Fall From Grace

I blindly rummaged through all the crap on my bedside table looking for my phone. I glanced at the clock to see that it was one in the morning. Who the hell was calling me at this time of night? My fingers finally closed around my phone and I unplugged it from the charger and brought it up to my ear.

“Hello,” I said groggily into the speaker without checking to see who it was.

“Hey, Melanie, it’s Johnny,” the voice from the other side said.

“What the hell do you want at one in the morning?” I asked with a groan.

“To ask you for something,” he said, sounding a little awkward.

“What? Hurry up and get on with it so I can get some sleep,” I said, thinking this better be fucking good.

“Well, I kind of need a place to stay tonight.” Okay, that kind of threw me off.

“And you’re asking me for help why? Have you not noticed that I can’t stand you?” I asked and he chuckled a little.

“Yeah, I know that. But there’s no one else for me to go to. Everyone else is either out having sex or drinking or getting high,” he pointed out.

“Okay. Before I say anything more. Why might you need this place to stay tonight?” I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

“My parents are screaming at each other and have been for the past few hours. I’m afraid that if I stay here and have to listen to my dad yell at my mom anymore I might kill him. So you’d be saving me a prison sentence if you’d just let me come over for the night.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. Johnny was becoming a lot more trouble than I’d anticipated.
“Fine. Come over. You’re sleeping on the couch. Don’t think this means I fucking like you or anything,” I told him.

“I know, thank you. I owe you one,” he said, his relief evident in his voice.

“Yeah you totally do. Bye.”

I hung up the phone and fell back onto my bed, pulling the covers up over my head. Why was I being so nice to him? He threw a party and inadvertently was the cause of Brian taking advantage of me. Even though he did that brief act of pretending to have a heart, it didn’t change anything. He was probably still drunk then anyway.

Ah, hell. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t blame Johnny for that, as much as I wanted someone to blame. That was my own damn fault. I’m the one that got too drunk to know what was happening. I shouldn’t have done that. I should’ve been smart enough not to let some stupid, arrogant excuse of a human being take advantage of me like that.

I was still lost in my thoughts when the knocking on the door began. I sighed and climbed out of bed, putting on my robe. I stopped and opened a hallway closet, pulling out a blanket and pillow before continuing down the stairs. Johnny opened his mouth to start talking as soon as I opened the door. I just shook my head and shoved the stuff into his hands.

“Don’t speak. I just want to get back to bed. I need my beauty sleep. Don’t break anything down here,” I quickly said before I turned and walked away. I barely heard his muttered, “Yeah, it’s going to take a lot more than sleep to help that face.”

Surprisingly enough, a small smile found its way onto my face at how typical Johnny that was.

“God, there must really be something really wrong with me tonight,” I thought to myself as I went back upstairs.

~x~

I was woken up by a very annoying beeping sound. I was trying to figure out what the hell it was. I didn’t have my alarm set, so that couldn’t be it. I was still trying to figure it out when I smelled smoke; it was the smoke detector going off! Shit!

I threw back the covers and jumped out of bed, not bothering to grab my robe to cover up my skimpy pajamas. I was just worried about getting to safety. When I opened the bedroom door however, Johnny was standing in my way, arm raised like he was about to knock on the door.

“Do you not hear the fucking smoke detector? That’s normally a sign to get out of the house, not to go upstairs!” I yelled over the shrill ringing.

“There’s no fire. I was just coming up here to tell you that,” Johnny said.

“If there’s no fire then why the hell do I smell smoke?” I was still screaming.

“Well, it’d probably be better if I showed you,” he said. I knew letting him in my house was a bad idea.

“You broke something didn’t you?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, just turned around and headed back downstairs. I rolled my eyes and followed him. He led me into the kitchen, which was full of smoke.

“What did you do?” I asked him.

“Well, I was trying to make you breakfast as a way of saying thanks for letting me stay here, but I’m not the best cook in the world. I think I kind of burnt it,” Johnny said, looking down at his feet, I guess it was to hide the fact that his cheeks were taking on a light pink color, but I saw them anyway.

“You think?” I asked sarcastically.

At that moment, I didn’t know whether to yell at him or laugh at him. So I settled on just walking past him and taking care of the mess that was left of the stove. It looked like it was supposed to be scrambled eggs. I grabbed the skillet and turned to dump it in the trash. That didn’t work out as planned.

Instead, I stepped in something really slippery and fell forward, straight into Johnny. I let go of the skillet and it crashed to ground, burnt eggs going everywhere. Johnny caught me around the waist and we both toppled to the floor with me on top of him.

“What the fu-” I started, but fell silent when my gaze met his and froze there.

After a few moments of us both lying there motionless, Johnny slowly lifted a hand and brushed a bit of egg off of my cheek, his fingers lingered a little longer than necessary.

He looked like he really wanted to say something, but I wasn’t really in a good position to listen to him. I picked myself up off of him and grabbed Johnny’s hand to pull him up as well.

“Nice pajamas,” he said, smirking slightly as we both tried to recover from the awkwardness of before. This time, it was my cheeks turning pink as I pulled my top up. It had slipped down to reveal a little more cleavage than I was comfortable with. I grabbed the broom and handed it to Johnny before retrieving the skillet to wash. This morning was insane, I hoped the day ahead of me was a little more normal.