Shotgun Honey: A Series of Scattered Stories

L, lovely and long-legged.

L sat across from me at the long stretch of rectangular white desks. Her legs sprawled and relaxed across the arm of a black office chair. She used her hand to fan her face lazily.

The air circulated slowly above us due to an old ceiling fan that seemed out of place in the modern setting. L snuck a glance at KC. KC suppressed a smile, busily typing and retyping his proposal. The humidity, while suffocating, could not keep their flirty glances at bay.

Eventually, KC volleyed an invitation our way. An invitation to a very secret, very underground party. "I can't go alone, it would look too desperate," L pleaded, while I reviewed the incomplete to-do list sitting in front of me.

Guilt won, and here I am. A cliche party crasher standing in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, regretting my choice in friends.

The old restaurant is empty. Crowded with chairs, tables and knick-knacks, the sparse group fills the room with empty gazes and empty conversations. The party goers casually mingle between the few. They look tired, as if all of them had spent hours rearranging the furniture in the smoke shack, back and forth, and up and down. Casually dressed, pretty and put together - I feel underdressed, underwhelmed, uncomfortable.

And then I meet you.

Shirt buttoned to the collar, you wear shorts formally and collared chambray shirts casually. Your thick rimmed glasses sit, perched on the slant of a long nose. Wearing aloofness and a quiet disdain for parties on the edge of your lips. Man, with some essence of boyhood, you say an almost welcoming “hello” and walk away.

The first greeting, the first, very awkward greeting. Out of place and out of mind, I suddenly notice it. This is not a party. This is another desperate attempt from another poor boy to win L’s heart. This is L: hook, line, sinker.

I say my hello's, trying to make polite in the very small, intimate circle of friends who seem to have swapped stories and dreams and spit for years upon years.

KC catches L's attention, leaving me alone with the friends who are hardly friends.

And you walk towards me. I can feel the tension. It’s obvious you aren’t comfortable here.

I introduce myself with the best smile I can muster.

You shrug, shaking my hand, “Hey, ____ .” You tell me your name. I don’t hear it. I don’t want to ask again.

“It’s nice to meet you.” Your smile wraps into a coil with a slight nod of the head, you agree. It's nice to meet me too.

You stare at me with a dulled interest, staring at me then through me. Your fingers tap a plastic cup looking for conversation. You survey the room. They are all talking and laughing without us. It feels rehearsed. Like we must be on the set of some show I’ve never heard of before. We are the only two in the middle of the thin crowd with nothing to say. You ask me how I know KC.

I gulp my drink right as you ask. I try to nod, to answer, cooly. I explain KC and L and their newfound interest in one another. We both look to them. Tall and innocent, both laughing at new, presumable inside jokes tonight will spark. Fate is a funny thing.

You share the same twisted-lipped look I carry like a gun.

We make small talk, a little more conversation we both dread, and finally a savior appears. We are called to an assembly of poorly made speeches in the back room of the old, homey restaurant.

We sit uncomfortably in our seats. L is hanging onto every word that rolls from KC's mouth. Drop. Drop. Drop. The plunks of a dripping faucet, drip, drip, drip as you try to sleep. The driving drop that makes you more tired and more anxious as you wait for the outrageously high water bill from the unfortunate leak that you could ignore if only you could sleep. He is a man of many words. Who knew he had so many words?! It is terribly dull. Like a funeral parade. Everyone pretends like there is so much to celebrate but they speak in overdone metaphors, bad religious allegories and sad songs you play when it rains… This is the anniversary of their friendship. This is a terrible anniversary party.

I look to L in anguish. Nothing. She smiles at me. I look around the room. Another boyish-bearded man is staring at me with a look of lovesick desperation. In his head, we are already married. I bet I am pregnant with our second child and we live in the kind of “white suburbia” described in bad country songs.

L and I are new meat, but the boys know she belongs to the optimistic idealist that speaks in broken sentences with teary doe eyes. I notice L's immediate admiration... and then I see another longing glance across the table.

She has dark eyes and even darker rings around them. She talks about the room, the friendship they all share. She looks at KC with such attentiveness, her affections are a neon light that hangs awkwardly in the room. The flickering one with a few missing letters that people pass over. KC keeps his eyes on L. The other girl’s heart-shatter is almost audible. Her speech involves a few tears, weary looks toward me and a certain spite toward L.

L watches the girl with the dark eyes, boredom pulls on the edges of her beautiful mouth like a teetering balance that determines how polite she comes across. And you, with the glasses, begin your speech - short lived and kind. You are the only one to say anything good about this band of misfit brothers and adopted sisters, and although the break from your typical cynicism is the only hopeful note, the party prefers bittersweet funeral speeches.

After what feels like several hours of weepy talking, we finally are allowed to break away for “fellowship.” I lock myself in the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror. I meet my reflection. I have the kind of eyes that speak for themselves, in a very plain way. I have no stance to speak and nothing to say. The mirror is my only sympathy for the evening. The rest of the party chimes outside the door. I decide then that it isn’t desperate to attend a party alone. Some should be attended without accompaniment. Deep breath in. Plunge and the door opens.

They stand around, concerned with what each other thinks about shallow things. L is swooning over KC, crafting phrases for him. And just like that, L gives up country music and being your All-American sweetheart for Kurt Cobain’s ripped flannel and bad attitude. She raves about music her brother listens to and talks movies I know she's never seen. She loves the band she’s hated for the past six months. We’re all going to a concert together. She says it so eagerly. I nod politely.

I look for something to do, something to clean, some relief from our acting.

And your name reappears in conversation – you seem so disengaged with the evening. Again removed, I find myself making conversation with the bearded boy. He loves me. That much is clear. He makes a few degrading jokes and reminds me that he is exactly the boy I assume he would be. The words “I heart bacon and I’m not as smart as I look” mix within his speech and I smile, saddened by him but in attempt to stay kind I keep grinning. As the party drifts outside and we lock up the old doors to the hole-in-the-wall restaurant, I look to sky. It is pitch black. With the light flooding the parking lot, I can barely make out the view. And then I can see them.

Perched on the back of an old pick-up truck, L tilts her head, giggling into her hands. KC stands across from us, smoking and laughing and laughing and smoking. The girls are in another arena of conversation. L tries to make friends. The bearded boy sits on the gravel lot, smoking and humming. The other boys talk trucks and tattoos and it’s a murmur of collegiate chatter. I meet your eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses. You look to the ground, flicking the remains of your cigarette across the lot, lighting another. You look at me. I pretend I don’t see. Inhale and then exhale, letting out the familiar trail of artistic rebellion. Casual and damaged and formal and dangerous in a way that doesn’t seem so.

The night around us is dark. The people around us are polite enough. I look to the sky again. A thousand stars wink at us. Now I understand tonight. I have never seen so many beautiful little lights living, breathing, twinkling so close to the city.

This is the best part of my night, those lights.

L and I get into an argument over those boys on the way home. She is in love and I am in skepticism.

We will still see those boys though. L will never want to stop hanging out with them, so long as they love us. Any chance to see KC will be worth any drive or any boring interaction. The bearded boy with a low self-esteem and a fairly reasonable sense of humor won’t be the worst to make conversation with. Even in his hatred toward you, he will be tolerable. It will always be a weird tension to decipher.

KC, L, the bearded boy and you.

You who seems to never mind much of anything except a good cigarette and a better band, will probably never riot over your friends, their outrageous behaviors and childish thoughts. You, above reproach... at least you seem above reproach.

This will become our lives. Chain smoking cigarettes on a back porch somewhere, talking on everything from movies to music to politics to Jesus. I will never feel at home. L will never want to go home.

We will argue and I will always worry about the work I’m leaving behind in my world away from you, the smoke and the stars.