Bash - 1. Bash

Bash

by RKnapp

“Oh my god, I can’t wait for this crappy year to end already!” Jo said, as she was putting together a taco salad and I turned on the television to live coverage of the Times Square New Year’s Eve bash. “At least you had a lucky year.”

“Me?” I inquired quizzically.

“Yeah, you hooked up with Jake in like what, two hours?”

“We didn’t hook up that night!” God damnit, why the hell does she have to insist that we fucked each other’s brains out when he stayed over that night? Honestly, we were decent in front of each other for at least the first twenty-four hours following our first meeting at the Halloween party. “I’m serious, I took the bed and he took the couch. This couch, right here,” I said, pointing down, “The one I’m sitting on. The same one you made out with that Rowan kid last wee…” I couldn’t finish that sentence. Doing so would have merited more than just the wooden spoon she had fast-balled towards my head.

“You shut up right now! I was stinking drunk because SOMEONE put ever clear in my drink! Asshole!” she exclaimed heatedly as she banged around in the kitchen. I just threw both of my arms over the back of the couch and relaxed. It wasn’t going to be a very big night, with only Jo, myself, and eventually Jake, and yet she was still making a fuss over food for a “party.” “Why don’t you have any taco sauce here?”

“Because you and Jake are the only ones who actually use that thing.”

“That ‘thing’? You mean the kitchen?”

“Yeah that too,” I said with a smirk. I can’t be trusted in a kitchen without setting fire to water.

“Ugh, I’ll have to go back to my place and get some. I’ll be right back, watch the salad for me,” she said as she shrugged on her heavy winter jacket and flew out the door.

After about five minutes of watching the action in the city, I made a decision to grab a few beers from the industrial-size fridge in the garage. I put on my own winter coat and, while bracing myself for the extreme cold that was waiting for me on the other side of the side entrance to the apartment from the outside, I opened the door, stepped through, and closed it again to trap the heat inside the apartment. God was it cold, the weather channel said it was supposed to be a wind chill of minus four tonight, and it sure felt like it! Jo lived for this weather, but I could do without it. I made my way cautiously down the rickety wooden steps to the ground level of Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s property and made my way over to the garage door code box on the side of the garage that was opposite the stairs. Whoever designed this damned garage was a total idiot.

The second I touched ground I noticed that it was slippery. Makes sense, being that some of the snow from the storm two nights ago had melted during the day, that ice would have formed on the driveway now. I had to be careful.

I slowly made my way out to the other side of the two-car garage, looking in through the windows to keep the winds out of my face. Inside the garage were two dark hulks, one of them being my old black Chevy coupe, and the other being Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s deceased husband’s old covered ’62 Buick. She refused to let the old car go because her husband, Gerry, loved that car almost more than his own wife, and so she learned to love it too in order to have the relationship with her husband that she wanted.

Unfortunately for me, Jake has no interest in my own hobbies, which revolve around my car. We’ve been dating now for nearly two months, and it seems that I spend more time with the car than I do him, because he never wants to have anything to do with it. Hell, there are times when I feel as though our relationship simply will not work because we really don’t share the same interests. I love my car, while he loves himself. No, I’m serious; sometimes I swear that if the guy were given the chance to date himself, he would do it. I’ve often wondered if that meant that maybe I just couldn’t give him what he wanted even if I tried, since we’re such polar opposites. It worries me because I’ve always had the fear of my first major relationship failing so quickly. I’ve had a few relationships with guys over the years, but none of them really were anything more than sex everything now and then. I liked to think that Jake and I had something a little more special than that, but sometimes I wondered if that were true. He’s needy, but I guess I just sometimes doubt myself in my ability to meet those needs.

It was with these thoughts in my mind that the wind suddenly picked up, blowing my feet directly out from underneath me a few feet from the keypad. I wound up landing on my upper back with my head striking the cold icy ground with great force. The pain was unimaginable as it slowly turned to numbness and I could feel only a hint of moisture between my skull and the ice. The pain completely turned to numbness as the light from over the garage door went black, and the windy world that caused my sudden fall slipped away into darkness…

I’m not sure what I was looking at. I mean, it was all very fuzzy, like I was drunk, but I didn’t feel drunk at all. Though, I could still make out two distinctive figures. I could also tell that I was outside and that it was the middle of the day, as my surroundings were relatively bright, airy, and cold. Not as cold as it was outside my apartment right now, but cold enough that I was wearing a hoodie. Why wasn’t I front of my apartment though, and how did I get here? As my view slowly came into focus I could see that I was actually in New Hope, walking past a bookstore. For some reason, I couldn’t hear anything. I mean, I could see and feel the cars driving past us, but I was deaf to them.

Wait, us? Yes, us, Jo was walking to my left. But what about those two figures up ahead? I tried to ask her what was going on, but I couldn’t make the words. I also couldn’t hear what she was saying to me as she stopped and peered into the bookstore. The figures disappeared into another shop. As my surroundings came into better focus, I noticed that I was wearing an odd watch. My watch had silver trim, a black face, a black band, and had both analog and digital functions. However this watch had a silver trim and band with a navy blue face on it, and was completely analog. I almost never used the analog function on my watch, so it took me a few seconds to understand that the time of day now was 12:04 pm. What the heck is going on? Where did this watch come from? I decided to try to ask Jo again what was going on, when I noticed something else that was odd in the window. It was Jo’s reflection. She was wearing a hoodie that prominently displayed the letters UCLA. She never went to UCLA, nor did anybody she knew, so why did she have a sweater from there? This was all too weird.

Ack, no time for that now, Jo was pulling me away from the bookstore. We walked a ways, up towards where those two mysterious figures had walked into another store, when someone I didn’t know stopped in front of us. She had straight, dark brown hair that fell to the small of her back. I actually found her to be quite attractive, for a woman. Her chestnut eyes set off her soft, slightly pale face so well that I found myself entranced by them, until she averted them over to Jo, who stepped up to this woman and hugged her. Who was this lovely young woman who Jo knew, and I didn’t? They were talking to each other, and I still couldn’t even hear it if a ship landed on the shops across the street. Why can’t I hear or speak? I don’t even think my lips were moving when I tried once more to ask what was happening!

Movement in the corner of my eye made me look over to the shop where the two figures had gone. It was an ice cream parlor. Inside I could see the two figures at the counter. Slowly, they came into focus, and I could see that they were both young men around my age. I couldn’t see very well, but I could tell that the man on the left was Latino, and wore his black hair in a buzz cut. The other appeared to be slightly more flamboyant, and if I didn’t know any better, I would say he was my boyfriend, Jake. It was! Why is Jake here? Oh right, if this was the ice cream parlor I thought it was, his music shop would be around the corner. Normally I would have gone inside the parlor to greet him, but this other guy made me nervous, so I chose instead to wait outside with Jo and her apparent friend.

As I watched the pair in the parlor, I could see that they were being friendlier towards each other than I would have liked. Call me jealous, but I don’t like it when someone other than his family or myself puts their hand on his arm while laughing at something they said. I was getting extremely uncomfortable with the way they were acting towards each other, especially with how close they were standing next to each other. Why were they together just then? Why were they in the ice cream parlor? Who was this guy? All these questions and more were running through my head as the dark-haired girl joined us and Jo started pulling me down the street.

Suddenly it felt as though the air was getting thin, and the sun was getting bright. I put my hand over my eyes to shield them from the sun and looked over at Jo, but she and her friend were gone. In fact, everything around me was blurring out of existence. I could hear something in the distance, like a voice, telling me to wake up. I used both hands to shield my eyes from the increasing intensity of the sun, but nothing helped as all of my surroundings disappeared, and suddenly the world went white.

Oh god, why is my head throbbing with pain? Oh right, I guess I kind of hit my head on the ice outside. That would explain the ice bag on my forehead, as well as my hands. I had one hand on my head, because that’s what you do when you hit your head, while the other hand was shielding my eyes from the intense light coming from the ceiling fan light overhead. I then realized that the person who was telling me to wake up was Jake, as he slowly came into focus, leaning over my couch and looking worried as ever.

“Oh thank God, he’s awake,” he said over his shoulder, I guess to someone in the kitchen, “God, Ryan, you scared the hell out of me when I drove up and you were lying unconscious outside like that.”

“W-what happened?” I asked weakly. I was still groggy from being out, “What time is it?”

“It’s 11:30, almost time for the ball to drop. Hah, what a way to start off the year, right?”

I found that laughing made the throb in my head hurt more, so Jake told me relax and went over to the kitchen. Well, even though I was in pain, I was glad that I could hear and speak again. He returned soon with a fresh bag of ice.

“Oh, could you grab the box and bring it here?” Jake said again to someone else in the room. Who else was here? Was Jo back? “You know Ryan, tonight marks two full months since we met. I wanted to do something nice for you tonight, but since you hit your head, I guess the gift I bought will have to do.”

Our company came around the couch and set the box in Jake’s hand. I got a good look at him, and once I realized that he wasn’t Jo, I remembered the man from the ice cream parlor. I nearly choked on my tongue as I realized that that man and this one looked exactly alike! “Ry, this is Andre. He’s my ex-boyfriend from a few years ago.” Did he just say ex-boyfriend? “He didn’t have anyone to spend New Year’s with, so I hope you don’t mind that I brought him along?”

I suppose he took my facial expression as acknowledgement, even though I was still a little shocked that the man who had been in my little vision was standing in front of my couch, because he smiled and handed me the box. It was a clear box with a bow on it. Inside was a new watch. He opened the box for me so that he could wrestle the watch from the holder inside the box, and put it into my open hand. I looked it over as the silver trim and band gleamed in the light from the ceiling fan. As I looked closely, I could tell that the watch was completely analog, as opposed to mine, which was digital and analog. I could also see that the face of the watch was a navy blue. I shivered slightly as I thought how eerie it was that not only was the guy who was in my… whatever it was that I just had… was now standing in my living room, and was Jake’s ex-boyfriend, but the mysterious watch that I was wearing before turned up as well just now as a gift from Jake. I decided to not think about it too hard, and smiled at Jake. I mean their relationship has been over for years, hasn’t it? People don’t get back together after that long, right? If I wasn’t in pain right now, I might have been looking at the guy and making him feel unwelcome so that he didn’t try anything funny with myself or Jake.

“Thank you, it’s beautiful. Happy two months,” I said to him as I open my arms and he leaned over to hug me. He also pulled his head back slightly and slipped his lips over mine to give me a light kiss. He tried to pull back, but I tightened the grip that my arms had over him and pulled him back down to me, and open-mouth kissed him. I don’t know why I did it, especially since we were in the company of others. Though it may have been just who that company was that prompted me to do it. I guess I felt threatened, I mean who wouldn’t feel threatened by their boyfriend’s ex being in their house? I guess I also wanted to be sure that this little fact didn’t mean that I was losing him. I already had that feeling, as I always did every time I was working on my car and he either headed upstairs to do something else or went home. I guess I just needed a little reassurance from him that he wasn’t going anywhere, and that his little invitation to his friend there was genuinely out of concern, the friend who had taken it upon himself to return to the kitchen.

I did get that reassurance as he collected his wits, threw a leg over my waist, held my face in his hands, and proceeded to kiss me the right way. I slid my hands down his back until they reached his jeans and slipped over the mounds of his ass. I wanted to keep the kiss going, but he pulled back and said, “Well I can see you’re okay,” as the door burst open and a shivering Jo came into room.

“Who’s okay?” she said.

“Gretzky here,” Jake said as he sat up, still straddling my waist.

“Gretzky? What?”

“When I got here, I found him lying on the ice outside the garage. I guess he must’ve slipped.”

“Slipped?! What the hell were doing out there Ryan?” she asked me heatedly, “you were supposed to watch my salad!”

“Thanks for caring, Maud,” I said as I let my hands slip to Jake’s thighs, closed my eyes, and tried to tune out the noise, the noise being Jo.

“Ugh, boys. How’s your head?” she asked.

“Throbbing, but I think it’ll be okay,” I replied.

“Well, I’m taking you to the doctor in the morning anyway, you might have a concussion,” she said. I opened my mouth to protest, but then she got a fiery look on her face as she said, “You’re going and that’s final!”

“Okay, Jesus,” I said with exasperation.

Looking satisfied, she looked over to the kitchen and spotted our guest, “And who’s our guest here?”

“Andre, this is Jo. Jo, Andre. Andre is my ex-boyfriend from back home. He didn’t have anyone to share New Year’s with so I invited him down,” Jake said to her.

“Ah, well in that case, Andre can you grab that plate of taco salad and come over here? The ball is gonna drop in a few minutes!” Jo said as she hung her coat on the coat rack by the door and took an armchair and turned on the television to the Times Square celebration that I had been watching prior this whole mess.

As far as that kiss goes, I couldn’t tell you if I was completely satisfied by it. I mean, it was physically satisfying, but I’m not sure he had his heart in it. It was passionate all right, but it just didn’t feel right. Call me paranoid, but I think this Andre fellow might have something to do with it. Jake climbed off of me and sat on the couch with my feet in his lap as Andre set the taco salad on the table and took the other armchair in the room. Jo quickly stood and got a bottle of champagne from the rack that was against the far wall, as well as three glasses from a shelf over the rack.

“Sorry hockey puck, but no alcohol for you until we know your head’s okay,” she said to me.

“Oh, so now this is a dry apartment?” Jake said comically as I kicked his legs.

“Smartass,” I said to him.

“Look, it’s starting!” Andre exclaimed as the large and brightly lit glass ball began its descent.

Jo quickly popped the cork and poured a small amount of its contents into the three glasses, handing one to Jake, one to Andre, keeping one for her. As the crowd counted to zero, the three of them clinked glasses as they all exclaimed, “Happy New Year!” and downed the alcohol.

I on the other hand remained silent, and wondered just how happy this New Year was really going to be.

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