The Now or Never Kind

I stared attentively at the empty television. If I were to look at pretty much anyone else in the room, I would have put myself in a staring contest. So I didn’t.

“It’s… like you’re older,” Gabe said, head tilting slightly as it sat on his fist. “Only not.”

“Less innocent-looking, I think,” Bill mused.

I twisted around, leaning over the back of the couch. “Beeeeth!” I called. “The boys are being creepy! Are you ready yet?”

“It’s hot,” Alex declared, leaning closer to me. I narrowed my eyes at him and planted a hand on his face, shoving him away; I hopped off the couch and leaned on the back of Zack’s chair. He smiled up at me.

Figures the quiet one would be empathetic. Though he was also the only other person with a nose ring.

My formerly blonde friend flounced down the stairs, dressed typically attractive, and stopped when all the guys turned to stare. Somehow she’d managed to escape the first pass through the apartment, so I got a break while everyone mooned over her. Apparently she was right when she told me every guy has a redhead fantasy.

I tapped Zack on the head, making him look up. “Do you think we’re ever going to leave, or should you and I just go out?”

“Or we could raid whatever Gabe has here,” he suggested lightly. That got things moving. I think Saporta was already afraid of us drinking him out of house and home. Even though he’d already said that he was never there anyway.

I didn’t ask where we were going, and I merely rolled my eyes when Zack, whose lap I was sitting on in the cab, covered my ears. Beth, however, argued the point that we had every right to know where we were going, and surprises and secrets were for people with no creativity to cover their transgressions.

Well, at least Alex learned that Beth bites the hand that tries to silence her.

It turned out that we were going to a karaoke bar. “Are you out of your mind?” Beth asked, looking up at the sign as she pulled out her fake ID. “Four-sevenths of us are professional vocalists!”

“True,” I said, handing my new ID to the bouncer, “But six-sevenths of us can sing decently or better.”

The others looked at each other calculatingly. Jack pouted at me. “What’s wrong with my singing voice?” he asked.

I raised an eyebrow at him, grinning crookedly. “You mean, besides the fact that you sound like a bleating sheep?” He pushed my shoulder, tripping me into the bar. I walked backwards, pushing out my lower lip. “Now that’s not very nice, Jackieboy. No way to treat a lady. Be a doll and you boys grab a booth. Beth and I are going to get ourselves some drinks.” I winked and sauntered over to the bar beside my partner in crime.

Beth perched daintily on a stool and leaned on her elbow while I leaned backwards against the bar beside her and surveyed the room coolly. “So,” Beth stated, eyes sliding down the bar.

“So,” I agreed, half a smile tugging at my lips as I noted how many pairs of us were fixed on us.

“How long d’you think it’ll ta—”

“Ladies,” the bartender called over the din of talking and karaoke machine. ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ was being sung by two very large burly guys. Scary. “These are for you.” He set two Long Island Ice Teas on the bar in front of us and smiled dryly. “For the sexy redheads from the guys over yonder.”

Both Beth and I looked where he jerked his head and saw three guys, I’d say late twenties, at the end of the bar waving and smiling at us. I raised my glass in their direction and sipped my straw. Beth rolled her eyes subtly when I smiled pointedly at her.

“Can we go to the—I never thought I’d say this—safety of the boys before those weirdoes come over and try to chat us up?” she asked, picking up her drink.

I glanced back at our enabling sleazeballs and shrugged, straightening up and following her to the table that the guys had snagged. I didn’t knock off Alex’s arm that slung across my shoulders the instant I sat down—I realised that I really didn’t have a need anymore—and I noticed that Beth didn’t seem to mind William doing the same thing either. To be fair, though, there was a vast different between Beckett and Gaskarth.

“Chicks have it easy, dude,” Jack griped, adjusting his baseball cap. The guys hadn’t even ordered yet.

“Just because guys are stupid and willing to spend money on women out of their league,” Beth began, sipping her drink.

Not willing to listen to people arguing all night, I interrupted cheerfully, “Who wants to sing first?”

Silence. I looked around the group; the boys of All Time Low were distinctly not looking at me. Gabe was smirking at Bill, who soon got that grin on his face. Bill poked Beth’s shoulder. “Wanna get, like, seven more drinks with one song?” he suggested, grinning.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I have a drink currently.”

“Well, either way, chicita,” Gabe said, scooting sideways in the booth, “You’ve gotta move, because us tall kids gotta belt some old school tunes.”

As they sauntered towards the stage, we underage folk gave each other weird looks. We weren’t sure what Gabe’s definition of ‘old school tunes’ was, but it’d probably be way better than anything else we’d heard so far. I clapped Alex over the head when I caught him trying to steal some of my drink.

“Miiiiiine,” I hissed, narrowing my eyes and sipping at the straw protectively.

He laughed. “You got it for free!”

“We earned them for free,” Beth corrected.

“By being female and attractive?” Zack guessed, amused.

“…Duh.”

Old school tunes turned out to be “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, and it had us all laughing our asses off because, come on, two skinny giants singing, “I got all my sisters with me” is just too hilarious for words.

Apparently that was just for irony’s sake. The next from our group was Zack singing Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life,” which I greatly appreciated, having a great love for the band from my hometown. Then I decided to metal the place up a bit with Iron Maiden and “Wasted Years”; no one seemed to get it. Alex surprised everyone, particularly those of us of the retro persuasion, by singing “Ziggy Stardust.”

“I didn’t even know you knew who David Bowie was,” William laughed as Alex sat down. The younger singer shrugged and downed half his beer.

We started a drinking game eventually: for every love song sang, we took a shot. Every note that made everyone wince, another shot. Every song no one could understand because of slurring, another shot. Two more interesting notes: the more drunk our group got, the more we decided we should show off our talent, and every time Beth or I sang some shmuck would buy us another drink.

So we all ended up pretty tipsy and vocal.

As Jack and Alex were singing “Soulja Boy” and, naturally, doing the dance, I got into a heated discussion with the rest of the table—except for Gabe, on whose lap I was sitting and around whose neck I had an arm crooked—about the scarcity of female singers in rock and the even higher rate of them not having a decent vocal range.

“What about Hayley Williams?” Zack challenged, leaning on his elbows towards me.

I waved his comment away with my hand next to Gabe’s face. “Hayley’s a perfect example of my point,” I said emphatically. “She’s a soprano and the lowest she sing is still in the high part of my comfort range. I’m not saying she’s not talented—I’m not an idiot—she’s really good at what she does; I’m just saying it’s hard to find a vocalist who isn’t soprano.”

Bill laughed, shaking his head at me. “And people call you selfless,” he joked.

“Hey.” I pointed a finger at him and frowned as my hand wavered in front of his face. “This is not about me. Or my bizarrely wide vocal range.”

He snapped his teeth at my finger and I snatched it back. “I think it’s your turn, Ange,” Zack said, shaking his empty bottle of beer as his bandmates came back. I swung myself to my feet… and landed immediately in Bill’s lap. He smiled warmly, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Whoa, maybe you should lay off…”

“No, I would have fallen over sober,” I said, pushing at William’s arms; he pouted, but let me go. “Low blood pressure.” I smiled at the table before I sauntered towards the stage. “Who wants to be the David Bowie to my Freddie Mercury?”

A few seconds later I heard the table protested, “No!” as I picked Queen’s “Under Pressure” and then Jack bounced up beside me in the line. “And it all becomes clear,” I chuckled, stealing his hat, jamming it on my head, and ruffling up his hair. He simply knocked it out of his face and grinned at me.

I didn't expect much of Jack: play guitar, jump around, act like his crazy amusing self. Generally just be Jack. My low expectations were far exceeded with our duet, however. Sure, he didn't know all the words and we both cracked up several times, but Jack didn't butcher one of my favourite classics. And his Bowie impression was hilarious.

"Impressive," Gabe said, clapping as we wandered back to the table. "We only had to take one shot for sour notes."

I tilted my head, considering, at the seat now open beside Jack before I groaned slightly. "I'll be right back," I announced, heading towards the bar again. "Need water." I wove my way through the room, edging around tables and chairs and pretty much avoiding eye contact with anyone. I smiled when I got the bartender’s attention and kept smiling when he went to get me a bottle of water. This would be the first drink I was buying that night.

“Excuse me,” a male voice said. I turned to find a relatively cute guy (if a little more preppy than my taste) standing beside me, and he seemed a bit concerned. “I seem to have lost my number. Can I get yours?”

Bear in mind that I was a female in a male-dominated business and thus was used to getting hit on. And then remember the type of people I was friends with. You’ll soon understand how incredibly difficult it was not to laugh in his face.

I hoped he didn’t take me biting my lip to keep from becoming hysterical as flirtatiousness. “Um,” I said, voice wavering. “…Are you serious?”

He smiled—I had to admit he had a nice smile—and leaned on the bar beside me. “It’s a cheap line, but yeah,” he continued. “I saw you singing up there and I thought how beautiful and talented you are, so I thought I’d ask for your number.”

I picked up the water bottle the bartender set on the bar, handing him the money with a smile, and cracked it open, eyes shooting from myassailant admirer, who hadn’t even told me his name, to the table of my friends. They all seemed immersed in conversation. But luckily for me, one of them had a shorter attention span.

“You see that guy over there?” I asked, pointing to Jack around my water bottle. The guy leaned into me to look where I pointed. I raised a hand and wiggled my fingers at Jack, smiling warmly; he grinned and waved back. I arched an eyebrow at the guy beside me, who looked slightly miffed, as well as calculating how he could beat him up. “I don’t think he’d like that much. And come to think of it neither would any of the myriad of six-footers at that table.”

I sipped my water as his eyes widened. He’d probably just noticed Zack and Gabe. I sauntered away from the bar, looping again through the room, and sat beside Jack, nudging his arm around me. The rest of the table looked confused while I replaced his baseball cap.

“Congratulations, Jackieboy. You get to pretend to be my boyfriend for the rest of the night.”

He grinned, knocking back another swallow of beer. “What?” Alex protested. “Why him?”

“Because for once, he was paying attention,” I replied.

I stopped accepting drinks at that point, but it didn’t really matter because I was nearly pickled anyway, and spent the rest of the night cosseting and being generally “coupley” with Jack. Which was weird for me, since I didn’t even act cuddly in public with R—anyone I dated.

I am sooooooo not above making myself forget his name.

Fitting seven people into a cab was difficult, but it was nearly impossible when all of us were drunk. Eventually we all got settled in—damning Gabe for automatically getting shotgun because of height—and took off towards Saporta’s apartment; apparently we were all too drunk to be wandering on our ways to hotel rooms.

Zack was humming to himself. I could tell because I was on his lap and leaning back against his chest. I smiled, both because of the reverberation of the sound and because I liked how protected I felt with his arms around my waist. Zack was just… generally comforting.

I turned my head to the side and lightly kissed his cheek. Zack, flushing slightly, leaned his head against the window and looked at me curiously. I simply smiled.

The guys always told me I was a friendly drunk.

For this reason, it was probably a good thing that the cab stopped outside our destination. I stumbled out of the backseat and sat carefully on the stoop. Even though he was just as if not more drunk than I, William helped me up and held onto my elbow as we walked up the steps. The rest of us waited, swaying for various reasons on our feet, as Gabe fumbled with his keys, until Beth grew impatient, snatched the keyring from him, and jammed key after key into the lock. Soon the front door opened, allowing all of us to stagger in.

Beth and I walked crookedly down the hall to our guest room, lazily dressed for sleeping, and flopped into bed. I shut my eyes, exhausted from singing and drinking, and cleared my thoughts. As usual, things kept swimming through my brain, but after a while I realised that Beth’s breathing had slowed a long time before.

When I looked over at the clock radio, red numbers blazed 2:23 at my straining eyes. Careful not to disturb the recent redhead beside me, I crawled out of bed and shuffled quietly out the door. The apartment was dark, which was good for me, seeing as my eyes would explode if it wasn’t. I shuffled down the hall, past the forms of tall boys sprawled out on the couch and in chairs, pausing when I noticed the light in the kitchen was on.

I squinted, holding my hand over my eyes. “Jack, what the fuck are you doing up?” I whispered.

He turned halfway, pausing in making himself a sandwich. “Just ‘cause I’m not a tortured-soul singer doesn’t mean I can’t be an insomniac,” he quipped, turning back his work.

Chuckling, I sat heavily at the table and leaned into my hand. “Yeah, well we have to have something to draw from.” I watched him spread mustard on the bread. “But you drank as much as the rest of us, and everyone else is passed out.”

“What can I say? Some nights I’m the lucky one.”Want to see how far that theory goes? I shook my head sharply, trying to wave that thought away. Sobering up would be good, except I didn’t know how long that would take. I groaned to myself. “Hangovers won’t be fun. Remembering could go either way, probably favouring amusement.”

Jack pressed his masterpiece together, studying it from several angles. “Why?” he asked conversationally. “Did you do something you’ll regret?”

“No, I meant tonight was really good,” I explained. “Hanging out with you guys…” I shrugged, eyes drooping shut; they hurt from the light, and it wasn’t helping the headache that was forming. “I try not to have regrets, though I think this morning certainly counts. But I guess since I’m still awake there’s still opportunity.”

Another thing Matt, Jesse, and Sean said was that I talked a lot when I was drunk. Long-winded speeches about metaphysics; detailed explanations of definitions of words; distracted, bizarre, hard to follow trains of thought. Yeah, that sounded about right for the evening.

“Opportunity, huh?”

I opened one eye: Jack was leaning over the counter towards me with an intrigued smile on his face. A similar smile tugged at my lips, but I closed my eye again. “Hope springs eternal, Jackieboy.”

Oddly enough, he sighed. “Why’d you pick me?”

Change of subject. Work, little addled brain! My eyes flickered open and my head tilted to the side. “Che?”

Jack chuckled, hanging his head a moment before looking up at me again. “In the bar,” he clarified. “You could’ve had anybody.”

I propped my chin up on my fist and smiled condescendingly. "Putting aside my lack of self-confidence and not saying, ‘Like hell I could,’ you're wondering why I decided to hang off the lanky amusing guitarist rather than either of the more intimidating figures among our friends?"

He blinked, staring blankly. “Uh… I think I'm a little more drunk than I thought.”

I giggled, running a hand through my hair to push it out of my face. I hated that I giggled when I was drunk, but there wasn’t much to be done; it was either stop drinking or stop having reasons to laugh, and I sure as hell didn’t want to do either. “That is why you,” I said, climbing to my feet and meandering over to him. “Well, that and you happened to look up at the right time.” I grinned, falling into chuckles again, and hugged him.

Jack hugged me back tightly. Hugging Jack was always good; it kind of reminded me of hugging Matt, which wasn’t good at the moment since I’d left him clueless in California. “I’m here for you, Ange,” he said next to my ear.

I whined lightly, pulling away a little. “You are soooo not making this easy,” I said softly, shaking my head.

“Making what easy?”

And right on cue, I sprang back with one of my usual Angie-isms. “~Don’t make this easy… I want you to mean it…~”

“~Angiiiiiiiie!~” he finished, grinning.

I rolled my eyes, smiling. “You’re a dork, Jack.”

He shrugged. “I know. But I’ve loveable.” Jack pouted, eyes going big. “Riiiiiight?”

“More than you know,” I agreed quietly. I blinked and realised that Jack’s hands were still on my hips, and mine were still around his neck. “Er… I think we forgot to let go of each other.”

“Or maybe…” I looked up at him curiously, and Jack smiled slightly before leaning in.

Why is it that life moves slower than I can think when I don’t want it to? In a flash I rolled through a hundred thoughts: I wanted to kiss him, but I’d just broken up and been liberated. Would that make me a slut or would Jack just be revenge? I liked Jack too much to use him like that. I didn’t want to hurt him. But…

I leaned my forehead against his at the last second, and his eyes flitted up to mine. “Jack…” I whispered, “We’re both drunk… and I don’t want to regret this.”

He shrugged almost imperceptibly. “So don’t regret it,” he whispered back.

Pause.

Elongated delay.

Heat death of the universe.

And then the next thing I knew I was kissing Jack. I… couldn’t say what it was like, not especially fiery or needy, but not awkward or in the least bit boring. I’m of the opinion that if a kiss is boring, someone is doing something wrong. But it kind of just… was. I liked it. Didn’t love it or hate it.

But I was drunk. So it could have been the best kiss of my life and I might have misremembered.

We both pulled away slowly, taking deep breaths. The last person I’d kissed before… the last person I kissed… had been Brendon. As in Urie. No, I tell a lie, but technically I wasn’t supposed to have kissed him. His fiancée didn’t know about that one.

“You should really go to bed, Jack,” I decided.

“Come with?” he asked, grinning.

I chuckled, shaking my head lightly as I pulled away. “Aww, but Alex will be jealous,” I teased. “And I could never come between you and Alex.”

He followed me out of the kitchen, turning off the lights as he left the room. I paused to let my eyes adjust to the light and quickly steadied myself on the couch when Jack ran into me. We both snickered, and then shushed each other. “I don’t think he’d mind,” he whispered loudly, feeling his way to the back of the couch. “If you were between us, that is.”

“Sorry, sugar, I don’t do threesomes. And that’s bandcest.”

“Aww.” Jack was pouting. I knew him too well to think otherwise.