Just Before You Go

I was just beginning to wind down my spirit when the bus lurched to a slow stop. We crept forward at a glacial pace, completely tipping the atmospheric balance. I leaned to the window, pulling the blind back just enough to peer out. Apparently we’d stopped for fuel.
I guess the sudden slow had shaken things up with the boys because they quickly came staggering out from the bunks, looking somehow more like zombies than humans. Jimmy yawned sleepily, rubbing at his eye.
“Where are we? Are we there? Is it daytime?”
I smiled fondly up at him, “It’s one in the morning, Jim.”
“Why the fuck are we up?” Brian groaned.
Jimmy countered him with the enthusiastic buoyancy I knew and loved, “Why were we sleeping?”
“You have a cold,” Matt grunted from behind him, reaching out to move his lanky friend from his path. “Remember?”
Jimmy took a deep breath in through his nose, glancing around at everyone with his eyebrows high, “Sounds clear to me!”
“Hey, guys,” the driver shouted back to us. “We’re stopped for fuel. If you need anything, the time is now!”
Jimmy lit up, all remnants of exhaustion effectively wiped from his system, “Gas station hot dogs!”
He bounded off the bus without a second thought. The others were so tired they didn’t realize what he’d said until he was long gone, the door slamming in the breeze. Brian groaned, reluctantly shuffling his way down Jimmy’s crumb trail to pull the door shut. I snickered quietly to myself, collecting the scattered debris of Blair’s contract into one neat pile. Matt grabbed a black sweater hanging off the back of the couch, pulling it over his tattooed arms.
“I’m going for snacks,” he yawned. “Anyone want anything?”
Brian nodded, “Sleep. Eternal fuckin’ sleep.”
“Yeah,” Matt croaked, pausing with his face skeptical as ever. “I don’t think 7-Eleven sells fuckin sleep, dude. But I’ll see what I can find.”
Brian waved once over his head as he plunked down into the bench across from me, “Appreciate it!”
Matt laughed, moving his gaze to me, “Aria? Anything?”
“I wouldn’t be mad about a hot chocolate,” I shrugged
Brian scoffed playfully, “What are you, four?”
“Yes,” I answered firmly.
Matt smirked, “Hot chocolate. I’m on it.”
The bus fell into another silence as Brian and I both fought a tension I wasn’t sure why existed. He seemed strangely distant, something that usually only brewed up when I’d stepped over a line. I retraced my steps for boundaries but came up with nothing but soil.
“You okay?” I asked awkwardly.
He seemed to perk up a bit at my voice, yawning dramatically with no attempt to cover it up, “Huh? Yeah.”
“Okay,” I shrugged, sliding the contract off the table and meandering away to slip it into the safety of my bunk.
I took my time returning, unnerved to find Brian staring with a great burden out the window at the dead air. My head tilted without my noticing, feeling a lot like some confused owl watching a mouse surrender itself.
“Hey, can I ask you something personal?” Brian asked lazily without looking in my direction.
I carefully regained my place at the table, my nerves fraying a bit, “Sure.”
“When you, um...When you...fuck...you know what? Never mind.”
“When I what?” I pressed.
He sighed, snapping his brown eyes over at me, “How did you know you loved Jimmy?”
I couldn’t help the distinct smile that spread across my face. It was only a matter of time before Brian fell deep under Blair’s spell and let her change him in ways he couldn’t imagine. My pleasure obviously annoyed him, he let out a foul groan.
“Forget I asked,” he grunted at me.
“I’m sorry,” I half-laughed. “It’s just cute...You think you’re in love or something?”
He shrugged lazily, like it pained him to even entertain the thought. But there he was, begging for guidance through a world unknown.
“I don’t really know how I knew,” I thought aloud, trying my best to come up with something more elaborate. “I just did…One day I woke up and it hit me in the face.”
Brian moved his teeth around inside his jaw, mulling over my weak sentiment.
“When you know, you’ll know,” I assured him.
“Yeah,” Brian sighed, looking troubled as ever.
It had been a while since I’d seen Broody Brian—he’d been a ghost since Blair had decided to stop pulling her hands from him. From then on, it was like he was a new man. He was suddenly patient and mostly kind…But he was sulking at the table like the Brian I’d known before Blair had bat her eyelashes at him. I had to wonder if something had happened. It usually required some sort of trigger to get Brian lost inside his well-groomed head.
Before I could grill too far into him, the bus door flew open once more.
Jimmy bounded inside, a wild Blair hot on his heels. My and Brian’s faces fell simultaneously as we witnessed the sheer terror that was, as Jimmy had so eloquently called them, gas station hot dogs. They had three each, Jimmy cramming one into his mouth.
Blair shook a bottle of clear liquid around enthusiastically, “Look what we found!”
Brian snickered quietly, “Of course you did.”
“The Haven bus is boring,” Jimmy half-explained.
Blair nodded, taking a small bite of mostly bun, “And tense as shit.”
Jimmy and Blair exchanged looks before tapping the ends of their gas station hot dogs together. It was like some grotesquely unhealthy cheers.
“Really?” Brian asked flatly, just a hint of a smirk forming upon his lips.
“What?” Jimmy retorted, his mouth full.
Blair took a big bite of her own dog, grinning over at the lankiest man on the planet, “He doesn’t like our culinary choices.”
“Fuckin’ killjoy,” Jimmy mumbled, shaking his head. “What do you see in that guy?”
Blair shrugged exaggeratedly.
Brian half-laughed, “You’re both going to get fucking food poisoning.”
Jimmy and Blair both lit up with explicates and damnations. They threw their hands around wildly, calling Brian out for being such a buzzkill. His smirk fell into threatened irritation as they continued to berate him.
“Come on, Blair,” Jimmy scowled at his best friend, stuffing another large bite into his mouth. “We don’t need this negativity.”
Blair dramatically turned away from her beau, glaring daggers in his lonely direction. He turned to me with an exasperated sigh.
I laughed, “You upset the goth twins.”
“The goth twins,” Brian smirked.
“Um,” Jimmy called from the couch where he and Blair were now scarfing down their food. “It’s Blimmy, actually. Get it fucking right.”
“Yeah!” Blair added, which set them off into a serious of giggle fits.
Brian blinked at me, begging me to intervene in some way. But there was nothing to do but enjoy the hilarity that came along with Jimmy. His energy shifted noticeably when Blair would walk into a room—I hated that I’d hated it for so long. I’d let it build up inside of me until it devoured everything sensible.
Looking at them then, it was clear. Blair was important and I’d done Jimmy a disservice by trying to sever that. I would forever feel like a pile of shit over it.
“Yeah, Brian,” I grinned. “It’s Blimmy.”
“That’s the dumbest fucking name I’ve ever heard,” he noted.
Jimmy was appalled. Blair didn’t seem to notice anyone was talking at all; her green eyes were fixated on the hot dog in her hand.
“What do you think’s in these?” she asked absently. “Do you think it’s really meat? It can’t be, right?”
Brian groaned.
“It’s definitely ground up rhino horn,” Jimmy told her seriously.
“Ground up rhino horn?” I questioned with great amusement. “In a…hot dog?”
He nodded proudly.
“Whatever it is,” Blair decided aloud, “It’s fucking delicious.”
Brian laughed finally, pulling himself out from the table and slowly meandering her way. She guarded her hot dog of all things. With another groan, he reached out and snatched the brand new bottle of liquor from her side.
“Where are you going with that?” she asked him skeptically, making absolutely no effort to get up and stop him.
“To the bathroom,” Brian assured her. “I’m going to go dump it out. You two have obviously had enough.”
“What?” Jimmy erupted, shoving the final few bites of his food into his mouth and hurrying after Brian.
He leaped onto his best friend’s back, swiping at the bottle as best he could. I watched intently as they struggled, laughing and grinning at each other like children. Without warning or commotion, Blair breezed past them, snatching the bottle back from Brian’s clutches.
“Idiots,” she smirked.
She grabbed a couple of plastic cups from the stack permanently housed in the cupboard and then turned to me as if to judge my participation.
“Matt’s bringing me hot chocolate,” I told her awkwardly.
She tried not to laugh, “Okay then.”
“Blair!” Jimmy shrieked. “Blair! He’s coming!”
Blair and I snapped our guys to the fighting men in time to watch Brian break loose from Jimmy’s long fingers. She grinned up at him as he snaked his arms around her waist.
“Just let us have our fun,” she cooed at him.
Jimmy was huffing, panting with his hand on the table for support.
“Aria,” he said to me, “we’re going to get very drunk.”
I smiled, “Yeah, I gathered that.”
“No,” he shook his head. “We. No fucking hot chocolate.”
Before I could protest, Matt appeared in the doorway. He struggled to pull the door closed with the copious amounts of random things in his muscled arms.
“Help,” he grunted at Jimmy, who rolled his eyes as he strolled over to grab the door.
“Dude,” Jimmy grinned, “why wouldn’t you get a bag?”
Matt shrugged.
“Here,” he said, his hazel eyes fixated on me. “I got you your—”
“No!” Jimmy shrieked, slapping the paper cup from Matt’s hand.
It fell to the floor, splattering out in every direction. Everyone froze, stuck inside a stunned silence. Even Jimmy was cringing.
“Ha!” Brian declared, the interruption enough to pull him from his lusty moment with Blair Peterson.
Matt grumbled, studying his soaked t-shirt and following the trail all the way to the floor, “You’re cleaning that up.”
Jimmy pouted but grabbed a roll of paper towel from the counter anyway. Matt folded his arms across his chest, supervising the drummer as he labored over the spill.
“Dude, you’re smearing it into the bench,” Brian groaned, gesturing with his hand.
Jimmy scoffed, “I don’t see you helping.”
“I’m telling you that you’re smearing it!” Brian objected.
“Right,” he whined. “And it isn’t fucking helping!”
“How do I always get roped into your shit?” Brian grumbled as he sank down next to his friend and began mopping at the steaming liquid.
Blair plopped herself down next to me, firmly holding a red cup between her hands.
“Now do you want a drink?” she grinned at me.
I sighed, “Well I guess now that someone knocked my hot chocolate onto the floor…”
“Sorry,” Jimmy winced, daring to peek over the table at me.
Even in the throes of his annoying exuberance, I still found him delightful. He could always make me laugh—even when his shenanigans were inconveniencing my life. But watching him scrub at the floor was entertainment well worth a two-dollar drink.
“I’m on it,” Blair smiled at me, promptly crawling back onto her feet.
As she twisted the lid off of the glistening bottle, I couldn’t help the excitement that flourished up inside of me.
“Hey,” I said, trying my best to mind my tone. “That, um…Thing you asked me to do?”
She peered at me over her shoulder, interested.
“I figured it out,” I told her confidently. “You can have what you want…Any time you want.”
Her mind processed for a second, her face registering both freedom and fear. Jumping from her skin and into the body of someone impossibly warmer than the Blair I’d gotten to know, she whipped around and forced herself into me. She wrapped her arms tight around me, pulling me into her scent.
That girl crush was still alive and will, I can confirm.
The boys caught the gesture with sweetness in their eyes. Brian, especially, was melting to see his girlfriend so cheery.
“Thank you,” she whispered into my ear.
“Did you tell her the good news?” Jimmy asked me happily.
Blair grinned as she straightened herself out once more, “Fuck yeah she did.”
“What good news?” Brian asked curiously, looking back and forth between our trio in the know.
Blair looked almost giddy, “Aria did it!”
“You figured it out?” Brian asked, genuinely astonished at my accomplishment.
I tried not to take offence.
Nevertheless, I nodded my head with pride.
“Fuck yeah, Aria!” he cheered.
“What’s happening?” Matt asked confusedly.
Jimmy rolled his eyes, “We’re cleaning up your mess, man. Keep up.”
As Matt and Jimmy descended into a battle of wits and blame, Blair was grinning over at me. She mixed a drink together lazily and slid it at me, her piercing eyes dazzling in the dim light.
“Now we really need to celebrate,” she told me.
A celebration shared between Blair and I was something I could get behind. Clanking our drinks together as she collapsed onto the bench by my side, I drank to more than some contractual obligation I'd found a loop hole out of.
I drank to our friendship. To our lives; vastly different but somehow, on that bus hurdled across another state line, eerily parallel.
For the first time in a long time, I felt like I'd finally done something right.

Notes

It isn't even Aria spilling shit this time.

xx