When Happily Ever After Fails

Ricky rolled his eyes as he collected the dirty napkins off of the table. The girls who had been sitting there had each pulled an extra napkin out of the dispenser, written their phone numbers on it, and left it in their spots. At least they had been couth enough to leave their names as well. Maybe he would give the red head a call; she seemed sweet in a quiet sort of way. Not tonight, though. Tonight he didn’t feel like doing much of anything. It was too late to be do much of anything, anyway.

As he clocked out, Ricky couldn’t possibly help but reminisce about the first time he had set eyes on the place. Two years previous, Tucker and himself had been severely confused when the address had turned out to be an old run-down restaurant run by a middle aged couple. The two hung around out front for a few hours, trying to figure out where they had taken a wrong turn, or if the place had changed owners at some point during the past. The people watching them from inside the establishment seemed the type to have been there forever.

As the door creaked open, the woman who had been carefully observing them for the last two hours poked her head outside. The boys went dead silent and tried to hide the piece of paper with the address scrawled on it. Fear wrote their story across their faces and they couldn’t help but glance between themselves. At the sight of each other’s faces, they instantly knew that they had been caught.

“Who gave you the address?” she asked with her voice barely above a whisper. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. They just stared at her, trying to decipher her meaning and intent be the warm smile and knowing eyes. In both of their experiences, people who came with warm smiles had a tendency to also come with daggers which were red-hot to cauterize the wounds that they inflicted.

“I’m so, so,so sorry. We must be at the wrong address. We’ll just get off your property. We are so sorry...”

“You look so familiar. God, what was her name? You have dark hair just like hers, and I could never miss those green eyes; one of a kind, they are. She would have been about ten years older than you. Melissa, I think?”

“Marissa... my sister’s name was Marissa. She was the one who gave me this address... how did you know her? My sister had never been to New York in her entire life when she gave me this address,” Ricky asked with a hint of reluctance. Her eyes crinkled up at the corners as her smile grew. Without a moment’s hesitation, she opened the door and held it. When neither of them moved, she gestured with her hand to express that they had permission to enter. “You never did tell me how you know my sister...”

Ricky stepped outside and inhaled the thick night air. In front of the restaurant, there was a girl maybe a year younger than himself with long, dirty, blond hair and sunk in cheek bones. She was pretty in a damaged sort of way; almost like she would crumble if he placed a finger against her skin and applied the slightest pressure. When he smiled at her, she winced. Ricky instantly recognized the similar traits that after almost two years in New York, he himself hadn’t completely gotten rid of.

He approached her quietly with a small smile gracing his lips. As he started to get a bit closer to her, she tried to act as though she didn’t notice him. Every once in a while, however, her eyes flickering towards him gave her away. His voice was low, barely above a whisper, when he started talking to her. She was like a cornered deer, any sudden movements or loud noises would send her scuttling away. Quick, darting words were her replies, and that gave away more than she knew. It became more and more obvious that she was avoiding the topic of her past and what colourful events had led her to that doorstep. A crinkled piece of paper hidden in her sweaty palm proved his suspicions correct.

“You remind me a lot of a girl that used to come here often. She was maybe a year younger than you, with green eyes as opposed to blue. Britney... I think her name was Britney,” he said while paying careful attention to her reaction. For a second, her eyes glimmered with recognition. As soon as he saw that look, he held the door op[en for her. “Leanne is back in the kitchen. Why don't’t you go talk to her for a few minutes? I promise that she can help you.”

He uttered the last sentence while pointing at the scrap of paper in her hand that she was attempting to conceal in vain. A vibrant blush flashed across her cheekbones and over the bridge of her nose which caused his smile to widen a tad. Technically, he wasn’t even quite sixteen yet, but his ID said that he was almost eighteen. Even if he was interested in what this girl was so obviously thinking, any relationship he had with her would be considered illegal in a matter of months when he turned eighteen in the eyes of the law and she remained fourteen.

When he closed the door behind her, and didn’t follow her inside, her face morphed from happy and accepted to scared and rejected. He sent an encouraging smile her way, and only finally left the premises when her meek form headed into the kitchen as he had proposed she should.

Wrapping his arms more tightly around himself, Ricky started the walk home. It was colder than he had expected it would be. Damn weather forecasters, there should be a heavy fine for every time they got it wrong; maybe they would stop being wrong so much.

He breathed in the night air reluctantly. Even though it was cold enough to be on the verge of snowing, Ricky slowed his walking pace. The twenty minuted that it took him to walk home were his to take and do with what he pleased. When he turned left on the street and was greeted by dozens of flashing lights, he couldn’t help but smile. In his opinion, he didn’t need this entire city to hide in, all he needed was this one street.

Ricky bumped shoulders with a man about his age, slightly older; and apologized profusely. The man smiled slightly, and insisted that it was fine. When the man didn’t continue on it’s way, Ricky became unsure as to what he was supposed to do.

“Hey, my name is Alex. Where are you headed?” Ricky felt the heat rise in his cheeks and looked down at the sidewalk. Alex’s eyes were a bit too direct for him. While in hiding the last two years, Ricky had a gained a certain aversion to public attention. Male attention was found to be the most awkward and disturbing because of his relationship with his father. “Why are you blushing so bad?”

“I-I guess it’s just cold out here... I was just going home...”

“A couple of friends and I were heading to this place I know downtown. You can join us if you want to,” Alex said with a question in his tone. His eyes seem to have a spark in them whenever the corners of his mouth turned up; which seemed to be really often. “You seem like the quiet type... I promise this place isn’t like a club or anything.”

“I’m underage...”

“That’s fine, I know the owner,” Alex said with a wide grin. His blue eyes danced with the reflection off of the brilliantly shining neon lights. The look in his eyes had Ricky’s stomach fluttering in a way that was altogether unpleasant. As Ricky took longer and longer to answer, Alex began to take the subtle hint that Ricky wasn’t overly exuberant about the notion of joining his plans. He handed Ricky his number with a wry expression. “Maybe some other time?”

While breathing a sigh of relief, Ricky nodded enthusiastically. This guy seemed nice enough, but he could tell that their intentions didn’t match in the slightest. Another sad smile was flashed in his direction before Alex headed off to wherever he had planned to take Ricky. The very notion of following a man he didn't know through the heart of New York made his skin crawl.

Ricky hurried through the remaining fifteen minutes of his walk and managed to push the time back to ten minutes. Silently, he cursed his luck as he fumbled with his keys and dropped them repeatedly. It took him several minutes to comprehend why he couldn't manage to force the door open; he was using the wrong key. By the time he realized this, too much time for his approval had already been wasted, and his temper had long since been lost. Swearing up a storm, Ricky forced the apartment building door open.

He climbed over dozens of strung-out addicts on the stairs to reach the apartment that Tucker and himself shared on the fourth floor. Their apartment was located in an extremely unorthodox part of down full of some less than reputable characters. They really couldn't complain, though. You get what you pay for, and in this particular case, they didn't pay for much, Ricky swore at a middle aged junkie crouched in front of his door and the man scuttled away in fear.

The door wasn't locked and Ricky rolled his eyes at this fact. Apparently, Tucker had gotten a little too used to the idea of not locking the doors when they were back home. At this thought, Ricky had to bite his lip and place his hand over his mouth to keep his bitter blood from spilling out onto the already horrendously stained carpet. He could not believe that he had referred to that place as his home. Enraged with himself, Ricky hip-checked the door open and headed right past Tucker towards his room.

Half a dozen unopened letters lay scattered all over the floor. If one of them hadn't caught his eye, Ricky would have tossed them on his night table and left them for another few weeks before bothering to look at them. That one letter, however, warranted his attention.