Chapter 4 Night of the Long Knives

“It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.” H.G Wells

For the second time that month I found myself, for some reason unbeknownst to me, out partying. Although, it arguably doesn't count because I was driving this time. The bar and all of its lights were beginning to point out how that night had been wearing on me and I slumped around the room looking for my comrades. 

I was walking towards the doors when all of a sudden my hand was grabbed from behind and we were dancing. 

It was a hate dance, at least on my part.

He was trying to be poetic, told me I was beautiful and said everything was superfluous to beauty. I laughed at him, what a card. Several dips and spins later. He said to me:

“I pick my enemies by their intelligence and my friends by their looks, what will it be for us?”

“Definitely enemies”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“I don’t care.” He immediately dropped my hands and quickly skittered away. I was aghast, a little annoyed. Why did I feel upset? He was an overconfident show-boating tool. And Grace wanted to be with him so I needed to just walk away; because thats what I did. That is who I was. I had never been that girl -if someone I knew had feelings for a guy, he was automatically off limits, because my friends are more important than me -I thought I’d do anything for them. I didn’t have a right to have any feelings for him. I’d made my dislike perfectly clear to everyone around me (including him I’d thought). Besides. I didn’t have human feelings, not the real, deep, intense kind that make you cry and forget everything. So why should I get what others wanted so much more than me?  Things that they could feel right down to their soul. If I wasn’t capable of feeling love, happiness, loss, the way others seemed to. No, I couldn’t be like that, and therefore did not require what I was beginning to realize I wanted. When did it happen? Interwoven somewhere between my lies to myself and our arbitrary trading of music and disparaging comments, I’d started to like him. Enough that it hurt my feelings when he walked away; leaving me alone on the dance floor, like a character in some sad teenage melodrama. 

I should leave. I began to gather Grace, Scarlette, and their roommates I was to take home, Janis, apparently was sober and the only one wanting to go to bed at that point. I was running around the bar looking for my other comrades, when he grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the bar.

“Just talk to me.”

I acquiesced, and seized by a moment of frustrated passion, fixed a stern eye on him. I was fighting everything. I am a good friend, I am a good friend.

“What do you want from me? I am so abrasive, what do you want?”

“I’m just looking for some stimulating conversation from an attractive female” His hand moved my from finger tips to my hamstring, pulling me closer. I obstinately stood my ground. 

“Again, this is a University, you can get that anywhere.” I slipped a couple of inches closer to him. He was sitting on the stool, eye-level with me. “No, I don’t know what you want or what you think this is, but you know I hate you.”

“Its intriguing.” I was deeply irritated and wanting to leave. “Kiss me and tell me you don’t feel anything and I’ll leave you alone.” What a line! One that I bought it hook, line, and sinker (excuse the pun). This may be my only chance to get rid of him. And for some reason unbeknownst to any deity, I leaned into that obnoxious man aloft on the barstool and I kissed him. It all came crashing in on me seconds later. I was a monster. What had I just done? I was horrified and turned to look at my roommate ten feet away, frozen in shock. I spun out of his arms and said, we’re leaving, pivoting quickly on my heel away from him, I literally sprinted out of the bar and to my car. I didn’t look back. 

Outside in the cool air I felt the oppressive realization of my actions even more heavily. What have I done? It spilled from somewhere in my cerebral cortex, wetted my eyes, before moving down my throat to force a swallow. It landed on my heart, pulling it string down to my stomach, where it landed with a thud, making me sick. 

“Do you wanna talk about what just happened?” The thrill of the drama was thick in Janis’ voice making it shrill in the refreshing but frigid air. She knew me fairly well, having lived together the year before.

“Nope.” I darted for my car. “I don’t know what to do.” I drove home slowly, only able to think about the road to get us there safe.

“He obviously has feelings for you. Are you gonna talk to him?”

“No! I don’t know. Should I? Do I need to?”

He texted me in his inebriated state, inquiring identically as to what she had just mentioned. “He just asked me”

“I think you need to go and figure this out, do you have feelings for him?” Mollified I sat in the drivers seat and fidgeted with the light, unsure of whether or not to just go inside -I was far too hyped up to sleep. “I don’t know what you should do, but I’ve got to get in and go to bed.” I accepted her exiting line and then pulled my phone from the centre console. 

Alright, I’m on my way back

The bar was as foggy as I remembered it, but dying in volume a tiny bit since when I’d left. Where was the scoundrel? I searched around for him, and had made up my mind to leave, exciting the bar door. He was there, just outside, chatting. We made eye contact. He did the stupid eye, head nod thing that people do in movies to motion that they want to talk to you in private. I nodded my head in agreement, walking right past him and towards my car. He followed. 

Thrusting himself down on the seat he lost a multitude of change to the recesses of my car.

“Consider it a tip.”

“Excuse me? For what?”

“Are you saying you didn't enjoy it?”

I was taking him back to his house.

“I’m not saying anything. You said you wanted to talk, so lets talk.”

He clicked my blinker on and then tugged on my steering wheel. I was damn sure he would braked for me too, God knows his legs were long enough to read from that side. I pulled over at his apparent demand. 

“What is this?” He leaned back the chair. I began throwing things at him, verbally, he knew Gracie liked him, how wonderful of a person she was.

“She is the most genuine person I know, so sweet…”

“And she doesn’t give herself enough credit for how smart she is,”

“Exactly, and like 50 percent of the girls at at bar would have love to be in my position right now, but all I am is abrasive, how could you want that? I’m basically a sociopath”

“And I’m an egomaniac, see, we’re perfect.” I was mollified. I had nothing to say but continued to talk, rattling off reasons why I hated him. His seductions were all so well articulated, every retort poking fun at my assertions. 

“Then there’s your facade. That I mean, apparently everyone has fallen for but me, and I can’t stand you, I don’t know why I’m here.”

“They don’t understand me.”

“I don’t understand you, I don’t even know you.”

“You know me better than they do.” Exasperated I flung myself back into the seat, knocking my head against the back support. He was playing with my fingers in a delightfully terrible manner. 

“There’s just something about you, you're just different.” He stroked my face, sending shivers down my neck.

« I basically don’t have feelings, sociopath. » How could anyone want that?

« I think you just feel things more deeply than other people. Like I said, you're just different. »

“There are 7 million people in the world, at least fifteen of them are exactly like me.”

“No.” I was facing him now as his fingers tangled through my hair and caressed my face. I was willing him, with my eyes, to forget the entire thing, to come to the astounding realization that he was too cool and didn't want me, just like the jerk I’d made him up to be in my head would. 

“I’m so easy to read.” 

“Just because it’s a quote doesn't make it true.”

There we were again, quoting Oscar Wilde and F. Scott Fitzgerald back and forth, mostly from him though, I was speechless.

“Why do you wanna be a doctor?”

“Two pronged answer: it’s the only thing I think I’d be good at, every time I go to a hospital I feel like I’m coming home and B) because I always, no matter what, I hurt the people around me and I’d like to help people. Maybe it has to be on a larger humanitarian scale and not in my personal life, but I guess I’ll take that. Why do you want to be a doctor?”

His answer was so simple I still think he was making it up: “One time someone told me I couldn’t.” There was a brief pause. That’s a stupid reason. “I wanted to be an astronaut as a little kid.”

“What happened to that dream?”

“I looked at my projected height and figured out that I would be too tall, how do you say that to a second grader?” 

I kissed him again, because I couldn't not. He put his seatbelt on.

I pulled back out onto the road and continued driving towards his house. 

Once there he asked me if I wanted to come inside, stay the night. Well, if I’m going to hell.