Lukey Kid

“You’re a fuckin’ dipshit,” Joey slurred.

“You’re the dipshit, dipshit,” Brendan countered.

“Green beans are way better than corn!”

“Fuck you, green beans suck ass!”

“You’re a retard!”

“No, you’re a retard!”

“You guys are both stupid,” I jumped in, smirking at the battling brothers in the hotel kitchen. “Broccoli rules all.”

They looked like twins, the way they looked at me with that “Jesus, what’re you talking about?!” face.

“You know what? I ain’t even gonna answer that,” Brendan sighed. “You’re a dipshit too.”

“Hey now. Language.”

He stuck his tongue out at me. Joey snickered. “Good language is for cocksuckers,” he mocked.

I rolled my eyes. The Veins brothers had acquired what I had dubbed “hotel mouth.” No holds barred cussing. I was probably the only one who hadn’t let a bad word slip out. Gosh, even Ren swore, and even if he was already prone to a few dirty words, it was still a bit of a shock.

Somebody suddenly knocked on the door.

As if hamsters scurrying to the food bowl, all five of us – Soria and Ren emerged from the back room of the hotel – got in the main room and huddled about six feet away from the door.

Waiting.

They knocked again.

“Who the fuck is that?” Brendan whispered.

We all shushed him. Who knows how thin the walls were.

They knocked again.

We froze. Joey pushed Ren into the door. Ren squeaked, but regained his wits and looked through the peephole.

Then, he turned back and whispered loudly, “Justin has a son!”

Now, everybody looked at him funny, but Soria full-on gasped like she knew who he was talking about. With her hands over her mouth, she looked as if she’d seen a ghost.

Then she pushed Ren aside and opened the door.

What was going on?

A burst of outside air whooshed us in the faces as Soria swung open the door and surprise, surprise!

The kid who came to visit us looked like a hobo.

Pale skin, red, sideswept curly hair, a leprechaun beard and a v-neck paired with black skinny jeans and a Castro cap. If Justin – the guy who farted at dinner our first night in Miami – lost weight…they’d be twins.

A huge grin broke out across the dude’s face when he saw Soria and she was no different – they started hugging and laughing and smiling, and ho-ly-crap, the awkwardness was tangible.

Man, you should’ve seen the look on Ren’s face.

His brow was furrowed, his lips pressed into a thin line. Immediately, he folded his arms and stepped forward, out of the half circle me, him, Joey and Brendan had formed.

“So you two know each other?”

Soria and the kid didn’t respond. They just kept hugging.

Ren asked, louder this time, “You two know each other?”

Bloody red in the face. Either embarrassment or just anger. Although, I’d never seen him mad. I couldn’t imagine him being so angry he’d actually change colors.

Finally, she let go and smiled pretty for all of us, oh so innocent. The kid was grinning too, his gums showing. He almost looked high.

She held him around the waist and he held her around the shoulder. “Guys, this is Michael,” she smiled.

None of us knew who the crap she was talking about.

“He’s my long-lost brother,” she added, elbowing him, apparently not aware that that was still a little bit of a sore spot for me. I looked like Brendan and Joey – confused. But Ren? Yeah, his eyebrows were scrunched together in the middle of his forehead. “I met him in Santa Monica last year.”

Well, yeah, she told us something like that a while ago. It kind of made sense. What she didn’t tell us, though, was why he was there! At least when Travis dropped by, we sort of knew who he was and why he was at our hotel.

Michael ruffled her hatless hat-head and laughed. “And she’s my soulmate, we’re in love, and we’re gonna get married!” he said jokingly.

Pff. Bad move, dude. Even I thought so.

Now, I could have run a hand through the air and grabbed a nice heaping handful of awkward.

Even Soria’s face fell as “love” rolled off the tongue! I could tell her heart dropped right to her feet. That look of “uh oh, the cat threw up again”-type guilt was written all over her face.

Silence.

Mike still had that stupid grin on under that mop of red hair.

“Uh…eh, um…Mike, er…” Soria stuttered. She coughed and cleared her throat, pushing away from his grip, and wriggled over to Ren. He grasped onto her shoulder tightly. She held her arms out as if to introduce. “This is my boyfriend, Ren.”

There went the smirk.

“Oh!” he gasped, holding a shaky hand up to his mouth. His eyes were dinner plates with a dot of hazel in the middle. Seeing a guy taller than me being scared was a little weird. “I, uh…hi, Ren…”

Man, if looks could kill.

Brendan and I looked at each other, both of us thinking “Ohhh dang.”

Ren folded his arms, not taking his eyes off of Mike. The three of us that weren’t caught up in anything backed away immediately. “What’s this about a ‘soulmate?’” he said to Soria and Mike, a wicked little grin taking over his face.

Mike’s mouth twitched for a little while, then he looked down at Soria expectantly. She twitched, looking for a good way to explain this. But truth was, heh, there was no way.

“No, really. Tell me. I wanna know why you two’re ‘in love,’” Ren urged, this time staring Mike down.

Soria grabbed Ren by the arm and hastily pulled him into a corridor of the room. Mike looked at us in panic, but Joey was shooting him a dirty look too.

Ren and Soria were whispering really loudly. If they thought we couldn’t hear them, well, they were wrong.

“Who the hell is he?!” Ren almost yelled.

“Michael! I told you, I met him in Santa Monica!” Soria defended.

“Then why the hell did he say you and him were in love?!”

“Because he didn’t know who you were!”

“Why didn’t you tell him who I was?!”

“Would you stop cutting me off and let me finish?! Jesus Christ!” she growled. “I met him, and I didn’t tell him we had a thing, ‘cause, like, I didn’t want him to think I was hung up or depressed about it. And he liked the same stuff I liked! And I could talk to him about, like, Cobra Skulls without hearing, ‘Uh huh, uh huh,’ like you’d do! You know how much that fucking bugs me?!”

Ren was still in death-glare mode. I didn’t know which side to take. A little quieter, he said, “You didn’t answer my question. What did you do to him to make you so close? Stop making stupid excuses, okay? Your attitude right now isn’t helping your case.”

“Nothing! We didn’t do anything!”

“Answer me.”

He said that last one through gritted teeth, a horrible shade of pink. Soria gasped and receded in on herself, and I think it’s safe to say the rest of us did too.

“Ren…” she trailed off softly. “Chill out.”

“I’ll chill when you answer my question.”

Soria pulled off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, taking a shaky breath. All of us were bracing ourselves; now things were just getting crazy.

Was I the only one who was sane?

“Back in Santa Monica…Ren, you know how I feel about you,” she bargained. Even I gotta admit that was just a bad sign.

Ren rolled his head and folded his arms. “Quit bullshitting and tell me.”

Quiet.

“I…we went out one night, and…we almost kissed.”

Oy! Static!

Man, I didn’t even know that! None of us knew! I could tell that from the way we all shared a synchronized “oh my God” look.

Ren held his arms out. “What...what the…are you kidding me? You didn’t tell me, and you just thought I’d never find out about it?”

Mike had this helpless look written all over his face and I even heard him mumble a curse under his breath. He had a hand over his mouth and my God, he was shaking. Bad timing, man.

Soria was full-on crying by then. She put her hands on his chest as if to console and calm him down.

“He didn’t know! He didn’t know about us!” she explained.

“That’s no excuse, you knew!” he countered. He turned around, facing us with a hand over his eyes. “You knew. Man, I…I loved you! I lied and said I just liked you so I wouldn’t freak you out!”

She sobbed loudly. I almost went over there and hugged her, but I wanted no part of that hurricane. Even Mike stayed back.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again, so I just went with it! You didn’t even ask me out! We just said, ‘Oh, I like you,’ to each other and never committed! What the hell was I supposed to think? For all I knew, you could’ve been doing even worse!” she defended.

Ren got even madder. “So you thought that was excuse to be a whore?!”

Ohhh dang…

Time stopped.

All of us, including me, said something along the lines of, “Holy crap.”

And Soria slapped Ren. Clear across the face - the kind of slap that’d leave a mark. Also, the kind of slap that broke that silence.

She whimpered something and fled, scurrying under Ren’s arm, flying out the door, out of the room, out of the hotel, out of the building. Just a fourteen-year-old blonde guitarist, nobody knew where she was going. None of us did, anyway.

Ren was just standing there, mouth agape, hand on his reddened cheek. Man, what an expression. Shock! Disgust! Anger! All rolled into one teenage boy.

All of us were staring at him. Albeit, it was rude to do that, but…dude, really?

“Why’d you just call her a whore?” Mike said flatly, his brow furrowed.

Ren gave him this insanely crappy look that even scared me a little bit.

“I don’t even wanna talk to you.”

All of us were quiet. Me and Joey and Brendan were looking at each other helplessly, and I felt like if we left, somebody would get slaughtered.

Mike was all serious business. “No, tell me. Why’d you call her a whore when she was right?”

Now this part just freaks me out, even now – Ren let out a huge growl and pushed Mike into a wall, though Mike didn’t fight back, and after that, Ren looked down at his own hands and even looked scared for a moment.

I guess when you’re as mad as he was, though, it didn’t matter.

Now, I guess it was our cue to do something. Joey ran up to the scene and shook Ren by the shoulders to try and get his head on straight.

“Chill the fuck out!” Joey screamed, right in Ren’s face. I gotta admit, I peed myself a little bit. “Michael didn’t know!”

Ren almost looked like he was about to turn around and hit Joey, but he wasn’t that stupid. Brendan once told us Joey won fifty-four out of the sixty fistfights he’d been in since grade school.

He just stared him down for a long time. It was kind of scary, honestly. Just two big spring coils waiting to bounce back up.

I took a deep breath and eased toward them. “Guys, uh…calm down…”

Joey fake-lunged at Ren. He blinked.

“Soon as this kid makes like he was and shuts up,” Joey sneered.

Ren coughed. “Whatever.”

Michael had weaseled his way next to Brendan and me. I didn’t blame him. I was still shaking a little bit.

The air was a little less tense, but that was probably just because Soria wasn’t there. Man, if she were still there…man. There’d have been a nuclear explosion.

“Where’d she go?” Brendan asked.

None of us answered. None of us knew.

“We could call her,” Mike suggested, completely oblivious to the ever-present Ren death glare.
“Dude, her phone’s right there,” Joey sneered, pointing to the kitchen counter, where her dinosaur-old cell phone lay. “I don’t think she’s gonna answer if we call her.”

“Maybe we should just let her, you know, cool out,” Brendan shrugged, “and then she might come back.”

“And what if she doesn’t come back? Then what?” Joey said.

Then we were screwed, that’s what. I put my two cents in. “You got the keys, dude? We could ride around and look for her.”

They looked at me funny.

“Yeah, ‘cause going around in a big windowless SUV asking people if they’ve seen a blonde crying teenage girl is gonna get us help,” Joey stated.

Brendan shrugged. “Why not?”

- - -

So we grabbed Mike away before we left; Ren decided not to come and we didn’t wanna pay for six hundred bucks worth of damage when we left them. Mike complied. Ren went back to being quiet, but I knew he was still pretty mad. Honestly, I don’t understand why even to this day; Mike was a pretty nice guy, it seemed.

I guess it was between them and them only.

Joey leaned out the window up to a young couple – a blonde lady and a pissed-off looking short guy. “Hey, you guys see a blonde girl running through here?”

The woman shot us a confused look and glanced up at her beau. He gave us a crappy stare. “No, we haven’t,” he growled. They went on walking down the seaside stores.

Joey went back in the car and made a face. “Fuckin’ asswipes.”

Mike took the front seat. Brendan and I had occupied the backseat and kept an eye out for Soria, not that it worked – the backseat had no windows. Brendan was playing with a cell phone, causing a bright light to shine in my eyes.

Wait a sec…

“Well, she’s not cheatin’, at least from what I can see on her phone,” he declared, flipping the phone shut.

I yanked it out of his hands. “Don’t look through her phone!”

He let it go, then put his head in his hands, giving up. Sighing, he told us, “Man, this just fucks it all up.”

We all shrugged in agreement.

“I mean Ren’s a cool guy and all, but what the hell?” Joey added. “What jackass says that to his girlfriend? Both of those idiots are the biggest fuckin’ drama queens I ever met. What’s wrong with them?”

Mike said his first words of the ride. “You can’t really deny that fact that he really does love her, I guess. I never met him and I could tell.”

Brendan snickered. “Dude, I hate to say it, but if he…oh, yeah, I get it.”

Yeah, me too. Hey, if he got that pissed off over a simple stupid phrasing of words, either he really loves Soria, or he’s crazy possessive. I chose to believe the first one.

“Ya’ll guys gotta understand that I had no clue in hell that those two were dating,” Mike added, looking back at Brendan and me. “She just told me she liked a boy back home after we almost kissed. She never said who it was, either. And I got word of her band hitting it big – I follow her on Flitter – and so I wanted to drop by and say hi. We were still talkin’ and everything but I backed off when she told me about him. I don’t like her like that anymore.”

Joey shrugged. “I get that, man. I guess Ren don’t.”

“Well, he’s liked her since seventh grade,” I explained.

They all nodded in agreement.

Time passed. Twenty minutes of boredom, sighs, and tension.

Pretty soon we thought about giving up. “Maybe she went back,” Mike had shrugged, to which Brendan responded with a rude laugh.

Miami came alive at night, especially as we drove along the boardwalk, thinking Soria might have wanted a little taste of her home. Lights were on everywhere and people in windbreakers walked all over the place, proof of the simply mild weather of a fall in Florida.

None of those lights shined on our guitarist, though…

It was an hour since we’d left and we hadn’t spotted the familiar mop of wavy blonde hair. For the longest time I bet we looked like a van fulla pedophiles.

But finally, finally, we were driving past a movie theatre and saw Soria speedwalking along, hands shoved in her pockets like she was so cold it was inhuman. She didn’t have a jacket, either; even I wore one and I’m from Jersey.

Joey saw her, actually; he got all excited and beeped the car horn, pulling over in the parking lane to get her attention. She looked or way and saw Mike in the window that was facing her, which must’ve turned her off, since she immediately turned away and sped up.

“Get in!” Mike told her. She didn’t listen.

Joey went, “Fuck it,” and unbuckled himself, leaning across Mike’s lap to get to the opposite window. Brendan snorted a laugh as his shirt rode up. Mike jumped back and yelled something in defiance, but…well, now, we had even more reason to question Joey’s definition of “personal space.”

“SORIA, GET. IN. THE. CAR. NOW.”

I tapped his shoulder. “Uh, dude, people are watching…”

“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT IF PEOPLE ARE WATCHING!” he yelled at me. “WE NEED’A MAKE IT ALL RIGHT!”

Amen.

Soria stopped in her tracks, rubbing her eyes.

Joey slammed on the brakes. We waited for Soria to calm down and comply, and when she mustered up the nerves to look at us, Mike and Joey smiled sheepishly as if it was one last try at convincing her.

“Ready?” Mike said.

She pursed her lips and opened the van herself. Brendan scooted over so she could sit in the backseat with us. With people still staring at the scene we’d made, we sped off to our hotel.

She was quiet. We were all quiet.

Brendan elbowed her. “So, uh…y’okay?”

She leaned her head against the seat. Obviously she didn’t wanna talk.

Joey snickered as we turned down a main street. “This is why there ain’t many bands with one chick.”

Soria punched his arm hard. “Fuck off.”

“Ooh! Feisty!” Brendan teased.

She punched him too.

“Guys, leave her alone,” I told them, reaching behind Brendan to pat Soria’s shoulder.

She started crying.

One loud sob was heard throughout the entire van, and in an instant Joey had pulled over and everybody was huddled around her, asking what was wrong.

Freakin’ duh!

She shoved us all away and quietly crumbled, all of us bewildered at the crying girlfriend of our singer. She whimpered for a while and then brushed the hair back out of her eyes.

And then she said, “I love him.”

And, once again, we were silent.

Brendan took the liberty of breaking that silence. “…Wait, you love Ren?”

Soria looked at him like he was the biggest idiot on the planet. “Yes, Ren!”

More silence. Joey put the van back into drive with a, “Well, halle-fuckin’-llujah! How ‘bout we go back and tell him that?!”

I kept the smile to myself as he pressed the gas pedal, crazily speeding up and back to our hotel.

Soria rubbed her eyes.

The only thing we heard for the longest time was the old rumble of the van, until Mike sighed and turned around. Facing Soria specifically, he said, “Look, I’m sorry.”

She rolled her head. “Yeah.”

“’Yeah?’ The hell does that mean?”

She shrugged. “Just, yeah. I accept your apology. God knows you needed to say it.”

Mike snickered. “Well, you could’a told me your boyfriend was ya’lls singer. And you could’a done without all the hugging and laughing, makin’ me think there was nothing to risk.”

Joey intervened, just in time. “Alright, alright. You two don’t need’a fight no more. None of us do.”

“Amen, man,” Brendan smirked.

Then we went back to being quiet, waiting for our cue to turn into the hotel parking lot and maybe, just maybe, tie up all those loose ends.

“You mind just droppin’ me off up here?” Mike said, pointing to the upcoming street corner.

“Why?” I said.

He shrugged. “Guess I don’t wanna get in the middle of things again.”

“Where’re you gonna be?” Brendan inquired.

Mike was quiet. “I’ll prob’ly just find a hotel.”

“It’s ten at night. You really think that’s safe, man?” I added.

“If he doesn’t wanna stay with us, then leave him the fuck alone,” Soria defied quietly. Mike stared back at her for a second, a drop of shock flashing across his face. “Christ. You really think we’d be safe?”

I shut up. I sucked at winning arguments.

Joey pulled up to the corner and drove on the side of the road. Mike stepped out, bidding Soria goodbye with a farewell hand slap, and telling us all to “stay classy.” Really. He said that.

A couple of blocks later, we reached the Triple Tree Hotel parking lot again, anxiously awaiting confrontation. Half of me expected Ren to be there. The other half expected him gone. When we were huddled around the door, waiting for Joey to slide the key card in so we could walk back into heck…

Ren was watching TV on one of the beds.

One by one we filed into the room, and Brendan and Joey grabbed me into a different area of it with them. Soria came in last. I wanted to stay in the same room and diffuse any possible conflict, but of course, Joey had yanked me along and I was in the back room with Brendan and him.

And…Joey instantly pressed his ear to the door. How did I ever see that coming.

“Shh,” he cautioned, holding an arm out to signal for us to comply. Brendan had a goofy concealed smirk; he hid it with his hands. Then he held a finger up to his lips to tell me to be quiet. No problem, I mouthed out.

There really wasn’t a need for us to have our ears against the door. We could hear Soria and Ren anyway. Hah…not that I wanted to listen in on them, but…

“You came back,” Ren said flatly.

“Yeah,” Soria said, a nervous quiver in her voice.

Silence. Brendan and I exchanged a scared look.

“You got anything you wanna say to me? Anything you wanna come clean about now so I don’t accidentally find out later?” he asked expectantly.

Soria sighed. We could hear that even from where we were standing. “Ren…look, I’m sorry, but -”

“But what?”

“But you gotta understand that I didn’t think I’d be coming back! And it wasn’t like we were legitimately boyfriend and girlfriend back then!”

“Yeah, well, you moved back anyways. Soria, you should’ve told me before we actually started dating.”

She sighed again. Her words muffled by something else, she said, “I’m sorry.”

Quiet. Shuffling.

“Wha…what the hell’s going on?” Joey whispered to nobody.

Brendan and I exchanged a look of anxiety as we awaited the next words to come out of their mouths.

Ren sighed in exhaustion loudly. “Look…Soria…I love you. I just don’t understand why the hell you didn’t tell me this,” he groaned.

“I wasn’t ready! God! And I told you about Mike! I told you when I first got back, when we were sitting in my house that day!” she fired back.

Pause.

The air was thick with the sting of anger and distress. Man, I wanted to go out and settle this, but this was between them. Them only. No matter how much I wanted to get in and help, it was their problem. Theirs.

So why did I care so much?

Before I knew it I had my ear pressed to the door next to Joey, desperately wanting to catch any sign of further conflict. It was quiet. He was shooting glances at me in panic, his lips parted slightly. I wasn’t just panicking - I was freaking out.

I’ve said earlier that Plaster Caster was the most important thing to me. It is. The last thing I wanted was for us to get messed up. Especially because of relationship troubles between Ren and Soria.

Okay. Back in seventh grade when I went out with Soria, we broke up, partly because of peer pressure, and partly because we disagreed about a lot of music. I once said that I didn’t think Plaster Caster would break up because of a stupid break-up.

Prepare to eat those words, twelve-year-old me.

“I’m sorry!” Soria repeated. “I…I don’t know what else to say to you! I don’t know why the hell you’re so hung up on this either! It was once and I didn’t even kiss him!”

“You knew how I fucking felt,” he said in a low creepy tone. “Even if you didn’t think you’d come and see me ever again, it was still stupid. We were tight. We talked every night. You obviously knew there was something between us.”

Soria sighed. “I don’t even know why I keep telling you I’m sorry if you won’t forgive me.”

“I can’t forgive you!” he yelled. “Jesus.”

I bit my lip.

Brendan came up between Joey and I, gluing his ear to the door as well.

“Then why are we still talking?” Soria said quietly.

“Because you can’t get it through your head why I’m mad,” Ren growled. “I…honestly, Soria, I don’t even know if I have it in me to even stay with you. If this is what you do…”

Joey, Brendan and I shared a simultaneous gasp as our hearts dropped right into our feet.

“Wha…what…what the fuck? Dude, you were my first kiss! How could you -”

“After all this, I don’t even know if I am!” Ren shouted.

Soria growled – audibly – and pretty soon we heard a rush of air coming toward the very door our ears were pressed against. Out of instinct we three bystanders leapt back and almost peed ourselves as our guitarist herself, red-faced and teary-eyed, stormed in the room and shoved us all aside. Literally.

“You guys need to get the fuck out. I need to be alone,” she spat, turning Joey around and shoving him out of the room. He looked back for a second, but didn’t bother going back in.

Brendan took it upon himself to get out. I didn’t blame him. She was a head shorter than most of us, but she could get quite scary.

For some reason I stayed; I didn’t get out when she told me to. She grabbed me by the shoulders and tried to force me out, pushing the best she could, but it wasn’t enough to get me to leave. I wanted to comfort her, what can I say. Being on the football team in junior high paid off, heh.

“Get out, Luke,” she grunted, still pushing. I pried her hands off of me and held them aside, looking her in the eye.

“No.”

Brendan and Joey were staring from in the doorway. Ren was pacing back and forth, rubbing his face.

“Get out.”

She gritted her teeth, hair covering most of her face. Even at her angriest I still wasn’t scared. I was still in here for a reason.

“No,” I repeated, firmer this time.

She tried pushing me out by the waist, but it didn’t work. She just turned purple and gave up. Looking up at me square in the eye, she said again, “Get the fuck out, Luke. I don’t need you in here.”

I looked her square in the eye and said, “No!”

“Luke, just get out, man,” Joey ushered, that look of fear and something bitter in his eyes.

I shook my head. I wasn’t going out until I was sure Soria was alright.

She sighed heavily, anger and distress flushing out of her lungs. She took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes, sobbing a few times, and finally broke down crying. I put a hand on her shoulder, almost hugging her, but I really did not want to deal with a possible jealous Ren.

And when I saw her breaking, it all came back to me.

Why did I like her in junior high? Why did I, Luke Ragan, star quarterback for the Claymore Ravens, ask out Soria Atkinson, a virtual nobody girl, in seventh grade? Why didn’t I ask out a more girly girl – one with flirting talent and a way with lips?

Why was I reminded of that too-short period of time…now?

“What the fuck are you looking at?!” Soria yelled at the Veins brothers, who were still gaping at the scene from the doorway. She walked over and slammed the door shut so hard that the walls rattled.

I asked her out…because she was real.

Soria wasn’t an average kid. She wouldn’t settle for the boring. She wouldn’t bottle up feelings around people she knew. In fact, sometimes she exaggerated her feelings. When it rained, it poured. When she was mad, she was mad. I liked that excitement. I wasn’t bored when I was with her.

For two years, I thought Ren was the luckiest man alive.

I still thought that, even as Soria crumbled in my arms, sobbing into the crook of my neck and I cradled her, nonchalantly running my fingers through her hair. Even if she was absolutely freaking out, I still thought that.

Way to mess me up, kid. That’s right. Start crying, ‘cause you knew I couldn’t resist hugging you…that’s what I kept telling myself when she broke down. But how could she mess me up if she didn’t even know…God. She did mess me up. Bad.

“Shh,” I ushered, stroking her hair.

She held me around the waist tighter, pulling me closer in her warm embrace. It gave me goosebumps realizing how warm she was compared to the chill of the outside air. It freaked me out. Maybe these weren’t just stupid teenage thoughts.

Maybe there was a reason we stood there, hugging each other.

Maybe there was a reason I stopped envying Ren and started losing respect for him.

She pushed me away after a while, tears streaked across her red face. Pulling her glasses off, she looked up at me and then stared at the floor. I took her chin in my thumb and index finger and made her look me in the eyes, because I couldn’t get over how blue her eyes were.

“Luke…” she whispered, averting my stare.

I barely heard her. All I could hear was the sound of my own pounding heart, which was beating up into my chest like that poison dart had been blown out and all the blood was flowing out. I couldn’t hear myself think. For the first time in my entire life, my heart was controlling rather than my head.

All I could think about was how freaking beautiful she looked. Ah, when it rains…

“Dude. What’re you doing?” she said flatly, clearly.

I could hear her, yeah, but did I listen?

Nope.

I leaned over and came this close to finally closing that distance, almost touching my lips to hers. Almost fulfilling that dream I’d kept in the back of my conscience for two years. God, I’d wanted this so bad that my hands were shaking in a feeble attempt to keep control.

Instead, I lost control.

Right before my dream came true I felt two small hands shove me away hard by my chest. The wind was absolutely knocked out of my system as Soria pushed me back. I hit the wall with a giveaway thud, and it occurred to me that I had just tried to kiss our guitarist, my “ex-girlfriend,” (though we never kissed when we “dated”) and the source of all the hotel distress.

I opened my eyes. Soria was staring at me in horror, mouth dropped to the floor. While I reeled my lips back in, I felt that warmth that was there vanish suddenly, realizing that…oh my God…oh my God…Ren cannot know what went on.

That’s the one thing that flashed through my mind.

“What the hell was that, Luke?!” Soria gasped, shivering; either because of my sudden attempt to make a move, or because she just stood there in an old Bouncing Souls t-shirt and skinny jeans, despite the freezing weather.

My mouth twitched, trying to make words, but my brain wouldn’t work. All I could do was stutter mindlessly and hope she’d understand.

She didn’t.

“You…did you just try to kiss me?” she whispered harshly.

I stuttered some more.

She walked up to me and grabbed me by the shirt collar. Pinning me against the wall, she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “You just fucked this up even more. You have no…idea…what you got into.”

I just grabbed her hands and almost pried them off of me, but the sensation of having her that close made me long for more. I didn’t want a distance. And of course, that was one reason why I never listened to my heart.

“Soria, I wanna talk to you,” Ren said from outside the door. He didn’t even knock. A split second after he said that, he walked in, completely dropping his jaw upon seeing Soria pushing me against the wall with her lips this close to my ear.

Time froze, put simply.

“Oh…oh my God. Oh my God,” Ren gasped, evidently running out of breath.

Soria let me go. My face was red, but all I could manage was an open-mouthed look of shock at Ren. She wasn’t any better – the look on her face said, “Oh…crap.”

“Oh…” she trailed off, glancing at me, and then glancing back at Ren.

Ren clenched his fists and glared at me, walking further into the room. “What…is…going…on. Tell me the fucking truth this time.”

Soria leaned on her hip and folded her arms as if to rub something in his face. “Luke here just tried to kiss me.”

“No, wait -” I managed, my first comprehensible words of the event.

That was before I felt a burst of energy against my left eye that knocked me back onto Brendan’s bed. Holy crap. The kid just punched me.

Wait.

The kid just…punched me?

It didn’t hurt too bad – it just throbbed. I sat up and gaped at Ren – the very same kid who I could call one of my best friends mere seconds ago. The very same kid who just socked me in the eye. Lord…the only kid here who I’d went to school with the longest.

He was looking at me with the evilest eye anybody’s ever given me.

Soria had her hands over her mouth like she was about to blow chunks.

Ren grit his teeth and glared at both of us. Looking at me specifically, he let out a twisted laugh and growled, “And I thought tonight couldn’t get any worse.”

“Dude…we didn’t kiss,” Soria bargained, palms up and shrugging, “I swear to God. He just leaned in and I pushed him away. I dunno what the fuck he was thinking…”

“Yeah, about that,” Ren jumped in, “What the fuck were you thinking? Getting up on Soria like that? Did you really think it would end well? Did you?”

He stood over me on the bed, blocking out the weak light caused by the ceiling fan. As if to intimidate me. No offense to him…but he was only slightly more built than a twig.

I never told him that though.

I’m not that kind of person.

Well…most of the time...

“I wasn’t thinking,” I admitted, giving Ren a dirty look despite my regret. “I just…I did it because…”

“Because why?”

I sighed. Ren kept glaring at me, and despite his youthful face, he seemed twenty years older from the stress on his chest.

“Because why?” he repeated.

I shoved him off of me with more force than I intended – he stumbled backward into the wall. I had so many things I wanted to say to him. You were being a jerk, bro. Soria loves you, man, just get over something that happened a year ago and move the heck on.

I think it was because he was such a normal kid. He didn’t live a life comparable to mine or Soria’s or Brendan’s. He didn’t have to go through the pain of losing somebody he loved to death, or moving across the country, or being separated from family. And when something came along and screwed up his security, all heck broke loose and he didn’t know how to deal with it.

Of course, I didn’t say any of that.

“Because she deserves better than that!” I yelled, louder than I expected.

Ren looked like a deer in the headlights.

Soria did, too. Only, you know, redder in the face.

“You…you…” Ren trailed off, pointing at me as if to try to piece together something understandable.

“If you can’t get over something that happened over a year ago and didn’t even amount to anything, then she deserves better than you.”

“You know what? If you two are gonna do this, then get the hell out,” he growled, his lip quivering. “We can get another guitarist. Another bassist. We don’t fucking need you. Get the hell out of this hotel and get the hell out of Plaster Caster.”

That is why I don’t get angry. It’s like somebody else takes over my body, and that somebody else is an idiot, I swear.

You know what happened next? Soria grabbed my hand, yanked me out of the place, and I shot one last look at Ren and saw a tear roll down his cheek.