Jagged Vacance

It was eerily quiet in this castle I called home. As I placed my purse down on the kitchen counter, I glanced around the corner, into the living room, and was surprised to find no parties or crazy stunts going on. Maybe something else was happening elsewhere that I didn’t know about. Oh well.

The climb up the stairs to our bedroom was also eery. No banging noises, no loud, obnoxious laughs, no stereos playing that made the house shake... This was too weird.

I didn’t call out to anyone for fear of having no voices call back. That always freaked me out, like I was left to my own devices. But when I walked through the bedroom door and saw the condition of it, I knew someone had to be here to watch my reaction.

All of the furniture -- the bed, the nightstands, the dresser -- were hanging from the ceiling upside down. Not only did this make me mad, it made me furious. I had been planning on taking a nap when I got home, not having to take all of my furniture off of the ceiling. A sigh escaped my lungs, and I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers. Oh, someone was about to get chewed out.

“BAM!” I yelled, my eyes still closed, and turned toward the doorway. My voice echoed through the halls until I heard a mass of footsteps through the first floor and up the stairwell. Then came the laughter, and my expression hardened slowly as my jackass boyfriend, Bam Margera, ran down the hall with some of his friends, laughing like this was actually funny.

“Would you mind telling me what’s wrong with this picture?” I asked calmly, not wanting to embarrass myself in front of the flock of men standing in the hallway before the bedroom.

“We got you good, huh?” Bam asked, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. Pulling away from him, I backed into the room and gestured at it with my hand. Not wanting to lose my cool mostly because I had gotten used to this, I spoke calmly again.

“You came up with this idea, didn’t you?” I asked, my voice making me sound a little more angry now. Bam’s smile faltered as he tried to think of a reply...or at least, that’s what it seemed he was doing.

“Uh...Johnny’s here!” He exclaimed, and once it registered, I smiled. I hadn’t seen the infamous Johnny Knoxville in a few months now, not since the last movie came out, and of course, he was one of my favorites.

“Johnny!” I called out, forgetting the state the bedroom was in for a moment, and opened my arms to the man that made his way through the door.

His hug was tight and warm, and it made me forget about all of the rough spots Bam and I had been through this past year and a half. “Hey sweetheart!” Johnny spoke loudly and gave a chuckle, holding me out at arm’s length to look me over. “You look gorgeous!”

“Thanks, Johnny,” I mumbled, my cheeks turning pink from the compliment. As he put his arm around me, we turned back to face Bam and his other friends. I couldn’t help but wish Ryan was here -- that would make the whole family complete. But hopefully Bam wouldn’t notice the brief, but sad look in my eyes.

“What’s for dinner?” Johnny asked, squeezing my shoulder in his arm and pulling me out of the room. I contemplated what was in the refrigerator, wondering if I had enough food to feed all of these men in my house.

“Well, I was thinking pork chops, but that was just if it was going to be Bam and I,” I pondered my options quickly, then a light bulb went off in my head. My mother’s cooking would never leave me, and Cajun food always fed plenty. “But what about gumbo?” Looking up at Johnny for approval, I followed him down the hall and to the top of the stairwell.

“Sounds great!” He answered, and I heard a few other grunts of agreement behind me. Bam called out “sweet!” but I turned around to face him, feigning anger at his little stunt that he had pulled. I couldn’t be seriously mad at anyone when Johnny was around, plus Bam was making this cute little innocent face that I couldn’t resist.

With my finger pointed at him, I spoke up in front of all of his friends with a frustrated tone to my voice. “You’re not eating until my bedroom is put back the way it was this morning when I left for work,” I huffed, and all of Bam’s friends made “oooh” sounds and laughed at his unfortunate punishment. All Bam caught, of course, was my choice of possessive pronoun.

“Your bedroom?” He asked, his voice full of sass, and I almost laughed at how pissed he looked.

“Yeah, you’re sleeping on the couch tonight. I will be sleeping in my nice, right-side-up bed.” A smirk crossed my features as I watched his jaw drop.

Bam had always been a little daredevil, thrill-seeker, whatever you may want to call it, and once he had started pulling pranks like this on me, I put my foot down. My schedule wasn’t going to be messed up by his crazy antics, even though I did enjoy a good prank on him or his friends any other day.

A loud, exasperated sigh left his mouth. I simply shrugged my shoulders. “Sorry, sweetcheeks, you get what you ask for,” turning back to Johnny with a satisfied smile on my face, I turned back for a second only to see him huff and march back into the bedroom with a pouted lip.

~
“So boys, what do you think?” I asked, a wide smile on my face. The answers were mostly grunts and “mhmm,” but I took it as a yes. Johnny got up from the dining table and headed toward the kitchen with his dirty bowl, motioning for me to follow him. With my eyebrows furrowed in confusion, I walked behind him into the closed off kitchen area, closing the door behind me. “What’s up?” I leaned against the counter with my hip, folding my arms across my chest.

Johnny washed his bowl in silence for a few seconds before sighing loudly and speaking up. “I’m glad you’re taking care of Bam,” he admitted, turning to face me with a straight face. This was already starting to freak me out -- Johnny, of course, was fourty-three, but that never stopped him from always joking around. Slowly I began to register the words and my own response.

“I am, too, Johnny,” I answered, a questioning tone riddling my statement. “Though, he’s more taking care of me than anything else.” Looking around the nice kitchen, I wondered how I had deserved anything like this. Certainly I wasn’t lovable enough -- maybe it was pity. Bam had graciously taken me in after a best friend had kicked me out of our apartment; though we had been dating, it was a big step in comparison to normal relationships. We had only been seeing each other about a week when my friend kicked me out and Bam opened his doors for me.

Walking toward me, Johnny took me by surprise by giving me the second hug of the day. “You’re making him better,” he told me, and I felt his chin move against the top of my head. Tears welled in my eyes as my arms went around his torso. “If it weren’t for you...” Johnny didn’t finish. We both knew what he was going to say, anyway.

As my arms pulled away from him, a mass of guys came bursting through the door, eager to put their dishes in the sink. Surprisingly, they had gotten that far, but I wasn’t going to clean up their mess.

“Oh no you don’t,” I told them, walking over to block their way to the basement. Of course, being of such small stature didn’t help my case, but they all stopped in their tracks. A chuckle almost made its way out of my chest. “Clean them and put them in the washer.” I motioned towards each of the two actions that I had mentioned. All of them slowly but surely obeyed my request -- that was all I asked of them, anyway. All of their messes were easy to deal with, except for all the dirty dishes.

“Thank you” came out nicely, and all of them groaned in response. “It’s all I ask!” I called down the hall they crowded to meet in the basement. Johnny stayed behind to pat me on the back and give me a small smile.

“You get on his ass about that bedroom,” he suggested, and I just smiled back, nodding my head incessantly. As he walked down the hall, I turned back toward the direction of the stairs that led upward to our bedroom, taking a second to release a small sigh and shake my head.
As I peaked my head around the corner, I noticed Bam fiddling with some nails that connected the lamp to the ceiling. Surprisingly, the job was almost finished, but Bam seemed more than frustrated at having to do it. A smile spread across my face while I watched him mutter to himself, probably strong words about me, but I knew it wasn’t anything meaningful. Bam liked to talk to himself in his angry moods, and who was to blame him? I did the same when stunts like this were performed in my house, anyway.

“Hey,” I spoke up into the quiet, walking through the doorway and leaning against a wall. Bam’s head snapped up, but a smile didn’t show like it normally did when my voice caught his attention. I had to hold back a giggle at how upset he seemed.

“Hey, mom,” he answered, eyebrows furrowed while he turned back to his current task. Bam always addressed me as such when I scolded him for his antics, but it always made me smile in return.

“You almost done, huh?” It seemed mean to tease the poor guy, but it was hard to resist when he was the jackass of all jackasses.

“Yeah, but I don’t think I’m going to eat anyway. All of these nails kind of took away my appetite. I tried to eat one, you know.” A loud snort escaped me and Bam turned around with eyebrows furrowed in feigned confusion. “I’m serious.”

“I know you are,” I retorted quickly. Not being able to help myself, I crossed the room and knelt down beside him, throwing my arms around his neck.

Surprisingly, his arms slowly but surely wrapped around my back.

As the smile grew on my face, I pulled back a little to look him in the eye. “No more upside-down room, okay?” Pulling my arm back, I put my pinky straight up before his gaze. With a little hesitation, Bam locked his finger with mine.

“No more upside-down room,” he muttered, then pulled me down onto his lap. While I snuggled into his chest, I smiled a little, like a small child, and latched onto the cloth of his jacket for support and comfort.

“Hey, Bam?” My voice was a little muffled from being snuggled so close, but he heard me just fine.

“Yeah?” Was his response, his head tilting down to place a quick kiss on my forehead.

“You’re still sleeping on the couch tonight.”

“I know.”