Red Lights

“So, tell me something,” Dylan said, taking a sip of his coffee, which had just filled with a probably a million sugar packets and mini creamer cups. “How did you get into this job?”

I smiled, well, grimaced around a bite of waffle. I chewed, swallowed and then started, grabbing my glass of water for a sip. “It’s in the family. Hunter Security. I’ve been working there for years now, on the books. A little longer off the books, but not like at jobs or events. I was just getting a feel for things, doing my homework at the office and stuff, before I got thrown into the thick of it.”

“I think that’s really cool,” he said, picking up a piece of bacon from the mountain of it that he had ordered. “Like, you get to work with your family? That’s gotta be an experience.”

I nodded, putting my glass down. I thought of all the breakdowns, the scheduling, the struggle to sometimes put work troubles behind us at the dinner table, but I also thought about the satisfaction that came when everything was done right. All of the stories we shared together, the ones that we all knew because we were there, where we could fill in details with laughter and sometimes, sighs of frustration. All the struggles, it came hand in hand with the success. “It’s definitely something. I guess it could be worse, but hey. I can always leave if I wanted to.”

He hummed in response across from me, picking away at the food on his plates. I looked down to my own single waffle, barely cut into, covered in fruit and a little syrup. I really didn’t think I would be able to finish the whole thing.

“What was up with you and that kid, the one who brought me out into the lobby?”

Dylan’s voice pulled me back from my thoughts. I looked up to find him watching me, chewing. “Who?”

“The blonde guy, with the dark eyebrows.”

I looked at him for a second, but he just continued to chew, watching his food, then me. “Oh, Johnny. He’s just my brother’s best friend. You know, the big scary police officer’s son? He’s been working for the company even longer than my brother, but like… only by a few months. ‘Cause he’s the oldest.”

“Okay, but… what’s going on? Between you two?”

“He’s my brother’s best friend? We work together and live together? But like, so does Dan and my grandmother… like, wait why are you asking?”

“I dunno,” he said, shoving a bite of waffle in his already full mouth. He shrugged his shoulders, not moving his gaze from mine. The way he looked at me, without looking away, that damn mouthful of waffle… I don’t know. I felt like I needed to explain more. I didn’t know how, but I did.

“John’s my brother’s best friend. I mean, we live together. We all do. John, Dan, and me. It can get sticky, but we always keep it in check. For her. He’s like another brother to me. I’m all he really has now in that sense.” I glanced down at my plate, at the syrup settling and covering the white of the dish. The little hunger I had felt when our meal came washed away and I felt sick.

I didn’t want to explain anymore. I didn’t… I couldn’t. I never, ever could. This was usually where my throat closed up, where my usual unabashed, fearless mouth came to a screeching halt. I couldn’t talk about her without feeling everything all over again. I hated feeling it at all, even a micro bit of it. Saying or hearing her name was usually enough to send my insides reeling, trying to squeeze themselves shut and tear themselves apart until my body just quit.

John wasn’t really my brother, even though I often referred to him as such. He had just been best friends with Dan, my brother who was two years my senior. They’d been friends for so long, he was kind of part of the family now. Our families were two shared entities now, had been since years ago when our lives became intertwined on two very different fronts of friendship.

“Her name was Melanie. She was about two weeks older than me. She was Mel to me and I was Liv. We were inseparable from the moment we met, really, which was when she came along with John to one of my brother’s birthday parties. We were seven. From that point on, we did everything together. We were sisters. I, um… we had just turned fourteen. Late birthdays, so we were always younger than everyone else in our grade. In a few months we would be in high school.

“Mel was so excited about it. She thought high school would be everything. Going to games without our parents, watching our brothers on the team, going to dances, boys, everything. She would come to my house to sleep over or vice versa, and we would just talk and talk about whatever we wanted to. Toward the beginning of the school year her house was being renovated so she stayed at my house more often than not. She was headed over when it happened. A drunk driver ran a red light and pushed this crossover over the sidewalk. She was on her bike, couldn’t have even seen it coming from behind. She flew over the handle bars ten feet and hit the ground head first.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed, my only mechanism for fighting back tears. My throat was tight, my hands hot. My skin prickled. I closed my eyes tight, pushing myself tight against the booth with my legs against the seat across from me.
“So I went through high school without my best friend. And all I could think was, where is my Mel? Why is life so god damn unfair that I have to lose my best friend, who hadn’t even gotten to live her life yet? High school was just the beginning for her, for her dreams. We talked about working for the business together once we were sixteen, graduating, going to college, travelling. All things she wanted to do, all things she never got to try.

“John took it hard. We all did. But he had Dan. For all my brother looks like he would be good at, he’s a really good friend. He’ll hug you out of any funk, console you until you couldn’t cry again. The only person I wanted was Mel. The only person I ever wanted to console me was Mel, and she was gone. There was no changing that. So I tried my hardest to go on with life and school. People looked at me, torn between ‘Oh, she’s that girl who lost her best friend. Melanie was so great.’ and ‘She does know people die, right? Get on with life.’ and so many other things. And it sucked the whole god damn time, because still all I wanted was my best friend, yet that was the only thing I will never, ever get back.”

Somewhere in the middle of my talking, between my frustrated, pathetic attempt at chuckling and fighting tears and continuing to talk, to get it all out because that’s the only way it won’t haunt me for every waking moment of the next week, because still my mouth didn’t know how to just stop moving, I felt a slight pressure on my leg. I realized now, as my words dwindled away to nothing and I turned my gaze away from my plate, at which I stared the whole time I had spoken, that it was a hand, Dylan’s thumb rubbing along the exposed skin near my ankle, my legs stretched out and my feet perched in the seat next to him. That was all he did, I realized. The whole time I spoke, he sat there, watching, listening, not touching his food. And somewhere in the middle of it, when I myself didn’t think I could keep explaining – because this is something, this is something I never have explained to anyone; my pain for missing Mel – this simple gesture, this slight skin on skin contact, his touch on my leg in the booth at a god damn waffle place, was the most consoling I had had for the loss of my best friend, or anyone or anything else in my life, that I had accepted in a long time.

When I looked up from my plate, I caught Dylan’s gaze moving down, away from me, to his own almost-finished waffle. The touch on my skin disappeared quickly, thumbprint sliding over my ankle and onto the vinyl seat and – I was guessing now, but it was probably true – into his lap, where he rung his hands together.

“I-I’m sorry, Olivia.”

I gave a small smile, tugging at my napkin, my fork and butter knife sliding off, and laid the cloth in my lap. “Me, too,” was all I said before my fingers found my fork again, my other hand reaching for the maple syrup. “Me, too.”
It kind of hung in there for a moment, everything. I could barely swallow over the small bite of food I’d just chewed. My head ached something fierce as I realized that I kind of just totally told Dylan a lot of stuff that I probably shouldn’t have shared with an almost complete stranger. I tried to backtrack, my words fumbling over one another in a race to pick myself back up. “Oh god, I-I’m sorry? You didn’t ask for that. I didn’t mean for that to even come out like… wow. I didn’t mean to… sorry.”

He shook his head, brows furrowed, and went in for another bite. “It’s alright, trust me.”

I spent the rest of the meal barely listening to the boy across from me, instead thinking of my forever-lost best friend. I imagined her with me, gushing over nonsense and shoveling syrup-soaked waffle bites and eggs into her mouth, drinking Coke through a straw. She used to bump my leg under the table, sometimes hooking it around my ankle just for effect – it was this thing she did, automatically, when she was talking. I hated footsie, but I loved when she did it – it was like she was hooking me in as she talked about the last episode of Degrassi, or how her brother had pissed her off. It was this little anchor of our friendship, ankles bumping. It was just Melanie.

But what if she hadn’t continued to do that? What if one day she got too caught up in a boy or new friends and stopped hooking her ankle with mine under the table? Or stopped drawing stars and hearts on the palm of my hand when I was having a bad day? Or stopped being my friend? I miss Melanie an unbelievable, ineffable measure – but what if she hadn’t missed me, if she had lived? What if we had moved apart, and then we were no longer Mel and Liv? I shuddered at the thought. It made me sick, because I couldn’t believe that could have ever happened. Not that I’ll ever know. At least this way, it never can – this way I’ll always miss her, and she’ll always be an infinite possibility.

I missed everything Dylan had talked about, which I knew ranged from how good his waffle was, to the conversation of Waffle House versus IHOP versus The Waffle (AKA Dylan’s idea of the best place for a waffle. I’d never been before tonight, but he was right. It was great), to Star Wars, to – oh, yeah I’ve got the check. The last part was the only thing I caught or cared about, as I slapped my hand down on the check the waitress had just left.

“I don’t think so,” I said, holding tight to the little slip under my fingertips. I reached for my back pocket with my other hand, looking for my wallet. Dylan didn’t budge, just waited, lips pressed together as he held his side of the receipt. He wasn’t gonna win this. I could pay for my own damn food.

But he did win. The only card I had was my ID, my debit card nowhere in sight – that’s when I remembered that it was in my purse, at the theater, along with my pepper spray. Oh, how the things you need escape you when you need them most. The smug smile on Dylan’s face made me wish I could wash dishes to pay for my meal.

We left The Waffle, Dylan full and seemingly happy, me grumpy about not being able to pay the bill and trying not to focus on the huge amount of word vomit I’d left all over the floor of the restaurant. I didn’t know what had gotten into me. One second I was just trying to get over the fact that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, the next I was spitting up all the bullshit I’d lived through like he was a therapist asking me to draw a picture of it all.

Outside, the air was still warm. Not as thick as earlier in the day, but still warmer than I would ever like it to be. We walked along the sidewalk, a mere foot or so apart, but the air between us was quiet. Around us, however, was a different story. It was a weekend in Los Angeles, after all.

The streets were moving well along, people scurrying about and we milled through it all alone, together, separate. We bumped elbows as I maneuvered to get out of the way of a particularly drunk guy who looked like he’d been partying since the work day ended Friday, two days ago. We were just going about, making our way to I still had no idea where, when the people traffic stopped.

The entrance and sidewalk to the restaurant in front of us was blocked off, a van parked out front.

“They’re filming something,” Dylan said, bending down so his head was close to mine. “I wonder what.”

Wondering, to me, was one thing. Entering the restaurant was a completely different scenario all together. But he did it. I grabbed his arm just as a woman with dark hair and glasses turned to him, looking impatient.

“You? You were supposed to be here twenty minutes ago! Get out there, both of you. The more extras, the better. The room is looking thin.” I stood there, stuck, staring at her as Dylan started away. She turned her glare to me, barking words at my face. I felt my skin prickle red hot. “Go! Go find a table!”

I jerked forward, the warm hand on my wrist pulling me past cameras, crew and actors – some of who looked almost familiar – until I almost knocked into a table in the corner.

“Who the hell does she think she is?” I started, glaring behind me toward the entrance that I could barely see now. The restaurant was so dark I couldn’t believe they were actually filming here.

“She’s an underpaid, overly stressed set director at a location that is losing money every second she spends filming or waiting. So they’re probably being really bitchy, even if this does give Beso a lot of publicity once the episode airs.”

“I didn’t ask you,” I growled, still searching with my eyes through the dark.

“Yeah, you did,” he said, his voice a lot closer than before. I jumped as something touched my hand, turning back to face him. Just then, the lights came on, brighter than before, and I realized they were about to start filming again. I also realized that there was a salad in front of me. Oh, and also that someone still had their hand on mine. I shook his fingers away, looking up at him.

“Don’t look that way, they’re about to start. Just talk to me and quit trying to glare laser beams at that woman.”

“She was completely rude and uncalled for!”

“Shhh,” he pressed a finger to his lips, glancing past me. I barely listened to the noise behind me, but I knew they were starting. “Now, talk, quietly. Please.”

What I really wanted to do was stomp on his foot, or leave the restaurant, or take the knife next to me and go find the woman who yelled at us, but instead, I whispered back.

“Why the fuck did you bring me in here?”

“I thought it would be fun! I didn’t know they were gonna throw us on the floor! Hell, I didn’t know she was gonna think I was an extra… but really, it isn’t bad. C’mon, Olivia. This is fun.”

Fun, totally. I looked across to him, over a full glass of I-don’t-know-what. Fine, I thought. Let’s make this fun. “I know I’m a cheap date, but really. You could have brought me here, but instead what? The Waffle? Really?”

He turned pale, then pink, biting his lip. “This was not the plan.”

“I’m pretty sure there was no plan.”

Across from me, he picked up his fork and started moving the lettuce around on his plate. I found my fork, letting the cold metal sit between my fingers as I silently pondered on if I should follow along. The noise behind us told me that they were somewhere between takes, but that they were rushing.

“It’s not like you were much conversation at dinner. Staring at your food and not talking? Yep. Such a great date.”

I gripped the fork then, remembering dinner, when I talked far too much and then not at all, turning my gaze from my salad to him quickly. “It wasn’t even a date,” I said flatly.

“That didn’t stop you from pointing it out.”

“They’re only ten minutes apart!”

I’d been leaning forward, my left elbow rising to meet the table. I can’t help it. I have always been very argumentative, although not necessarily confrontational. In the business, discussions can often get heated quickly – over trivial matters, usually. Sometimes I am a part of it, leaning closer and raising my voice to get my words into the air, although usually not into anyone’s ears or considerations, and sometimes I’m the one sitting back, waiting until it starts to burn red hot and needs to be talked down until I step in. Now, I was antagonizing him, waiting. I didn’t think about pulling myself back.

He, however, did. I was sitting up, my lower back tense as I stared back at him, only aware of the chocolate brown color of his wide eyes, my quickening, annoyed pulse and the cold metal fork warming beneath my touch. His posture was similar: slightly hunched, gaze zoned in, lips parted slightly. And then for him, it just kind of… melted away. The fork he had been moving, but not eating, salad with was laid aside. He slumped back in his seat, moving his hands to run over the top of his head, mussing up his dark hair. He looked toward his lap, then up at me, the thoughts I had seen bubbling in his eyes, poised on his tongue just moments ago, moved elsewhere.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, looking past me for a second. “That I made you come with me tonight. That I dragged you around the city and didn’t really listen to anything you wanted to do. That wasn’t fair of me at all, honestly.” He sighed heavily, looking down in his lap for a second. He lifted his head again, but his gaze didn’t meet mine. “I meant what I said earlier. I wouldn’t have done this usually and I don’t know why I did, but I’m still glad you came. So, I guess all I can do is ask… what do you want to do now?”

I thought about it, honestly. I appreciated his apology. A lot. Tonight happened very quickly and I felt extremely out of control, although not completely out of my comfort zone. I was used to rolling with the punches. I could take this. However, I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to do anything else with Dylan. Tonight, or ever.

I wasn’t just out of control in that I’d been taken on a wild goose chase to nowhere around L.A. It was that I had completely lost myself in something I didn’t understand and that I had let myself go to a point where I had shared things with him that I had never shared with anyone, ever. Melanie is a whole part of me that I hold dear, higher than anything else. My relationship with her was the strongest and most important I had ever had that wasn’t some mandatory, I-must-love-you relationship through blood lines and family trees. I unintentionally made myself extremely vulnerable to him without even meaning to. I had told John that everything was okay, that I would make it home safely, but that was a lie.

I’d hurt myself tonight. I’d made myself vulnerable, weak and easily susceptible to damage. I had said it all to him, to Dylan, but the thing was, he wasn’t the one who was going to hurt me – the only person who was going to attack me because of this was myself.

Everything had went from a standstill to speeding before I could react. I couldn’t get a grip on anything, including myself.

Which is why the answer to his question was easy to find, easily falling from my lips: “I want to go home.”

He nodded, offering me a smile and glancing behind me. “Alright. I can do that. I think maybe, maaaaaybe, if we move quickly, we can sneak out before dragon lady tries to breathe fire on us again.”

I smiled, turning in my seat some to see the set and search for the woman from earlier. I turned back to him. “Whenever the coast is clear, just lead the way.”