The Times We Felt Alive

It had been a few days since the party in which I hurt my arm and Alex’s nose had been broken. Both by the same person, I should add.

I’m still on break and home alone, what with Blake at his new job at McDonald’s and my mother out in town with Alex’s mother, Isobel. She had wanted to show my mother the best clothing stores that offered the “cutest clothes” with the “greatest bargains.” They had asked me to come along, but I wasn’t so sure shopping with the older women would come to my appeal on this fine day. Honestly, I felt a day alone in the house would do me well. And the two mothers could use some bonding time; they seem to be getting along pretty well.

Speaking of the Gaskarths, I hadn’t talked to Alex much either. I still felt guilty for provoking Lisa into hurting him, and I had to admit, I felt a tad awkward talking to him after we, um, made out on Zack’s bed. I did call my best friend back in Cape Cod, Maria, asking for some advice on the situation. She told me not to worry as much and do what I wanted to do (such as date Alex,) and we started planning for her to come down here once she gets her license. She wants to meet the guys (I know she would adore Jack. I think I’m going to try and hook them up.)

I had always admired Maria for her fearless attitude; she was always the one who wanted to get the ball rolling in the relationship. That’s what made her such a high maintenance girlfriend. She was picky with her boys, but there was nothing wrong with that.

I decided to go online after I had put away all my clean clothes. I hadn’t checked up on social media ever since I got here, the exceptions being for me to accept the new friend requests. I opened Twitter and Facebook from my bookmarks and scrolled through; already getting bored with my friends’ lives back in Cape Cod. I did notice something when Alex’s name popped up in my news feed, however. His relationship status went from ‘in a relationship’ to ‘single.’ He also tagged me in a post.

‘Alexander William: Finally got my license! So ready for a trip to Hanover this Friday with @Tiff Kampbell ?’

I had completely forgotten about our Black Friday trip. I clicked the little comment box.

‘Tiff Kampbell: Yes! And congrats! ’

A new message also popped up on the bottom of the screen. It was from Joseph, my ex-boyfriend.
‘Hey. I have a question, can I call you?’

One thing about Joseph I really didn’t like was the fact that he thinks he should be a part of everybody’s business. Also that he thinks nothing bad ever happened between us, besides the fact that he was basically cheating on me. Let’s not forget that he told everyone HE was the one who broke up with me, for he didn’t think ‘long distance would work between us’ (information courtesy of Maria.)

But, it was a Tuesday, I had nothing to do, and how bad could it be, anyway?

‘sure.’ I replied.

Not ten seconds later, my phone began viciously vibrating from my desk.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” Joseph purposely made is voice sound lighter and sweeter, apologetic. My stomach twisted slightly and I tried to hold myself together.

“What’s your question.” I spurted out flatly.

“So… I hear you’ve already got a new fuck-buddy!” He retaliated from my tone, showing sarcastic excitement that produced a different, anger-filled twist in my stomach.

I honestly didn’t know how to respond. My brows were knitted together in anger. I considered hanging up, but figured it wouldn’t help the situation.

“I don’t know where you heard that, and it’s none of your business in the first place. And could you ask an actual question? I don’t have to be here talking to you right now.”

A laugh came from the other line. “Sorry. So it’s true then? You’ve got a fuck buddy?”

“No.”

“Then who’s Allleeex?”

“Why are you being so immature? I can have friends here, can’t I? Anyways, I’m surprised you don’t understand. You should know a LOT about having friends of the opposite sex.”

“Chill. I’m just trying to catch up.”

“Well, you can ‘catch up’ when you’re ready to grow up.” And with that, I tapped the red “end” button and threw my phone at my bed. It bounced off, and landed with a thud on the floor.

“Goddamnit,” I murmured as I picked up the iPhone I received for my birthday and found a tiny crack at the bottom of the screen, near the home button. I slumped to the floor, leaning against my bed and tracing the crack with my thumb.

I had almost forgotten how bad the drama is back at home. It’s so pathetic, how the people there are too uninterested in their boring lives; they decide to confide in mine.

The ring of the doorbell brought me back up, slipping the phone in the pocket of my pajama shorts I still had on and trotting down the stairs. I opened the door and was surprised to see Marcus Green, the cute dark haired drummer boy from Zack’s.

Marcus’s mouth hung open in confusion. He squinted his brows at me, stuttering before saying “Um, hey… does Alex live here?”

“No,” I chuckled, “next door.”

“Oh, haha. Sorry! Wrong house…Um,” Marcus raised a brow and tilted his head. “Tiffany, right?”

“Correct.”

“Sweet. I didn’t know you lived next to Alex!” He said, pulling the sleeves of his red zip up hoodie over his fingers and clutching them tightly.

“Yep, that’s how it worked out when we came here, I guess.” I laughed lightly. A cool breeze shivered inside the house and goose bumps formed on my bare legs.

“Well, I was headed over to Alex’s now; you can come with if you want? I can wait if you wanna get… dressed.” He smiled and motioned to my attire.

I looked down at my polka dotted shorts and old, unattractively fitting band tee. My face felt warm. “Uh…”

“Or if you’re busy…”

“Oh, I’ve got nothing going on. I’ll meet you over there in a few?”

“Yeah.”

***

“And it’ll happen once again, you’ll turn to a friend, someone that understands, and sees through the master plan. MARCUS!” Alex flung the little Rock Band microphone in front of Marcus’s content face while he tapped the plastic drumset.

“BUT EVERYBODY’S GONE,” Marcus continued, “AND YOU’VE BEEN THERE FOR TOO LONG, TO FACE THIS ON YOUR OWN. TIFF!”

Alex then ran over to me as I was playing the plastic guitar (badly, especially with my bandaged arm) and quickly and stuck the mic in my face.

“WELL I GUESS THIS IS GROWING UP!” I screamed as I struggled to push the correct buttons on the neck of the guitar.

The three of us yelled the ending of Dammit by Blink 182 and Alex stood on the coffeetable and I was lying on the floor pushing random buttons and Marcus slammed the drumset so hard one of the symbols fell off.

The final note sounded and Alex jumped off the table and toppled on top of me.

“Ahhh, you jabbed your mic into my FUCKING TIT!” I yelled into Alex’s face, laughing.

He ignored me, pointed at the broken symbol and clutched his ribs from laughter. Still on top of me, he picked it up and choked out, “Yo-you broke the fucking symbol!” Alex laughed so hard tears began to glisten in his dark mahogany eyes. Marcus rolled onto the floor and kicked his feet up.

“I-I’m sorry man…” Marcus chuckled some more and hiccupped.

I laughed and tried to push Alex off of me, to my failure. He looked at me and wrapped his arms around me. “I’m not getting off of you, sorry!” His breath smelled like mint and iced tea. I took notice of his little crooked tooth when he grinned cheekily and hugged me so tight, I could barely breathe. Still though, I felt warm on the inside and yelled out profanities from underneath the brown haired boy.

We wrestled (in an extremely flirtatious way) for a good five minutes until my phone began to chirp loudly from the coffee table. Marcus had answered the phone just as Alex released me from his grasp.

“Hello, this is Tiffany.” He said in a high pitched tone, making his voice crack at the ‘any’ of my name.
I laughed and snatched the phone out of his hand. I didn’t bother looking at the name on the screen.

“Hello?”

“Tiffany, where are you?” My mother’s worried and serious tone came through the receiver.

“Alex’s.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She sighed. “We’re headed over there now. Isobel insists I watch this apparently hilarious British TV show. It sounds pretty funny. She says it’s about-“

“Okay, Mom, we’ll probably just hang somewhere else, then.”

“Well, alright… just be home by nine. No alcohol or drugs or weed, you hear?”

“Mom!”

“Just making sure! See you later sweetie, love you!”

“Love you too.” I hung up and faced the guys sitting on the floor still. “My mom and your mom are coming back here to watch some TV show I guess, so you wanna go over to Jack’s or something?” I was already scrolling through my contacts to text the youngest Barakat son.

An awkward silence crawled in and I looked up at the two males. Alex was looking down, his fringe covering his eyes. He was fidgeting with the drawstrings of the grey sweatpants he was wearing. Marcus was biting his bottom lip (something I’ve picked up on as a habit of his,) and cleared his throat before smiling weakly. “Um, I actually have to leave real soon. Mom thinks I’m at the apartment we’re staying at right now, so if she comes back, er, I’m dead.” He stood and smoothed out his clothes. “It was awesome hanging with you guys today; we’ll have to do it again.”

Alex and I agreed, myself ignoring the hiccup in the vibe for the moment. “And Alex, I’ll bring the drums over tomorrow if I can?” Marcus asked while walking towards the door.

“Sounds good!” Alex agreed, sitting cross legged on the floor. We said our goodbyes and I turned to Alex the moment Marcus closed the front door.

“Drums?” I questioned, eyebrows scrunched.

“Yeah, Marcus just wanted to get together and jam before he leaves after break, you know since Skyline broke up he hasn’t really got anyone.” He shrugged his shoulders, picking up the little Rock Band microphone from the floor and running his fingertips along it.

“Oh so, are all of you guys getting together?” By ‘all of you guys’ I meant Jack, Rian and Zack, but I was sure the messy-haired Alex assumed that.

“Er, probably not. I mean, maybe some of the guys will come over, but…” The light haired boy looked at me, tilted his head and shrugged again. A small grin formed on his thin lips.

I gave Alex a weird look and returned the smile. I assumed I looked confused to him, because he frowned and sighed. “Yeah, but uh… don’t tell him this, but Marcus doesn't really like Jack… Actually, he hates him.” He concluded.

“He hates him? Why?” I then realized that Marcus was sending Jack dirty looks at
Zack’s party and that they never did converse.

“He just thinks he’s a prick. They've had… problems before. They got into this huge fight during the battle of the bands because Jack had this fling with Marcus’s younger sister, and then stood her up. And Marcus holds grudges towards people when he’s pissed at them.”

I didn’t know that about Marcus. “That’s pretty annoying.”

“Yeah. I think that’s part of the reason Skyline broke up…”

I began wondering how Jack would feel about Alex and Marcus playing together. If Jack and Marcus don’t like each other, how would Jack feel about his best friend hanging out with the guy that hates his guts?

As if reading my mind, Alex said, “And Jack and I talked about this before. Jack doesn’t necessarily hate Marcus; he’s just annoyed that he held this grudge. But Jack doesn’t really mind if me and Marcus are friends, at least that’s what he told me.”

“I don’t think he would be.”

Just then Isobel and my mother walked inside, holding Starbuck’s coffee cups and laughing.

Alex stood and took my hand. He leaned into me and said quietly, “Let’s go.”

I wasn’t exactly sure where we were headed, but I followed him out the door anyways.

We walked a bit down the road, my heart beating rapidly, due to Alex’s warm grip on my hand. We stopped outside my driveway and Alex tilted his head at the blue house. “Is Blake home?” he asked me.

“No, he’s at work. Want to go to my house?”

Alex turned to me. “Is it okay if we’re alone?”

I laughed. “She’s only next door, she won’t mind.” I pulled him up the driveway and into the warm house. Alex smiled and took my jacket from me and searched for the coat closet. “Right here,” I giggled, standing behind him and turning him in the right direction of the small closet underneath our staircase. I tried to take the jackets from him to hang them up, but he snatched them away.

“No, let me do it.”

“Alex, you don’t have to.” I smiled.

“No, I don’t,” he lifted the coats up and hung them on the pegs, “but I want to.” Alex turned to me and wrapped his arms around my waist. I put my hand on his lower cheek, cradling his face.

“Your hands are so cold,” he commented, placing one of his hands on top of mine.

“Oh, they are, aren’t they?” I took my hand off of his face but still held his. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He smiled. “I’ll keep them warm.” He lifted my hand up and kissed it softly. Alex held our hands there by his mouth, our fingers beginning to intertwine.

Usually I would have been hypnotized by him by now, paralyzed and lost into his eyes and nose and lips and those adorable dimples he has, but right now I felt different. Of course, his features were wondrous to me. But I feel like… this is the way it should be for us. Like it was normal. But the butterflies in my stomach and the adrenaline racing throughout my body tell me this is exciting and real. That I want to pursue this adventure farther, because it’s all shiny and new to me. And this feeling turned me on.

So, I moved our intertwined hands away from his mouth and kissed him on the lips inside the coat closet. He responded almost immediately by gently pulling me closer to him. I put my free hand up to his face, cradling it again, while we held hands by our sides. We kissed more and more, getting more intense each time we came back up for air.

And these kisses are cleaner than the ones at Zack’s party. Mainly because, we aren’t tipsy right now, nor did one of us just finish crying their eyes out or get seriously injured. These kisses are simple, our lips perfectly aligned with each other. He isn’t too forward with me, but knows the right times to move farther in intensity, just like last time. This is new to me. It’s nice to kiss someone who respects you.

Just as I felt him begin to flick his tongue on the inside of my mouth, I pulled away slightly and whispered into his ear.

“I haven’t shown you the rest of my house, haven’t I?”

He pulled away farther and gave me a confused look. “No… you haven’t,” he raised a brow.

I began to walk away from the closet, holding his hand. To the stairs we went, with me ahead of him. I turned to him near the top and smirked. “Well then… why don’t I show you my bedroom?”