To Be Alone With You

“To finally being together for once!” Austin Gibbs cheered from the head of the circle, holding a shot glass at eye level and his voice in the most commanding tone. Surrounding him were the rest of us – John, Pat, Garrett and Jared – and a few of the old crew that used to hang around Tempe, making music and breaking hearts, the usual.

“Fuck yeah!” Garrett cheered, in unusually good spirits that night. We clinked our glasses together in a ceremonious harmony, the high-pitched sound filling the still empty kitchen. It would be just the rest of us for a while, getting drunk enough to handle the enormous wave of people excited to see us from all over town. It had been some great span of time since we’d been home, crossing a great amount of time and land and a whole lot of growing up. We were all different people, and yet still quite the same.

“To a night we won’t remember!” John added, filling our shot glasses again with another round of the thick mahogany liquid, the ridges of the flow catching the light from the porch. “Right Ken?”

He looked at me expectantly with his already drunken eyes, a few beers and a couple shots into the celebratory night. “Fuck yeah!” I agreed, earning a cheer from the rest before they downed their drinks like their lives depended on it. As we settled around the table like our bodies were programmed after so many years to play Austin’s favorite card game, I decided there wasn’t ever quite a night like that night – even before it started. If only I’d known.

Within an hour, Austin’s house was crawling with people, most of whom we knew, but a spattering of fresh faces intertwined between them, laced like fingers. Worlds were colliding all over the house, John and his high school best friends in the kitchen, Pat and Garrett with their brothers in the living room, Jared and his old girlfriend upstairs. Everyone was reuniting with someone somewhere, like we’d staged a family reunion with close to a hundred people with which we shared no blood.

I was pretty intoxicated by then, lying on the couch and watching a group of people dance to the music in front of me. Already exhausted from talking to people, I succumbed to the soft leather of the living room, examining the scene with heavy eyes. Pat and Garrett were still with their brothers around the stereo, laughing amongst themselves as they shuffled through songs and enjoyed the reactions of those dancing.

Trey glanced among them with an amused look before switching the song to a popular Lil’ Jon song from ages ago. The room went wild. I laughed with them though I was across the room, the people between us like a small dancing ocean. I scanned their faces with entertainment until my gaze landed on someone I hadn’t expected to see. The breath left my lungs entirely.

It was her.

The girl from the picture on John’s desk. Josselyn Stevens. The same beautiful dark eyes, full lips – this time painted nude – long hair down to her waist. But this time, she’d made it blonde, the waves at the ends sprawling like a mermaid’s. She was stunning under the dimmed lighting of the living room, a spiral of light illuminating her features just right. Before I could tell myself otherwise, I was on my feet and crossing the room to her, my nerves kept at bay with the liquor coursing through my veins.

“Hey,” I greeted, the sound of my voice sounding so idiotic the minute it left my lips.

“Hey,” she greeted back, her grin toothy behind her striking full lips. “What’s a girl got to do to get a drink around here?”

I laughed, amazed that my usual jitters weren’t showing so blatantly that I would scare her away. I’d been waiting so long for that moment, to finally meet that girl in the picture and figure out her story, and that moment had finally arisen. The way she looked in her curve-hugging dress was enough to make my blood run cold, her long legs stemming out into a pair of killer high heels. It took everything in me to not say something stupid, instead motioning to the kitchen with a jerk of my head.

“I’ve got you covered,” I said suavely, earning a laugh from her as well. She followed me into the kitchen where she watched with careful eyes as I mixed her a drink from the messy assortment of bottles on the counter. When I handed it to her and she took an approving sip, she reached for my hand and led me back to the makeshift living room dance floor. My heart could have stopped right then.

Her hips were swaying in time with the end of that Lil’ Jon song I couldn’t name, sending my nerves into a frenzy. My hands went to her without any sort of command, turning her to face me and we danced together, her laughter filling the room. It was the most honeyed sound I’d ever heard, swathing me with its pleasant cloak while our bodies grazed each other.

It was my chance. It was my chance to finally make something of my crush on that girl in the picture, on Josselyn Stevens, the girl I’d never thought I would meet in a thousand years. It was my chance to finally get some answers. I didn’t know what she was doing there but I didn’t much care, knowing that no one else would probably talk to her out of sheer hatred for whatever happened between her and John. I glanced over to the boys in the corner who were looking at me with panicked confusion, like they wanted me to stop. But in the presence of this beautiful girl, I wouldn’t ever stop. No matter what she did or didn’t do to John.

The song ended and the next came on, and the next. I kept giving her drinks from my stash, powerful ones at that. It came that she was just as drunk as me, and I finally felt comfortable talking to her rather than just making a complete and utter ass of myself in her golden, sober presence.

“What’s your name?” she finally asked, her grin more sloppy than before but not any less beautiful. We’d moved off the dance floor and to the foyer by the front door, leaning against the wall with not any more than an inch of space between us.

“Kennedy,” I responded. “And you?” Even though I already knew the answer.

“Casey.”

Casey? My mind melted at her words, everything suddenly mixed up and entirely confused. Casey? But I’d seen her face before in the frame, I’d seen her everywhere – I’d heard John talking to her voicemail when he thought I wasn’t listening and her name was certainly Josselyn. What the hell was going on?

“Kennedy, we’re out of here.” I turned my liquor-heavy head to see John barreling down towards us, grabbing my arm as he went to the door.

“What the hell is going on here? What the fucking hell is going on?” I protested as he dragged me away from the girl I had thought to be Josselyn Stevens, shooting a glare at her through drunken eyes. I turned and tried to fight to go back but John was powerful in his determination to leave.

The last sight I had of that house was two of Josselyn Stevens, one raven and one blonde, standing in the doorway. The double was exactly the way I’d known her, with the beautiful figure and long dark hair, lips as dark red as blood. It was her. And then I puked on the grass.



I thought we were going to eat that Friday, the way we usually did. Since the incident with Josselyn, John hadn’t been invited with by my request, and I was perfectly fine with keeping it that way. But when I showed up at Jared’s to meet the guys to leave, I was met with an ugly surprise, forced into the basement.

“We’re staging an intervention today, gentlemen,” Jared stated from the head of the room, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. Pat and Garrett stood behind him, looking rather sheepish in comparison to his attempt at a commanding stature. John and I sat in front of them, my arms folded across my chest in solidarity and his expression flat and barren as the desert.

“No more of this stalemate,” he continued. “We want our friends back. We want our band back. So the two of you can figure it the fuck out and let us know when you have.”

They promptly exited the room after that, leaving John and I alone for the first time in god knows how long. My skin was still crawling from his encounter with Josselyn, even though weeks had passed since it happened. From my knowledge, they’d had yet to see each other again, which left me with not much else to work with. I was absolutely furious with not much else of a reason, but perhaps that reason would be able to be enough.

“You were a fucking prick to her that afternoon, you know that?” I started in the silence, not looking in his direction for fear of losing my nerve. I hated being mad at my friends, especially the close ones. John was just about as close as they got.

“You weren’t even there,” he replied, his tone just as flat as his expression. “Don’t talk about stuff you don’t even know the first thing about.”

“I do too know the first thing about what happened,” I countered, trying to keep my tone in check. “You came to my house to tell me off about seeing Josselyn, and when I wasn’t there, you ripped into her instead. What kind of man are you?”

John scoffed. “What kind of man are you to be seeing her?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Kennedy,” he sighed, and I could see his hand go to his temple out of my peripheral vision. “Josselyn Stevens and I have a history. A long, complicated history that started with her as my first love. Do you understand? She’s not just some toy for you to play with, some puzzle for you to solve. She was four years of my life.”

“You only dated for two.”

John sighed again, and then repeated, “She was four years of my life.”

I cracked my knuckles in my lap, unsure of how to proceed with John. He was going to be insistent that I was in the wrong, but in my mind he was the one who had completely wronged me. He’d shown up at my house and verbally assaulted my girl. I wasn’t about to let that go.

“It doesn’t matter,” I retaliated, fighting my way upstream in the conversation. “There’s something between Josselyn and I that is different. I swear that it is. And if you’re just bitter that I’m with her, than you can fuck off, I guess.”

“No need to be hostile, Ken.”

We were quiet for a moment, preparing our arguments. Or rather, I prepared my next round while John sat there apathetically, staring at the wall ahead of him with nothing apparent on his mind. He was good at hiding his emotions when he wanted to, a talent I guess he learned from his heartbreak with Josselyn. I cursed her in that moment for doing that to him, because in that argument it would have been a hell of a lot easier to know what he was thinking.

“You don’t just get to lay your claim on her if you want nothing to do with her, that’s not fair to me at all,” I muttered finally. “You don’t want anything to do with her, right?”

He didn’t answer with words, only a bitter grunt. That was enough of a sign for me. I looked down into my lap, rolling my phone around in my hands, ready to get out of there. I was begging for an excuse to leave. Things between John and I weren’t going to get better, not until he could stop playing his childish game of ‘dibs’ and let it go.

“Why do you care so much if all she ever did was hurt you?” I asked after a while of us sitting there in silence. It took John another while to answer, like he was contemplating the right way to frame his answer.

“Because, Kennedy. She’s going to hurt you too.”

The sound of my ringtone came to life in my lap, Josselyn’s name emblazoned underneath the time clock. Immediately, my hand went to answer, my heart smug at her obvious need of me and not John.
“Hey,” I answered. “What’s up?”

“Kennedy,” she replied, her voice frantic. “I need you to come home. I just got a call from the NYPD about Rick. I can’t be alone right now. I need you to come home.”

“I’m on my way.”

And as I stormed out of the house, away from John without a word and past the guys with an annoyed glare, I was in my car and on the way home. In that moment, I had won. Josselyn needed me. Josselyn needed me. That was more than John could say as he sat in the basement pining over her, as I won and played the hero to her damsel in distress. He couldn’t stand to see me unraveling her secrets in the palm of my hand, and he was going to have to deal with it.

Because I had Josselyn Stevens and he did not.