Circo

I wasn’t alone in my bed when I woke up that next morning.

I was pressed into the far wall by the other body lying luxuriously in the middle of my bed, limbs flailed in all directions. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed before, how they hadn’t woken me up in the process of drunkenly clambering into the caravan and collapsing on the first bed insight.

Grunting slightly, I sat up and shifted Josie’s body slightly so that I could climb over her and out of the bed.

Admittedly, last night hadn’t been the best night’s sleep in the world, I’d certainly had better.

The ‘party’ – for lack of better description of the events that took place last night – lasted well into the morning. It’d started to quieten around four-ish leaving me some time to actually fall asleep, and it was now six-twenty-seven.

I stepped into the chilled December air learning my lesson from the previous morning and pushing my abused shoes onto my feet, and glanced around the camp. It was still dark, but the pending sunrise left a soft blue hue hovering in the air.

As I looked around the destruction of the camp, the bottles – empty, half empty, broken – empty plastic baggies, and blotches of powder in the grass, I noticed a sharp orange pin-prick of light moving around in the circus tent.

Raising my eyebrow, I walked towards the entrance to the tent and towards the moving orange light. Upon entering, I took in the sight in front of me, of many bodies sprawled around on the floor, slouched and sleeping in the audiences’ chairs or carelessly spread out across the ground.

As I approached the moving light, the smell of cigarette smoke hit my senses, and I realised what the orange light was.

For a brief moment, I wondered why anyone would, firstly be awake right now; especially after last night, and secondly why they’d be sitting in the tent in almost pitch darkness. Of course it was because the show lighting had been taken down the previous morning, but my sleep deprived mind didn’t care to remember that at this point.

“You departed early last night,” A dry voice that I barely recognised as Gerards croaked.

I shrugged into the darkness, “Not really my scene,”

“Then why’re you here,”

I paused. The honest answer to that question is that I really didn’t know. I’d joined the circus in the hopes of it being a beautiful place, but it was nothing as I had expected; yet I was still here. They weren’t keeping me here, they weren’t forcing me to stay, I could easily hop onto a train or a plane and leave, but I didn’t.

“Why’re you in here alone?” I asked, swerving from the topic and sitting myself on the crash mat Gerard was currently situated on.

“I’m not,” He laughed gesturing to the bodies scattered around the ground.

“They’re unconscious, Gerard, they don’t count,”

“Sometimes, you just need space to think,”

“What’re you thinking about?” I asked, curiously.

“My kid,” he said casually.

I chocked in that moment, my eyes going wide as saucepans. In the time that I’d been in the tent my eyes had adjusted to the light, or lack of therefore, and I saw Gerards face break out into a grin before he let out a throaty chuckle, his head lolling back on his neck as he exhaled some of the smoke from his lungs.

“You’re kidding,” I chuckled, feeling relieved.

“I might not be,”

“You have a kid?!” I noticed that my voice exceeded its normal pitch limit. He laughed again and I saw him shrug in the darkness.

“Might do, not sure,”

“You’re not...sure?”

“Nah, I mean...I’ve been to a lot of different places,”

“But aren’t you...”

“Gay?” He interrupted. I nodded. “Yeah, but sometimes you just gotta get off you know, doesn’t matter where. Believe it or not, there are a lot of places in this country where it’s impossible to find someone who swings my way,”

“So you just find a woman instead?”

“Yeah sure, why not,”

“And you didn’t think to use protection?!”

“You’re so fuckin’ condescending, you know that?” He stubbed his cigarette onto the crash mat. “Of course I fuckin’ did. I just made the mistake of sticking around until the next morning. We’d been drunk the night before, I mean; I couldn’t do that sober,” He cringed. “And when I took the condom off I just carelessly threw it on the ground; didn’t really care. Woke up the next morning because whats-her-face was shrieking at me that the condom had split or something, I don't know; so I sat with her, comforted her -told her it’d be fine...left two hours later and haven’t seen her since,” he laughed cruelly.

“You’re kidding? She could have been pregnant with your kid and you just left?”

“I was nineteen, Frank. And this isn’t exactly the greatest environment to raise a kid in – I should know,”

“But still Gerard, shit,”

He just shrugged. “Since then I’ve never stuck around long enough to find out if anything went wrong,”

“So you could have more than one kid?”

“Why do you care?” he snapped.

“Hey don't flatter yourself, it’s not you I care about; it’s those now single mothers with their father-less kids,”

He didn’t say anything, he just sighed and lit another cigarette flicking the ash onto the crash mat and exhaling the smoke in my general direction.

“You’re a very opinionated little asshole, you know that,” he said after the pause.

I just smirked and shrugged, staring off into the darkness of the tent, goose-bumps popping up on my arms from the cold. I shuddered and rubbed my hands up and down my arms to create a friction to warm myself up a bit.

“Cold?”

“Duh,” I nodded. “We’re not all as bizarre as you, running around outside in December with no shirt,”

“You know you love it. I’m surprised that sight in its self doesn’t warm you up from inside out,” He muttered, his hand moving to take a place on my knee.

“Well, aren’t you modest?”

“Are you kidding? I have guys drooling over me practically every single night. After a while it begins to go to your head and you actually start to believe it,”

I made a noise of amusement though my throat. “Or maybe, just like you, they just want to get off and you happen to be the only piece of ass they can find,”

I’d expected to get a reaction from him, but instead he just grinned. “But it is a fine piece of ass, right?”

I just laughed and made a humming noise. To this day I don’t know if that hum was one of agreement or not...

“So speaking of bad parenting, your little family must be beside themselves with worry,” he commented smirking at me from behind the curtain of his hair.

“Doubtful,” I snorted. “Apparently, they don’t even know I’ve left,”

“How do you know that?”

“Because they haven’t called me – I brought my phone for the simple reason that if they tried to contact me and find out where I was, they could, but they haven’t,”

“That’s no surprise. I wouldn’t want you around either,” He laughed. “They’re probably celebrating,”

I just gave a nervous chuckle refusing to let my eyes well up as his laugh echoed around the tent, loud and amused his head lolling back on his shoulders once more. When he pulled his head back up his eyes met with mine, and his smile fell. “Frank, I’m sorry...” he hesitated. “I shouldn’t have said that,”

I let out a water-y laugh, “‘The fuck? You never apologies to anyone. Why would you apologies for something that’s true,” I muttered, hooking the hem of my shirt onto my thumb and using it to wipe the unshed tears from my eyes.

“I-I know, but that was uncalled for. I’m sure they do miss you,”

“Of course they don’t,” I mumbled, wiping at my eyes again to tell the unshed tears that they were not welcome here. “M’just being a pansy anyway,” I chuckled harshly.

“Hey, it’s cool. Everyone has a sore subject in their life, yours just happens to be your parents,” He casually stubbed out his cigarette on the grass, before pulling out the pack and lighting another. I briefly wondered how long he’d been sat in the tent chain smoking, but didn’t think much of it, choosing to respond to his previous comment instead.

“And yours?”

He didn’t say anything for a while; he just exhaled the smoke in his lungs, running the thumb of the hand holding his cigarette along the length of his chin and back again, a thoughtful look on his face. “I’m stupid,” he announced, sucking in the deadly fumes once again.

“You’re not stupid,” I said carefully. In all honesty I was not someone who could make that judgement, I’d never really thought much into Gerard’s educational ability, all I really knew was that he didn’t go to school.

“I really am though. That’s why I got so pissed at you yesterday with all of that thunder storm shit,”

I nodded slowly watching closely as he smoked his cigarette. It was like art in motion. It reminded me of those French movies in black and white, romanticising every aspect of society; the woman sitting in the black cocktail dress in an outdoor cafe smoking slowly to a soundtrack of posh accordion music.

The smoke left his lungs in ghosts that made minor appearances before the particles separated further and further until no trace could be found.

His limbs looked feather light and moved with such ease it didn’t even seem possible. He moved like liquid, smooth and flowing freely, making everything he did look so easy.

I couldn’t help but notice the way his jaw would clench somewhat as he sucked in on the cigarette, and the way that as he exhaled his eyes would close and his head would tip back only a fraction.

“You like something you see, kid?” I heard him laugh. It’s only then that I realised that he was watching me watching him.

Even with his eyes on me, I didn’t blush. Even with knowing that he knew I was staring, I didn’t look away and when he smirked I didn’t get that sick feeling in my stomach. Instead, with a combination of all three, I had adrenaline in my veins and I acted on impulse.

I leant forwards, my palm pressing into his cheek as I pushed my lips onto his. It was messy, unexpected. I felt as though my mouth was being pushed up against the bottom of an old ashtray in some sleazy bar, but I still stayed in place for at least another ten seconds,

I’m not sure, I wasn’t really counting. I wasn’t even thinking. I completely blocked out reality and I didn’t feel anything.

I pulled away and it was then that my adrenaline induced confidence drained. I stared at him for a minute, my hand coming up to my mouth, my fingers brushing my lips. “I-uh...” I chuckled nervously as I leant back away from him.

Gerard had only looked bewildered for a mere second, before his eyes lit up and a smirk rose on his features again. It wasn’t a good kind of smirk, it was mocking, as if to say ‘I knew you wanted it’ or something to that effect.

My eyes darted away from his face, and towards the entrance way to the circus ring where I could see the sun painting the sky pink and purple and orange. There was also slight movement in the camp and I realised I must have been in the tent longer than I’d thought.

Not even looking back at Gerard I stood from the mat and made my way outside, my fingers still brushing my lips, a blush still covering my cheeks, and Gerard’s smirk still burning into my back.