Picturesque

Chapter 18: London Fog

She placed the shoes near my feet. "Get changed. We're already late."

I held the clothes in my arms and looked around. "Here?"

She looked at me stupidly. "Yeah."

I blushed, and I wondered if the color of it matched the shirt, too. I thought maybe it did because she smiled a bit. "You want me to turn around?" I nodded, so she did, giving a dramatic sigh as she turned herself around on her heels.

Quickly, I started to change. I pulled my clothes off and yanked the pants and shirt onto my body, and right when the shirt went down to my hips, she turned around. My skin started to burn through the fabric when she laughed outright. "What?!"

Glancing down, I realized that the pants were way too long on me, flooding my feet until they weren't even visible. "Oh, no."

"Here." Jo came to me and kneeled, moving her hands to the ends of the pants. One by one, she rolled the ends up and tucked the folds tight within each other so that they stayed folded at my ankles and stood up. I looked at her with a face of disgust. "What?"

"I look like a roughneck!" I remembered how Mama hated women in pants to begin with, but she also hated when pants were rolled up at the ankles.

"God, you southerners and your prejudice. It looks fine. Mine are rolled, too." She pointed down to the ends of her jeans, where only half an inch of the fabric was rolled. She was tall and didn't require rolled up pants, but mine were folded four times over. "Now, let's just tuck this in."

Her hands grabbed the hem of my shirt and started to stuff it into my pants. My back straightened, body going stiff as I watched her fingers dip past the hem of the red pants to tuck the pink blouse in. I didn't feel her gaze on me until she said. "What? You never had another girl stick her hands in your pants?"

My eyes flashed up at her and caught the devilish look in her eyes. Her red lips turned into a grin, and I began to fear she could feel the heat of embarrassment and shame radiating off me. She roughly tucked my shirt in the back until it was all done, stepping away from me to glance me up and down. "Shoes," she said with a point. I slipped them on, finding them a little big on me, but Jo gave an approving hum.

Next thing I knew, we were in her car on Sunset Boulevard, pulling in front of a little nightclub with a large blinking sign that read London Fog. A group of people were standing out front, and I recognized them as her friends.

"It's the Becca!" Johnny greeted me as soon as I stepped out of the Fury, jogging over to the car to tackle me in a very unexpected hug.

"Hey..." I weakly said as I choked on his cologne, feeling dread fill me as I remember his crude advances at the burger joint.

"Don't suffocate her, Johnny, dear God," Jo murmured as she jumped out of the car and ran a hand through her hair, wafting over to the group.

Johnny finally released me but kept an arm around me as he guided me over to the group.

"Thought we'd scared you off, girl," Delores said with a smile as Bobby and Tony regarded me with a nod.

"Must be a tough one," Johnny remarked, and I felt relief when he finally removed his arm from me.

Looking back, this night is hazy to me. I don't remember when I first started drinking, but I know that I tried to decline Johnny shoving beers and drinks into my hands. I think it might have been Jo who finally persuaded me, because the next thing I remember is sitting at the bar in this nightclub where a band was playing live. People were crowded around the stage, dancing and drinking, and it was the most people I had seen all at once in the same room. The room was dim and spinning, and I remembered being sat directly between Jo and Johnny.

It was easy to miss. I think she was being discreet because I was around, but while Johnny was telling me some story about how he played football in high school, I glanced over to Jo. She was turned slightly away from me, but I could see the white powder lined on the thumb of her fist. I could see her lean down and tremble a little before she leaned back up. The powder on her fist was gone, and she was rubbing her nose and sniffling. The skin around her nose and eyes turned red, and she took a large drink from the glass whiskey in her hands.

Johnny nudged me to get me to pay attention to him again. I had lost count of how many drinks I had, but I was looking at two Johnnys as he spoke.
"Did ya hear me, Becca? I asked if you wanted to go to a room back there." He pointed somewhere behind me where I had seen a hallway earlier. "I've seen the way you look at me, you know."

I noticed Delores leering at us from behind Johnny, her eyes flickering between me and Jo, who was sitting behind me. There was a concerned look in her eyes.

I know I have a habit of reflecting, but it felt a whole lot like the night at the party in college. I remembered the guy who took me to a room, and Georgia hauling me back to the dorm. I remembered what happened in the dorm. I was still so young then, even years after that had happened. I was drunk off my ass, too. In my intoxicated mind, I imagined this as one of my movies I wrote. Johnny would play the guy at the party who had taken me to a room. Jo would play Georgia.

"Sure," I slurred, and upon getting up from the stool, I basically fell into Johnny's arms. He stood up and held me, laughing awkwardly. I think he was surprised I was so easy. We were two steps away when Jo grabbed my arm.

"Nuh uh," she said to me, but she was staring at Johnny. The sight of her swarming pupils sobered me a little.

"Aye, Jo," Johnny began, but I couldn't hear the rest. I had stumbled across Johnny's shoe somehow, and my head hit the concrete.

I remembered Bobby carrying me in his big strong arms to the car, and for some reason he was shirtless again. I felt safe. I remembered the wind blowing on my face as I laid in the passenger seat of Jo's car, feeling wetness on my upper forehead. I remembered watching the city streetlights blur past me, some orange, some white, as she sped us home. She was cursing, I remember that.

I came to again when my back hit my bed. My eyes opened, and Jo was leaning over me with a damp rag in her hand. We were back in my room now, under the soft yellow light of the lamp on my nightstand. I felt the soft, cold touch of the rag on my forehead, the occasional pad of her fingers accidentally brushing my eyebrow. Her breath fanned against the bridge of my nose.

"Don't kiss me," I said, and I didn't even feel the usual regret and shame after nearly everything I say.

Jo's face came more clearly into focus then. Her pupils were still wide, and her brow sewed together. But it wasn't disgust.

"What?" she asked quietly.

"Don't kiss me," I said again, my head lolling to the side. A tiredness was washing over me, but Jo's hand gently took my chin and turned my head so I looked at her again.

"Becks, what do you mean?"

"She kissed me last time, and it was bad." I'm pretty sure that was what I said.

Her brows sewed closer together. "I'm not going to kiss you, Becks. Not like this."

Not like this.

It started swelling up inside me again. That hot, bulging pressure of grief. Tears pricked my eyes, and my lips started to swell.

"It was bad," I said again. "It hurt."

The look of shock on Jo's face was something I would never forget.

"Becca," she whispered. "I would never hurt you. Don't cry." Her thumb reached to the tears on my cheek and wiped them away. "Please don't cry." She looked like she was going to fall apart if she saw another tear drop from my eyes.

"Don't kiss me."

"I'm not."

"Don't leave."

It was there that she hesitated, but when she saw how easily the tears were spilling from my eyes, how it seemed that they would just never stop, she nodded. "Okay."