn’t think it meant anything, but I feel really guilty now and you didn’t do anything to deserve it, but...." Joe still hadn’t put the unfortunate truth out in words, but through his ramble, Anny had caught on and tears were already burning her cheeks. "I’m sorry, Anny, I’m really sorry." He reached for her hands before they could wrap around her chest and held onto them, desperately trying to hold onto her.

"Don’t touch me!" She shouted, throwing his hands off of her. She stood up onto her feet before her legs turned into jelly and shook on the locked closet door. "Damnit, Mich, this isn’t funny." She wailed, her eyes pouring out silent tears while she banged her fist against the wall.

"Anny, please, can we just talk about it?" Joe liked being able to speak rationally with his girlfriend and tried to calm her down by talking in a soothing low tone.

"Who was she?" Spinning around in a flash, Anny pulled the light bulb back on and asked with her face shaking and her eyes vividly electric.

"Anny..."

"Who was she?" She meant business and she wasn’t going to let anyone sweet talk her off the floor.

"Just some fan." Underneath his shallow breath, Joe admitted, the guilt thick over top of each word.

"Just some fan?!" The more Anny worked herself up, the faster the tears fell. "You cheated on me with just some fan? Not even a super model or an ex-girlfriend, just some crazy screaming fan girl!"

"I know, I’m sorry." Exasperated, just from admitting a secret he hadn’t even told his brothers. Joe sighed.

"You’re sorry? No, Joe, I am sorry! I left my family for you, I defied my mother and screwed up any chance of a relationship with her because I thought you loved me!"

"I do love you, Anny..." Joe scrambled onto his feet, but the moment he got within reaching distance of Anny, she backed up closer against the thin closet door.

"No, I loved you!" She screamed back. "Don’t come near me."

Considering, they were sharing a small few feet of space, it was hard to keep to himself, but Joe knew she needed time to adjust and be alone, so he crawled back down into the corner he was originally curled up in. Anny shut off the light and went back to banging on the door for someone else’s attention.

XXX

Magazines, blogs, fans, reporters, even his own parents regarded Nick as "the wise one" and that’s why it took him no more than seven minutes after arriving at the closest Starbucks with Kevin and Michelle, that Nick blew them off. He could tell, right away, he was just a broken third wheel that was doing nothing, but making things difficult.

Texting Garbo to pick him up, Nick left the two brunettes to be alone, but not before poking a little fun at his oldest brother while Michelle was in the washroom.

"Man, you’d think that Michelle was, like, a big celebrity or something." Nick drew a hand through his hair, leaning against the glass window of Starbucks and ignoring a passer byer taking a picture of him with their camera phone.

"What do you mean?" Kevin acted completely oblivious to what his little brother was hinting at.

"You get googly starstuck eyes every time she walks by. It’s sick." He laughed.

"My eyes aren’t googly!" Kevin defended himself, but it didn’t matter. Garbo was already in front of the coffee shop and Nick had already waved goodbye to Kevin and jumped off of the curb and into the almost vacant parking lot.

In a booth, way in the back of the popular coffee chain, secluded from other people who had also found refuge inside the Starbucks, Kevin was rubbing Michelle’s aching feet, making fun of her sparkly painted toes, as she sipped the last few drops of her berry blossom misto.

"How is it?" Kevin watched as she theatrically smiled and then gasped as soon as she had swallowed the sip of her hot beverage.

"Tastes better than a first kiss." Sweetly, she pulled out an expression she’d been using since she was a little girl. It was one she’d picked up from her grandma years ago. Kevin giggled, thinking to himself that she was the sweetest girl he’d ever met. Not the hottest, sexiest, or even the prettiest, but she was adorable in the way a child was. The kind of person, you love all at once and for no reason.

"Tell me about your first kiss." Simply, he asked her, his eyes narrowing into hers so thoroughly, that she thought, maybe, she was the only other person in the coffee shop for the moment. She swallowed quickly around the lump in her throat, suddenly more nervous than before.

"Excuse me?" Maybe, he had said "I tasted worst fish", not "tell me about your first kiss", she thought.

"Tell me about your first kiss." Blushing due to having to repeat himself, Kevin smiled timidly and tried again.

Boys had asked Michelle a lot of strange things before, usually they involved sexual favors, but no guy had ever asked to know something that she looked at as a very important and defining fact of her life.

"Um," Thrown for a loop, she had to actually think back and recall her first kiss, even though she knew it like the back of her hand. "It was in grade eleven," She nodded, putting her nearly empty cup down on the table in front of them. Kevin stopped massaging her feet and looked surprised to hear that fact. "I know, I was a late bloomer, but yeah, I was seventeen and it was at homecoming. I remember being super excited because I had a date and I didn’t think anyone would ask me, but Steve Zygerliski did. Anyway, we were dancing and the song from Armageddon came on, Aerosmith’s big hit, and he just leaned in and kissed me." Smiling with her cheeks turning as red as the sparkles on her toes, Michelle almost slipped into her nostalgia, wishing things could always be as sweet as that moment was.

"Nice." Kevin nodded, admiring the guy’s romanticism at seventeen.

"It should’ve been," Michelle shrugged her shoulders in one quick motion, recalling the way the kiss ended, a part she usually blocked out. "but, I had shared a package of Reese’s Cups with my friend when were doing our hair and it turns out Steve is majorly allergic to nuts."

"What?" Kevin laughed, throwing his head foreword, as his curls swung lightly around his head. "Are you kidding me?"

"No, his head blew up, like, three sizes bigger than it normally was," Using her hands in front of her, she explained. "and his lips got all swollen." Michelle finally rested her forehead in her hand and laughed at her memories of being an awkward teenager.

"That is a memorable first kiss."

"Yeah, but what about you?" Slowly, she stifled her giggles and looked up to pay attention to him. "Was your first kiss good?"

"Yeah, it was with my neighbor at the time. We were both in grade three and we played spin the bottle."

"Oh, man." Shaking her head, Michelle recalled how embarrassing and traumatic that game was back in junior high.

"Exactly, and I remember it being so weird and I didn’t know if I liked it. She said I was slobbery, so...."

"Are you still friends with her, at least?" Michelle curiously asked. She wasn’t sure why she wanted to know, the question just sparked inside her head.

"We talk from time to time. What about you and Steve?" Kevin chuckled again, gently, just thinking about the poor guy that she nearly killed by kissing him.

"No, he never talked to me again, actually."

"Well, he’s missing out." After finishing up his laughter, Kevin stole the moment with a compliment and earned another sweet smile back from her. "So, do you think we should go free our prisoners?"

"Hopefully, they’re talking again." Michelle pulled her legs off of Kevin’s lap and reached on the ground for her heels.

"Hopefully." He stretched onto his feet, taking both their empty cups and tossing them in the nearby trash like a makeshift basketball player. "How are your feet? Think you can walk again?"

"Maybe." She slipped her feet into her shoes, and she tried not to, but due to the throbbing pain they were still in, her face twisted into a prune shape as she adjusted the heel down into the them.

"Here." Kevin stood in front of her and squatted down, bending his knees as low as they could. "Get on."

"What?"

"I’ll give you a piggy back ride."

"I don’t know, Kevin. I’ll weigh you down." Naturally, like any self-conscious girl, Michelle tried to make up excuses to why she shouldn’t jump onto his back.

"Michelle, just get on my back."

"I haven’t had a piggy back ride in years, I think I didn’t have front teeth last time I got one."

"Hurry up and get on."

"But, it’s a long walk back to the bus..." She tried.

"Michelle."

She wanted to say no, she didn’t want to give Kevin any knowledge of just how heavy she was. Her friends all poked fun at her for having calves of steel due to playing football, but her feet were aching bad enough that she pulled off her heels and climbed onto his leather jacket clad back and let him carry her out like her own personal carriage.