Gray - By Pete Wentz Page 0,27

We are clumsy as we make our moves. As this stranger fumbles with my belt, I suddenly realize that this officially means it’s over between Her and me. It’s funny the things that cross my mind in moments like this. Depressing too. So I block it out and get to work. I pull at her buckle; it’s turned around to the side of her pants. Ten scene points. I grab her hair, which is jet-black and covers her face in just the right way. Twenty-five scene points. She’s about to get the boy you couldn’t catch in between the sheets. One hundred scene points.

We grunt and sweat all over each other, her hair hanging like a black cloud over my head as I lie under her. She moans and wails as if she’s just found religion, rolls her eyes back in her head, runs her nails down my back. It’s all a big show. The thought crosses my mind that there’s not much difference between fucking and a fistfight. At least not right now. It ends with her shouting, “Oh, God,” over and over. Her poor roommates. We lie there drenched in sweat, white sheets clinging to our bodies. I’m starting to sober up now, and all I want to do is escape. So I make up a lie, say I have to get back to the van by 6:00 a.m. because we’re heading out of town. I don’t know if she believes me or not, and I don’t care.

Her alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m., but we are both still awake. She walks me down to the street as I desperately scan the horizon for a cab. The air is heavy and damp with the impending promise of spring, and if I weren’t standing out here with a complete stranger, wearing a shirt still covered in booze and what appears to be dried vomit, I’m sure I’d be enjoying this right now. Finally, I spot a cab and frantically wave it down (“Save me!”). As it pulls to the curb, she pulls my hand toward her, writes Bastard on it, then scribbles her number below that. I look at it for a second, then, not knowing what to do or say next, jump in the cab and tell the driver to go. We take a right, then another right, and another, and I doze off. I wake up as the cab comes to a stop in front of my parents’ house. I’m not sure how he knew to stop here. I walk up the stairs and into my room, drop my clothes in a pile by the door, and am asleep by 6:00 a.m. I sweat out the booze, and by the time I wake up, her number has worn off my hand. But the Bastard is still there. I look at it and laugh, even though I’m probably not supposed to. The truth will do that to you.

• • •

It’s way past noon when I finally crawl out of bed. I’m so hungover, I can’t even see straight. My folks have decided to have mercy on me—they’ve left a pot of coffee on the burner and gone out for the afternoon. A year ago, they would’ve given me such shit for rolling in at 6:00 a.m., but now, things are different.

I sit in the kitchen while the rest of the world carries on without me. Somewhere someone is mowing a lawn. Somewhere someone is beeping a horn. My parents’ dogs are going nuts about something in the backyard, but I’m too sick to get up and see what it is. I drink my coffee and move my eyes around the room . . . the bowl of fruit my mom is constantly refilling, mostly because the apples keep going bad. The wallpaper that my dad hated hanging, golden fleurs-de-lis entwined with fingers of ivy. The big, stainless-steel fridge, with a picture of my brother playing soccer and an old promo photo of my band (me with long hair too). I’ve been in this room a million times over the years, but it’s never seemed as still and sad as it does in this moment. It’s like sitting in the kitchen of someone who’s just died. The cabinets are filled with cans they’ll never open, the freezer stuffed with meat they’ll never thaw. The air is heavy and you don’t want to disturb anything because, you know, that’s the way they left it. Maybe it’s just because I’m hungover