Life As We Know It

Scarlett and Frank arrive home an hour after Gerard and I, walking in the door with guitar cases and big smiles. I don’t even question where they went or why they couldn’t have come home first. Not only would it have not mattered, but I also probably would have gotten a snarky remark from Scarlett about it being obvious. I honestly have no idea where Scarlett is getting all her money from. She doesn’t work and her parents are by no means wealthy. Yet, every time she goes out she comes home with arms full of shopping bags. Now she’s got a brand new guitar. I wonder if she's putting it on credit.

Instead of staying in the kitchen and making small talk with the rest of us, Scarlett and Frank disappear into her bedroom, the soft sounds of guitars flowing down the hallway a few minutes later. In certain ways I’m jealous of Frank. He gets the see Scarlett in her most raw form. Our friend doesn’t usually share the interworking’s of her mind. She hides her talents from the world for some reason or another. Yet, with Frank, she lets her art flow, putting it out there for the man to see. No one else gets her quite like Frank does. I envy that. I wish she would open up to me, bear her soul and let me in just a little. It isn’t that Scarlett and I aren’t close, I sleep in her bed for Christ sake, but even though she’s physically open with me I want more. Scarlett is an artist in every sense of the word. I just want her to show me that side.

I stay silent in the kitchen, eyes set on Gerard who sits on the couch next to Jenna. We’d spoken a handful of words to each other after the party. The taxi ride was silent, each of us pretending to be busy with something on our phones. I’m angry with him. He was distracted by Lyn-Z and left our friend vulnerable and alone. I had almost hit him that night, but refrained for fear of escalating a situation that was already terrible. Gerard’s got his head in other places and it showed that night. Usually no one is affected by his lapses in judgment, but this time someone was and that someone was one of our best friends.

Footsteps from down the hall get my attention and I turn just in time to see Scarlett enter the kitchen area, pulling Frank after her. “What movie are we going to watch?”

“Not Dawn of the Dead,” Frank answers back, giving the girl a smile accompanied by a wink.

Scarlett always picks Dawn of the Dead. It’s one of her favorites and because of this we’ve all seen it too many times. Sure, it’s a good movie, but mixing it up every once in a while doesn’t hurt. There are only so many times I can watch three people run around a mall trying to stay alive.

“What about Night of the Living Dead?” Scarlett questions, eyes switching between Frank and I.

“Nothing with zombies,” I answer back walking over to the shelf that houses all of our DVDs. We’ve got quite a collection now and some of them still have the plastic wrapping around them; movies that were bought on a whim and then left, dejected on the self as we all realized we didn’t actually want to watch them.

“What about Big Daddy?” I offer, pulling the movie off the shelf and holding the case up for everyone in the living room to see.

Gerard shrugs, his eyes never leaving his hands. Scarlett takes the case from me, and pulls the shiny disc out, popping it into our player. Frank and I take up spots on the couch, the brunette’s arm snaking around Gerard’s shoulders. Once the movie has started playing, Scarlett leans against Frank’s legs, their hands finding each other.

About halfway through the movie I feel Scarlett shift so that her cheek is resting on my knee, fingers on her free hand beginning to trace out patterns on my hairy leg. I take my eyes off the screen and focus on my friend. She looks content though I can tell she’s far away, lost in the world she created for herself. It’s times like these that I wish I had been gifted with the talent of drawing. I wish I could capture this moment on paper, keeping it for all eternity. Gerard once told me that wasn’t the point of art. That art was supposed to cut you open and drain you and show emotions. That pictures where for capturing moments, but not art. I don’t care. I’d give up everything to be able to draw this moment. For a few seconds I don’t worry that Scarlett is going to crumble or self implode. She looks too calm to do any of that. Yet, as she gets up to walk towards her bedroom, I know that she’s always teetering on the edge. Scarlett is one of those people that could either be totally fine or delve into madness at any given second. It makes her who she is.

I couldn’t live that way. I need to know who I am and how others see me. I walk into a room and automatically need the approval of others. I need to know which people I fit in with and which ones will only lead me off my set path. I have to know my place in life and I rarely deviate from it. I don’t have enough balance to teeter on the edge and eventually I fell forward, landing on the side of leading a semi-normal life. Am I always happy, no, but I’ve learned to live with that. I can’t live impulsively like my other friends. Honestly, I think that’s what drew me to them. I like to watch them go off on their adventures, experiencing them through their energetic recollections. I have become okay with that.

“Josh!” my name is called from the back bedroom.

Getting up off the couch, I walk down the hallway, dipping into the room that Scarlett and I have been sharing. The green-eyed girl is sitting on her bed, a white box held between her fingers. Although she doesn’t outwardly look it, there is a melancholy feeling surround Scarlett. Walking over to the bed, I sit down next to her, wrapping my arms around my friend. Scarlett lets her head rest at the base of my neck, the box I’d seen seconds ago still clasp tightly in her hand.

“What’s that?”

“Plan B,” Scarlett answers back, holding the box out a little for me to see. “I have to assume that I was too drunk to use protection and my birth control still hasn’t come in the mail.”

I swallow hard. Scarlett has taken the morning after pill before, after other drunken hookups. She’d casually mention it or ask one of our other friends to go in with her while she was purchasing it. Never, have any of us been called in to sit with her while she’s taking it. Something is different this time. Scarlett is upset. She chews her lip as she opens the box, fighting against plastic to get to the small pill. I sit silently, not knowing what to do. I’m used to seeing my happy go lucky best friend, not this broken girl sitting in front of me. Sure, Scarlett’s been sad before, but those times where different. One of us, usually Frank or Bob, would tell some shitting joke or insist that the guy who had broken up with her wasn’t good enough for her anyway.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital. I can take you. I don’t mind,” I offer, wrapping my fingers around Scarlett’s thin wrists.

She blinks up at me, sheen of water covering her eyes. She’s fighting with herself. Trying to keep up the scenario she’d created in her head about what happened last night. I feel anger well up inside of me again, wanting to lash out and yell at Gerard for what he let happen.

“No. Frank’s show is tonight, we can’t miss that. He’d be crushed.”

“He’d understand.”

“Nothing happened,” Scarlett answers back defiantly, placing the pill on her tongue and swallowing hard. “So drop it and stop giving Gerard dirty looks. This wasn’t his fault.”

“Scarlett, if he hadn’t left you, none of this would be happening.”

“Nothing is happening because I said yes!” Scarlett answers back, her voice rising as she gets up off the bed. “Stop trying to make this something that it isn’t!”

Gerard and Frank appear in the doorway, concern blanketing both of their faces, “What’s happening?”

Scarlett turns to face Gerard, “Josh is trying to make what happened last night a big deal again.”

Gerard’s eyes slide over to me, eyebrows pulled together in frustration, “I thought we were going to drop it unless Scarlett wanted to talk about it.”

I get up, walking towards Gerard, “She called me back here to sit with her while she took her pill. Thus, she obviously wanted to talk about it.”

“Did she? Or did you bring it up?” Gerard questions, taking a step towards me, our shoulder almost touching now.

Gerard is a few inches taller than me and I draw myself up, trying to make it so he isn’t looking down on me. He isn’t going to get away with accusing me of bringing things up. “I wouldn’t have to bringing it up if you had just done your job!”

“She was going to find you! She wanted to be with you!” Gerard growls back.

“You should have walked her over to me!” I holler back, shoving the dark haired boy backwards a little. He stumbles into Frank, who wraps his hands around the taller boy’s shoulder, steadying him.

“She just walked away,” Gerard huffs back, his fist meeting the side of my face.

For a second I’m shocked. Gerard isn’t a violent person. He backs away from fights, even avoiding verbal confrontation. His hit just causes the anger inside of me to boil over and I feel my fists making contact with the brunette’s face.

“Stop!” Scarlett screams, her hands grabbing desperately at my arms. “Josh, you’re hurting him!”

My arm swings back and I feel my elbow make contact with something hard. The small yelp pulls me out of my rage. I spin around quickly, only to see Scarlett holding her hand over her right eye. Tears cling to her face. As I try to move closer to her, the green-eyed girl backs away, a mask of fear over her half covered face. “Scarlett…”

“Don’t,” she answers back through gritted teeth, “you’ve done enough.”

With that she brushes past me, right into the arms of Frank. He glances over our friend’s shoulder, his eyes skimming over me before landing on Gerard. The dark haired man has gotten to his feet, fingers pressed to his bloodied lip. He’s got a bruise forming on the side of his head, just above his eye. He backs up towards Scarlett and Frank, never taking his hazel eyes off of me.

I’ve always had a temper. I’d gotten it from my father who got it from his dad. Usually, I kept it reigned in, avoiding activities that would trigger the angry thoughts. For a while, when I was much younger, my mother had put me in kickboxing classes. That stopped shortly after I’d started using the moves I had learned in class on my brother and other kids on the playground. She’d tried meditation after that, but I was much to active to sit in a room still and silent for an hour. Never, have I been violet towards my friends. Sure, they know about my temper. They had all watched me beat the shit out of other kids at recess for taking the swing I wanted. I think that’s why Gerard decided to be my friend. He got picked on quite a bit and having someone around that most kids were scared of helped tremendously.

I feel like I have let all of them down. I’d purposely hit Gerard, though he had thrown the first punch. I’m most upset about Scarlett. Her father had been abusive to her and her mother. She’d worked so hard to move past that, to trust the new man her mother had brought into their life after she’d divorced Scarlett’s biological father. I can see in her face that all the trust she’d put in me is gone. Up until this point she had never seen the rage. Now she was a victim to it.

“Scarlett, please, I’m sorry,” I beg, trying to move closer to her, to just touch her shoulder to let her know I wasn’t going to hurt her again.

She flinches away from my voice, cowering further into Frank.

“Dude, don’t make it worse than it already is,” the guitarist cautions, pulling Scarlett so that she’s behind him. “I’m going to take her with me to band practice. You two need to work out whatever issues you have before the show tonight.”

“I’m going for a cigarette,” Gerard mumbles, disappearing down the hall with Scarlett and Frank.

I stand in Scarlett’s room for what feels like ever. I don’t know how to fix this. Gerard obviously doesn’t want to hear my apology and even if he did I’m not sure what I’d say. Anything that comes into my mind just feels like an excuse, a copout. Sorry isn’t a strong enough word, not for this. Are there any words for this? Could I come up with some kind of sob story, beg on my knees for them to forgive me for my indiscretions? That just seems silly and childish.

“Josh?” a soft female voice sounds from the doorway. Glancing up I see Jenna. Her hand rests on the wooden doorframe, blonde hair falling around her tan face in soft waves. Her eyes are kind and I can’t help but wonder if she’s oblivious to what had just occurred. If she wasn’t, she’s being rather calm about it. “Do you want to come do yoga?”

I shut my eyes, taking in a deep breath. I’m still angry and don’t want to lash out at her. Sure, yoga works to help Jenna de-stress and stay balanced, but I’m just not in the mood. It just feels like a waste of time when I’ve got to deal with figuring out how to apologize to my friends. “Not right now, Jenna.”

“Josh,” a hand is pressed to my cheek and I open my eyes, “I think it’ll help you calm down. Please? At least just come sit out with me.”

“Fine,” I huff, following my friend up the hall and into the living room where she has laid out two plastic mats. The couch and coffee table have been shoved out of the way, soft music playing from the television.

“Why did you hit Gerard?” Jenna questions, sitting down on her mat and closing her eyes.

Not knowing what else to do, and suddenly feeling like my body is taking up too much space in the room, I follow suit, resting my hands on my knees. Jenna has always made me feel like I’m standing naked in a shopping mall. She gets right to the point and strips away the bullshit excuses. Maybe it’s because she’s older or that she’s seen so much in her short twenty-one years of life. She isn’t afraid to call you out and make you really think about stuff.

“I was angry. He let Scarlett get hurt,” I answer back as we switch positions, lying on our stomachs now, noses almost touching.

Jenna frowns at me, lifting up on her arms, “Is Scarlett really hurt, Josh?”

“She was passed out Jenna, that guy took advantage of her.”

Big blue eyes blink back at me, “Yes, but does Scarlett see it that way, or are you and Gerard trying to force your interpretation of that night’s events on her?”

For a minute I’m silent. I hadn’t actually thought about it like that. Sure, Scarlett doesn’t think anything is wrong with what happened because she can’t remember. Gerard and I had just been trying to inform her of the events. We never took a step back and asked if she wanted to know; if she even cared. I let out a long sigh, “We never really took her opinion into consideration.”

Jenna nods, shifting her body so that her hands and feet are planted on her mat, butt in the air. I do my best to copy it though I feel silly and slightly exposed. In high school, Jenna used to get all of us up super early to do sun salutations with her. I’d hated it. I wanted that extra hour to sleep. Yet, every time I went out to join them everyone would start getting into it or laughing and I’d forget why I was so grumpy. The coffee and donuts, usually provided by Ray, also helped quite a bit. We were all so close back then. It isn’t that we aren’t still that close, it’s just hard staying in touch when we aren’t all living in the same neighborhood.

“Maybe ask her how she feels about the situation and actually listen to her response,” Jenna suggests a bright smile on her face. Although the blonde can be condescending at times, I’m convinced she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.

“Are you going to Frank’s show tonight?” I question, wanting to change the subject. I’ve decided what I’m going to do about the situation at hand and don’t want to continue talking about it.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Jenna answers back as we switch positions yet again. “I’m not going to the after party though. We’re still having issues with the Greece trip and I need to get it sorted out.”

“Yeah,” I answer as the door is shoved open, Gerard stalking through the kitchen and into our bedroom. “How do I deal with that?”

Jenna shrugs, coming back into a seated position, “Let him draw about it, he’ll come around eventually. Josh, let Frank be Scarlett’s party buddy. He’ll keep her safe.”

I nod before disappearing into Scarlett’s room. She’d put my pillow and blanket back on my bed in preparation for Frank staying with her. I do still have a few articles of clothing lying around though, mainly discarded shirts that Scarlett told me not to wear out and jeans that I take off before crawling into bed every night. Something in here has got to be good enough to wear to the show tonight. Eventually, I settle on a pair of jeans with a small rip in the knee and a black and green polka dot shirt. If Scarlett is still talking to me I’m sure she’ll make a comment about how tacky I look.

As I’m fastening the last button on my shirt my cellphone goes off, playing the love ballad from Titanic. Fucking Frank, “What?”

“Scar needs you to bring her some clothes. She didn’t get to change before we left,” Frank answers, talking quickly. It’s obvious that he’s still a little upset at me for the black eye I’m sure I gave Scarlett. She’s like a fucking doll in his mind; fragile and about to break any second. “She says there’s a pair of black shorts with the pockets sticking out of them in the top dresser drawer – ” There is rustling on the other end and I can hear Frank talking quietly to Scarlett, trying to figure out what she wants. “– She also wants a red tank top and that black leather jacket she wears all the time, the one with the patches.”

“Does she need shoes?” I question, pulling the various items out of the dresser and closet, shoving them in my backpack.

“No, but bring her guitar, she’s playing tonight,” Frank answers back.

I can hear Scarlett whine out an exaggerated no and Frank shushing her. He likes it when she plays on stage with him. Honestly, I don’t understand why she isn’t in the band. All the guys like her and she can play better than the second guitarist they’ve got now. She’s not scared to play on stage either. They’ve just never asked, either that or they have and she’s told then no. Scarlett can be like that sometimes. She only wants to do things when it’s on her time. It can definitely be frustrating sometimes.

“Hey Josh,” Frank says as I go to say bye. “She’s not angry with you. She says to bring Tyler, whoever that is.”

Notes

Would you guys be interested in the link to the Spotify playlist I have for this story? Let me know :)