Free Fall

In this room that is crowded with people, filled with hot breaths and sweat, with walls painted a light-sky blue, and carpeting a sea-foam green, I am floating, high, high, higher than clouds. My mind is erasing the previous minutes, trapped with her in that sickening bedroom, and my eyes only focus on one thing. There’s a glossy green-eyed boy moving around the room in hypnotizing circles, a nameless face that I’ve never seen before.

And I can tell he’s just about as high as a kite, his pupils wide, his moves slurry. I can tell when he looks at all the other guys in the room with a seductive pout that he wants someone just as much as I need someone. I tumble my way towards him.

When I reach his side, he’s dancing around in tiny circles, laughing in a low, purring sound. He blinks at me once, twice, and then lets a grin curl around the edges of his lips. “Hey,” he slurs out. He reaches a finger out and traces it along my should softly. Shivers rocket down my spine and I open my mouth, let a tiny hello slip from my lips. “I’ve s-eeen you befor-fore.” He hiccups. “You were with that g-irrl. The bony bro-roken one.”

A sheet of red taints the scenery for a minute before I shove her image away from my mind and give Glossy-Eyed Boy a grimace. “Had to get rid of her,” I mumble. “Passed out in some room.”

Suddenly he looks somber, and glances up at me. “Whatsa matter wi-ith her?”

“Nothing,” I say quickly, and even though the look in his eyes tells me he doesn’t agree, he nods anyways.

“Let’s find some-meplace else to go,” he whispers, and I nod.

In another room in another hallway, he is kissing me, chuckling darkly and moving below me in soft measurements. He is unbuttoning my shirt and kissing my chest and then he is moving lower, lower, lower. He is letting a soft, tiny sigh slip from his lips as I move restlessly above him, biting my lip to keep from crying out another boy’s name. And then we are both lying there, deep breaths echoing around the room.

“I never got your name,” he muses, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling.

“I never got yours,” I reply. He turns his head, a smirk ghosting across his face, and laughs just a little.

“It’s Frank,” he says. “Now are you gonna tell me yours or do we haveta play 20 questions until I get it,” he asks, clearly still amused by my attitude. While he’s waiting for a response, he turns over and reaches down beside the bed, digging around for his jeans. He finds them and pulls a pack of Newports out of his pocket, a lighter, and lights it, exhaling smoke and turning around to look curiously at me again.

“Jeph,” I mutter. “It’s Jeph.”
And he nods, as if in affirmation, exhaling smoke again, staring back up at the ceiling. “I’m not usually like this,” he finally says, eyes still glued above. “I don’t act on impulse, like this. Not really. Unless there’s blow involved,” he grins briefly, eyes roaming back over to me.

“Isn’t that all of our excuses?” I mumble, looking away. He chuckles.

“It was purer than usual tonight,” he says. “I don’t know who got it, don’t know who offered it to me, even. I was already fucked on Johnnie Walker. But I don’t think it was cut with much.”

And I nod because I know what he’s talking about. Tonight has been the first night I could look through disoriented eyes at another boy since the first time Blow and I met. Whoever got a hold of it got a hold of practically pure Colombian shit, and nobody was complaining. Especially not her.

The look on her face when she tasted it at first shoots through my mind like a bottle rocket and I shudder. He looks at me curiously. “What, you withdrawing or something?” He questions. “I thought you were an expert.”

“I thought you didn’t know me,” I shoot back, and he shakes his head.

“I said I didn’t know your name. That doesn’t mean I haven’t seen you around. I see you groping through hallways at parties; you’re never too far away from that girl. You know, the one who looks broken – she’s really bony. She love you or something?”

“Or something,” I mutter, reaching down and grabbing my jeans, standing up, pulling them on. The room is dimly lit by a lamp on the desk five feet away, just enough light to see which shirt is mine and which shirt is Frank’s.

He survived. He almost didn’t, but there was water below, a pond in the backyard of the apartment building. In just enough time I raced down and pulled him out, before he sink below, and he survived.

He was out of it for three days before he woke up with a gasp and a shudder, opening his eyes and looking at me. I gazed back at him with anger and a fierce, undying love that held an icy cold grip around my heart, even after everything.

“She told me everything, Gerard,” I told him quietly, and he looked at me with caramel irises that showed unstoppable fear. “She told me how you lost that one shipment, and she fucking told me how you planned to pay it off. I’m not getting involved with your shitty murder ideas,” I growled, fingers reaching out and grabbing his face. “Don’t get me involved.”

“Kayleigh doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he said, looking at me. Now that I’ve told him something else, something different from what he expected, the fear is gone, and replaced with it is defiance. “She overheard me talking on the phone,” he continued calmly. “Assumed things, as usual. She’s overdramatic. Always looking for something more to lie about. Don’t worry – no murder plans here,” he holds up his hands, still a pale pale complexion, a smirk slipping across his face. I pulled away from him and shook my head.

When I walked out, still shaking with anger, I turned around. “And,” I said, voice shivering with anger, even though the fist around my heart tightened at the thought of walking away, even just temporarily. “She told me about your nice little night of fucking her too.”

And the look fills his eyes and face again as I turn around and step out of the room.

“You hate her,” Frank says, now. “Then why are you putting up with her?”

“You ask too many questions!” I explode. “Questions that have nothing to do with you!” But instead of looking angry or hurt he just keeps gazing at me with that calm look, reaching for another cigarette.

“What are you hiding yourself from?” He asks. And after a moment of silence, I open my mouth to respond, when an earsplitting shriek echoes throughout the building. And at once, even Frank knows who it is.

“Jeph! JEPH! JEPH!”