Vegas Boys

Matt and I arrived at the dance at about eight o’clock, dressed as Jack and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I doubted that he’d even ever seen the movie before, but he knew I liked it and was desperate to impress me (although so far, it wasn’t working very well.) Almost every one of our so-called "friends" asked us what our costumes were supposed to be, and when I explained, they all said, "Oh. I’ve never seen that movie," and then Matt would shrug helplessly like the clueless baboon he was.

Oh yeah. Did I mention I was turning kind of bitter? These days, I was almost more anti-socially cynical than I’d ever been with Brendon.

At the thought of Brendon, I sipped my punch nervously and automatically scanned the room for him, wondering if he would come to something like this. And if he did, would he bring a date? I felt a pang of jealousy, and then realized I was being ridiculous--I was envying a girl I wasn’t even sure existed.

Congratulations, Kelsey, I told myself sarcastically. You’ve reached a new low.

-----

I didn't see Brendon that night until the dance was almost over.

Matt and I had just left the gym and were walking across the school parking lot together (I had my arms folded across my chest and my hands tucked under my arms to keep him from attempting to hold them) when I first saw him. He had teased his thick, dark hair into an Elvis-like curl in the front; his face was completely covered with bright costume make-up applied in colorful, random designs. His ruffled, extremely wrinkly burgundy suit looked like something he’d found in a dusty box in the back room of a thrift store--I was already imagining the musty, mothball-esque smell of it, mixed with his own unique, crisp scent.

I might not have recognized him if he hadn’t been half sitting on, half leaning against the hood of his beat-up car, alone, crossing his ankles and folding his gloved hands over his abdomen like someone’s grandpa might. He happened to glance our way as he heard us approaching, then quickly averted his sad brown eyes when he recognized us.

It was definitely Brendon.

"Hold on," I murmured to Matt, veering away from the direction of his car and towards Brendon.

Brendon saw me coming and pretended to be deeply interested in the torn seam of his right sleeve as I approached. He wouldn’t look at me, didn't say anything.

"Hi…Brendon," I mumbled sheepishly.

At first I thought he wasn’t going to speak to me, but then he raised his eyes slightly and said, "Hey, Kels. Have a good time at the dance?" There was a dull, lifeless quality to his voice that I wasn't used to, and it made my heart ache with regret.

I glanced over my shoulder, confirming that Matt hadn't moved from the spot about a hundred feet away where I'd left him, before turning back to Brendon and muttering, "Honestly? No. It's kind of lame."

He laughed humorlessly. "Yeah. I figured it was."

"...You didn't go in?" I asked, my brow furrowing with confusion.

Brendon bit his lip and looked away--first at the gym, then at a discarded cigarette butt on the ground, then at the pavement itself. "No," he admitted finally, his voice breaking just the tiniest bit. "I was going to, but then I...didn't."

"You've been out here by yourself the whole time?" At this point, I just wanted to go cry for him.

"Well, I..." He raised his face, scratching the back of his head awkwardly, but he still wouldn't look at me. "I've only been here, like, twenty minutes."

"Oh...well, so..." I knew it was a bad idea, but I couldn't help it--the question had been plaguing me all night, and finally it burst free from my mouth of its own accord: "You didn't come with someone else?"

For the first time all night, Brendon looked me right in the eyes. "No, Kelsey," he whispered sadly. "There's no one else."

All I could do for a moment was just stare at him, and blink away the tears that were suddenly stinging my eyes. And then suddenly I was ready to tell him everything, right then and there, to apologize, to take it all back. The words welled up in my throat like the tears in my eyes, and, for once, I knew exactly what I was going to say.

But then, as if he could sense how quickly his role of Kelsey's Potential Boyfriend was coming to an end, Matt interrupted from somewhere behind me.

"Kelsey!" he called, his voice trembling only slightly as it rang out across the deserted parking lot. "Come on, what about Ronny's place?"

"Just a second!" I yelled back, without looking. I don't know why I bothered. I had already decided that I was not going to Ronny's place, and especially not with Matt.

"Look, Brendon…" I said to him in a low voice, so that Matt wouldn't overhear, "I wanted to tell you…I tried to tell you, a couple of weeks ago… I wanted to come with you. I don’t like Matt, I like you--"

"Really?" he said coldly. "Because it’s kind of hard to tell."

The bitterness in his voice caught me off guard, and it took me a second to remember myself. "Of course I like you. I went out with you, didn’t I?"

"Did you? You said it wasn’t a date--"

"Forget what I said!" I was raising my voice now, frustrated, hurt. "I was scared, okay?"

"Scared of what?" He half-laughed, sourly.

"Scared of you! Scared you might hurt me!"

Anyone else probably would have been confused, but Brendon was patient, and somehow he innately understood me. His eyes bore into mine for another long moment and then he said quietly, "I would never hurt you, Kelsey. You know that."

"…I know," I admitted.

"You hurt me," he added.

I was shaking, for some reason, as I remembered my father's words: Your mother hurt me a million times worse than I could ever hurt her.... "I know," I said. "I’m sorry."

Brendon's dark eyes softened a bit at this last part, but at the same time, their gaze was flicking up over my shoulder, to some point in space behind me. I turned to see what he was looking at just in time to find myself face-to-face with a very agitated Matt.

"Kelsey, baby, we gotta go," he said. "It's getting late, everyone's already out there--"

"Oh, I'm not going," I said easily, the words sliding off my tongue as if they were the most obvious thing in the world.

He just stared, his bright blue eyes darting almost imperceptibly to the side every now and then to take in Brendon suspiciously. "You're not? Why aren't you going?"

I shrugged. "I just don't want to. And I have to go home soon anyway."

He looked stricken, to say the least. I could tell by the way he kept pretending not to notice Brendon that he was trying hard not to say something cruel to him, just because he knew I wouldn't take it well. He tried to humor me. "Alright then," he sighed. "Okay. Fine. I'll take you home--"

"That's okay, Brendon's going to drive me home tonight."

Brendon seemed as surprised as Matt was to learn this. They were both gaping at me as Matt repeated confusedly, "Brendon?"

"Yeah, Brendon. You know," I said off-handedly, grinning wryly at Brendon, "my boyfriend."