Tales From Another Broken Home

Alex stopped for a second, taking a second for the pain to disperse I imagined, and I felt my legs jump up automatically, and I shoved my beer toward the guy next to me, intending for him to take it. Collective “oohs,” gasps, and jeers filled the room and I looked over at the boy who had been sitting next to me, kissing me, moments before and I could have sworn I felt my blood rise in my veins.

“What the actual hell?!” I screamed at Jimmy, taking a small step forward, but he didn’t even glance over at me.

Alex slowly placed his hands onto some relatively stable parts of the fallen table and shoved himself upward with a small grunt of effort in one smooth motion, lumbering toward Jimmy as he got up. He was considerably taller than Jimmy, but the dark haired boy’s expression never wavered – Jimmy just seemed angry.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, man?” Alex said, now completely in Jimmy’s face.

“You know very well what I’m doing, jackass,” he hissed through his teeth.

“Being a complete fucking douche?” Alex said condescendingly, to which Jimmy answered with a punch to the jawbone. Alex saw it coming and dodged it for the most part, having Jimmy’s star-embellished knuckles graze the edge of the bone. Alex followed it with an uppercut, which hit Jimmy in the chin. He went down for a second, but managed to scoot back out of Alex’s reach and follow inward with another punch. Alex blocked the punch with the outside of his forearm and grabbed Jimmy’s shirt in the process to undoubtedly try and flip him over – but Jimmy was quick, spreading his feet to stabilize his weight and he grabbed Alex’s shirt right back.

“Goddammit!” I screamed, exasperated at the two boys. I quickly jumped in to the side of the two of them, and tried to shove my way inbetween their arms. “Would you just quit it?”

Out of nowhere, not even allowing me to get my full sentence out, I was slammed hard in the cheekbone with someone’s elbow. I tumbled backwards onto the carpet, slamming the back of my head onto it harder than I probably should have. An intense pain ran through my skull, and I laced my fingers behind my head, putting pressure on the pain. I heard myself whimper, the sounds of the struggle never ceasing. There was a short burst of shuffling and dull slapping of flesh hitting flesh, when I heard a voice scream, “Jesus Christ, man! Now look what you fucking did!”

The next thing I knew, a pair of clammy hands were hauling me up to my feet. I pressed my hand against my injured cheek, and looked up to find blue eyes and dark hair.

“What I did?” I heard Alex say, voice full of contempt.

“Yeah,” Jimmy spat back, “Maybe if you’d learn to stay away from my girls this wouldn’t happen. How about you learn to just fuck off; nobody wants to see your sad face anway.”

Alex just simply stared after Jimmy for a couple seconds, his expression hard.

“Come on, Abbey,” Jimmy muttered, jerking my arm to drag me with him. We had hardly reached the front door when I heard a condescending chuckle from behind me, and Jimmy stopped, but didn’t turn, when a voice spoke.

“What, do you think you’re fucking Jesus or something?” Alex sneered. He seemed to have regained some of his composure because his voice was back to a normal tone now; assertive, but didn’t have the strain of yelling.

Jimmy paused for a moment, turned his head to offhandedly look at the taller boy.

“Yeah, maybe I am.”

Laughing, he walked out of the house.

---

There was a very long pause between Jimmy and I in his beaten up old Mustang. He had rolled down the window to let in the cool spring night air, his arm hanging out the side, letting the smoke of the cigarette he was holding out of the confined car. I would occasionally glance at him, trying to figure out exactly what he was feeling, and if I should say anything, but I would always just end up looking down at my hands and staying quiet.

Suddenly, I heard Jimmy exhale loudly, smoke flooding out from his lips, and he quietly asked, “How’s your face?”

I was stunned for a moment, but I responded with a simple, “okay.” I realized I was absentmindedly touching my cheek where I had been hit, and slapped my hand down to clasp around the other one.

“That Alex guy is a jerk,” Jimmy said matter-of-factly. He took another long drag of a raised cigarette to his lips and exhaled after a pause, looking like he was really taking in the smoke. I saw him try to relax his facial features, but it really didn’t help; he still looked mad. “He’s a manipulative son of a bitch and you should stay away from him.”

That almost made me mad, but Jimmy’s own anger was intimidating enough to keep mine from spilling over. He wasn’t going to give me any other reasons to why I should stay away from him?

“Way to be unreasonable..” I muttered. It was unusually cheeky of me, but it felt good to let the frustration out.

“Yeah well it wouldn’t be if he hadn’t gone after my girls deliberately before this all of the damn time,” he snapped back, venom in his voice. I immediately regretted saying anything, his voice cracked like a whip and I found myself wanting to flinch away from it just from the tone.

“He was just going after you because you came with me. Not like you’re that fucking special to me or anything; he was just doing it to piss me off.”

I stayed silent. Was that really it..? I felt crushed; used like a chew toy in some bigger, stupid manipulative plot. I felt hot tears slide down my red face; I knew it was heating up from embarrassment again. How humiliating; the whole thing.

Jimmy glanced over, took another drag of his cigarette, and eventually released the smoke with an exasperated sigh. “Fucking shit,” he murmured, and jerked the car into a parking lot suddenly. He smoothly turned into a parking space around the back of the strip mall that we pulled into, away from sight, and parked the car. The engine was still running, which I was glad for. I hoped it would create less of the awkward silence that I was sure would ensue from the conversation.

“What now?” Jimmy groaned, clearly fed up with the whole night. It’s not like I could blame him, it sounded like a pretty crappy night all around. Of course I was the cause of it all. I didn’t really know where my head was at the moment, I felt like my thoughts were trying to swim through Jello to make it out of my mouth. Eventually, even though my voice cracked, I managed to get out just, “I don’t know.”

Jimmy ruffled his fingers through his hair, mussing it up a bit, and turned in his seat to lean against the car door, facing me. “Well you might as well fucking talk, God. I already stopped the fucking car, and its not like you’re really good to go home yet, you’re obviously drunk.”

I sniffed and drew my legs up to my chest, resting my chin on my knees. “I don’t know,” I repeated simply, honestly not realizing why in the hell I was getting so overly emotional.

Jimmy paused for a while, fiddling with the radio like it was the more important thing to do at the time. After he had decided upon a song he liked, he said, “Look, that guy was a jerk. I get that. Fucking asshole to try and use you like that, yunno?”

I nodded.

“Abbey, I promise that if you stick with me then I won’t let him come near you again, gotcha? I get the shady people around here. I know you don’t know anyone, and I do. I can look out for you, okay? Just stick with me.” I looked up at him, wiping my eyes on my jeans as I lifted my head up. He moved closer to me, putting his arm around me and clasping me against him reassuringly. Honestly, it felt nice, and more real than Alex had been. Jimmy was firm and strong, solid next to me. I guess I did believe him when he said he’d look out for me, he pretty much had been doing that this entire time, right?

I nodded, bobbing my head up and down quickly. My hair fell in my eyes, and Jimmy chuckled, messing up my hair in an affectionate way, making it blind me even more. I swept it out of my face and felt him draw back, putting his hand on the gearshift again, putting the Mustang in drive.

“Well I guess you need to sober up now, you fucking lightweight,” he said, driving out onto the main road. “You actually managed to convince your parents you were at a study group this time right?”

I nodded, and realized he couldn’t really see that with his eyes on the road. “Yeah,” I corrected myself aloud.

“Just come to my place to sleep it off, it’s not like my mom gives a fuck,” he suggested, although I knew it really wasn’t that much of a suggestion.

“Sure,” I said, my eyes drooping. At this point, I didn’t even care how strange that sounded, I just wanted to rest.

However, should I have been able to think through my drunken stupor, I would have realized that Jimmy inviting anyone back to his house was strange.