Telemachus Rising (14 page)

Back in the kitchen, my third beer felt extra cold.  It wasn't the beer, it was me!  It had cooled off outside and I hadn't noticed that, either.  It was louder indoors, and there seemed to be people buzzing around everywhere.  I decided to take a lap and see if anyone from work had shown up – or anyone else I knew, for that matter.

The house had filled up just like the yard.  There were so many people in the living room I couldn't see the far wall.  Even with the size of the crowd, I didn't see anyone I knew as I picked my way around the edge of the room.  I had just made it to the far side when I saw her for the first time across the sea of people.

It wasn't like the movies.  Time didn't stand still.  We didn't make dramatic eye contact, loaded with intent.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that it wasn't love at first sight.  I didn't even know her name.  I did know I wanted to meet her, though.  She was beautiful.  She had long, dark hair, brown eyes, and was sitting on a love seat in a room that hadn't contained a single stick of furniture the last time I'd seen it.  The guy holding down the other end of the little sofa got up as I worked my way closer.  I hoped no one would beat me to the empty seat.  I chalked it up as a minor victory when no one did.  She glanced up at me from her phone as I sat down.  

“Looks like someone was finally brave enough to sneak a couch upstairs,” I said, inspecting the arm of the love seat.  I turned my head in her direction to see if she'd respond.  Her phone was still up, but she held my gaze this time.  There was a tiny but unmistakeable smile on her face.  “You did this?” I asked.

She lost the fight with her smile and put down her phone with a little shrug.  “I didn't really want to sit on the floor.  When our tour got to the basement full of furniture, I screamed and said I saw a mouse run out from inside this couch.  I think they're bringing the rest back up as we speak.”

I had to admire her a little bit for that one.  Somehow I doubted whether she was actually afraid of mice – real or imaginary.  “Nicely done.”  She seemed genuinely proud of that.

“Thank you.”

“Aside from the invisible rodent problem, what do you think of the house?”

“It seems nice enough.  I don't know if I could live with a member of the opposite sex, though.”

“Yeah, me neither.  I'm not totally clear on how this little arrangement of theirs is supposed to work.  Then again, I guess I don't have to be.  So you live with some other girls?”

“Two.  We've got a big apartment across town.”

“Doesn't that make having your boyfriend over kind of...awkward?”  

She smiled again, but it might've just been at how obvious I was being.

“It did.  Sometimes.  Before we broke up.”

“Aw, I'm sorry.”

I was not at all sorry.  She laughed at me.

“What about you?  Where do you live?”

“I'm about to move into a studio apartment near campus.”

“That could be nice.”

“Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.  There was a gap between my leases, so I've been living at home with my family for the past couple weeks.”

“Yikes.  That can't be easy.”

“Going back home is never easy once you leave.”

“It's like you change and everything else stays the same.”

“Totally.  And to make it worse, everything I own is sitting out in my car.”

“You've got to be kidding me.”

“The time between leases was too short to make it worth unpacking, but long enough to be totally inconvenient.  My car's pretty much undriveable, but I had to get out of the house for a while.”

She took a sip of my beer.

“So how do you know our host?”

I took a swig of my own.

“I don't, actually.  His girlfriend invited me.”

She seemed extremely disappointed.  I thought she was faking for a second.  I looked around to see who was nearby and leaned in so I could speak quietly.

“Honestly, I feel bad saying this because it was really nice of her to invite me, but I'm not sure how much I actually like her...as a person.”

She sighed, like hearing this was a huge relief.

“Oh thank god,” she said.  “I can't stand her.”

“I don't think she expected me to show up.  I think she just wanted to invite me in front of other people at work so they would know they weren't invited.”

“Ugh.  That's just like her.  She has this crazy passive aggressive streak.  She's so fake!”

“How do you know her boyfriend?”

“Oh, we've got the same major, so we've had a ton of classes together.  Know the same people.  You know, that's why she hates me.  She thinks he likes me.”

“And why wouldn't he?”

She smiled and gave me an intentionally overacted look of suspicion.  Her frustration seemed to have burned itself off.

“Give me your phone.”

“Why?  What are you going to do?”

I took it out of my pocket.

“Just give it to me.”

I gave it up without a fight.

“Don't you go digging through my pictures,” I warned.

“Why?  What would I find?”  She replied with a mischievous grin.

I played it cool.

“Nothing I wouldn't show you if you asked nicely.”

She tapped away at my phone until I noticed the one in her lap ringing.

“Sneaky.”

She ended the call she'd made, “Thank you,” and reached across the loveseat to hold the phone out to me.

I'm not sure exactly what happened at that point.  Maybe it was the beer.  Maybe it was the stress of living at home again.  But in what was undoubtedly the boldest moment of my life, I caught her wrist as she reached out with the phone, draped it around my neck, leaned in, and kissed her.  For about half a second, I caught her completely off guard.  I could feel her surprise in the soft, warm lips pressed against mine.

Then she kissed me back.  Hard.  Until she was the one leaning forward and I was being pushed backward.  Like there was something desperate, urgent going on.

We broke apart and she froze for a moment, like she needed to process what had just happened, or like she was remastering her impulse control.  She took a deep breath and composed herself.  I wasn't sure what to expect when she looked up at me again.

“I need to go find my friend really quick.  Don't.  Move.”

She pressed my phone back into my chest, and with that, took off into the party before I could respond.  I hadn't even lost her in the crowd when I noticed the girl from work pushing her way toward me and the couch.  Her ears must've been burning.  She sat down next to me with a look like I was guilty of something.  She didn't speak, so I did.

“Heard you had a little mouse problem.”

“Oh my god, don't even get me started!”  She sounded pretty disgusted by the whole thing.  “You two looked awfully cozy.”

I was quietly happy she'd noticed.

“Yeah, I gue-”

“Come with me.”

She had me by the hand and I was being dragged toward the kitchen before I could get another word out of my mouth.

“You HAVE to try this.  We made it just for the party.”

I wasn't sure how anything “just for the party” had been left off the tour.  I played along anyway.

“What is it?”

“Here, try some.”

She ladled me a plastic cup full of something that looked like fruit punch with chunks of melon floating in it.  It tasted more like paint thinner.  With chunks of melon floating in it.

“Jesus, what's in this?!”

“A little bit of everything.  Isn't it amazing?  It's jungle juice!”

“Wow.  That's...wow.”

“Oh my god, how are you!”

It took me a beat to realize she was talking to someone right behind me.  I wasn't introduced.  I didn't know what to do with my big red cup of toxic waste, and there wasn't anywhere to set it down, so I carried it with me as a conversation piece.  By the time I made it back to the love seat my spot was taken.  My beer and the brunette from before were nowhere to be seen.  Someone across the room turned the music up.  With nowhere to sit and no one to talk to, my fruity cup of death and I wandered back outside.  We'd developed a grudging respect for one another over the past several minutes.  I topped off on my way outdoors.

The yard was full of strangers.  I went from group to group, trying to be social, but mostly just hanging back and listening.  Everyone else seemed to know one another.  My fruity friend and I stuck together.  I could hardly taste the alcohol anymore!  I considered that this could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.  A couple times I found people talking about things I liked to talk about, too.  Those conversations seemed to end pretty quickly after I'd joined them.  I went back inside for more jungle juice.

Was I on cup number three or four?  Wait, it had to be at least four.  Was it four cups or five?  I wasn't sure, and I wasn't sure how I had lost track.  I took a look around and realized the yard was nearly empty.  I wasn't sure when that had happened, either.  Back inside, the party was still humming along, but I was mostly positive there were less people probably.  The couch was empty again.  Still no pretty brunette.

I do not remember falling asleep.  I do not know how long I stayed asleep.  The only way I knew I had fallen asleep at all was that out of nowhere I was waking up and something was very wrong.  I wasn't sure right away where I was, but that wasn't the problem.  I realized they had brought the furniture back into the living room and that was part of why I was disoriented, but that wasn't...  There was something else...  Something was wro...

“Oh fuck.  Shit.  Fuck.”

Slumped there on the couch, where hours earlier I had very successfully flirted with a beautiful young woman, I threw up all over myself.  I felt very sober all of a sudden.  Very sober and incredibly ashamed.  I've never been so ashamed in my entire life.  The girl who had invited me was steering me into the bathroom, quickly.  I made it just in time to empty more of my stomach into the toilet.  She had the decency to shut the door and give me as much privacy as my highly audible vomiting would allow.  I was officially “that guy”.  As I heaved and felt like the blood vessels in my face were going to explode, I tried to work out how much I'd had to drink.  That son of a bitch jungle juice.  I had no idea how much liquor was in a cup of that stuff, and I'd managed to lose count of how many cups I'd had.  I prayed the pretty girl had left the party earlier.  Little flecks of sick dripped from the front of my shirt onto the bathroom floor.

After a horrifying three minutes that felt like three hours, I managed to pull myself together and clean up my mess in the bathroom.  The hostess handed a clean t-shirt through the door, and I apologized until my self-esteem was about as low as it could get.  The words came out in a rush.

“I'm so sorry.  I've never gotten sick like this.  This has never happened before.  God, I'm so embarrassed.  I'll clean it up.  Please, just let me clean it up.”

“It's okay.  We already cleaned it up.  Come on, someone's gonna drive you home.”

I hung my head in shame and didn't make eye contact with anyone on the way out the door.  I carried my soiled shirt wadded up in a damp ball from rinsing it in the sink.  It was only a mile to my parents' house.  The boyfriend was the one driving me.  He did his best to convince me it was no big deal.  He was nice.  It only made me feel worse for throwing up on his couch.  I thanked him over and over again before I closed the car door as quietly as I could and crept up to the front door of the house.

My parents' house was still as a grave.  It was late.  Very late.  They slept downstairs, so I breathed a little easier when I made it to the second floor without a confrontation.  I dragged myself into the bathroom and flipped on the light.  Even in my borrowed shirt I was a mess.  I emptied the pockets of my jeans and found a little bit of vomit.  I thought I had done a decent job of cleaning myself up at the party, but the closer I looked the worse it was.  I turned on the shower and got in with all my clothes on, even my shoes.

The hot water felt amazing.  I scrubbed my clothes with a bar of soap to remove any lingering evidence of my over drinking.  When they looked presentable I peeled them off, sopping, and hung them on the shower curtain rod.  My shoes, I left in the tub.  They wouldn't be dry any time soon.  When I finally felt clean, I shut off the water and dried myself.  I was tired, but my head was starting to clear.  How could I have been so foolish?  I pulled on pajama pants and a fresh t-shirt.  I was climbing into bed and reflecting on my stupidity when it hit me.

Fuck.  My car.

I'd cleaned up my mess pretty well, but how would I explain the missing car?  I mean, my parents had to know I'd been drinking, but it wasn't something we talked about.  They definitely wouldn't approve of the kind of drinking I had been doing that night.  God, this was exactly the kind of bullshit I had been trying to avoid.  Fuck it.  They would just have to deal with it.  That's when the other boot dropped.

Fuck.  Everything I own.

I could take responsibility for being irresponsible.  It wasn't going to be fun, but it was my own fault and I was willing to accept the fallout.  But I couldn't cope with all my stuff getting stolen or my car getting towed.  I hadn't been exaggerating when I told that girl everything I owned was in my car.  Remember, we're talking about my TV, my movies, everything.  Big ticket items.  Stuff I did not want to replace.  Stuff I could not afford to replace.  I was already in bed, but I groaned out one more miserable “Fuuuuuuuuuck.”  There was no getting around it.  I had to go back.  As tired as I was, I had to go back.

The plan formed the second I made my decision.  I grabbed my car keys from the bathroom counter.  They seemed vomit-free.  I wouldn't change clothes.  I wouldn't even have to see anyone from the party.  I was parked down a cross street.  They'd never even know.  It was only a mile away.  I could walk a mile in no time at all.  One mile was hardly even a warm up when I was out running.  I searched for my shoes until I remembered they were completely water-logged and still sitting in the tub.  I was already annoyed.  This whole night was fucked.  Well fuck that too.  “I'm going barefoot.”

I won't describe the walk back to the party.  It was uneventful, even if it did seem much further and less reasonable barefoot than it had when I was standing in the bathroom glaring at my wet shoes.  It took longer than expected, but I made it back to the little two bedroom house where I'd thrown up about 45 minutes earlier.  I was just rounding the corner toward my car when two people from the party who were outside smoking spotted me.