I Believe We're The Enemy

Lariah’s P.O.V.

“Vi? Is that you? My head hurts.”

“Gee...?”

My eyes force themselves open, slowly, to find Gerard face several inches away from my own. His gleaming hazel eyes are squinted and seem rather blurry, and he’s gazing at me with a look of utter confusion, as if I’ve turned into a giraffe or something. I sit up slowly and see him wince, and that’s when I realize that I’m laying on top of him. My feet are propped up on Frank’s chest, and Whatsername is curled up next to him, her arms wrapped firmly around his waist. Oh, she’s going to freak when she wakes up. Luckily, the only clothing missing from this scene is Frank’s shirt.

“What the fuck happened?” I mumble, not bothering to move away from Gerard’s slumped form. Like he said, my head is pounding quite painfully.

He yawns loudly, stretching so that I can feel his muscular stomach rippling underneath me. It’s not as awkward as I would expect. “Welcome to the world of hangovers, sweetie. We got drunk.”

“Whatsername’s gonna be pissed when she wakes up.”

Gerard laughs, sending another painful wave through my skull. “I feel sorry for Frank.”

Now I remember him inching away from her after some threat yesterday, and I realize that protecting Frank may become vital. We’re all sprawled out on Gerard and Frank’s bed, the pillows and sheets around us so out of place that it almost makes me dizzy. However, as suspicious as our position is, I don’t think that anything too serious went down. At least, I don’t remember anything... like that. My memory seems to have taken a blow.

“Um... Lariah, can you get off of me?” I blush a violent crimson and comply, finding myself face-down on the bed next to Gerard. he smiles. “Thank you. You’re a bit heavier than I expected, and that was starting to hurt.” I laugh and, seeing as nobody will know, roll over so that our sides are pressed together, our skin almost hungry for each other’s touch. Gerard takes my hand.

“I love you, Gee,” I mumble, burying my face in his neck.

“I love you too. Even if you’ve made it a rule that you must inform me of such feelings at least once every single day.”

I laugh. “I’m sorry. I just... If I ever lose you, I want you to remember that I love you. No matter what.”

Within seconds, I’m relaxing in a warm Gerardly embrace, and our legs tangle automatically as our arms are tossed around each other’s bodies. “I will never forget that, I promise. I’d never be able to forget you.”

I’m only glad that he can’t see the way I’m smiling.

“Good morning, fuckbuddies,” Frank grumbles from behind Gerard. I stiffen, but it would probably take an army to tear me away from my best friend right now.

“Hello, Frank,” Gerard replies.

“How do I get this thing off of me?”

We laugh as Frank attempts to dislodge the sleeping Whatsername, who is completely plastered to his side. She grumbles in her sleep a few times, her fingers gripping his bare skin adamantly, but luckily, she doesn’t wake up.

“Guys,” Frank mumbles, glaring at Whatsername, “if she wakes up like this, she will kill me.”

“No she won’t,” I reassure him. “She’ll freak out, but she won’t hurt you.”

Frank glares at me. “Yes she will! She told me yesterday, ‘if I wake up in bed with you, clothing or no, you will die.’ She’s going to kill me.”

“Hide her gun,” Gerard suggests.

“Um... I can’t. I can’t even get her off of me, much less get to her gun.”

“Oh. Okay then. Goodbye, Frankie! I love you!”

“Shit!” shouts Frank. “Don’t leave me! Come back here!” Relentlessly, Gerard and I disentangle from each other and slide off the bed, approaching the door and preparing to abandon Frank. Suddenly, Whatsername wakes with a start, her breathing so hoarse that it sounds loud from across the room. To my surprise, she glances around quickly and then buries her face in Frank’s chest, her pale skin shuddering fearfully as she hisses (her version of a whimper). “Whatsername?” Frank murmurs, abandoning his terror of her in order to hold her close to his body and run his fingers through her charcoal-colored hair. The roots of her shaggy mane, where her natural platinum blond is growing back in, show through.

“Lisette, what happened?” I call. She only shivers at the sound of my voice, pressing her body against Frank’s.

“Whatsername,” her whispers. “Lisette, hun, it’s okay. What’s wrong?”

She dislodges her face from his chest long enough to look him in the eyes, her terrified features glowing with need. Then, she grabs her notepad from a side table and curls back into Frank’s body as she writes. He wraps his arms around her hesitantly, reading over her shoulder.

After a few minutes, Frank’s face starts to contort with rage. “Forget it, babe. I have nightmares too; they’re just memories, they’re not worth crying over.” She ignores his condolence, however, and her face is soon streaked with thick, glossy tears. As she continues her rant on paper, Frank’s arms tighten around her body, taking on a more protective position. When she finishes, she turns back to Frank and buries her face in the tattoo on his chest, the one with a flame and the word HOPE. He only huger her tighter, his emotion too strong for words.

Despite Whatsername’s Frank-related fear of love, this scene isn’t really romantic at all. Frank is protecting her, guarding her, consoling her, and she’s drowning herself in the safety of him, but they don’t look like they’re in love. His eyes lack that certain glow of emotion, and her stance is purely instinctive; she trusts him, so naturally she is, for the most part, comfortable around him.

Gerard and I leave them, traveling into the kitchen to prepare a big breakfast for our entire bunch, because I figure everyone else will be too hungover to fix their own food. Unusually, Rose and Mikey’s room is silent; they normally wake up long before anyone else. Gerard and I have a good giggle over this suggestive fact.

A few hours later, Ginny, Rose, and Mikey are all awake and, after a brief up-chucking session, shoveling food into their mouths at full speed. I notice that Rose has acquired a bit of a limp, and Mikey has some legitimate sex hair. Ginny, apparently, is above showing obvious signs of her sex life, but I still spot a few poorly-hidden hickeys along her collarbone.

In the middle of our random, sleepy conversation, Rose and Ginny start teasingly pointing out the reddish blotches on one another’s necks and jawlines, one by one, until they both get tired of this and turn to me. Suddenly, their eyes widen, and they both zero in on the same spot on my neck, their faces masked by surprise. Suspicion overtakes me.

“What?” I snap, looking back and forth between my two friends.

Ginny pokes the mysterious spot on my neck, and to my surprise, it hurts. “You have a big, fat hickey.”

“No I don’t! What are you talking about?”

“Yes, you do. Go look in the mirror,” Rose interjects.

I feel my neck cautiously, and, as it turns out, there is a small lump where they’ve indicated. Grumbling under my breath, I rise and stalk into the nearest bathroom. A large, purply-red bump in situated in a very conspicuous spot on my neck, as I’ve been told.

“Gerard?” I call, halfway between angry and afraid.

He strolls into the room tentatively, obviously detecting the anxiety in my voice. “What?”

“What is this?”

His face pales. “I... Well... Oh! I remember! We were playing truth or dare, and Whatsername dared me to... Yeah.”

“Oh.” For the most part, I’m relieved, but disappointment still bites at the back of my throat. “Okay. Thanks.”

Gerard leaves awkwardly, and I study the interesting mark again, pulling the hem of my shirt down to get a better view. Suddenly, another blotch of red catches my eye, and I gaze at it nervously. It’s another hickey, placed strategically just below the edge of my shirt. Oh, Gee...

I decide not to tell Rose and Ginny about this one.

“You’re blushing really hard,” Rose informs me quite bluntly when I return to the kitchen.

“Your point being?” I snap, surprising myself with my venomousness.

“We still don’t know why you have a hickey.”

I roll my eyes at their expectant faces and occupy myself with my Power Pup. “Ever heard of a little game called truth or dare?”

“Oh.” Ginny sounds unusually disappointed.

I snort. “What were you expecting?”

“Oh, I dunno,” she begins. “Maybe, after every one else fell asleep, Gerard came over to you and started whispering in you ear about how much he loves you, like, loves you, and-”

“Quiet down, Ginny,” I hiss.

She rolls her eyes and continues in a slightly more discreet but dreamy manner. “Then you would start giggling, and tell him how sexy he is, and then he would kiss you, softly at first, but then you would do what any sex-deprived young woman would do, and you would start heating things up. Maybe just french him, or take someone’s shirt off. Next, he would do that undeniably sexy smirk that all boys have and start kissing your neck, and you’d be so turned on that all you could do would be to tangle your fingers in his hair and marvel at how curly it is-”

“Ginny! Shut up!” exclaims Rose, and I scrunch up my nose.

“I didn’t really need a detailed description of what it’s like to fuck Ray, thank you very much,” I mumble.

Even though she’s blushing very slightly, Ginny cackles. “It’s fun. That’s all you need to know.”

“Ew,” mumbles Rose, looking at Ginny with immature disgust.

“What about Mikey, hm? How’s he?”

Ginny and I both laugh at the look on Rose’s face, a mixture between defensiveness, spacing out, and the state of being utterly smitten. “That’s none of your business, Ginger.”

“Oh, but it is. As your best friend, I reserve the right to pester you about your sex life whenever I see fit.”

“Yeah, Rosie. You didn’t think you could hide that limp, did you?”

“Not to mention Mikey’s nice hairdo.”

Rose huffs irritably. “Fine. We fucked, okay? It happened! Are you happy now?”

“No,” Ginny replies. “I don’t know about Inferno here, but I want details.”

“I don’t remember. I was really drunk.”

“You’re lying.”

“Maybe.”

“Come on, Rosie.”

For a second, I almost expect Rose to slap Ginny. Hard. “Why are you being such a fucking pervert?”

“Curiosity. It’s normal in young adults.”

“Fine. All I really remember... Well... It was just... Sex.”

“Oh.” Again, Ginny looks bored by this response. “I expected Mikey to be a little... kinkier than that.”

Rose laughs. “He was drunk too. We both just kinda stumbled into the room, ripped each other’s clothes off, and fucked.”

“No lead-up?”

“Just lots of... Touching.”

“Ooh. Sexy.”

At this point, I get up and dump my bowl into the sink, leaving Ginny and Rose to continue with their conversation, which I find a little too personal. If Gerard and I ever do get that close (I blush maniacally at the thought) I wouldn’t want all my friends to know every last detail.

“What are they talking about?” Gerard asks softly, approaching me as I stand in the doorway at the back of the kitchen and gaze out at the desert.

“Sex.”

“Oh.” He just stares at me for a long moment before ducking under my arm and out onto the sand. “Come frolic with me.”

I can’t help but smile at his adorably childish face. “Okay.”

We finally get around to building our sand castle, after a long expedition to find some relatively moldable sand. It soon grows to an incredibly impressive size, due to our artist natures. After we finish, we collapse in the minimal shade behind our gargantuan construction, giggling feverishly. He rolls over to close the space between our overheated bodies, and we both sit up at the same time.

“You’re so pretty, Gee,” I laugh, running one gentle hand down the side of his cheek.

He grins. “I love you.” Then my arms are around his neck and we’re kissing, sweet and gentle, and it’s okay because it’s a nice day and no one will see and his lips taste a little bit like cinnamon and cigarettes. At least, I think it’s okay.

It’s a long kiss; I feel him try to break away a few times, but he always changes his mind before I have to pull him back to me. It’s like a never-ending cycle. Neither of us wants to let the other go. Finally, we both start to run out of breath, and when he leans back, I let him, because it feels right. For a long moment, we just watch each other, reading every little twitch and over-thinking all the tiniest bits of one another’s facial expressions, until he stands and wipes the reddish dust off of his jeans.

“So... Yeah.” I watch him walk away forlornly, not understanding why I feel so ready for this, but he’s so afraid. It feels as if I’ll never have a chance with him; like I’ll never be good enough. A line from another one of Whatsername’s favorite songs pops into my head.

There is nothing left to analyze.