Fiction Friday #25

"When?" he asked.

"High school," I said.

Jer looked over at Karen. She nodded again.

"High school?" he said to himself. Then he spoke to me, "Does that mean she's..." He let it drift off.

I pushed my hair off my forehead and said, "Yeah. This is her. This is Karen."

"Oh," he said, looking at her again, this time not so cow-eyed.

"What," she said to me, "have you told him?"

"The truth," I said, leveling my eyes to hers.

"'The truth,'" she said, mocking me by making her voice higher. "You wouldn't know the truth if it crawled out of your belly button and said, 'Fuck me, I'm the truth!'"

"Yeah, sure," I said and turned to walk to my room. I wanted to let them handle whatever was going on between them.

Jer grabbed my arm, "Where're you going?"

"To my room. I don't have to deal with this." I shook his hand off of me.

Karen leaned her butt onto the back of the chair she had been sitting on and let out a long sigh. "What now?" she asked.

Jer sat on the floor, looked at me, then at her. He shrugged and looked down at his arms, which were crossed on his chest. I wondered if he was about to cry.

"What, 'What now?'" I asked Karen. "I don't get it."

"You," she pointed to me. "Him," she pointed to Jer. "Me," she pointed to herself.

"Fuck me," I said.

She grinned an evil grin at me, "Only with a chainsaw."

"Look," I said, ignoring her as best I could, "this doesn't have anything to do with me. Jer," -- He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. -- "we were bullshitting, bitching about exes. We were playing, one upping each other. How'd I know three years later you'd see her and bring her home with you?"

He looked away from me.

"And you," I turned back to Karen, "give him a fucking chance. He's not me." I paused. She didn't say anything; she just frowned. "Hell, I'm not who I was. I'm a totally new kind of jackass."

Karen smiled a little.

That's when I left. I didn't go to my room. I walked back the way I came in and out. I hurried down the stairs after I pulled the door shut and hopped on the first bus that came around the corner. It didn't matter where I was going, just as long as I was gone.

Nearly four years after we spent hours screaming at each other, almost four since I'd even seen her, and when I saw her all those old emotions came back. All the pain I felt because of what she said and because of what I wanted to do. As if no time had passed at all. If I'd stayed, I would have started again. Maybe she would have been mature enough to not fight back, but I doubted it. She always had a quicker temper than I did, than most people did. Her temper was one of the things that made her so much fun to be around; it made her more unpredictable and exciting.

So, we probably would have fought. This time in front of an audience, Jer. He didn't need to see that anymore than I needed to go through it. Besides, he'd been building her up for so long, it would have been awful to just show him her worst side. Besides, I knew, deep down, that she wasn't the horrible bitch I'd made her out to be. I didn't know who she was at all anymore.

She was, though, even more beautiful than she had been in high school. She was rounder, fuller, still dark and glistening. When she smiled when we were kids, it dazzled me, now it would probably knock me unconscious. I could see how she caught his eye. Couple her looks with the deadly sharp wit she's always had, and Jer had no chance.

I rode the bus for long enough to lose track of time. I thought about what had happened at my apartment. I thought about what happened between me and Karen then and now. I thought about who I was now compared to then. It all just rolled around and around in my head always looping back on itself.

Eventually, I wanted off. I didn't want to go back home, but I knew I couldn't sit on the bus all night long, it's run had to come to an end some time. A bar seemed like the right place to go for the night. Who wouldn't want to get drunk after seeing someone like Karen again? Bars have to close sometime. They may stay open late, but late wasn't all night long. Denny's, though, stayed open all night long.

I transferred twice to get onto the line to Denny’s; I wouldn't have had to transfer at all if I went to a bar. Still, Denny's was a better place. I hadn't dropped off my backpack, so I still had all the books I'd taken to school. Unfortunately, they weren't the books for the next day's classes; still it was something else to focus on.

I bought a never ending coffee and slowly, through the night, bought food and worked my way through a few weeks worth of homework. I left around five so I could get to the first bus of the morning. Once again I transferred twice and, in time, ended up across the street in front of my apartment.

I stood there wondering if I really wanted to go in. Did I want to know what Jer and Karen had decided? Which outcome would make me happiest? I knew what would make my life easiest, at least after Jer settled down to his normal routine.

I stood there wondering and the door opened and Karen came down the stairs. I don't think she saw me, but if she had, she would have seen me clutching my stomach, as if I'd just been punched.