Skipping a Beat

Despite the fact that two seconds ago Reese had his tongue down my throat, I told myself that I still did not love him. I told myself that I hated the guitar around his shoulders and the fact he stayed out so late, I hated that he smiled easily and that everyone noticed him. He was holding my hand though, as if it were the neck of his guitar and he lead the way in front of me and the people parted for him on the streets because he was someone you wanted to part for. For the life of me I would never figure out the secret behind Reese Munn, the one that made him addictive like the drugs sold on shady street corners and made him glow like a million lightning bugs buzzed along his veins.

He steered down the street that I now know led to Camelot and there was a couple leaning against the wall outside, the boy had a cigarette dangling from his fingers at her side, his other hand buried in her hair and she was shoved against him in a vulgar way and I almost wanted to turn around and drag Reese back up the alley, but of course he took it in good stride and called out the couple, laughing as the heads poked up and Jamie’s lanky figure was revealed next to a short girl with blue hair who scurried away after Jamie said something to her from the corner of his mouth. Then he was bounding towards us, the cigarette fell to the ground and was crushed under the heel of his boot a moment later and it made sense to me that Reese would befriend this boy who was far too dangerous to really trust, he too, glowed in the dark like a bug and people moved for him, but some of them scurried in fear.

“Fuck no,” He spat as he got closer to where Reese and I were standing, “There’s no way in hell that a nice, cute girl like you would go for a piece of ass like that,” Jamie said, pointing at Reese as if in disgust, but his mouth was twisted in a smile that stretched across his face in warm way.

And then Reese was dragging an arm around me, pulling me close by his side and his fingers curled slowly around my arm in a way that made me want to have those fingers everywhere at once. “You’re just jealous Tuck,” He called at his friend, leering as if he was already buzzed and I wondered if the very air here was charged with beer.

“Aw no Reese it’s not like that, Laura is too good for us,” He said and looked at me as he did so, as if I were to really listen to this, as if it were a warning at that moment to step away from the boy who had his arms around me like I was his new guitar and oldest lover.

“Jealous,” He said in a sing-song voice and laughed as he pulled me past Jamie and into the smoky bar behind him, Jamie following us on our heels and the blue-haired girl forgotten about somewhere in the streets of New York with no one to make sure she got home safe.

“So are you guys together now or what?” Jamie asked, poking his head between the space between us just as I started to draw away from Reese’s arm so that I could stand on my own and he reached down and took my hand in his.

I answered, “No.” to Jamie at the same time that Reese said, “Yes,” and then suddenly Jamie backed away a few steps and held up his hands. I looked at Reese then, whipping my head around and we were both wide-eyed and my cheeks started to burn red at the silence that slowly started to mount around us.

“Well I’m going to get drunk,” Jamie patted Reese on the shoulder, “Good luck mate,” He said to him, giving me a nod before disappearing in the fog to another round of cheers and leaving Reese and I still starting at each other, both forgetting how to speak or move or blink so that slowly, my eyes started to burn from the haze around us and I had to look away from him.

I stammered, trying to remain calm, trying to force the air into my body, forcing it to take the oxygen and replenish my slowly dying soul. “I really didn’t think,” I started and failed at that, lost my sentence somewhere in the crowd or perhaps someone stole it when I wasn’t looking. “We only just kissed yesterday and I didn’t think,” I tried again, and failed again and felt miserably hot in the face and embarrassment licked its way around my limbs and tried to make me feel shameful.

“I don’t really have relationships,” I said finally, which was not at all what I was intending to say in the first place and I felt embarrassed all over again because I don’t think that during this entire time Reese even blinked.

“What do you do then?” He asked, and now he was moving, leaning more forward as if to make this private, eyes going wider, jaw setting firmer in a way that made me want to run my lips against it and just the thought made me feel wild.

“I don’t really do anything,” I decided, and it was as close to the truth as I was ever going to get.

“Do you like me at all?” Reese asked, and for the first time in my entire life Reese did not pour confidence from his very being, instead he looked vulnerable and small, he looked almost scared by what could come next out of my mouth and I was disgusted and prideful all at the same time that I had an effect on Reese Munn like that.

“Of course,” I said my tone almost sharp, as if it were a butter knife poised in the hand of a killer that had no thirst for blood.

“Then I’m confused,” He sighed and ducked his head, “I need a drink,” he excused himself and ducked towards the bar, ambling along at that same lazy pace as if he had already forgotten that he had been upset for a second and then I was alone in the bar, and I knew that meant I was vulnerable.

“I warned you,” Kelly said, sliding up to me, “When he stomps all over your pretty little heart don’t come crying to me,” she said, smiling through the slick of red on her lips, her pearly whites shining like daggers.

“I wouldn’t be so sure, Jamie said she just rejected him,” Tommy said, always appearing suddenly and at odd times, always looking like he just rolled out of bed and always with a crowd waiting to greet him and welcome him into their group.

“What?” Kelly’s nose scrunched up, she turned a wide eye up at Tommy who solemnly nodded as if he was delivering the news of a death.

“Yeah, now thanks you to Laura, Reese is going to get too drunk to even walk tonight and I’m going to have to give up my bed so he can pass out there,” Tommy complained, still smiling as if even this did not bother him and I wondered if nothing ever really did.

“I’m impressed Laura, I didn’t know you had it in you,” Kelly started to say, a smile spread out across her lips and her hands coming to rest on my shoulders like a father rewarding a son for a job well done.

“It’s not even how it sounds,” I tried to explain, feeling blood rush to my face in a wave of embarrassment and my body felt too hot under all the smoke and lights.

“How is it then?” She asked, her head tilting to the side as if preparing herself to hear my next words by emptying some of the content of her already filled brain.

“It’s complicated,” I faltered, for the words I was looking for couldn’t’ seem to escape my throat and they became trapped in the whirling through my mind, the one trying to make sense of the things happening around me through the smoke.

“Complicated,” Kelly repeated her face dull and uninterested and I was embarrassed all over again, as if now that Reese was no longer by my side I was no longer the interesting one of the bunch, but instead, maybe the boring one, the one they all secretly wanted to leave. And it was true for all I could see, with their piercings and cackling above the crowd, the way they flounced about and slicked makeup onto their face as if they were to die tomorrow, and I was blushing alone in a corner and trying to explain why I wasn’t hooking up with the one boy everyone wanted to hook up with.

“I don’t even know what to make of her,” Tommy said, still hovering over Kelly, looking at me as if I was a piece of art on display in a stuffy museum he had no place being at.

“No wonder Reese wants you,” Kelly said, agreeing with Tommy, “You’re like a fucking crossword without the clues.”

“Is that a compliment?” I asked, feeling nervous about the way they were looking at me, picking at my shirt, brushing back my hair and looking anywhere but their faces.

“Take it as you will,” was all she said, and this just added to the uncomfortable feeling, the one that worked its way through my body like a monster trying to escape the unfortunate skin that it was put in.

“You scare me,” I told her then, frank and honest and I met her eyes because I felt like I owed her that much if I was saying this, but once my eyes were on here I immediately found my way back to the floor where I could comfortably pick at my shirt in silence.

“It’s okay,” Kelly shrugged, as if I was stating something about her hair or the weather, as if this was only a fact that could be dealt with and not changed. “We all have our flaws.”

“Is yours that you’re scary?” I dared, and I wondered if I should, but her lips smiled at me and her eyes sparkled slightly in a dangerous way.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” She told me then, and her eyes were serious as if this was something she truly believed to the bottom of her heart. As if maybe there was a secret message left for me to decode in that mess of a girl, as if I was supposed to get to the bottom of it before it was too late and the urgency alone scared me even more than I had been.

Tommy was there though to save the day, his height making him appear more awkward then he really was and he stopped low as if he was trying to hide his lankiness, “I forgot why I even came over here in the first place,” he told us, his eyes getting seriously and wide, as if this worried him and Kelly slipped him a grin and leaned into his side.

“You came over here to seduce me,” she told him, dropping her voice low and suddenly I felt as if I was watching something I shouldn’t be.

“Of course,” Tommy said, slipping a hand around her stomach and dragging her closer to him in a way that made me uncomfortable.

Reese was holding a beer in his hand when he appeared again, glancing back and forth between Kelly, Tommy and I. “So what’s going on?”

“We’re talking about how Laura just burned you,” Kelly said before I could answer, leaving me standing there with my mouth open like an idiot. I let my eyes find the floor again, tracing along the carpet that was worn out in patches, weaving through the lines of it, trying to think about anything but Reese standing next to me, which always seemed to be the problem.

“Oh yeah that,” he said, and there was bitterness in his voice and I could just imagine him swallowing more of his beer and wincing as it went down as if it scorched his insides.

“It’s not really like that,” I said, swooping in, feeling the need to explain, wanting to place my hand against Reese’s chest and feel his heart beating there underneath my fingertips and feel him sigh into me and stay there, like we were glued.

“Then what is it like?” Reese asked before anyone else could, and suddenly we were back in that alley, alone and tucked away from the world and Tommy wasn’t kissing Kelly’s ear and Jamie wasn’t yelling at people over by the pool tables and he didn’t have a beer in his hand and my thoughts weren’t clouded by the haze that had gathered around us.

“It’s complicated,” I said again, and I was starting to sound like a broken record, repeating and repeating itself until you finally gave up and tossed it into the trash bin of other broken things.

“Of course it is, because nothing is never uncomplicated with you,” Reese said before I had finished closing my mouth, and my face burned again in embarrassment that Kelly and Tommy were still standing there, now both staring at us as if we were a television drama.

“Well considering you’re the one that kissed me first, you walked into this,” I snapped, feeling another flush to my face, feeling embarrassed that they were witnessing this, that Reese brought this side out of me, the mean and spiteful side that’s pride was too big to fit into my body and boiled over into my words.

“Just because I kissed you doesn’t mean I asked for all of this,” Reese grumbled, his voice lower now and in my ear, but not the same way it was before, more of a growl now coming from his lips that was sexy and scary all at the same time and made me want to reach around and touch him in some way.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t just kiss people,” I said back, my voice as low as his, almost a whisper above the music in the crowd and it was clear that Kelly and Tommy could no longer hear our words and were straining their eyes to read our lips.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be such a bitch,” he said back and I wanted to die of humiliation and smack him across the face hard enough to leave the imprint of my face on the skin there, red like my anger.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be such an asshole,” I said, and I was running out of things to say and I started to feel my insides flounder around themselves, like they were trying to constrict them and keep me from saying anything else.

“We’re leaving,” he grumbled in my ear then, taking my hand, yanking me in the direction of the door and Kelly and Tommy were wide-eyed and gaping at us like they had just witnessed a car accident in the middle of time’s square that left four people dead and two in critical condition.

“Damnit Reese,” I said when the door to Camelot swung shut behind us with a bang that startled the people passing by on the street to glance in our direction. “You can’t just drag me out of places or cause a scene like that,” I said, placing my hands on my face as if I was trying to wipe it from my body, rubbing circles into my temples.

“Why do you have to humiliate me in front of my friends?” Reese asked his voice still low even though we were outside now, his body curved down to mine as if he was forming a shield or curving into me.

“I didn’t do anything on purpose,” I said, lowering my eyelids so that my eyes looked dangerous in the night, dark orbs against a pale face.

“Of course you didn’t Laura, and that’s what makes you such a bitch, you do it without thinking.” He was shifting his weight form foot to foot now in front of me, still leaning down as if he was being sweet but his voice was dangerous and spiteful and his eyes looked me over with a mixture of disgust and lust that made me want to have my way with him.

“Fuck you,” I spat at him, closing my eyes sharply as if this could contain my emotions. “You are the biggest asshole I’ve ever met in my entire life; why on earth should I be nice to you?”

He grabbed my shoulders then, roughly with his big, calloused hands and slid them down my arms and yanked my body closer to his violently and then his mouth was on mine again, aggressively biting down on my lips in a way that I knew would make them swollen, kissing me fiercely as if he was trying to prove a point, his hands pressing my hips sharply against his in a way that made me gasp into his mouth and had his hands spreading flat out on my bottom, keeping me pressed to him and making everything in my body light on fire.

My hands found his chest to shove him away, and instead they were grabbing fistfuls of his shirt fabric and holding up to where my heart was, pulling his lips harder down onto mine even though I knew they would be bruised in the morning and the thoughts in my head were ramming into each other and swimming around for lack of oxygen.

“That’s why you should be nice to me,” Reese said when he pulled away, keeping me harshly nearly him, panting in my ear like he ran a marathon, keeping my hips smashed to his and my eyes were shut against the world and my breath tried to catch up with me.

“I will never understand you,” I told him, my eyes shut, my face buried in his chest and my body still curved against his as if he were trying to fuse us together.

“Can I walk you home?” He asked, still resting his chin on top of my head, his breathing slowing down, his grip on me loosening as I pulled away to look into his eyes then, wanting to see the moss green color on mine, wanting to see his face in the moments after he kissed me, to see if his lips were swollen and bruised, if his head was pounding out a dizzy rhythm as if his head had moved behind his forehead, but he looked the same as always, face slightly flushed and his teeth showing through his grin, but the same lazy boy with the same guitar over his shoulder.

“No,” my voice was soft but the word was firm, I wrapped my arms around his middle and felt him move to pull away and kept him there, straining against the muscles of his stomach, avoiding having to look into his face.

“Why not?” He asked, and he was confused all over again, in a few minutes the confusion would turn to anger and we would start all over again, and maybe the cycle would never end but continue on forever, right there in front of Camelot and we would grow old and be forgotten by our friends and never move from these spots.

“Because I don’t want you to,” I said to his shirt, my voice probably muffled by its fabric, but he must have heard because he tried to pull away more sharply and my arms strained against him for all the muscle they were worth and his hands found my shoulders again and roughly detached me from him.

“So I can’t even walk you home, after all of that,” he sounded incredulous, and I could picture him giving me the face that he usually gave to me, a mixture of disbelief and disappointment.

“Correct,” I said, but my voice sounded smaller and my head hung down in a way that was shameful and I wanted to turn around and run all the way home, into the shadows so that he couldn’t follow me and see the apartment, with its run down appearance, with my prostitute mother sleeping in her bed and probably not alone, with the strange cats who liked to roam the hallway, with the broken memories and broken people scattered about like litter in Central park.

“I don’t get you Laura. One second your kissing me like you’ve never been kissed before and the next you’re telling me that I can’t even walk you home? It’s like you pull me close and then just shove me away, like I’m nothing,” Reese said, looking at me with stern eyes, forcing my chin up to meet his face and I wanted to hide inside myself.

“I just don’t want you to walk me home, okay? I don’t want you there,” I said, tripping over my words, stuttering and stumbling, finally falling silent before I was finished, my head still forced up at Reese so instead I shut my eyes tight and wondered if he would force those open, too.

But he didn’t, instead he released me with a sigh and I stepped back, placing my hands flat against my sides, staring at his shoes, which were the least threatening part of him.

“Why do you do this to me Laura?” He asked, and then he stepped forward again and I instinctively shrank back, but not before he could gently get his arms around me, cradling me as if I was an infant. “Why do you fucking do this to me?” and his arms tightened the smallest bit, enough so that our chests were touching.

“I’ll see you tomorrow Reese,” I said softly, moving out of his arms and he finally let me go. I started to look away but only got two steps before I halted and looked back at him, where he was looking after me, his face somber, his hand still stretched as if he were holding me and his guitar case glinting in the streetlamp off of his back.

“If it was up to me I’d walk you home,” Reese said, and his voice was layered, as if this meant more than it did and I felt myself flushing all over again and the thought of my swollen lips.

“I know,” I said softly, just barely loud enough for him to hear over the buzz of the city and then I was turning around again and marching away into the night, alone. And suddenly I wished more than anything that Reese was there next to me.

But the next time I turned around two feet later he was already gone, and my eyes had adjusted to the dark.