Little Baby Pines

The problem with going to a bar with a bunch of girls is that attention is always drawn to them. When the girls are sitting at a table littered with alcoholic drinks more attention is drawn to them. The men at the bar are mentally evaluating the hotness and willingness of each girl at the table, evaluating whether or not one of those cute drunk girls will go home with them.

Kim was standing near the table feeling judged. She felt like the men at the bar were taking mental pictures of her and the girls around her. Her body trembled. Mindy, who was standing near Kim, raised an eyebrow. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

“I have the eebie jeebies. This bar is crawling with scummy men.” Kim lightly gripped Mindy’s naked arms. “I am going to the bar. Want to go with me?”

A pout formed on Mindy’s lips. The girl coyly played with the beaded edge of her mock 1920s flapper dress. It lacked the shapeless body of a flapper dress. It was a poor recreation since it showed off her body and cleavage well. “I wanna go dancing.”

One of the girls huddled around the table of beverages was tapped on the shoulder by Kim. The girl’s head was tossed backwards. “Larissa!” She shouted over the music since Larissa was hard of hearing. “Take my girl Mindles dancing.” The two girls excitedly joined hands and bounced to the dance floor.

Once the girls left, Kim slinked off to the bar. She tried to avoid getting caught by Heather. The point of the going-out was for sister bonding. Kim didn’t belong in the sister circle. Whenever the girls went out as group she stuck out like a sore thumb. If there was a black sheep in the Theta Phi Pi, the resident black sheep was Kim. When all the girls were dressed to the nines for a night out Kim was dressed like Kim: black drainpipes, her beaten Joy Division shirt, red suspenders dangling off her hips, and Doc Martens. The main reasons she was in the sorority were that Mindy asked her to and that it helped her get a better scholarship.

Leering eyes were pinned on the girls. Kim glared at the piggish men. The degrading of women made her want more clothes on her body. There were a few seats open at the bar. A mopey guy at the end of the bar caught her eye. She suddenly felt happier about making the decision of joining the group to the bar. There was an open seat by the man. Kim sauntered behind him, placing her lips near his ear. “What are you doing out after a game? That doesn’t sound like you.”

Jon’s eyebrows rose and a glimmer of something innocent sparkled on his face. He swiveled around in his chair with his beer in hand. “Wow. This is weird seeing you here.” What he wanted to say was that it was conflicting see her there. But Jon was more than one beer into the night and his thoughts had become flighty.

“Weird because it is a little awkward since the last time we saw each other we made out and you weren’t sober?” Her bottom occupied the once empty seat next to Jon. She was busy getting situated in her seat that she didn’t see Jon’s face fall and the innocent glimmer snuffed out. The bartender near them looked over at Kim. “Can I get a gin and tonic, please? Thanks, Tim.”

“You know the bartender?”

She batted her eyelashes at him. “I am an adorable college girl that DJs a lot of shows. I know a lot of bartenders. So, I am really happy to see you here.” A sweet smile was on her face. A smile sweet enough to make Jon cave. He caved all over again like when he first met her.

But something bitter had grown in his heart since he last saw her. Patrick infectious words and ideas tainted Jon’s memory of her. Seeing her made him sick. He wished that they never had their tryst, that he never saw that spark of her that he was attracted to. “Of course you know a lot of bartenders.” He scoffed.

Kim cocked an eyebrow. They were taking a step back in their relationship. He was acting just like he had before the E kicked in at the party. Her gin and tonic was placed onto a square napkin in front of her. It didn’t sit on the napkin long enough to leave water rings. She downed in an impressively short amount of time. She could tell that things between her and Jon were going to get heated. She wanted to at least be on his level of drunkenness. She signaled Tim to get her another.

“Um, okay. So how have you been? I haven’t seen you since that party at the barn. That was like, what, two weeks ago?”

“Yeah, and in that time I found out so much about you,” he mumbled into the neckline of his plain white shirt. Jon ran a hand over his face, tugging at his lip. “I am sorry. You know what, I should just leave. Don’t talk to me, Kim. I can’t associate with you. Just… Kaner told me.” He craned his neck in Kim’s direction. His bloodshot eyes were barely open. He was tired and drunk. “Look, I know. I know! I know what you do and fuck.” He took the shot of whiskey sitting next to his beer. After the shot he picked up his beer. “And it disgusts me, so don’t talk to me, Kimberly.” He picked himself off the stool, wobbling side to side.

Kim tilted her head to the side. “I am sorry?”

“You should be!” His voice cracked. Jon pulled out his phone and walked drunkenly to the exit.

If Kim wasn’t Kim, she would have huffed away and decided that Jon was an asshole. But being Kim meant that she was ever so curious and polite. Seeing Jon stumble around made her nervous. She couldn’t let him go out on the streets on his own. With the flick of Kim’s hand a couple of dollar bills were thrown near her drink. She hustled after Jon. She spotted him outside of the bar, down a street. He snapped his head back and saw her walking behind him on the sidewalk. His body turned around; he walked backwards for a bit. Kim caught up to him. “I wanted to find you, honestly, Kim. I tried to remember the name of the sorority. I tried looking on Kaner’s phone for you, but it is difficult. You should try it sometime. It is like looking for Waldo. No one is listed under their real name. For all I know you could have been ‘cute Asian’ or ‘my funny girl’. But then I saw your picture on his phone like you were one his ho bag hook ups or something. And then he told me about you.” He ran into a newspaper kiosk. It barely moved.

“What about me?”

He motioned for her to come closer. His lips snarled. “A drug dealer,” he whispered. “At first! I didn’t believe him! It sounded like bullshit. But then I listened to your boyfriend’s music and he raps all about it. Then Bur told me, too. And here I was thinking you were a nice girl and you aren’t! My judgment was fucked again. Thank you, Kim.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Kim didn’t know what to do. She had kept that from him. It didn’t surprise her that he was incredibly cross with her. It did hurt her, though. The girl wasn’t made of tin with a circuitry board inside her hollow chest. She was sad that she disappointed him.

Jon gave her a look that read, ‘glad-you-are-sorry-bitch’. He turned around a couple times and looked at the busy street. “Fuck. I want to go home. Where is my home?” He walked aimlessly down the sidewalk. The steps he took were over calculated and he stumbled near the road, nearly falling off the curb.

“Watch it!” Against his wishes, Kim hooked an arm under his, steering him to safety. “Okay, you hate me. I get it. But can I help you get home or are you just going to keep telling me how disgusting I am for selling drugs and for disappointing you?” She let go of him.

“I don’t know.” He walked back towards the street. He stumbled off the curb and fell on his ass. “Why did you do that, Kim? Why did you not tell me something like that? Why is that when I thought I met someone nice she turns out to be a fucking drug dealing DJ? I can’t be associated with you. I can’t know you. I can’t…” His words trailed off. Jon buried his face into his open palms.

Something brushed Jon’s arm. He was too pouty to notice it was Kim’s leg. She walked off the sidewalk and into the street. Her arm flapped up and down, flagging down a taxi. A yellow car pulled up in front of her. “Right. Get off your ass, Toews. I will buy you this cab ride. Just go and we never have to see each other ever again. This was a weird coincidence anyway. Maybe it is fate that we aren’t supposed to know each other.”

The damp sidewalk let the backside of Jon’s suit pants a slight shade darker than the front. He absentmindedly dusted off his pants. He wobbled to the taxi’s open door and slipped inside. “Fate,” he muttered to himself.

Kim bent down so that he could see her. “Hey Mr. Taxi man, can you please take him home safely for me. I would hate for this guy to end up damaged. Here is a twenty. It should be more than enough because he probably lives somewhere near here, downtown.” Kim pulled a bill out of her back pocket and extended her arm towards the driver. A hold on her wrist caught her off guard. “Jon, what are you doing?”

“Come with me.” He said it in a blurry, hushed tone. It was almost like he was ashamed to say it. He cleared his throat. “Come with me, Kimberly.”

“I am sorry, Mr. Taxi man,” Kim laughed nervously. She leaned down closer to Jon. “Are you out of your fucking mind? You just told me how you couldn’t be seen with me and all that.” She wiped at her eyes with her free hand. “This is masochistic. Jonathan, let go of me.”

“Kimberly. Please get in the cab. I don’t know what is going on with me. Fate. I don’t want to lose you again. I can’t be near you, but I want to. I push you away because I can’t, but—No, yeah, sorry, I have been rude enough to you. You should just go. I keep fucking this up.” His fingers let go of the hold they had on her wrist.

An exacerbated sigh cut through the air. “Fucking hell,” she muttered when she slid in beside him. “I will just come along to make sure you get home safely. Okay. Then I am done with this. I can’t take this bullshit from you. It isn’t cool, Jon.”

The cab door slammed shut. Jon gave the cab driver the address to his apartment. The car putted forward and zoomed down streets. As the car traveled closer to their destination, Jon pressed his weight against the car door closest to him. He pressed his cheek against the glass. “I know that I haven’t been the kindest to you. I just don’t know how to go about this properly. Can you—can you stay until the morning when I am sober so that we can talk?”

“You want me to stay the night?” She scoffed. “Now I know you are out of your fucking mind.” The girl pulled closer to the car door on her side of the car. She clenched the seat belt in her hands. “Wrong me once, shame on you. Wrong me twice, shame on me. Wrong me thrice and I might stab a bitch.”

“Are those famous words spoken by the ever clever Kanye West?” He hid his smirk by the window of the car door. “I can live with that.” He slouched lower into the backseat. “Thanks for not hitting me or going off on me, Kim. I would have. I can be…finicky. I just am--”

“A sassy finicky boy that doesn’t know what the hell he wants. I get it. Just… Just pay for this cab ride and I won’t hate you.”

He chuckled. “Okay. Thanks for being you.”

“Is that the closest I will get to a compliment from you?”

“I don’t think I could come up with a good enough compliment for you because you are beyond words,” he mumbled the words against the glass. Kim’s face brightened to a reddish color. She remained quiet the rest of the car ride.