Tiptoe Through the True Bits

In the past, I was a very friendly person. People always seemed to like me because I was generally upbeat and perky and I was brought up to see the good in everybody. As long as people made the effort to be pleasant to me, I was always pleasant back.

I always tried to get along with everybody, and subsequently I made friends with ease.

But evidently, they were not true friends. They were the kind of friends who I would invite to a social gathering, or lend Chapstick to if their lips were sore. The kind of friends who I ate lunch with, and shared in-jokes and secret handshakes with. But, when tragedy strikes, you come to learn who your true friends are; the ones who will stick by you regardless of how awkward it is, or how difficult you are being. The ones who love you and are there for you when you really need them, in your darkest hour.

It’s clear that I had no true friends back then.

As we weaved through busy streets, awash with people in short sleeves and short skirts and short shorts as they soaked up the last rays of warmth that the year had to offer, I couldn’t help but wonder whether Gerard had any real friends or not, and why we were in this strange situation to begin with. But before I could let my mind wander too far, Gerard came to a halt, outside a house that was the colour of duck eggs; a pale blue, so endearing amongst the off-white neighbours.

He gave me a quick smile and led me to the door, fishing around in his pocket for several seconds. As he did so, I gazed at my surroundings, pleasantly surprised by the house that Gerard lived in. The window-ledges were also blue, but a bright, royal blue that screamed in contrast from the subtle pastel of the walls. The wooden porch beneath our feet was cracked and worn, from years of use, and groaned a little as I shuffled my weight from one foot to the other, begging me to be still. The door Gerard was currently wrestling with, after a defiant declaration of “aha!” as he held the elusive keys aloft, was a sunshine yellow, with faded wooden numbers informing me that I was standing outside number 38 of this particular street. There was a small wind-chime humming softly above us in the gentle breeze, and as soon as the door was victoriously ajar, I could instantly smell the sweet allure of almonds throughout the house.

It was the sort of place where I felt at home. Everything had character, and even the hallway had quirky ornaments and artwork adorning every spare surface.

At my aunt’s house, everything is sterile. The walls are invariably magnolia, the carpets are beige and everything is clean and tidy and minimal. It is like living in a hospital. Everything is just a different shade of cream. Oatmeal, oyster, nutmeg, fawn. They're all exactly the fucking same. I longed to live in a house with charm and clutter, like this one, and I let my face curve into a welcome smile as Gerard pushed the door to a close behind us, standing uncomfortably close to me in the narrow passage.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” he announced, squeezing past my frame and beckoning me with his hands to follow as he stepped into another room at the end of the hallway.

After a split-second pause in which I accustomed myself to this glorious household, I quickly obliged and caught up with him as he entered what appeared to be a small kitchen area. The room was painted in a paler version of the sunny front door, and once again had nick-nacks hanging from every wall and surface. There was a small, slightly plump middle-aged lady standing at the stove, stirring a large saucepan of something that smelt delicious and chattering quickly to the equally middle-aged man sat at the table a few feet away, his head buried in a newspaper as he nodded at whatever the woman was talking about.

Upon seeing our presence, the woman, whom I assumed to be Gerard’s mother, stopped stirring and stopped talking, and the man, whom I assumed to be Gerard’s father, peered curiously over his newspaper at whatever had occurred to render her speechless.

She gazed at me with wide eyes for a couple of silent moments, before wiping her hands on the duck-patterned apron she had covered herself with, and embracing me in a very abrupt and very unexpected hug. Clearly the Way family were huggers, not fazed by enveloping a complete stranger in a spine-tingling, bone-crushing cuddle. Her silence was short lived as she quickly pulled away, holding me at arm’s length as she beamed a warm smile my way.

“My my, what a surprise!” she chimed, glancing quickly at Gerard, to my left. “Hello, dear, my name is Donna, I’m Gerard’s mother, and this is Don, his father.” She pointed to the man at the table and he gave me a quick wave. I reciprocated with a smile. “Gosh, you are such a pretty little thing! Now come on, do sit down.” She marched me over to aforementioned table and pushed me into a seat opposite Don, as Gerard slid easily into the chair next to me, and Donna herself fell into the last remaining seat around the small wooden surface.

“You didn’t tell me you would be bringing home a friend!” Donna continued, this time focussing her words on Gerard instead of me. I was a little bewildered by her, if I’m honest with you. She was very smiley and very loud and it was something that I was just not used to. I very rarely get spoken to at “home” and when I do, it is easy enough to shrug and ignore whatever has been said to me. Here, I felt myself shying away into my seat and desperately wishing that she did not expect me to reply to her, because once more, I felt rude not being able to.

“Relax, mom,” Gerard grinned offhandedly, picking at grapes in the fruit bowl that appeared to be the centrepiece of this kitchen table. I watched as he popped several into his mouth, chewing and swallowing quickly before he continued. “This is my friend Elise.”

I felt myself blushing ever-so-slightly at his use of the word friend. Sure, I was aware that friends are exactly what we were supposed to be, but we barely really knew each other at this early stage, and I dreaded the onslaught of questions that I was expecting to follow this announcement.

Soon enough, I felt Donna’s gaze back on me, and I heard the sound of papers rustling, and when I looked up I saw that both of Gerard’s parents were smiling kindly and sympathetically at me.

“Well, Elise,” his mother began, placing one of her warm, soft hands over my forearm as it rested awkwardly on the table, “it is very nice to meet you.”

I glanced up at Gerard’s sheepish face at that moment, and I knew. I knew he had told his parents about the situation we had found ourselves in and the circumstances of our brief and unconventional friendship and the constraints of my communicative skills. I gave him a quick smile of relief, the hoards of concerns I had previously had draining out of me as I turned back to his parents and shared my smile with them. Donna’s own grin only widened as she pulled me into another sudden and surprisingly less awkward embrace.

“Will you be staying for dinner, my love?” she asked as we parted. “I didn’t know you’d be coming so it’s only lasagne I’m afraid, nothing too special.” She gave Gerard a very faint look of dismay before turning back to me, her face warm again.

Lasagne sounded wonderful. It sounded like perfection. It had been a long time since I’d eaten homely food; at my aunt’s I would either get burnt chicken nuggets and potato waffles cooked by the Au Pair, or I’d whip myself up a cheese sandwich. My diet was unhealthy and unusual. At least one meal per day consisted of a Snickers bar and little else. It’s a wonder I haven’t developed rickets.

I bit my lip and glanced over at Gerard, who let out a wry laugh and leant forwards onto his elbows. “You’re more than welcome,” he told me with a smirk, before popping another grape into his mouth.

I looked back at Donna, giving what I hoped was a grateful smile, followed by an enthusiastic nod, and she laughed slightly as she rose back to her feet. “Wonderful!” she announced, clapping her hands together before making her way back to the stove. “Should be ready for about six, kids. Gerard, why don’t you show Elise your room until then?”

Gerard rolled his eyes and let out a faint laugh. “Mom, I’m not a child,” he replied, getting to his feet anyway and pulling me to mine. I made one last glancing look at his father, who had yet to speak a single word since our arrival, and he caught my eye with a brief smile before reaching back for his paper. For some reason, I felt like he understood me, even though I was all too aware that his silence was extremely likely to have different reasons behind it (most likely because his wife wouldn’t allow him to get a word in edgeways).

I wondered then how Gerard had explained my own silence to his parents. Obviously they knew I was crazy, as we shared a psychiatrist, but I had yet to tell even Gerard why exactly this was.

Regardless, I followed him out of the kitchen with another small smile to his mother, and we re-entered the hallway before another door was opened and I was being taken down a flight of concrete stairs. It struck me as odd that somebody would choose to live in a dark basement with only a tiny window far above even Gerard’s eye-level, almost entirely blocked with blades of cartoon-green grass as it cast long, thin beams of light across the room, but I found it strangely charming. Once at the bottom step, Gerard flicked on a switch that illuminated the room, shining light across a large bed, a small TV, a tall bookshelf and a faded rug covering part of the cold wooden floor. It looked strangely comfortable, and more or less exactly how you might expect an 18-year-old boy’s bedroom to look; clothes hanging out of unclosed drawers, stacks of comic books piled up on the nightstand, a game’s console snaking its controller wires across the floor. Clean, but messy.

I perched delicately on the end of his bed and smiled up at him as he bent down in front of the old TV, fiddling with something and cursing under his breath every so often as he shot me apologetic glances over his shoulder. Eventually, he stood up straight, turned the TV on, and spun around to greet my curious expression with a maniacal grin as he handed me one of two Playstation controllers he held in his hands.

With a raised eyebrow and a light smirk, I took the cool object from his hands, and followed him with my eyes as he plonked himself down beside me. The TV sent waves of bright colours around the room, all washed out a little with a greenish filter as the credits for Mario Kart began to play.

“You’re Luigi,” he informed me smugly as he frantically pressed at some buttons.

I let the smile on my lips widen as Gerard picked the characters and levels we were to play. He had no idea what he was starting, challenging me to a Mario Kart match. Mute or not, I was certain that I was going to kick his ass, and I knew it would be all the more sweet when it came as a complete surprise to him.

Many of my former – let’s call them ‘faux’ – friends were male, and I had spent many an hour being thrashed on computer games, until eventually the time came when I had had enough of the constant defeat, saved up money from my job at the movie theatre, and bought myself a Playstation 2. I spent agonising hours holed away in my bedroom, practising my techniques over and over, perfecting my scores. And, after a week of almost solitary confinement, I had challenged one of these faux-friends to a Mario Kart match, and absolutely pounded him into the ground, screaming my defeat into his forlorn face as he realised that he had lost. To a girl.

So yeah, I was confident in my abilities to beat Gerard’s high-score. That’s not to say the kid wasn’t a decent player, as my victory did not come easy, but sure as day it came, and the expression that played out on his features bore a striking resemblance to that of a former friend. My win, though, was severely toned down, as I simply smirked and threw my controller to the ground in a cool acknowledgment to the triumph that beamed inside of me.

Gerard was almost speechless for a while as he stared blankly at the screen, almost refusing to believe the words that were scrolling across for him as Mario wept: YOU LOSE.

“You were...incredible,” he eventually choked out, turning to me with wide eyes and his mouth still slightly agape in shock.

I snickered a little and nodded, folding my arms in accomplishment and amusement at the shock still very apparent on his face. Nobody ever expected it. I felt like a silent assassin, sneaking through the worlds of video gaming and absolutely destroying all in my path until I prevailed and was announced as the undisputable champion.

“That is...” Gerard paused and let out a frustrated sigh. “That is irritatingly hot.”

This reaction was new to me. I had experienced the bruised male ego many times when it came to my gaming skills, and normally this resulted in broken consoles and prolonged sulking, but not once had I been told that my nerdiness was “hot” so, for lack of a better response, I let out a shy smile and gazed down at my feet as they dangled off the edge of the bed. As my eyes searched for a distraction, anything to change the topic to a slightly less awkward one, my eyes settled on a guitar case in the corner of the room, buried under piles of unfinished math homework and incomplete consent forms for field trips, and I slowly made my way over. I felt Gerard’s gaze follow me the entire length of the basement, and this made me a little nervous.

It was a beautiful guitar; almost as attractive as my mother’s, and I glanced behind me at Gerard, waiting for a nod before I tentatively picked it up and walked back over to the bed with it clutched in my hand. My heart was spasming against my chest as I raised my hand to the neck of it; all the while with Gerard’s eyes boring into the top of my head.

“My grandmother gave it to me,” he told me in a soft voice, folding his legs underneath himself. “Do you play?”

I gave a modest nod and strummed a wary A-chord before flashing Gerard a quick smile and proceeding to continue the introduction to my very favourite song. I wondered if he would recognise the intro, but I saw from the glimmer in his eyes and the grin on his face that he quickly did, and he softly began to sing along.