To Be Alone With You

She ran up my driveway, waving an envelope in her hand, having discarded her bike on the drying, late fall grass. I sat waiting for her on the front step, grinning as I watched her bound toward me. She looked so happy – her hair swinging with her step, blue eyes shining and bright. We collided in an entanglement of each other, the embrace she wrapped me in so intense it knocked me back onto the pavement.

“I got accepted!” she exclaimed breathlessly, her lips hovering just barely above mine.

“What?” I gasped back, confused.

“Early admittance to ASU! To the Walker Cronkite School of Journalism!”

She looked so excited, her white teeth brilliantly vivid against the dark red of her lipstick, but it was an excitement I couldn’t share in, something that I didn’t understand.

“Josselyn!” I exclaimed, running my fingers into the depths of her deep, dark curls. “That’s amazing. I’m proud of you.”

She leaned back, pulling me back up with her and wrapping her legs around me as she sat on my lap. “See, look,” she twittered, pulling the heavyweight cardstock letter from the envelope. “Dear Josselyn Stevens, Congratulations! We’re thrilled to say that you have been accepted through early admittance to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.”

The smile on her face as she cited the letter back to me was unmatchable, full of dreams and excitement and all the happiness in the world. I wrapped my arms around her in an effort maybe obtain a ray of the sunshine for myself, the heat of her happiness seeping into me.

“Have you heard anything back yet?” she asked curiously when she was done, her face just inches from mine. She leaned her forehead against mine so when I shook my head, her head shook too. Her eyes cast down to the little triangle of my chest exposed by my v-neck, her fingers walking themselves up to trace the edges with the tips of her nails. Every goosebump on my body rose to stand at attention of her touch, never getting sick of the feeling of her body against mine.

“It’ll come eventually, I know it will,” she chirped positively, the little lines around her mouth crinkling with her smile. “It’s still so early. They won’t start sending out the regular acceptance letters until winter.”

My lips curled at the thought of winter, the distance at which it still resided too great for me to even consider it. So much could happen between then and winter, between the time that Josselyn got accepted to college and I supposedly would get accepted too. Graduation. College. And then what?

“I’m really not sure if it’s for me anyway,” I muttered. “College.”

“What do you mean?” she inquired.

I paused for a moment, pressing my lips to hers when she was least expecting it. She giggled into the kiss and my heart caught fire, melting as the softness of her skin ran against mine. I had to think that the feeling I got when I kissed Josselyn was what a waterlilly opening its leaves to the first morning light must feel. Newness, exhilaration, incandescence.

“John,” she murmured, breaking away from me. “Seriously. What do you mean college isn’t for you?”

“I didn’t say I was for sure that it’s not for me,” I replied quietly, raising my eyes to the darkening sky. “I’m just not sure if it’s what I’m supposed to do. I just don’t know yet.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, tugging the sleeves over her red sweater over her hands, a nervous habit.

“I don’t know if I’m meant to spend another four years in school,” I clarified. “I want to explore. I want to play music. I don’t want to be stuck in a classroom anymore.”

“But there are so many opportunities you could miss out on!” she protested, pressing the letter to my chest as though the words would sink into my skin and change my mind. In that moment, with the most beautiful girl in my lap, the excitement flickering within her like a fragile candle flame just waiting to be blown out, I decided it was better not to pursue the topic. I couldn’t be the one to blow out that candle.

“We’ll see,” I said with a smile, kissing her high-peaked cheekbone. “I can’t really do anything until I know if I’ve been accepted or not, can I?”

And I decided that I would try for her, I would try for Josselyn. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew that I wanted to be with her. If being with her meant trying college, no matter how sure I was of my success, I would do it. In that moment, I realized that she was this torrential force, this supernatural center of my happiness, and I would follow her wherever it took me.



I only remembered what happened after the interview to a certain point until Jared had to fill in the deep, dark black blanks in my mind.

My tour of New York City began the minute I walked out the doors of that god-forsaken studio. I walked to the nearest bar and downed the most complex shot I could find on the menu, hailed a cab, and decided to go wherever the driver suggested I go. I had no specific plan of exactly what I wanted to see in the city, just that I wanted to see what was really important, what the real people of New York thought was important, not just what was show to us on TV.

I needed to forget about Josselyn. I needed to forget about those eyes and those lips, the way she talked to Kennedy and the way she looked when she held that camera. I seethed in the back seat as I watched the city go by, and I saw her face glinting in every one of the street-facing windows. She was everywhere in that city. She was the city. The lights, the noise, the melting pot of culture. Everything I saw screamed her name and I began to loathe the pavement the wheels moved across.

He dropped me at rustic looking French restaurant in Midtown called La Mangeorie, a few blocks over on Second. My breath escaped me when I walked inside and took a seat to wait – all wood and crystal and stucco. It was like I’d been transported out of Manhattan and into the French countryside, far away from Josselyn Stevens and the rest of the bullshit day.

It was busy, and not unpleasantly so. There were people all over the place, waitresses and bus boys and all kinds of patrons. I felt kind of underdressed, beanie and all, so I pulled it off my head and wrung it in my hands until I was seated at my table for one. Completely alone.

It was a feeling that I felt like I needed to master, this being alone. No matter where I went, I was always with someone. My band mates were always at my side, and when it wasn’t them, it was usually some girl. Even the night before when I’d gone out on my own, I’d found a woman to keep me company and ended up spending the night at her place. Unfortunately, I’d passed out piss drunk on her couch before anything interesting could happen between us.

“You’re absolutely beautiful, you know that?” I told waitress with the long, button nose and luscious blonde hair as she took down my order. She smiled at me from behind pressed lips and quickly turned on her heel, and I cursed myself for my stupidity. Being alone could be okay. Being alone could be great if I made it great. I always achieved the things I set my mind to, and being comfortable completely by myself was certainly not unattainable.

But when my Coq au Vin arrived at the table, comfort food at its finest, all I could think of was Josselyn. Those misleadingly white teeth. That red dress. The curve of her legs as she brushed past me after the acoustic set. As I picked apart my chicken, I wished to tear her apart, to humiliate her the way she deserved to be humiliated. Not even my stunt on the radio show measured up to the punishment I felt she deserved. She’d made a fool of me; she’d torn me apart and hung me up to dry. She’d made me weak and afraid and hopeless, and I wanted her to feel the same way.

I tipped the waitress a lot more than I needed to, in an effort to apologize for making her feel uncomfortable, and headed to Central Park to wander for awhile. The lights illuminated the pathway with a ghostly aura and I wondered what they were doing now. I made them all feel uncomfortable, something I was getting increasingly good at it seemed. Where would they go after that? I imagined Josselyn disgraced and crying in a cab on the way home, the rest going to get something to eat and discussing how much of a bitch Josselyn was, especially to make me feel that way. They had to be on my side; they were my best friends, my partners, the closest thing I had to family outside of those biologically linked to me. Surely they didn’t stay with her and comfort her, make her feel like she wasn’t the one in the wrong. They wouldn’t do that. Not to me.

The park was beautiful and my mood didn’t do it justice. I needed to come back in the daylight, when it was bursting with life and festivities. I hated myself for letting her get to me like this, for letting her get under my skin and ruin my trip. I loved New York City and I wanted so badly to appreciate it for all it was worth. Countless days were necessary for all the things I wanted to do, all the places I wanted to explore, and I felt like I may as well throw that weekend out the window and start fresh next trip. I couldn’t let her ruin the city for me too.

After stopping and taking a picture with a fan on my way out of the park, I headed to the nearest bar I could find. I ordered three shots of whiskey and took them within a twenty-minute span. Drunken stupor overcame me rapidly; soon I was ordering rounds for the multitude of beautiful girls sitting around me, flirting with them, my hands on their legs like frantic spiders, dying for a reciprocating set of lips, heavy eyelids, or wandering fingertips.

“I’m John,” I murmured to one as I handed her a drink, one that was non-descript enough for her to like, a tequila sunrise with all its pretty layers of warm colors. She was gorgeous, with long, glossy red hair, legs that went on for miles peeking out from a dress like pale shadows in the ambient lighting, her body all curves. The straw of the drink between her lips as she sipped sent chills down my spine.

“Helen,” she replied and I wished her lips could just wrap me up right there. I didn’t need to know anything more. Just her name and that she was so heart-stoppingly sexy.

I kept buying her drink after drink, running up a tab that wasn’t exactly in my budget for the month. Nothing could stop me at that point; the liquid courage bubbled in my stomach, encouraging me to keep going and going and going. It went well enough for awhile – she was on my lap, her arms looped loosely around my neck, her lips puckered but never grazing mine, teasing me.

“What are you waiting for?” I murmured huskily, pulling her to me with clumsy hands.

“What do you mean?” she giggled, her tongue poking playfully between her teeth.

I paused, my brain swimming lamely inside my skull. “Do you want to get out of here?” I offered with a heavy tongue. “Go back to my place?”

My suggestion was greeted with an unexpected response – her seductive face turned sour and she immediately hopped off my lap and onto her pointy, clacking heels. “Excuse me?”

I floundered to save myself but couldn’t find the words. “I… I just thought…”

“I have a boyfriend, you pervert!” she exclaimed, stamping off into the depths of the bar. I was wracked the confusion and anger, wondering what kind of girl with a boyfriend acted like that red-headed vixen just had. Tossing the appropriate bills to the bartender to cover my tab, I gathered myself to leave.

I stumbled out of that bar and into the next one, this one darker and muskier than the first. It was filled to the brim with people – people drinking and laughing and talking and dancing. It was just another bar filled with another set of New York City drunkards, looking for another night they wouldn’t remember. In that moment I really felt like one of them, stumbling to the bar to order another drink.

Suddenly, a hand was clapping me on the back excitedly, a voice shouting my name. I turned to see Jared, completely red in the face and quite drunk, a beer in his hand.

“What are you guys doing here?” I shouted, not angrily but not excitedly.

“We wanted to take Josselyn out after you were such a dick to her!” he shouted back, his words innocent in his drunken state, raising his hand to point across the room.

The very last thing I remember is the sight of Josselyn and Kennedy dancing in the corner of the dance floor and wanting to yell at the top of my lungs; so loud, it would create a gaping tear in the universe.