Vegas Boys

Suddenly being friends with Brendon wasn't nearly as weird as it probably should have been. It felt like we had been friends all along--he was just naturally so easy to get along with (once you got past the obnoxiously loud ego) that he made everyone feel like his friend anyway. When I thought about how much I had resisted him before--about how badly I had treated him--I was embarrassed and ashamed. Luckily, Brendon was easy-going enough not to bring it up. He was more than willing to forgive and forget.

I came over to his house after school on Wednesday, to work on the Drama project. True to his word, he had laid aside stacks and stacks of old library books, all in various stages of dilapidation: I picked up a complete volume of Shakespeare, and about fifty pages promptly fell out onto the floor.

"Shit," I swore, shoving the pages back into the book and closing it.

"Jesus Christ, Kelsey," laughed Brendon, "stop destroying public property."
I stuck my tongue out at him and smacked him playfully in the arm with a throw pillow lying at the end of the couch. He grabbed the pillow at the other end of the couch and hit me back; seconds later, we were attacking each other with silky beige pillows, laughing hysterically.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang, and we both froze where we were: me, down on the ground, cowering against the couch, and Brendon, standing over me holding a pillow up over his head, poised for the next blow. He leaned forward slightly in order to see through the clouded window in the door, and grinned.

Whoever was at the door waited about a millisecond and then proceeded to ring the door bell about seventeen more times in a row in quick procession. Brendon purposely took a long time in opening the door, knowing it was roasting outside--he pretended to have forgotten how to unlock the door, and locked and then unlocked it again several times before he finally pulled the door open.

"Woah, slow down there, Speedy fucking Gonzales," growled a deep voice crossly.

"Hey--watch your goddamn language, motherfucker!" snapped Brendon. "I’ve got company."

"Oh really? That’s a first," mused the boy as he stepped over the threshold into the living room.
He was slightly taller than Brendon and unnaturally thin; his baggy jeans and T-shirt (which probably would have been almost form-fitting on anyone else) hanging limply off his lanky frame. I couldn’t see much of his face, as an ugly brown baseball cap cast most of it in shadow, and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of oversized black sunglasses. He looked almost comical, really.
"Most people tend to avoid Brendon," he explained to me, gesturing vaguely to the aforementioned and grinning; his smile was a perfect little semicircle, and Iwas immediatelyself-conscious ofmy own as I smiled back.

"Well, I didn’t really have much of a choice," I laughed.

"Yeah," sighed Brendon contently. "If I’ve learned anything in my eighteen years of life, it’s that you can’t make people like you--you can only force your presence on them constantlyuntil they finally give in and pretend to be your friend for a while."

The other boy just stared at Brendon for a moment, and, because of the sunglasses, I couldn’t read his expression. Then he said blankly, "You’re not eighteen yet."

Brendon stared back with the same lack of emotion. "If you count my fetal development, I am."

The other boy made some dry remark under his breath, shaking his head a little.

"Anyway," said Brendon, beaming at me with such delight that I felt my insides squirm again. "Kelsey, this is the magnificent Ryan Ross, singer-slash-songwriter-slash-guitarist."

The magnificient Ryan Ross removed his cap and pushed his sunglasses up on his forehead to see me better. (I found myself wishing he hadn’t; his delicate, almost feminine features put Brendon’s--and even mine--to shame, and I was suddenly blushing.) "So this is the infamous Kelsey?"

"Yep." Brendon sounded very satisfied with himself. "This is her."

Ryan nodded his approval. "Not bad for a dorky Mormon kid. Did you have to slip something in her drink?"

Brendon laughed, but he sounded a bit apprehensive as he watched me carefully for my reaction.

But I wasn’t sure how to react. Had he been telling all his friends about me--is that what all this was supposed to mean? So this is the infamous Kelsey?--Ryan had been told about me ahead of time? Was Brendon bragging about me? About the rich chick next door he was close to bagging?

Don’t be so paranoid, I told myself sharply. He’s probably just excited because he likes you so much.

But I couldn’t stop the old fear I felt leaping up in my chest; the fear of being used and abused, like my mother had always warned me about. She had fallen in love with a Vegas boy, and he had broken her heart and left her tied down with me. How many times had she told me that she just didn’t want to see me go through the same thing?

For the most part, I thought that I was being ridiculous. Brendon was a nice boy, one of the nicest I‘d ever met. And he was nothing like my father, like the boys my mother had described--he would never hurt me like that.

"So, uh, hey, man, I just wanted to talk to you about this gig next week this dude at school said he could maybe get us…" Ryan was saying.

"Well, I’ll just leave, then," I said, standing up and making my way towards the door.

"Are you sure?" Brendon’s dark eyebrows contracted with concern.

"Yeah, it’s fine," I assured him. "I should probably be getting home anyway."

We were faced with the awkward moment of goodbye--he started forward slightly, as if he were about to kiss me or touch my hand or something, but then Ryan was in the way, and I was backing away from him anyway, so he gave up and just smiled weakly at me.

I forced my mother’s face to the back of my mind and swallowed my doubts and smiled back at Brendon; his tense expression relaxed with relief.

"Maybe you can come over tomorrow and we can finish up," he suggested (though there was nothing to finish--with all our screwing around today, we hadn’t even started anything.)

"Okay," I agreed, "tomorrow. It was nice to meet you, Ryan." He nodded shortly. "Bye, Brendon."

"Bye."

And despite all my self-made reassurances, the way he smiled at me made my heart beat fast in more ways than one--and not all of them were inviting.

-----

"Where were you yesterday?" asked Carly the next day at our lockers, frowning. "I called your house like twelve times and you never answered."

"Oh." I looked away, pretending to be absorbed with last night’s Chemistry homework. "I was over at Brendon’s house."

I wasn’t looking at her, but I could feel her bright blue eyes on me, boring a hole in me with her unasked questions. "Brendon…?"

"Urie."

"Brendon Urie?" She sounded almost as shocked as Matt had been the other day. "Ew--why?"

I resisted the urge to yell at her for her tone, and instead said, calmly, "We’re partners in our drama class. We have to do this project together."

"Ugh, that sucks," she sympathized.

"He’s not that bad," I said.

She let out a snort of laughter. "Oh, Kelsey, you’re such a sweetheart. You don’t have to be nice all the time, you know. He’s a loser, and you can say so if you want."

But he’s not a loser, I thought to myself sourly, but I lacked the guts to say it out loud.

If I wasn’t going to admit to our date or our budding relationship, I should have at least defended him as a friend--as a neighbor--as a Drama partner--hell, as a fellow human being--anything. But I was a coward, and not only was I afraid to admit to my feelings for him to someone else, but I was afraid to admit them to myself. I couldn’t tell them he was my boyfriend--or anything else--when I wouldn’t even let myself believe it.

Because I had been busy convincing myself that he wasn’t my boyfriend since Friday night. I told myself that since he hadn’t actually asked me out, or asked me to be his girlfriend--not officially--and since we had never kissed or held hands or done anything vaguely romantic besides slow dance, there was no reason for me to think of him as a boyfriend. And there was no reason for him to expect as much from me.