Two Hundred and Thirty

“How do you know him?” I cocked my head. I’d presumed that everyone at the party didn’t have a clue who the host was, obviously not.

“Who, Eric?” He bent down, being distracted by a vase on the floor before picking it up and putting it on the mantel behind him “He’s one of my oldest friends” A subtle smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, subtle like the memory that made him need to smirk in the first place.

I nodded in understanding.

John turned and fumbled with some cups on the mantel, stacking them and placing them on the bottom step of the stairs.

“His parents are out of town for a month and thought that at 24 years of age he wouldn’t do something like this-“ He chuckled thoroughly “Some people never grow up”

I stared at the faintest hint of stubble that graced his jawline… I’m sure if it weren’t for that and the incredibly light frown lines in his brow, I would have said he were much younger than what he was. Completely stuck in his teenage years, he slept with women like each one bedded was another point in a major league game.

The two men I was in a house with at that moment were two years older than me but embarrassingly trapped living like high-schoolers.

“Clearly” I muttered glancing around at the state of the hallway.

“He’ll get it together though, he’ll just wallow in his bed for a few days before he starts” I followed John out of the doorway (no need for the opening of a door) and out onto the path.

The smell of burning charcoal wafted through the air, the hint of freshly mowed grass and sun-tan lotion closely following it. It must have been great to have grown up around here, been a part of all this. I felt like an outsider, I think that you always will when you move to a new place, even if the culture isn’t different or the language is the same, hell, even if you only moved down the road. You’ll never feel like you fully belong there unless things are more or less the same.

I’m sure that if I moved all my family and friends over here then I would feel differently.

“You not gonna help him out?" I asked.

I guess I was just trying to pick out faults in him now.

John looked at his feet as we started towards his car, I was looking in the rough direction of his face but the blinding sun shone right above his head, making his face shadowed and my eyes hurt from trying to even look.

“He didn’t ask” He paused to clear his throat “I’d be the last person he’d ask if he needed help”

“You helped me and I didn’t ask you to… why can’t you just… insist” I wasn’t thinking, just speaking.

We reached the truck.

“That was different. You were drunk and if I didn’t help then-“ He stalked around the front of the car, getting into the driver’s seat, I got in too leaving too much of a pause between his words. We sunk down in silence, the truck acting like a container- the smells of summer outside had disappeared.

“Yeah but, you’re his friend and surely he needs your help whether he asks for it or not” I continued.

“Look” He smacked his hands onto the steering wheel and clutched his fists around it “Eric fucked up and sometimes when we do stupid shit, we deserve to suffer the consequences. You gotta sort out the mess you’ve made because it’s your own damn fault. And maybe he doesn’t want help; maybe he wants to figure it out himself”

“I-“

He snapped his head to me, blue dots splattered over his face from my previous gazing encounter with the sun. He harshly forced out a sarcastic smile as if to tell me to stop trying to be smart.

“Don’t tell me what I should do for my friends- you have no idea” He laughed in disbelief “You actually have no idea”

I frowned at the side of his lightly freckled face as he turned back to the road and put the key in the ignition. Maybe I was pushing his buttons, but I didn’t expect an eruption like that. Regardless, he’d helped me when he didn’t have to and I was grateful for that. So I bit my tongue and we drove in silence with no CD playing at all.

It was as if someone had stuck a pipe through the back window and filled the truck up with water… the tension was suffocating. I wished more than anything that I could tell what he was thinking as he clenched his jaw and drove through the sun scorched streets.

“John-“

“Leave it” He stopped me.

“No, I’m sorry, I was just-“

“Just what?” He laughed “Trying to make me out to be a terrible person who won’t help out his friends?”

“No, I-“ I started to get flustered, that’s exactly what I was trying to do “I’m sorry and I don’t want you to think that I’m not grateful for everything you’ve done for me- I just- don’t understand”

“Understand what?” He turned and frowned at me.

“You… You’re different everytime I see you” I wish I hadn’t said that but there was no going back now “You sleep around and think you can get anyone, that’s one side” I stared at the rips in my tights and took a breath “Then you sing on your balcony and… then were exchanging favours and then you’re all nice, complementing my work , then you’re suddenly depressed begging me not to tell anyone you sing, then you’re all defensive… and within the next second you’re fucking trying it on again… and then you help me out and fix my arm and let me sleep in your bed and take me to get my jacket- and I-” I sighed “I don’t understand”

Actually telling him wasn’t something I ever planned on doing. I didn’t even care enough to want to get an explanation from him, I just, I guess I didn’t want it anymore… I didn’t want for him to be the only thing I thought about other than home and to get it all out, the things that made me think about him, maybe they’d go away and maybe it would stop.

It stayed silent for longer than I wanted to, so I glanced up to the road ahead, being sure not to catch his eye. But we’d stopped. We were in the parking-lot of our apartment complex, right in John’s assigned parking space. My cheeks burned.

Still silence though, not a word, just my amplified breathing that I don’t know whether I heard with my ears or through my thoughts. He was enjoying this; he loved it that I couldn’t understand him. I didn’t have to stick around; I’d already told him that I was thankful for what he’d done last night, that was it, nothing else to be said. And I certainly wasn’t going to sit around and wait for him, for him to smugly laugh at me and undermine me.

I shuffled my jacket in my grasp and opened the door before stepping back out underneath the sun. The door shut with a satisfying clunk as I powered across the concrete towards the lobby.

The fuel from my frustration and anger drove me up to the fourth floor and down the hallway to my apartment quicker than I ever had before. I unzipped the pocket on my jacket and barged through the front door, launching my jacket across the room and kicking the door closed behind me.

I tried to breathe through my nose to calm myself down but my heart rate was still going from both the climb up here and the annoyance of that man. He was probably still sat in his truck, wallowing in satisfaction.

I made my way into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, slamming a mug down on the counter.
I rested my hands beside the mug and pot of coffee and tried to slow down my breathing. Maybe coffee wasn’t the best idea after all. I leant all my weight on the counter letting my head hang off my shoulders.

“I’m sorry”

I shot round, in utter bewilderment as to why I heard a voice in my apartment, let alone his… How did he even get in?! I didn’t hear the door open.

I regained an upright position and I felt like my eyes were going to pop out of my head in shock. He stood on the other side of my kitchen table; arms hung limply by his sides… eyes completely vacant like the tortured soul of a ghost.

“John, what are you- how did you get-“

“Sorry- I shouldn’t have just walked in” He sighed and dropped his head “Basically” He pinched the bridge of his nose “I’m sorry, I can’t ever do anything right and I gave up trying a long time ago now, so I do what I want, and I guess I don’t care who it effects- well… I do care, I just-“

He sighed heavily again, shuffling in his shoes. He didn’t know what to say and I felt all the anger and frustration that I previously felt drain out of me and be replaced with sympathy.

I reached behind me and poured a mug of coffee and set it down on the table before shoving it in his direction and pouring myself one. I pulled out a chair and sat down, waiting for him to do the same.

“I don’t want to talk about it” He shook his head in refusal to sit down.

“You don’t have to talk about it, just sit down and drink the damn coffee” I took a sip of my own.

He hesitantly pulled out the chair diagonal to me across the table and grabbed the coffee in his hands.
We sat like that, not saying anything until the both of us had finished. I didn’t need to understand anymore, I mean, he found this difficult, he clearly had underlying issues that I didn’t even consider… i suddenly forgot about everything that had happened before and focused in on the withered man before me.

Dark circles framed his eyes and laughter lines at the corners seemed to haunt his face like a memory that won’t go away. His lips cracked in places led my gazed to the unshaven stubble along his chin and jawline. Strands of hair drooped into his eyes and over his ears, refusing to stay where he put them, that is if he even tried to put them anywhere. I glanced at his huge hands that gently cradled the mug, small cuts and occasional freckles decorated the skin and his veins were visible like my fathers were.

I no longer saw him as the asshole his actions told me he was, or even valued the kindness he’d shown me over the past day. All I could see was the pain in his eyes that I’d apparently never even noticed until now.

“Apology accepted” I said, placing my mug down on the table.

He stared at me as if now, he couldn’t understand the person in front of him.

“Look, as long as you keep playing music on your balcony and don’t try to hook up with me again, we’re fine”

He huffed out a laugh and smiled humbly.

“Raina” My heart plummeted into my shoes, I usually hated it when people used my full name, normally people I knew just called me Rae, but the way he said it. The sincerity of his husky tone. I wanted him to say it again.

“Yeah”

“Would you mind showing me your artwork again?”

I smiled, a little uneasy, but still a smile and stood up. I headed over to the spare room and reached out for the door handle when a thought fleeted into my mind; What did John use his spare room for? Storage? Certainly not a bedroom because he slept on the couch that night…

I shook it out of my head and opened the door with John’s lingering yet oddly comforting presence behind me.