Night's Not Over

“Oh. Oh! Look at that!” Albert shouted, pointing an SUV with a cigarette between his fingers, his other hand holding a bottle of Jack Daniels.

“It’s just a car, Albert,” Gemma giggled then tripped on Nick’s freakishly long legs that were sprawled on the sidewalk. “Nick, you fuck. That could kill me.”

“We could, like, drive around NYC,” he suggested, stumbling his way to the car.

The six of them searched for some other bar to spend the night in, but no bar was good enough as their favorite bar. They were either too crowded, too quiet, too warm, too cold, too rude, too friendly, thus they ended up buying drinks from a liquor store and walked around. The alcohol kept their bodies warm in the middle of cold November air, so they didn’t mind not spending the night in a bar.

“How are you going to take it?” Fabrizio, who was so far not slurring nor tumbling (yet) followed him. “Plus, you’re drunk.”

“Someone else who isn’t drunk that bad can drive. And let Julian do his magic,” Albert grinned. “Yo Jules!” Julian, who was smoking by a lamppost, turned around by the call of his name. “Pick this car.” Julian just laughed, shaking his head. “Come on, we messed around with the teachers’ cars all the time back in Switzerland. You’d its lock and turn on the engine and we’d drive them out of the school and they went frantic.”

“Yeah and we’d get detention for the whole two weeks, cleaning the bathrooms,” Julian reminisced. He was the second most sober man this night next to Fabrizio. “Good times, man, good times.”

“See? Good times! Come on, Jules.”

“It was years ago when we were teenagers.”

“Bullshit, man, like we changed much now.”

“Fuck you,” Julian gave in, walking over to Gemma and pulled out the bobby pin she was wearing to clip back her bangs and went to the car, bending toward the lock in the driver’s door. The others watched as he was attempting to unlock the car, the sound of the bobby pin hitting against the metal was heard. A few moments later the door opened. Julian sat on the driver’s seat and bent down again to underneath the steering wheel, working out on the wires to turn on the engine. After a few of ‘bzzt’s and ‘fuck’s and ‘shit’s, the engine roared. Albert jumped in excitement and took shotgun as Julian hit his head against the steering wheel while he was sitting back up.

The rest piled in but Gemma just stood there, suddenly sober. She just watched the man she liked picking a car and turning it on with such skill, and he’d done it since he was a teenager. What else did she not know about him? She knew there was a lot more, and she wasn’t so sure if she was ready to find out.

“Come on, Gem!” Albert shouted from inside the car, “What are you waiting for?” She thought for a moment. She didn’t want to get into trouble for being a part of the (almost) drunk group that stole a car to drive around New York City at night, so she turned around and started walking away. The boys let out some confused shushed of ‘what?’s and ‘the fuck?’s. Julian watched as she wrapped her arms around her torso. He got out of the car and ran after her, stepped in front of her to stop her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

Julian definitely didn’t buy it. He’d met bad liars before, but man, she was really bad. “Come on, tell me. There’s got to be a reason why you suddenly look so gloomy and you’re walking away and you’re looking at anywhere but me.”

She averted her eyes from a neon sign that apparently was more interesting than Julian Casablancas and looked into his warm brown eyes, almost melting at the sight of them.

“Tell me,” he said. She couldn’t resist from those puppy eyes – who could? Even Julian himself was aware of that.

She sighed. “I’m not sure if I’m ready find out more about you.”

He knitted his brows in confusion. “What?”

“I know that you drink a lot, you smoke a lot, and you date a lot of girls, but seeing what you just did – I don’t know. God knows what else you did and I don’t know if I’m ready for it.”

His expression softened. “There’s nothing you need to worry about,” he reassured her, his voice delicate as if he was afraid that he was going to break her. “We’re not going to steal that car if that’s what you’re worried about – I’ll return it after I dropped all of you home.” She just stared, doubting. “I promise.” She still didn’t respond. “Come on,” he smiled, “Life is short, we’re still young! In ten years we’re going to get married and have kids and we won’t be able to have fun as much as we do now. Come on – give your children a story to tell. Your grandchildren, even. Trust me.”

They just stood there, staring at each other, but he could see a smile was slowly creeping up her face. “Come on,” he whispered. Her barrier was breaking and he could see that. He picked her up and carried her on his shoulder towards the car. She squealed, laughing.

• • •

They were at an empty skate park an hour later because Nick had been demanding that he wanted to go to one – slurring his every word, of course, so it took time for Julian to decipher what he meant. Somebody left their skateboard by a tree, so Nick grabbed it and instead of skating, he laid on it on his chest and pushed against the concrete with his hands to move. Albert decided to sit on his back, pretending that Nick was a dolphin and he was a mermaid.

Fabrizio was smoking at the edge of one of the bowls with Nikolai sitting down with his bottle of beer. They were only talking about how weird this night went and how trashed Nick and Albert were. Fabrizio sipped alcohol every now and then and it was beginning to get on his system. He began to slur and giggle at everything.

Gemma, in the other hand, had completely sobered up. She was not giggling anymore and only drinking bottled mineral water. She realized that as long as she was with the boys for a night out, she had to be sober enough to look after them. She could be the youngest in the group but the things the boys did when they were drunk were beyond stupid.

Julian was also sober. He hadn’t been drinking much like he usually did, and frankly it was because Gemma was there. He wasn’t sure why that whenever she was around, he didn’t want to drink too much. It was like she had built an invisible wall between Julian and his drinking habit without doing anything.

The two of them were sitting on the concrete near some grass. Julian wanted to sit on the grass but Gemma insisted to say no, because she was afraid that there would be frogs. He laughed at her phobia but joined her on the concrete anyway.

“Why are you so scared of frogs?” he asked in amusement as he pulled out his tenth cigarette of the night.

“I saw a dead frog, you know, how it looks like when a car ran on them.” She shuddered at the memory. “Ever since then I am just so grossed out by frogs.”

“But there are cool frogs. The black one with neon colors – I like them.” She cringed and he laughed again. He looked over her as she was watching her crazy cousin ‘skating’ around the park. The glow of the lampposts enhanced the beauty of her face. It was the most beautiful sight of her he had ever seen. “I swear to god if I don’t kiss you right now I’m going to be insane,” he muttered bluntly.

She quickly turned to him, surprised at what he just said. “Did you just...”

“Uh, I think I did,” he awkwardly looked down and blushed, playing with his shoelaces. Fuck. The last time he was this nervous was when The Strokes was going to perform for the very first time, and that was many gigs ago. He wasn’t nervous when it came to girls, but apparently that condition didn’t apply when it came to Gemma.

She smiled, finding him so adorable when he was doing this. Gemma wasn’t usually up for the idea of being the first one to kiss a guy – she always waited for the guy to make the first move, but she found Julian too irresistible.

So she placed her hand on his cheek and made him turn to look at her. Their eyes met but she had to break the contact to look at his lips – the body part that let out such beautiful voice when he talked and knee-weakening voice when he sang. She wanted to show how much she appreciated them, so she let her lips touched his. Just very delicately.