I Could Use Somebody in this Windy City

“She’s not catching on”, the boy whispered as his sister shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose with aggravation. “Is she stupid? Am I missing something here?” the boy snapped, his eyes tired and his arms tightly crossed against his chest. I felt my eyes widen as I looked over at the boy and glared. I was not stupid I was just in shock. The two emotions are very different but have the same effect on your facial features.

Lori looked over at me, her eyes not as glittery as normal. “Listen”, she stayed standing, looking down as her foot pushed the blankets on the floor around into a bigger pile. “Jon’s been getting a lot of crap lately from the press because he had to go and lie about himself. So he asked me for help”

“Then why am I involved?” I snapped, cutting her off from her further explanation. Her cheeks tainted a light pink as she shook her hands, then raised them up, and ran them through her light brown almost blonde hair. Her mouth stayed shut, her bottom lip being caught between her teeth. As she turned her back to me, her brother Jon, took her spot and looked at me with those eyes. I was starting to hate this boy more, which was not a good thing to do if I had this scheme Lori came up with correct in my head.

He asked me if I was lost, and I said yes. He asked me if I needed him to clarify it for me, and I answered in the affirmative again, keeping my angry posture as his eyes softened and he put his face in his hands and took a deep breath and let it out, rocking his head back on his shoulders.

“I’m a professional hockey player”, I nodded, and “Chicago is a very uneventful city. Hockey is becoming a very big sport. The players are becoming like celebrities”, I nodded again, the scheme coming full circle in my head. Instead of cutting him off and telling him I understood what this crazy scheme was, I just let him keep talking. “So the press was bugging me about my girlfriend, and I told them I had a fiancé”, my eyes must have grown five times bigger in my skull because the boy’s cheeks turned red. I just thought I had to pretend I was his little random girlfriend. Damn, I am honestly going to kill Lori and her always-happy mood one day.

“When did I ever agree to any of this!” I screamed rocking myself off the couch and onto my two feet, standing tall; I was still shorter than Jon was. In fact, he sort of towered over me, which only made me look down and take a huge step back from him, regaining my personal bubble that my outburst popped. “You never even told me about this, Lori”, I said looking over at her who was trying to shield herself with her hands. It wasn’t working and as she delayed the answer to my question, my stare grew more and more intense, filled with more anger.

When she turned around, she sighed and walked over to me taking me by the shoulders and looking me straight in the eyes. “Listen”, she started. I clenched my jaw and diverted my eyes to the wall behind her. I was starting to get tired of that word. “You just need to make believe you’re Jon’s fiancé for three months”

“That’s so fucking stu-”

“Just think about it a minute!” she said putting her hand over my mouth. “You’ll get to live in a nice place, you won’t have to work, or pay for anything whatsoever. You can go out and get nice food and what not, and hey! You get to spend even more time with me”, she said and flashed a huge smile, trying to make me feel better.

Truthfully, it all sounded good. I didn’t have to worry about rent, food, waking up, going to work, walking around this windy city alone, and I would be able to stay in a nice house for three months. Now that I rethink it, it sounded absolutely perfect. The only problem was, Jon and I did not get along. Even though we didn’t know the first important thing about the other.

First impressions are the most important.

When we first met, I was in super bitch mode, and he was in weird mode, which could be normal mode for him, I don’t know the boy.

“How about this”, Jon said smiling evilly. “I make believe you’re my fiancé. Secretly I go out and find another girl, and when I find one, we can just leave you alone”, this earned a punch to the shoulder from Lori.

“You dimwitted ass”, she started, “If the press saw that you’d be the biggest man-whore in central America. Maybe even the whole goddam country! Think Jon, for Christ sake, think”, the boy’s cheeks turned deep red.

“How about I think you could have picked someone else millions of times better than her”

“Does it run in your family to talk bad about someone when they’re standing right in front of you”, I screamed angrily, my nerves going crazy, making my eyes open wide and my hands start to shake. Sighing, I felt my back pocket for my cigarette box, which I had. I glanced around and sighed.

“Matches, lighter?”

“Plus she smokes!” Jon snapped. Grunting, I left the room and walked to the stairs. From there, I walked into the kitchen, turned on the stove and lit the cigarette with the tiny flame coming up through the top right burner. “Is she smoking in the house?’ I herd the boy scream.

Rolling my eyes, I walked through the house and out onto the porch where I sat down on the third step and leaned back, my elbows resting on the step above me and the heels of my feet hitting the sidewalk.

My eyelids shut, letting my mind put sole focus on my intake of the smoke and exhale of the same toxins. I knew smoking was basically long-term suicide, but I thought about killing myself before, so smoking is basically a chicken’s way of killing yourself or at least that’s how I think of it. Yeah, millions of people die from other reasons, but you think smoking was no factor in it. I doubt it.

I listened as the door opened and closed. I tried to pay no attention to it. I just took in the smoke, and then let it out in a long cloud from my mouth. Over and over again I did this until the white of the cigarette was gone. After my last intake, I let the toxic gas out though my nose and mouth, dropped the cigarette bud on the sidewalk, and crushed it with my heels until a small stream of smoke came off it and the orange faded into black.

“I’m really sorry about this, Jay”, Lori’s soft voice came from behind me, but I did not move. I didn’t acknowledge her being. “You don’t have to do it if you really don’t want to. I just thought that maybe it would be good to get you out of your daily routine. I mean, you don’t like your dai-”

“No, I don’t”, I answered in a soft whisper. “I’ll do it. I’m not happy about it.”, I watched as she let out a sigh of relief and bent down, giving me an awkward hug.

“I owe you huge”, I nodded my spirits lifting a little from doing a very rare on my part good deed. Lori was annoying sometimes, and she was definitely one of the people that said the wrong thing at the wrong time, but what was I going to do. Tell my one and only good friend that I wouldn’t make believe to go out with her brother for three months when I, in reality, had nothing better to do with my pathetic excuse for a life.

The door shut, and I stayed motionless, taking in my surroundings. It was light out, the sky clear blue, and the streets and houses seemed to be perfectly in place, nothing wrong with them, not a blade of grass out of place. It was somewhat sickening. I hated how houses were so perfect, I hated how people were so perfect, and then there were people like me, that can’t help but to not be perfect.

Just fucked up.

“I guess I have to try to get along with you”, I looked over and gasped. The boy was sitting right next to me; his body in the same position mine was, except his feet stretched out further than mine onto the dark grey sidewalk at the end of the porch stairs. “We are-”

“Guess so”, I cut him off, but he didn’t seem to mind. He just stayed quiet and looked over at me as my eyes stayed perfectly stuck on the house across the street. My eyes were really stuck on all of the houses across the street, but it was basically the one directly across. “When am I scheduled to move in?” I whispered, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears. For once, it sounded nice, which was another rare thing I did.

“Later. Lori said she was going to walk you home now”, I nodded and stood up, brushing myself off and turning to look at the door which was shut. “I’m sure she will be out in a few minutes”, he stated and got up too. “I guess I will see you later”

“Yup”, I answered nonchalantly and kept my back facing him as he walked down the stairs and over to his car in the driveway. I didn’t turn around and watch him leave. I was never one to watch people leave, may it be by any for of transportation, or any variation of the word ‘leaving’. Funerals, planes, trains, cars, busses, or even on the phone, I never liked saying good-bye.

I stayed on the porch, staring at the door until it opened and Lori popped out, her spring in her step there again, she hooked arms with me and brought me down the stairs as we started walking toward my apartment. “He’ll grow on you. It just takes some time”, she reassured me and then dropped all conversations there, which I didn’t mind. A quiet walk through this Windy hell sounded pretty nice.

When we reached my apartment building, I couldn’t help but let out a small smile. The thought of leaving this place for three months sent my spirits higher. It’s not that it was the worst apartment building ever; it was just that there were too many people, too many problems, and not enough silence, for my liking.

“So, you taking everything?” I nodded and then shook my head. “Only the important things”, Lori lowered her eyes as if saying I had no important things that was yet another nudge to my self-esteem. God, I really disliked her at times, I hope her brother isn’t as bad.

Emptying my drawers, I filled up a suitcase and a half. The rest of the space was used for my two other pairs of shoes, and my hair and beauty products. That was really the only things I had to my name, those things and my Ipod and shitty desktop computer that was the equivalent to a living dinosaur.

“My brother has a laptop” I rolled my eyes and unplugged the ‘dinosaur’, then grabbed the white Ipod cable out of the UBS plug and threw it over to my suitcase. Lori closed it, then zipped it around and stood it up, looking at me with excited and somewhat apprehensive eyes.

The small motherly instincts I had kicked in.

“What’s a matter?” I said picking up the suitcase with the small muscle in my arms. She shook her head, but after a minute of silence, she put the suitcase down and looked over at me, eyes filled with worry.

“The press and my brother. I just don’t want him to start worrying more about that then his career. You know how protective I am over him! He’s-”, I nodded, and she stopped, joining in on the nod. “Okay”, she stood up, running her hands through her hair and placing the lose strands behind her ears, “Let’s just get all of these things downstairs. I’m just going to get Jon to come pick us up in two or so hours, but until then, leave your bags by the door we have to go quit your job”, she said smiling.

My jaw dropped and I looked at her as if she was crazy, which she did sound. I’ve been working in that little café for a good four years now, and however much I kind o hated it; I kind of loved it all at the same time. It was the once place where 99.9% of the time I could go and not be bothered by anything happening in the real world. Most of the time I was oblivious to everything except whatever was written in AP, SPIN, and Rolling Stone Magazines.

“I’ve been working there for three years”, I said dumbfounded. It just hit me that I was actually going to leave this job. When I spoke about it, I didn’t care but now that it was actually happening, it was weird, and slightly emotional. However stupid that may sound, I was attached to the café.

“Don’t worry about it”, she said putting her hand on my shoulder as we walked out of the front doors of the building. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find another job after this is all over, or hey, maybe they’ll take you back”, she sent me a comforting smile, that did nothing of the sort.

“Sure”, I replied and looked down at the grey cement sidewalk under my feet. I kept my eyes on it as we walked all the way to the little café on the busiest street in Chicago.

“You’re here on your day off”, Leon asked, his eyebrows half way up his forehead. I looked up at him and watched as his eyes examined every portion of my face. When he was done, he sighed and turned around walking into the backroom, a minute later, he came out with a pink slip, wordlessly, he handed me a pen, and I started filling it out.

My hand felt hundreds of times heavier than it was as I filled out my name and the other personal information it needed. After filling in all of the lines, I came to the last line, which was the reason for leaving, and with that, I wrote ‘I need more money’, handed it back to Leon and watched him scan over it.

“More money”, I shrugged, shoving my hands balled into fists deep into my sweatshirt pockets. “I see. Well, I will see you around, Jayden”, I shrugged and turned away from the counter and stormed passed Lori and out of the building, my walking didn’t calm until we were two blocks away and when I did finally sunk down passed my thick skull.

“It was painless, no?” I shrugged and felt the cold air start to get to me. The Chicago cold was different from others. Not only was it cold, but it was windy, so with wind chill, it was maybe ten degrees lower then the actual temperature. It may have been bad for some, but I loved it. Summer was simply not my season.

We reached my apartment and I watched as Lori cheerfully got back on her phone. I grimaced. I loved the girl, but I was having second thoughts about this. What was I going to have to do? Would they make me change who I am? I’m not giving up smoking; Jon will just have to get over that. I hope the press doesn’t give him shit about ‘marrying’ a smoker. Then again, what the hell do I care? It’s just until the seasons over. It’s just for three, small, miniscule, months that are going to go by faster than summer break back in high school.

“You guys are!” Lori exclaimed making a few residents of the building just getting in look at her. “I can’t believe it! It was so all of you and Kane’s power. You two-”, she looked over at me and sighed. “Should I? I mean, I would rather wait”, she said her eyes glued to mine.

If there were one thing I hated about people, it was when they would talk about you, but then they talked about you, they would look directly at you. Even directly into your eyes. If you were trying to secretly spread rumors about someone, why would you be telling the rumors as you looked at them. I let out an audible sigh and rolled my eyes in frustration.

The human race has many problems.

“I’ll tell her when you… Oh, you are. I forgot you lived kind of close”, she whispered and grabbed the suitcase, walking out of the door without giving me a signal or anything. I assumed her walking away from me to a fancy SUV was my signal.

I walked out of the door, the heavier of the two suitcase locked between my hands. “Let me help”, Jon whispered walking next to me. I turned away from him and threw the huge black suitcase into the trunk and walked passed him, and opened the back passengers seat door.

“No, no, no”, Lori said slamming the door shut. “You sit in the front. I’m not going. Have fun. I’ll come over later. Bye, bye, loves”, she said and pushed me into the front of the car, slammed the door, and bolted down the street. I tried to open the now locked door. I was ready to run after her, although I smoke, I can still run pretty fast.

“Calm down”, Jon whispered and got into the seat next to me, shutting the door and turning the key in the ignition. “She’ll be by later, you can slaughter her then”, he huffed and glanced over at me. “Are you going to clean yourself when we-”

“Just”, I took a deep breath and rested my head against the window, “Drive”; I whispered and shut my eyes listening to the engine roar to life. The car lurched forward, and from there, it stopped and turned, but I didn’t move. I really didn’t want to move. I was rethinking this all, and as I had second thoughts about it, I realized that once this is over, my life will be worse than it was before.

I was going to have to start smoking more.