AKASH'S P. O. V.
It was almost midnight, an hour or so now after my chat with Brandon in the storage room of his house; everything I had told him had been true, but I had conveniently worded certain parts of it in a way that I knew would help me in getting Brandon and Cam to forge a connection. By this time, Brandon was now drunk along with the rest of them, having consumed extensive alcohol after apparently getting all the answers he wanted from me. Daniel had already left, and Kate's mom was on her way to pick her up, and she was also going to drop Ben off at his house. A slow smile creeped across my face as I realized that it was just going to be Brandon, Cam and myself in the house tonight; he had offered that I stay the night since I had the opening shift tomorrow morning. Given that I would have to reach the Y by 6:30, and we were likely to be awake at least until one, I had agreed, and I was glad about it now. This was a perfect opportunity for me to see just what kind of potential relationship these two had.
Brandon and I were playing a game against each other on his Xbox when Ben and Kate left, and Cam sat and watched while occasionally sipping her rum and coke. Once our game finished, Brandon wanted to start another game, but I knew that Cam would get bored if we did; all evening I had seen her glancing at him periodically, and it was time for the situation to move beyond simply staring, in my opinion. "Hey Brandon," I said, putting my controller down, "why don't you get one of your guitars? We can have a little karaoke session." He looked at me with slightly unfocused eyes, while Cam simply threw me a startled look. She wasn't aware that I knew about her weekly guitar lessons with Brandon, which I assumed was the reason behind her shock at my suggestion.
"Yeah okay, why not?" Brandon said. He tried to get up off the couch, but almost immediately lost his balance and flopped back down.
"Brandon, maybe playing guitar isn't such a good idea. You can barely walk," Cam said hastily, but I knew she was just worried one of us might ask her to play, and for some reason she was either embarrassed or scared of the prospect, or both.
"That doesn't mean anything," Brandon replied, trying and failing again to get up and try walking. "I could play guitar in my sleep."
"That's true," I added. "Just like I could be completely drunk and still kick Brandon's ass at our video games, or at soccer on the field." I grinned as he scowled for a moment.
Cam chuckled nervously but then looked concerned again. "Why don't we just sit and talk?" she suggested, sounding hopeful.
"Good idea, we can do that," I began, and I felt just the slightest pang of remorse at what I was going to follow that up with when I saw her relieved look, "after we have some fun on the guitar. I'll go upstairs and get it, since I'm the only one who's gonna be able to get to his room and back down here in one piece." I laughed and got up from the armchair I was sitting in. Brandon was sprawled on the couch to my left, while Cam was sitting across the coffee table from him, on the other couch. "Brandon, get up, even the master guitarist can't play while lying down," I chortled, knowing full well that Cam was likely to join him on his couch once there was room available.
He huffed, as if sitting up was a huge effort. "Yeah, you're right," he grinned. "Get the Taylor guitar, okay? It's already tuned." I headed upstairs into the room across from his bedroom, where he kept his computer, school stuff, keyboard and guitars. Quickly spotting the Taylor guitar, I picked it up, as well as a pick lying around on the floor near the instrument, and returned to the basement.
Sure enough, Brandon had sat up and Cam had seated herself beside him, on the same couch. I handed him the guitar and sat back down in the armchair I had vacated a few minutes ago. "What song should we do first?" he asked. Cam said nothing, but her face went a little pink, and I remembered her once mentioning a song at work.
