People Got A Lotta Nerve

“Oliver….Oliver…….OLIVER!!!”

“Scream a bit louder, love. Make it sound like I’m fucking your brains out.”

That fucking laugh that resonated deep from inside his chest plastered me onto the pavement even more so than his weight did. I am not really sure what happened; one minute we were giggling like 8 year old school girls, arms intertwined, a bottle of Jack Daniels in his free hand while my free hand whipped through the wind in beat to the song inside my heart. The next minute, his body is splayed on top of me, the acrid whiskey spilling into my hair as my face gets acquainted with the Las Vegas sidewalk. And the worst part is, I don’t mind it half as much as I protest.

Its moments like these when I really question my sanity. Now, is it all that healthy for a completely smashed (or as Oliver says, pissed) girl to go around questioning her life? Probably not, but when do I do things the healthy way? Here I am, my black dress bunching up around my hips, my bare feet exposed to the world, with the singer of some ‘hardcore’ band decompressing my lungs with his body weight, laughing up a storm as he baptizes me in whiskey. And of course, the thoughts were racing through my head like my brain was the Indy 500 race track. ‘Where are my shoes? What happened? Why is he laughing? What’s so funny? Can he see my underwear again? Can the world see my underwear? Where is Emma? Where is anyone? Why am I drunk?’

Ugh…intoxication. My mind flashed back a few hours earlier, when Oliver had handed me my first mojito and the world was still clear and opaque, not foggy and indistinct.

Please God, please don't let me get drunk and make a fool out of myself. Please, please please!

Good Christian mocked in my head, for once her voice sounded vague as it bounced around in conscious.

I mentally tried to smack her away as if she was an annoying house fly; I was desperate for the mental clarity. All I could think about was getting up, finding my shoes, and standing under a shower so hot my skin would molt and shed, just like a snake’s. I felt so…dirty, laying here, exposing myself on the pavement as some cute, rowdy boy giggled like he had just won the lottery on top of me. I tried rolling onto my back, so I could use my (imaginary) arm strength to push him off of me, but he had me completely pinned, and all I could do was sit and wait for him to come to his senses, the whiskey now beginning to pour down my forehead and form a little waterfall down my nose.

“Oliver….please, its hard to breathe.’ I managed to croak out, flailing my limbs as if I was having an epileptic seizure. Maybe if I caught him off guard, I could disrupt his laughter by forcing him off of me, and onto a piece of pavement unoccupied by me.

He didn’t respond, in fact, the only change was that his deep, throaty laughs had turned into shallow wheezes, his lungs clearly calling out ‘game over’ over the protests coming from his sense of humor. Finally, I sensed my opportunity, bucking my legs up off the pavement so that he rolled to the side of me, onto his back, the whiskey now pooling onto the pavement, instead of on my face. I lifted my upper body onto one of my elbows, rolling onto my side so that I was facing him.

“Whats so funny?”

He opened his eyes, and stared at my face. I could feel his stare burning a hole into my face, until it started to waver and his eyes closed once again.

“’S nothing, calm down.”

I rolled my eyes, and slowly moved up so I sitting Indian style on the sidewalk. I was surprised no one had passed by us yet. “Come on now, you have to get up Oliver.”

“Y’know, you’re the only lass I let call me Oliver.”

“I am so flattered.”

“You should be,” He smiled, “Means I don’t think youre a horny pig like the fangirls.”

I was far too drunk to deal with this. “Come on, up, up, up.” I tried pulling at his arm, but it felt limp and incredibly heavy to my girly grasps. “You have to help at least a little bit.”

He shook his head, smiling some more. He still had a hand gripped to the Jack Daniels bottle. Suddenly, his eyes shot open as he tried to bring the bottle to his lips.

“It's light!” He gasped, over turning and shaking the bottle onto the pavement, the last drops adding to the puddle.

“That’s what happens when you spill it…” I rolled my eyes. I guess Oliver was the oblivious kind of drunk, I was the more ‘silent and brooding type’.

He looked at me, again I felt naked under the stare of his deep eyes. “’Are you even drunk?”

I nodded. “Yes, I just don’t go around tripping on nothing and spilling my alcohol. Major party foul, Oliver.” I giggled, watching his face go from various looks of bewilderment, surprise, and sadness. “And I also don’t really end up chilling on sidewalk.”

He scowled, and finally propped himself up onto his elbows. “Where are we?” He questioned, scanning the surroundings.

And then it hit me. As my eyes surveyed the land, I recognized absolutely nothing. Chain link fence was everywhere, almost drawing battle lines between properties that hadn’t seen a gardener in years. The stucco and stone walls were all covered in some form of graffiti, some of it artistic, some of it foul, like illustrations of penises and gang signs. I looked up into the desert sky, trying to find lights. The lights could be like the North Star of Las Vegas, leading us back to the Strip and back to salvation. Unfortunately, the only lights I saw came from hazy stars, some of them bright white, while others emanated a dusty rose color.

“I have no idea…” I whispered, the possible graveness of our situation sinking in, taking residence in my bones. “I wasn’t paying attention…” I added, my mind rewinding to when we were on our feet, laughing and swinging off of each other, our arms locked together as we half ran down the sidewalk.

Oliver groaned, finally getting up onto his two feet again. I watched him throw the Jack Daniels bottle into a fence, the sound of glass meeting the chain link reverberating through the wasteland we found ourselves in. He reflexively brought his hands to his face, raking his fingers through his hair and stretching his face taught against his hands. He fell back, leaning against the fence, the broken whiskey bottle in pieces now by his feet, some of the glass chunks crisply breaking under his Nikes.

“Its okay…” I said. “We are on a one way street. At least we know we have to start off going that way.” I pointed towards the open road, away from the barrier of even more chain link opposite of the open road.

Oliver removed his face from his hands, looking down on me as I still sat on the pavement, my legs streatched out in front of me. “D’you want help up?”

I nodded, and smiled weakly. He didn’t return the gesture however, just stuck out one of his hands to me. I took it, and instantly felt the strength of his arm and shoulder muscles lifting me up onto my feet.

“Oh shit!!” I exclaimed, lifting one of my feet and cradling it with my hands. I turned my foot over, and felt the hot sticky liquid pool down onto my hands. I looked down at the ground, and saw a fragment of glass from the bottle glisten red in the streetlight.

“Shit!” Oliver exclaimed against, pushing me gently against the fence so I wouldn’t have to balance on my one good foot. “Sorreh, I didn’t know you lost your shoes!” His hands quickly enveloped both my hands and my foot. He held my foot delicately in his hands as it began to bleed profusely onto his hands. “I think theres glass still in your foot. Gotta take it out.” He gently forced the wound apart with his fingers, looking for any rogue fragments of glass that may have gotten trapped inside.

I gasped at the pain of him widening the cut, my hands rushing to cover my eyes as I made a pathetic moan in pain and my eyes squeezed shut. “It hurts….” Was all I managed to gasp out before I felt his fingers delicately but forcefully dig deep into the cut on my foot, clearly trying to remove a piece of glass. After a few seconds of his excruciatingly painful probing, he removed his fingers, and a piece of glass about the size of a penny. He let my foot go, and threw the piece of glass on the other side of the fence. He bent down, and began picking up the larger glass pieces as well, tossing them on the other side of the fence one by one.

Once all of the possibly offending pieces were on the other side of the fence and far away from me, he looked up, his face covered in a light sheen, his big brown eyes locked onto mine.

“Wanna find the way back?” He smiled sheepishly, getting up from his crouch and taking my hand gingerly in his.