They Let Us Play With Markers, but I Keep Trying to Draw Infinity

I sat in Spencer’s kitchen for quite awhile, slowly sipping at my beer and feeling sorry for myself. I thought about popping my head out a couple of times, but I couldn’t find the energy to get off the stool. I was glued there with misery, self-pity, and depression.

I found myself wanting to talk to someone – namely Spencer as Randy would be angry on my behalf and Chuck would coddle me – to wanting to just sit outside in the dark and the silence and watch the stars, dreaming; but the best way out was through the living room where everyone was, and I knew I’d never be able to sneak past all of them. So I stayed where I was, listening to their shouts of joy in the other room and wishing I could bring myself to join them.

Halfway through my second beer, Toby came into the kitchen.

“What are you doing in here, hiding?” he asked, almost a little surprised to see me.

“Moping,” I said with a sigh.

“Josey…” Toby came over and pulled me into a hug, stroking my hair. “Breaking up is hard to do—” he began to sing.

“Oh my God, shut up.” I laughed and pushed him away.

“Seriously though? Come play video games with us.”

“I’m not very good at video games.”

“Then come cheer me on! Come on, Josey, won’t you be my cheerleader?” Toby gave me his best puppy dog look.

I scoffed and rolled my eyes. “Where’s Ivy? She should be your designated cheerleader.”

Toby leaned against the counter next to me. “She is when she’s around. Her spring break was last week, and she cheered me on like a champ. …Josey, can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.” I shrugged and took a sip.

“I’m thinking about asking Ivy to marry me.”

“Seriously?”

“I just need to find a ring. I want to ask her on her birthday.”

“Wow,” I said. “Who else knows?”

“No one yet. Once I get a ring I’m going to ask her dad, and then her parents will know. I’m not sure when I’ll tell the guys. I’ll probably wait until I ask her in cause she turns me down.” Toby chuckled. “I’m not planning on that though. She’s hinted more than once that she’d like to get married. She doesn’t think I’ve noticed, but I’m sneaky like that.”

“So if you’re going to wait to tell your best friends, why tell me?”

Toby shrugged. “I’m hoping it’ll make you feel better to know something everyone doesn’t.”

“Thanks, Toby.” I smiled a little. He’s always such a sweet guy.

“And I was kind of hoping you’d help me,” he added hesitantly, looking away.

“With what?” I asked slowly.

“Picking out a ring.” He looked back at me hopefully.

“What? Toby, I can’t do that. That’s a lot of responsibility, and I don’t even know Ivy that well.”

“I know but I think you two are a lot alike, and I just need your advice on if it’s too small or too flashy. I’ve got a couple of ideas, I just need your helping narrowing them down.”

“Toby, you coming with those beers or what?” Leo shouted from the other room. “Ow! What was that for?”

“If you’re in such a hurry to get drunk off your ass then stop being lazy and go help him,” Randy said.

“Please?” Toby begged me.

“Oh… Fine,” I conceded.

“Now do one more thing for me?”

“What?”

“Help me carry out drinks and stay for awhile?”

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Meredith.”

“Atta girl, Miss Winsor.”

“Ew, no. Please don’t ever call me that again. It makes me feel really old.” I shuddered.

Toby narrowed his eyes at me. “You drive a pretty hard bargain yourself… Josey.”

I laughed and shook my head. “Oh my God, just stop stalking.”

I helped Toby grab a fresh drink for everyone and walked into the living room to find Randy, Brendon, and the tall, skinny bassist having an argument over pastries.

“Muffins are the shit,” Randy said. “They come in so many flavors, and they’re way more portable than pie.”

“Fuck portability,” Brendon argued. “Pie is the ultimate comfort food.”

“I’m afraid you’re both wrong,” the skinny guy said.

“Dallon!” Brendon exclaimed. “You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“I’m on my own side, sir; the pro-strudel side.”

“Too messy,” Randy said, “albeit delicious. And potentially sticky.”

“I think you’re all wrong,” I cut in, leaning against the back of Randy’s chair. “Although I love muffins and pie and strudel, I have to say that braid bread is the best. The cream cheese kind especially.”

“Well, the only thing we seem to be getting is more opinions. Perhaps we should just call truce,” Dallon suggested.

“And come play Dirty Scrabble with us!” Leif shouted.

“Might have to play in teams,” Spencer said. “There’s a lot of us.”

“Dallon, would you like to be on my team?” Randy asked quickly, hopefully wide eyed and smiling.

“It would be my pleasure,” Dallon said, bowing his head.

I scoffed and rolled my eyes.

“Josey,” Toby said quietly, having magically appeared beside me, “would you like to pair up with me?”

“Sure.” I shrugged. “But I’m going to be really bad at it; I don’t know any dirty words.”

“Yes, you do, liar,” Randy said.

I tried to think of one quickly but nothing special came to mind. “…No I don’t. Nothing past the basics.”

“No one wants to be on my team?” Leif exclaimed, standing in the middle of the room by himself. Spencer had teamed with Brendon, Chuck and Jacob had obviously formed a team, and Leo had joined forces with Panic’s guitarist, a tiny guy with very curly hair.

“We’ve got uneven numbers, man,” Jacob said. “Just make a threesome with someone.”

“And the game has begun!” Leo shouted.

“Leo, shut the fuck up,” Randy said.

Leo stuck out his tongue.

“Fine,” Leif said. “I’ll join Toby and Josey because you two do not have gutter-minds, and I am the Duke of Lewdity and King of Innuendo.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever, man. Just sit down.”

Somehow Randy and Dallon fought their way to playing first and laid down the word thundercunt. Everyone snickered appreciatively, but I just stared at the tiles, wondering what that fuck I was supposed to do.

“Do I even want to know what that means?” I ventured.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Randy said.

I nodded as I felt my cheeks start to burn then shook my head. “I am definitely not drunk enough for this.”

“You heard the girl!” Leif shouted. “We need hard liquor! Now!”

“I got it, I got it,” Spencer said as he stood up and went to the kitchen. He came back with a couple large bottles, one full of amber liquid, the other clear, and set them down on the table with a few shot glasses. “I don’t have that many so you’ll to share or recycle your cups or something.”

“No need to worry,” Leif said. “We’ll make do! Now, dear-darling-whatever Josey, drink up.”

He handed me a shot glass almost full of the amber stuff. I crinkled my nose at the fumes rolling off it. “I don’t think I’m going to like this stuff,” I said.

“Have you ever had it?” Toby asked.

“I don’t even know what it is.”

“Mmm, spiced rum,” Randy purred. “It’s like a party on a Caribbean island with Johnny Depp. We need some Coke to go with this though.”

“I got it!” Leo screamed, scrambling up from the floor and stumbling his way into the kitchen. He came back with two bottles of Coke and slammed them onto the coffee table.

“Thanks, jackass, now we have to wait for the carbonation to dissipate before we open them,” Toby said, shaking his head in annoyance.

“No, it’s fine. See?” Leo reached for one of the bottles and everyone shot forward, one hand outstretched and mouths shouting ‘no!’ “What?”

“Just leave it alone,” Toby warned.

“If you spill soda all over my carpet you’re dead,” Spencer promised. “I’m not gonna walk around on sticky floors.”

“Oh, hey,” Ian exclaimed, picking up a handful of tiles and laying them on the board. “Sticky.” He smiled. Leo matched his grin as they wrote down their score.

“You should drink that soon,” Leif said, nodding toward the shot glass sitting on the table in front of me.

I groaned, eyeing it warily before raising it in the air in a salute and saying, “Yo ho.” I tried to down the whole thing in one gulp which was probably my dumbest idea to date as I choked on the burn of the alcohol. Toby patted my back, trying not to laugh.

“Easy there, pirate.”

“Good stuff,” I choke out then tried to drink the rest thinking it had only gone down the wrong pipe, but the alcohol burned anew and I broke into fresh hacking coughs. I shook my head, waving my hands in front of my face.

“I told you,” Randy said, taking a leisurely sip of her drink. “It needs Coke.”

“Water,” I gasped. “I need water.”

Toby shoved a bottle in my hand, and I took a greedy drink. Though it was beer, it helped a little, and I was able to sit up again.

“I don’t like pop,” I said.

“Soda,” Randy corrected.

“Soda’s a southern thing.”

“And you grew up in the South.”

“I grew up on the Mason Dixon Line which is neither North or South, but both of my parents are northerners so I grew up with ‘pop.’”

“Soda.”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” I asked.

“No because it’s soda.”

“Agree to disagree?”

“Sure but it’s still soda.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Are you guys going to go or what?”

Chuck played the word seamen and looked up at me, trying not to smile, but as soon as our eyes met, we both burst out laughing. I’m sure no one else knew why, but we were laughing to hard to explain that once, in high school, we had to read this book entitled Angela’s Ashes in which the main character’s younger brother was named Seamus. During a class discussion, Chuck had tried to explain her feelings for Seamus but what came out of her mouth was, “I love Seamen.” The class realized her mistake right away and began to laugh. It didn’t take her long to realize it herself and laugh with us, saying, “I mean Seamus.”

Brendon laid down Uranus looking very proud. I wanted to argue that proper nouns aren’t allowed but decided that the rum and three beers had given me too good of a buzz to want to ruin it.

It was our turn next; Leif and Toby both looked at me expectantly.

“What?” I asked.

“Ladies first,” Leif said.

“Are you serious? I don’t know any words.”

Toby cleared his throat and gently nudged our tiles with his finger. At some point they had arranged them into the word tits but in looking more closely at our tiles, I saw a better one. Proudly I laid down most of our letters, playing off Randy and Dallon’s word.

Leo looked at it like it was an alien. Only Dallon seemed brave enough to ask, “What’s a titmouse?”

“It’s a very small bird of the Tit and Chickadee families and makes a sound like peter-peter-peter-peter.”

“Do you like birds?” Dallon asked.

“Not really but bird watching’s a family pastime so you tend to learn a little whether you want to or not.”

“But!” Leif interrupted, “it gives us twenty-two points so I’d say it’s a pretty damn good word.”

We played another couple of rounds, everyone giggling and me blushing, all of us still drinking steadily, before we had our first objection.

Toby had played off Ian and Leo’s sticky, adding fi- to the beginning.

“Fisticky?” Leif asked doubtfully.

“That’s not a word,” Randy said. “Trust me, I know.” She tapped her head.

“It’s not an official word,” Toby defended. “It’s when your fist gets icky.” He held up his hand in a fist to demonstrate.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” I said, covering my mouth with my hand. “That’s seriously disgusting.”

“I’ll allow it!” Dallon said.

“Okay,” Randy agreed, staring unabashedly at him and smiling.

Immediately my nausea disappeared and something clicked in my head: It was Dallon, not Leo. Randy had made out with Dallon, married Dallon. That’s why her behavior toward Leo hadn’t changed and why she couldn’t seem to stop smiling and giggling at Dallon. Randy was acting like a lovesick teenie because she had made out with married Dallon Weekes. And that would explain why Leif didn’t seem too happy about the two of them together… Oh, shit.