Gray - By Pete Wentz Page 0,15
want to leave you again.”
“You don’t have to go,” she whispers, as she begins kissing my neck. “You can just stay here with me. Nobody knows you’re here, not even the guys. You can disappear. We can hide out. Stay with me. . . .”
She keeps whispering stay as she kisses my body. She whispers it as she slides on top of me, wraps Her thighs around my waist. Stay . . . Stay with me. It’s not fair, and she knows it. But I’m not going to object, at least not right now. She moves Her body up and down slowly, and things go electric. Neurons fire and pop. We play “More Than a Feeling” again. It’s a great song.
After, we lie in Her bed and she asks me if I care if she smokes. I’ve only been gone for a month, and she’s started smoking. It’s because of school, she says. The stress. I laugh and tell Her I don’t mind, even though I do. She fishes a Marlboro out of the pack, lights it up. I watch the smoke rise to the ceiling, drift over to a corner, and hide there. My mom smokes. The girls who hang around after shows smoke. The room feels different now, as if there were a window open, and life were pouring in through the crack. Things have already changed, just as I feared.
That’s the problem with all of this. No matter how hard I try, I can’t make it perfect. I can’t keep it in a bottle, can’t ignore reality. Chemicals are involved, the kind scientists try to synthesize and put into pill form, and they’re making tremendous advances every day. They’re winning the war against love. It’s probably inevitable now. There are only two ways to see the world: either no one and nothing is connected to anything, or we are all a random series of carbon molecules connected to each other. Tell me if there’s room for love in either of those scenarios.
I suppose there’s no point in even trying anymore, so I let life back into our bed.
“I have to go, you know,” I say, watching Her eyes for a reaction. “I can’t stay here. We’re booked in the studio and there’s money involved and—”
“Oh, no, I know,” she lies. “I was just kidding when I said you should stay. You can’t after all.”
She added emphasis to that last bit just to let me know how ridiculous she thinks it all is. Suddenly, life is lying between us. She rolls over and lights up another cigarette. Here we go.
“You can’t just say something like that, it’s not fair,” I sputter. “I mean, do you think I want to leave you again? Do you think I enjoy doing this?”
“Of course you do,” she sighs, blowing a column of smoke skyward. “Why else would you be doing it?”
“I’m doing it for us, for our future.” I sit up. “I want to do this so I can take you away from here. So we can go to California and be together.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. How are we supposed to stay together if you’re gone all the time.” She laughs. “How are we ever going to move to California if you’re not here to begin with? I mean, you’re not even living here, really. You just blow into town from time to time. And that’s now. What’s going to happen six months from now? A year from now? Have you even thought about any of this?”
“Of course I have,” I fire back. “I’m not an idiot.”
• • •
I hadn’t thought about it at all. Not even in the slightest bit. I have no plan, no idea of the big picture. It makes me feel incredibly stupid that I was willing to ignore the facts and put so much stock in something as pointless as love. Maybe the scientists and admen were right. Love is just something that can be made in a lab or put on a billboard. It has no practical place in life; it serves no function other than tying us up into knots, making us chase fantastic ideals such as “happiness” and “hope.”
I end the Bed-In early. I’m a pretty lousy John Lennon. I take a shower, using Her shampoo because mine has mysteriously vanished. I was only gone for a month, and already she’s making me disappear from Her life. The smoking, the shampoo . . . the signs are everywhere. I’ve just been too blind