Authors: Monica Alexander
I stuck my tongue out at him, and tilted the cup back, spilling a little on my shi
rt as I did
, b
ut managed to get it all down.
Staring at him, I raised my eyebrows and cocked my head to the side, as if to say, ‘see, I’m not as out of place as you th
ink I am’ and
ignored the fact that I was already starting to feel a little buzzed
and definitely
felt
out of place
.
“See, I’m n
ot so rigid,” I said, proudly.
Chase just shook his head and smiled at me
before walking away
.
At the end of two hours, I was drunk, a little wobbly and de
finitely not in my right mind, but I’d achieved my goal
and had to say it felt good.
Chase had disappeared, leaving me talking to two guys with multiple piercings who were engaged in a heated convers
ation about their motorcycles.
Realizing that I hadn’
t added anything to the conversation in about fifteen minutes, I decided to step away.
They didn’t seem to notice.
I half-stumbled, half-
walked over to the bonfire
,
where a guy with
a backwards baseball hat over his
dar
k hair was playing the guitar.
A
few people ha
d gathered around to watch. He was in the m
iddle of
Paint it Black
,
my all-time favorite
Rolling
Stones
song
,
his fingers dancing along the strings at a rapid-fire pace, his head down, as he concentrated.
I watched him,
hypnotized by his movements,
caught up in
the
song as my head buzzed along, feeling light and fuzzy
as I mouthed the words he sung
.
I was enamored and
couldn’t
seem to
look away.
When
the song ended, he stuck his pick in his mouth and looked up, surveying the crowd around him.
His eyes stopped on me for a few moments, as he tried to place who I w
as and what I was doing there.
I must have looked
more awkward than I realized.
I smiled to show my appreciation for his talent,
and to show him I wasn’t strange,
but he looked away before he could see it.
I stared at him for a minute
.
He looked familiar to me, and I almost gasped out loud when I realized he was the guy I’d talked to
for five seconds at the coffee
house
at home
and obsessed about fo
r the greater part of a night.
I knew I’d recognize those eyes anywhere
, but it didn’t seem like he recognized me.
A
s he started playing
Hotel California
,
I knew I needed to step away. If I’d thought this guy had been sexy when h
e spoke, it was completely game-
over when he sung. I couldn’t hear his accent, but his voice rolled so smoothly over the words to the songs he played that it was hard not to get drawn in. If I wasn’t careful, in my inebriated state, I would do something I regretted. Distance definitely seemed best.
I
got up from the log I’d been sitting on and
stepped a
way, looking around for Chase.
He was talking with Molly off to th
e side of the fire.
I didn’t want to interrupt them, especially if he was making his move, s
o instead I walked
away from all the activity to a deserted part of the beac
h close to the water, falling fast on
my butt as I tried to sit, realizing t
hat I was really drunk
.
I wasn’t as out of it as I’d been the night I’d hit Ashleig
h, but I was close
.
I’m not sure how long I sat and stared at the ocean, sip
ping my beer.
After a while, I zoned out as I watched the waves roll in and out, in and out, the
mix of classic rock songs emanating
from the single guitar causing my head to move up and down slowly in time.
It honestly could have been ten minutes or an hour before anyone came over to me, but in a rush o
f movement and sound, Molly
plopped herself down next to me
and handed me a new beer. H
er
skinny, white
legs in her
tall boots extended
out
in front of her
, giving me a full view of the bright blue koi fish
tattoo on her left thigh
.
“Alright Emily?” she asked, cocking her head to the side and assessing me.
I nodded, and realized how sleepy I felt all of a sudden, my he
ad feeling heavier than usual.
I drew in a deep breath in an effort to wake up, and said, “Yeah, I’m good”.
“Good, I’m glad.
I know this isn’t really your scene.”
I looked at her skeptically, honestly a little irritated by her assumptions about
me so soon after
meeting me. The alcohol gav
e me co
urage, so
I said a little too curtly, “And why is that?”
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, catching my tone.
“I didn’t mean to offend you.
It’s
just that Chase told me a bit
about you.”
I raised my eyebrows and simultaneously felt myself get hot at the idea of Chase m
ocking me, which he probably had
.
“Oh yeah? What exactly did
Chase
tell you?”
I asked, a definite bite to my tone
.
She sucked in her breath and paused, pulling a cigarett
e out of the pack in her hand.
I waited for her to continue, watching her light it, inhale and exhale, blowi
ng smoke
toward the ocean.
She extend
ed the pack to me in offering.
I shook my head, but kept my eyes on her, waiting for her to continue what she was saying.
She
took another drag before saying anyth
ing.
I couldn’t tell if she was stalling or just someone who didn’t take things to
o
seriously and therefore didn’t think it was a big deal to make me wait on her.
“He just
said that you’re not like him.
You don’t really do anything bad, ever, and you tend to look down on people who do – pe
ople like him.
He said you’re
in a sorority
, you date a football player
,
and your friends are all just like you.”
Taking this all in, I realized that none of it sounded
that bad
to me
.
When I thought about it, I knew
that
was a pretty accurate description of me, b
ut when M
olly said it, it sounded awful.
I came across as an intolerant, shallow person who only surrounded herself with people like her.
Letting this all sink in, I leaned my head back all the way and l
ooked up at the stars above us.
There were thou
sands of them that I could see.
It looked as if the sky
had been salted like a pret
z
el. I never saw stars like that
at home.
I tilted my head back up and noticed Molly was staring at me, slowly smoking her cigarette. “What d
o you think of me,” I asked her, realizing that I suddenly needed to hear the opinion of
someone
who
didn’t know me
at all.
She thought for a moment.
“Well, I don’t really know you, so I guess I don’t have an opinion.”
I clo
sed my eyes for a few seconds.
“Okay, not good enoug
h,” I said, shaking my head.
“What is your initial impression of me
, just in meeting me tonight
?”
She took a drag off
her cigarette and thought for another moment.
“That
you seem like a really sweet girl who’s still trying to figure out who she wants to be in life
.
”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but for some reason, Molly telling me I was sweet didn’t bother me so much. She’d gotten the other part right.
“Yeah,” I said softly.
“That’s pretty much i
t.”
I could feel my face falling
as I
said it.
“Hey,” she said, moving her cigarette to her right hand and putting her
left arm
around my shoulders.
“Don’t feel bad about not knowing
who you are.
You’re only, what, eighteen
?”
I laughed
a loud, barking laugh. It was a typical assumption. “I’m twenty-one,” I said.
“Chase and I are twins.”
“Oh,
really,
” was all Molly said
, and I could tell she was surprised
. “Well, you still have time to get your shit together.
When I was your age,
I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I took some time off to figure it out.”
“What did
you do?”
“
I traveled for a while, worked some different jobs. I actually ended up in L.A. where I live now.
A mate of mine needed someone to mind the p
hones and make his appointments
. He owns a small record label
. I had experience in the industry,
so he hired me to be his assistant.”
“That’s cool,” I said, thinking how fun
her job probably was.
Rachel would kill to meet Molly with her connections.
She just laughed. “It’s okay. He’s just getting started though, so the
pay’s shit, and we only have two
band
s
, but I do get to see a lot of live music for free.”
I smiled.
“Can I have one?” I asked her, gesturing to the pack of cigarettes
that sat on the sand beside her
.
She looked down at them for a second, registering what I was asking.
“Sure,” she sa
id, pulling one from the pack.
I watched as she lit it against her own cigarette and handed it to me.
“How long have your worked in the music industry?” I asked, holding the
cigarette between my fingers,
watching it burn slowly, contemplating if I really wanted to smoke it.
Messages I’d heard in health class and
on
TV about how smoking was bad resonated in my head.
“About three years. My cousin asked me to manage his band a few years back, so I did. I’d just moved here after graduating from university and didn’t have anything else to do, so I figured, why not. I did that for about two years and when the band broke up
, I traveled for a while before I
decided to see
if I could br
eak into the industry for real.
That’s when Adam
hired me, and I’ve been working for him
ever
since.”
“What’s the name of your label?”
“Live Ammunition,” she said, and I just shook my head. I’d never heard of the
m
. “Are you going to smoke that or stare at it?”
I
slowly brought the cigarette
to my lips
and sucked lightly on the end.
I felt the smoke curl into my mouth,
so I
inhaled deeply and
immediately
pulled the cigarette away
as I
started violently coughing
smoke out of my mouth. Molly reached over and hit me on the back a few times.
“Have you never smoked a cigarette before?”
I shook my head, still trying to catch my breath. As my lungs cleared, I wasn’t sure I liked the aftertaste.
It sort of resembled an
ashtray.
I took
another drag, hoping t
he taste would improve
, and only coughed a little that time
.
She smiled.
“I figured.”
I got worried all of a sudden.
“Am I doing it wrong?” I asked, thinking I was doing my best to mimic everyone I’
d ever seen smoke a cigarette.