Love, Aspen

I nudged Aspen with my foot, forcing her awake. She rolled over onto Andy’s chest and mumbled something before opening her eyes. Realizing who she was laying on, she quickly sat up and smoothed out her shirt. She looked up at me with question in her eyes.

“What the fuck time is it?” She mumbled.

“Ten.” I paused. “Want to smoke with me?”

She nodded, using Andy’s shoulder to help herself to her feet. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and followed me outside, where the morning chill gave her shivers. She was still wearing the clothes from last night, wrapped up tight in Andy’s leather jacket. She zipped up the front of it and held her hands over her mouth, blowing on them and rubbing them together. I lit us both a smoke and handed her one of them, taking a long drag on mine and blowing the smoke out in a steady stream.

I cleared my throat loudly and spit on the porch. “Didn’t see much of you last night.”

She nodded. “I hung out with Andy.”

“Oh yeah, how was that?”

“Good. He’s a really nice guy.” She said, making rings with her cigarette smoke. “Good listener.”

“You talk a lot when you’re drunk.” I laughed.

“I wasn’t drunk last night.” She snapped.

“Oh bullshit.”

“I wasn’t! I took like three shots and that was it.” Aspen narrowed her eyes at me. “Maybe if you weren’t so fucking plastered last night, you would have realized that.”

“I wasn’t—“

She started laughing before I could even finish. “Matt, you were fucking wasted last night. Andy and I came inside because we were getting cold and you couldn’t even walk you were so drunk. You and Kelsey came falling out of the bathroom together.” Her laughter became more of a scoff. “She barely had her clothes pulled back on.”

I looked away from her and spit again. “I don’t believe you.”

She shrugged, dropping her cigarette to the ground and stomping on it. “I don’t give a fuck.”

She walked back inside without saying another word. I looked down at the half smoked cigarette, smashed into the floorboards, not even enough to salvage because she’d stomped on it so hard. Obviously she was pissed off about something. I hadn’t imagined I had been that drunk last night. I remember fucking around with Kelsey in the bathroom, which wasn’t something I usually do, but last night felt like my rebirth or something. I quit sulking about Courtney for one night of my life and I was able to fuck around and have a good time and now Aspen was throwing a fucking fit about it.

I sighed loudly and dropped the butt to my cigarette on the floor, just about to walk inside when Kelsey came out of the back door. I immediately looked the other way; I wasn’t feeling so confident now that I had a hangover instead of a buzz. She came over to me and pulled my face towards her’s, kissing my cheek. I turned away from her again and laughed nervously.

“What?” She chuckled, “Not so hot now that you’re not drunk?”

I looked at her, smiling uneasily. I was starting to realize how plain this girl really was. She had a perfectly shaped small nose, perfect lips, perfect face structure, perfect eyes, and brown in color. Her hair was long and dyed perfectly; everything about her was so unsettlingly perfect.

“I feel like shit.” I laughed.

She nodded. “That happens.”

The silence around us was awkward and I clapped my hands together, “Man it’s cold out here.”

“Well why don’t we go inside?” She said, wrapping her arms around my neck and reaching up to kiss me.

I felt bad, had I led this girl on? I thought we had both been drunk last night, but maybe it was just me. I gently pulled her arms away from my neck and smiled down at her. “Look, Kelsey. I was really drunk last night and I don’t think that—“

“You are fucking that Aspen chic.” She laughed at me, seemingly uninterested in the fact that I had just turned her down, “Aren’t you?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Bullshit, before she moved in with you, you were desperate enough to fucking ask me on a date.” She laughed, “You were all like um hey um Kelsey, would you um, being a pathetic freak. And last night it took you like half an hour to get drunk and mess around with me, because you wanted to make her jealous, since she showed up with that other guy.”

Besides the fact that she’d called me a pathetic freak, her theory made me want to laugh right in her face, but I kept calm and looked down at her. “Andy is my friend and I didn’t want to make Aspen jealous. Like I said, I got really wasted last night.”

I didn’t stay to hear anything else she said, I merely got up and walked away from her, going back inside. I found Andy and Aspen both awake now, sitting on the couch together, laughing and talking about something.

“You guys ready to go?” I snapped, yanking the keys to Andy’s Mazda out of my pocket.

Both of them nodded and piled into the car with me, not one of us bothering to say good bye or help clean anything up. As we pulled up outside of my apartment, I cut the engine and turned to Andy, “Where are you staying while you’re in town?”

He shrugged. “I’m only here a couple days and since I already spent one night over at Craig’s, I’ll probably stay at my parent’s house tonight.”

“Well do you want me to give you a ride over there now or later?”

I watched as he turned around in his seat to look at Aspen, who had busied herself with picking at the cloth on his seat. He smiled at her before yanking on a piece of her hair to get her attention.

She looked up at him, “Huh?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to hang out tonight.” He said quietly, “Maybe we could go out to dinner or something?”

Her eyes flickered towards mine for just a second and I looked away quickly, not saying a word. She swallowed quietly and looked up at him again. “Just me and you?”

He laughed. “Yeah just me and you.”

“Sure.” She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well.” I grunted, shoving the keys back into the ignition and starting the car, “Why don’t you stay here Aspen? I’ll go take Andy home so you can take a shower or whatever.”

Andy quickly moved out of his seat and pulled it back so she could get out of the car. She jumped out without saying a word to Andy, looking down like she was embarrassed. She stuck her head in the car and reached her hand out towards me.

“Can I have the key to the apartment?”

I twisted it off the key ring quickly and tossed it at her. She reached down to pick it up and gave me an angry look, walking past Andy.

“So I’ll come pick you up around like five?” He yelled after her.

“Yeah, five.” She smiled, turning around and clutching the key in her hands. “See you then.”

------------------------------------------------------------

I looked at the clock for about the hundredth time that night, it was only eleven at this point and I was sure Andy would have Aspen home before midnight, as he’d probably make his way home to spend some time with his parents before tomorrow. I sighed loudly and flipped through the local channels on the TV again, nothing catching my attention.

The only thing I could really think about was how pissed off Aspen had been before she left. She was not happy about the fact that I’d slept with Kelsey last night and I couldn’t really think of why. I couldn’t imagine that her and me holding hands really had any meaning to her at all. We’d been sleeping in the same bed for weeks now for fuck’s sake, holding hands meant almost nothing to her.

And she really did like Andy, I could tell. It wasn’t just every day that Aspen spent an hour messing around with her hair in the mirror and trying on the few dresses that Aly had given her before settling into a more comfortable pair of jeans and a t shirt. Although, it wasn’t every day that she got asked on a date. And I guess that was what really made Aspen like Andy, was the fact that he’d taken the time to ask her out and take her to go and do something.

I looked at the package of cigarettes sitting on the table in front of me and grabbed one, picking up my lighter and going out the front door to smoke. Right as I opened the door, Andy was pulling away from Aspen with a grin on his just kissed lips, dropping her left hand, looking like he’d just got caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing. It didn’t take me long to go right back inside and walk through the living room and out the back door to the porch.

I was halfway through my cigarette when the door slid open behind me. I didn’t say anything as I heard Aspen’s feet touch the concrete. I held my hand out towards her with the lighter in it and she took it lightly, doing her best not to touch my hand before lighting her cigarette. As Andy drove past us, he waved at her and she waved back.

I scoffed. “You know that nothing’s going to happen between you guys, right? He’ll never be over Scout.”

“Kind of like you’ll never be over Courtney?” She snapped.

I looked down at her. “What? You think you’re hot shit because Andy paid you a little attention?”

“Why are you being such an asshole Matt? Did I do something to piss you off or what?”

“You’ve been acting all high and mighty since last night.”

“Why? Because I said that you got plastered last night and fucked Kelsey? I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t even fucking find you!”

“Oh I’m sorry that I can’t be there every time you wake up with a fucking night mare!”

“You know what Matt?” She said, yelling now. “Fuck you!”

“No, fuck you Aspen!”

“Why don’t you both go fuck yourselves?” A voice from above my porch yelled. “It’s almost midnight, shut the hell up!”

Aspen looked over at me, narrowing her eyes. I watched as she took a drag of her cigarette and turned away from me. I watched as her chin trembled. She let the smoke trickle out of her mouth as she whispered, “Stop looking at me.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her. “Real mature Aspen.”

She turned towards me with tears in her eyes, “Yeah it seems that I’m just a big fucking baby, huh Matt?” Her voice hushed.

“I didn’t say that.” I said quietly, feeling like an asshole.

“You try fucking having the dreams I do.” She continued. “You try having a night mare you can’t even fucking wake up from and when you’re finally awake, you feel like you can never go back to sleep because you’re so scared.”

I didn’t look towards her again. I didn’t want to, I felt like a total creep.

“But you wouldn’t know what that’s like.” She stopped.

“Yeah because you won’t fucking explain it to me.” I retorted. “I bet you had no problem telling Andy last night, huh?”

She was quiet, locking and unlocking her knees while sucking in on her cigarette. I looked at her face as she blew out the smoke, doing her best to avoid my gaze.

“You told him, didn’t you?” I said quietly.

She said nothing.

I scoffed, putting my cigarette out on the siding. “That’s fucking amazing. I take you in to help you out. I’ve been there through fucking everything and you can’t tell me why you’re having those night mares, but you can sure as fuck tell some guy you hardly know.”

“It’s embarrassing, Matt.”

“Well you weren’t embarrassed enough to tell Andy last night.”

She turned to face me now. “I’m not going to fucking see him again, okay? It doesn’t matter anymore because I was a little buzzed, and it just came out. But now, I don’t have to worry about talking to him again. He’s in a band Matt, do you really think I’m that naïve?”

“So you won’t tell me because you’re embarrassed about it and you would have to see me again after you talked about it?” I asked. “That doesn’t make any sense. You saw Andy again tonight. If you were that embarrassed, you would’ve—“

Her voice was choked with tears now. “He acted like he didn’t really hear me, Matt. I told him everything about it before I told him about Ryan and he acted like he didn’t hear that part.”

“Ryan?” I said, “Ryan Mead? What about him?”

“Nothing.” She quipped. “I’m going inside.”

“Aspen.”

She stopped in front of the door. “And don’t worry about me waking you up tonight. I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

I turned away, embarrassed about what’d I said to her, but too busy wondering what it was about Ryan to say anything else before she slammed the sliding glass door against the wall so hard, it didn’t even close all the way.