North & West

Twenty-One

It opened up to a room full of tables, many more people sat around the room than had been in the ballroom. There was a long wall, completely made of clear glass windows that overlooked a pool and what looked like a golf course.

I suddenly remember the golf club in my hand, glancing over to make a joke about it to West when I saw his face had turned stony and devoid of any humor. I followed his gaze and saw a man who looked to be in his mid forties, the same dark hair as West's, but with a few graying strands. It was weird looking at the man, the resemblance between the two was so striking that I almost felt like I was looking at an aged West.

“Is that him?”

West nodded, already heading for the man, but stopped when he saw him lift his bag of golf clubs and toss it over his shoulder. It was clear he was about to leave, but West was simply watching him walk away, probably much like how he'd left before – except this time, West was watching it and there was no seeing it as anything other than what it was.

The sad truth was that people left, sometimes more gracefully than others, sometimes leaving behind more pain than could just be packed away in a suitcase much like the person who left took with them.

West and I simply stood there, watching the man walk across the grass golf course. When he was out of sight, having rounded the corner, I laid a hand on West's shoulder and forced myself not to immediately throw my arms around him. He was tense, tenser than I'd ever witnessed a person be. It hadn't occurred to me how hard this was on him, watching half of the partnership that had created him walk away, until he'd frozen up.

He took a deep breath, suddenly bringing his golf club up and smashing it down in the middle of an unoccupied table. He turned to me, a grim smile on his face, before he swung it again, this time sending the floral glass vase flying. It landed a few feet away, shattering into big pieces of glass that contrasted against the white carpet.

All faces turned to look at us, their eyes boring into us. West offered a meek, “Sorry,” before I swung my golf club and knocked another vase full of flowers off the table, watching as it shattered and completely contradicted West's apology.

And then it was like we couldn't stop ourselves, swinging our clubs back and knocking all the vases off, even the ones off the tables that people were sitting around. They scrambled away, their expensive jewelry flying about when the clasps broke in their haste. One particular couple was too stubborn to move, but West and I were so caught up in the moment that we brought our clubs down anyway, at the same time in the center of their table, the vase just about exploding with the force of our combined effort.

Just as the podium man came rushing in, obviously having heard the noise, West and I sprinted back into the ballroom and began knocking food trays off the tables and onto the floors. Before I knew what was happening, we were both laughing as we overturned the tables, our laughter mixing and making a sound I knew I would want to hear on my deathbed.

Our golf clubs were forgotten somewhere in the mess of food on the floor, so we moved onto the expensive looking frames decorating the walls. It was giving me such a rush that I wondered if I'd ever stop, stop destroying things the way I'd let my addictions destroy me and the way that West's father had destroyed his family.

We tore at the paintings, the canvas ripping beneath our fingers with ease. We were out of breath then, and when I stopped to survey the room, now in total disarray and looking nothing like when we'd first arrived, I grabbed West's hand and tugged him toward the exit. We'd stayed long enough.

The man from the podium was chasing after us, slipping a bit on the destruction in the ballroom, continuously yelling out, “The cops are coming!”

We broke free from the country club and immediately piled into West's car, him shifting into drive and taking off out of the parking lot at a speed way over the speed limit. He didn't let up, clearly as affected by the rush of adrenaline as I was, and I suddenly became aware of the laughter still leaving our mouths.

For once, I didn't feel a single need to smoke. The window was still cracked, the cool air rushing in and attacking my face, but all I could think about was how great it had felt to do that, to get back at West's dad without harming anyone.

When we pulled into West's driveway, we climbed from the car and headed in. We sank down onto the couch beside each other, finally catching our breath as what we had done finally started to sink in. West turned to look at me, his face completely open without a trace of the anger he'd had earlier.

He grabbed one of my hands, setting it on his knee and tracing a line across my palm where I'd somehow gotten a cut. He gave me a small smile, raising my palm to his lips and brushing his lips across the wound, before stepping away to grab a band aid from the sink.

He pressed the band aid onto my palm, carefully and gently, without saying a word. It must have been from the wooden frame of the paintings that I'd recklessly tore at, watching as the canvas separated, just as I often felt my body and mind did.

He kept his fingers against my palm, his index finger brushing against the band aid as if willing it to heal. It was all so intimate, so. . .real and I felt like my chest was going to burst from the feelings I was feeling for him in that moment.

“Thank you.”

I raised my eyes from his fingers on my palm to his eyes that were staring at mine, a little smile on his face when he thanked me.

I had to clear my throat, not one, but twice to pull myself from the reverie induced by West. “You're welcome,” I paused. “We could go to jail for that.”

“I wouldn't want to get in trouble with the law with any other person on the face of the planet.”

He said things like that so easily, as if as soon as they entered his mind, he needed to speak them. And I envied that. I envied the way he could open himself up to people, wearing his heart on his sleeve without a second thought. He sometimes said things so sweet I physically felt myself withdraw, afraid of ruining yet another good thing in life. If West were a flower, I'd be afraid of causing him to wilt, of tearing at his petals one by one, without a single touch.

If anything scared me more than the way I felt for him, it would be all the ways I knew that I could hurt him, damaging the genuine good soul that I knew he had.

I still hadn't answered, but it didn't seem to bother him for he simply got off the sofa and headed to the kitchen, calling back that he was going to make us sandwiches.

I sank back against the sofa, listening to him move things about in the kitchen. My attention was drawn to his vibrating phone on the table, and before I could stop myself, I had picked it up and swiped across the screen, a bit surprised to find it lacking a lock.

It was a text from Emily and I opened it to find that it read, she seems nice enough.

Scrolling up, I saw that West had mentioned my name quite a few times, and that would have pissed me off to no end if I hadn't of raised my thumb and saw the message below it.

She's so great, Emily, I think she's the best thing to happen to me.

I stared at the text for a few seconds, letting the words burn into my eyelids before I heard West's footsteps approaching. I quickly hit the back button a few times, before stashing his phone back on the table and trying to appear nonchalant and as if I hadn't just been snooping through his phone.

He dropped himself down onto the sofa beside me and when he handed me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich – which was really about the extent of his food preparation skills – I turned to look at him, searching his face as if I would find the words written on his face.

They were still swimming around my head, warming me inside and making the little West sized hole in my chest simply grow, expanding the more I swallowed down the words I wanted to spill to West and tell him that, fuck, I really did care about him.

We ended up leaning against one another, his head resting on top of mine as I slouched on the sofa and watched whatever action movie he'd put in without asking me first.

If I could have frozen any moment in time, past or present, it would have been that one – curled up beside West with a band aid on my palm reminding me of the great day I'd shared with the particular dark haired boy.