Vegas Boys

I was grateful that I didn’t have to walk home with Brendon that day, and I wondered if Dad would let me be so wasteful and lazy as to drive four blocks to school and back every day from now on, in order to avoid him. My stomach churned at the thought of Brendon, but he was inescapable--especially once Brittany and I finally joined the others at Starbucks, and she granted herself the privilege of relating the whole story.

"You know that kid Brendon Urie? The band geek that’s in musicals and stuff? Well, he totally cornered Kelsey right after school, all pissed off because she’s going to the dance with Matt and not him!" She cackled, and the others joined her with appalled laughter. She imitated him badly, in a high-pitched, whining, baby’s voice: "I thought you were going with me!" The other girls absolutely howled with laughter.

"Brendon Urie?" shrieked Amanda. "Brendon Urie thought you were going to the dance with him?"

I shrugged, trying to smile rather than cuss them all out. I stared down into my mocha latte so I wouldn’t have to see their cruelly gleeful faces.

"Don’t laugh, you guys," said Heather suddenly, and, obediently, the others stopped laughing. For a moment, I felt a rush of gratitude and respect for her, and then… "My mom’s a psychiatrist, and she sees this stuff all the time. These losers have no friends , so they cling to anyone who’s nice to them--you say three words to them, and suddenly they think they’re your best friend. It‘s really sad."

I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling her that Brendon did have friends, I was never nice to him at all until recently, and he probably was my best friend. Meanwhile, the other girls let out murmurs of sympathy and lamented that some people just can’t help the way they are before quickly changing the subject to last night’s episode of Desperate Housewives.

-----

I went to bed as soon as I got home that night and then slept through most of the next day as well. It was so much easier not having to think about Brendon--it was so much easier not having to think at all.

Dad finally nagged me into getting up at around three o’clock on Saturday, and I trudged unwillingly downstairs to pour myself a bowl of cereal. As I listlessly shoveled spoonfuls of Fruity Pebbles into my mouth, he pulled out a chair across from me and sat down, frowning.

"Something wrong, sweetheart?"

I shrugged. I didn’t feel like thinking about the situation at all, much less talking about it--much less with Dad.

"Is it your mom?" he guessed.

I stopped chewing for a moment to consider that. Mom hadn’t even crossed my mind in weeks, probably. Despite everything she had put me through, I felt a stab of guilt when I realized that I had all but forgotten my own mother.

Then again, it wasn’t like she made it hard to do. She hadn’t called or even sent a letter since that last time I’d talked to her on the phone--when I’d hung up on her. I probably wasn’t troubling her thoughts any more than she was mine.

"No," I said finally.

"Oh," said Dad simply. He was thoughtful for a moment. "Your friends at school?"

I shook my head dully. (There was no need to mention that I really had no friends at school, at this point.)

There was a nervous hesitation to his voice that I guess was understandable as he said, "…Boy trouble?"

Biting my lip and slouching back in my chair, I pushed the soggy, multi-colored bits of rice crisps around my bowl; I wasn’t hungry anymore. "I don’t know," I replied, reluctantly. "Maybe."

"With the Urie kid?"

"The Urie kid." Was no one else aware of his first name?

Nonetheless, I just shrugged again. I hated talking about this stuff, least of all with him. "Yeah, sort of," I admitted.

"You want to talk about it?"

"Not really." But as he got up to leave me in peace, I blurted out, "I think I really hurt him, Dad."

Dad stood looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to go on. "How so?"

"He thought we were dating, and…I said we weren’t."

"Well, were you?"

"I don’t know," I answered honestly.

"Well, do you want to?" said Dad sensibly. "Date him, that is."

I let my spoon plop down into the discolored leftover milk in my cereal bowl with a plink of metal on porcelain. "Yes…" I said slowly, "but…I’m scared."

"Why?" He was so matter-of-fact--standing there in his business suit, with that grim look on his face, he might’ve been a lawyer interrogating me on the stand.

"I--I just--" I stammered uncertainly, then decided to just admit to the shameful truth. "Mom always said not to trust Vegas boys."

Dad surprised me by grinning wryly. "And you listen to her?"

"Well--" I felt my face heating up as I said sheepishly, "She says she speaks from experience."

He chuckled dryly. "I’m not all that bad, am I? Have I really scared you away from men entirely?"

"Not me--her," I clarified, quick to defend myself.

"Wel,l that’s her. You shouldn’t let her mistakes stop you from living your life, should you?" he pointed out.

I nodded. "Yeah. I guess you’re right."

"And for the record," said Dad softly, "your mother hurt me a million times worse than I could ever hurt her. I just kept my pain to myself. We Vegas boys tend to do that, you know."

-----

On Monday morning--for the first time since school had started--Brendon wasn’t waiting for me on the sidewalk.

This was discouraging, as I had been planning on apologizing to him on the way to school, but obviously that was no longer an option. So now he was avoiding me--but was he mad or just upset?

Four blocks seemed a lot longer than usual with only silence to walk through. I kept looking to my side, or glancing over my shoulder, instinctively used to his presence. But Brendon wasn’t there.

For the past month, I’d been trying to scare him off--and now that I had succeeded, I wanted nothing more than to somehow will him back to me.

-----

At school, all of my other "friends" were merciless.

Brendon was the inside joke of the day--and probably would be for God knows how long. They kept mimicking him and his heartbroken words, even though Brittany and I were the only ones who had actually been there to hear them. They kept laughing and joking about what a loser he was, how he’d been stalking me and probably had some kind of shrine to me in his closet and was plotting to kill Matt. Their favorite jokes of all, though, were the ones where they guessed what kind of costume ensemble he’d had picked out for us to wear at the Halloween dance.

They had no idea what he was really like--what I was really like, even. They had no idea how things were between us. They just had no idea.

More than once, I had to stop myself from going off on all of them, or worse. I told myself that they didn’t know, they couldn’t help it, they were just clueless preps--but that just made me hate myself even more for ever hanging out with them in the first place.

Because I shouldn’t have hung out with them. I shouldn’t have given in to their shallow interest in me, I should have passed up their stupid cheerleader table in the cafeteria to sit with Brendon--Brendon, who really cared about me--instead. I shouldn’t have told Matt I would go to the dance with him, I should have waited for Brendon to ask. I had fucked up everything.

-----

But my very favorite thing about Brendon was that I knew he would never let me down. If he faltered for a moment, he would get back on his feet almost instantaneously--and then he would be the same cheerful, happy-go-lucky Brendon again, ready and willing to forgive and forget and just be friends.

It was no different on Monday, and I couldn’t believe I had ever doubted him.

I hadn’t seen him at school all day, and I had thought for a long time that he just hadn’t come at all--just for the sake of avoiding me. But then after school, as I came out of the building alone with my bag slung over my shoulder, I looked up to see him waiting for me on the sidewalk like every other day.

"Hey," I said, as if I’d been expecting to him there, as if everything was fine between us. "I haven’t seen you all day."

"Yeah." He tried to sound casual, but his voice cracked a little. "I was feeling kind of sick this morning."

"Oh. Did you have that stomach thing that’s been going around?" I couldn’t understand why I was being so off-handed, so obnoxiously unconcerned when it was obvious I’d hurt his feelings--when I had been practicing my apology in my head all day in anticipation of this moment. I couldn’t understand why I was making small talk with him when I needed to be begging forgiveness.

"No." For all his indifference, his voice trembled slightly. "My stomach’s fine--my heart was killing me."

"...Oh," was all I could think to say. The look on his face kind of made my heart hurt, too.

"But it’s cool now," said Brendon quickly. "I thought about it a while and it’s cool. I just wanted to tell you that--that if you want to date Matt or whatever, I’m fine with that. I mean, it’s your life, and like I said before, I can’t make you like me."

"Brendon--" I started to say. I looked around at the hoards of high-schoolers rushing out of the building, eager to get home, to avoid looking at him. "I wanted to tell you--I’m not fine with it."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that…" I sighed. "I mean that I don’t want to--"

"Kelsey!"

I whirled around to see the last person I wanted to at that moment: Matt.

He was hurrying over towards me, grinning. "You want a ride home?" he asked brightly. I saw his bright blue eyes dart over my shoulder to notice Brendon, and his expression darkened for a moment, but then he was smiling down at me again.

"Uh--" I glanced over my shoulder at Brendon uncertainly. "Matt, this really isn’t a good time--"

"That’s okay, Kels," said Brendon quietly, and my breath caught in my throat at the nickname. "I’ll see you later. Sorry for the misunderstanding."

I couldn’t find the words to stop him as he turned and walked off towards home, alone; instead, I let Matt take me by the hand and pull me away in the opposite direction.