by Felix, Lila
I packed up, deciding to go to work. It wasn’t my regular work day, but there was always work to be done.
“Hey, you’re Rex, right?”
I turned around to see a girl, almost taller than myself, blonde hair—she could’ve been a model.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, you are?”
She popped her right hip out and curled one blonde ringlet around her finger, and giggled like I’d really said something funny.
“You’re so funny. I’m Darla. We have Sociology together.”
I’d never remember someone from Sociology class. Number one, it was a stadium course. Everyone sat in the equivalent of a movie theater—there were easily a hundred or more students per class. And number two: it was Sociology. I was doing well just to remain halfway lucid during the whole thing. So long story short, no, I didn’t remember her.
“Oh, yeah, I barely stay awake in there. Sorry. Look, I was just about to leave, so, I’ll see you in class.”
“Aww,” she pouted her lip out and there was a bit of pink lipstick on her bottom teeth. I wanted to reach out and rub it off just so I didn’t have to look at it.
“Yeah, so bye,” I sputtered out and left as soon as my legs would take me.
Oh, I sucked so badly at everything, and especially girls.
Hayes
Remember the Snorks? I do. Those were some bad ass snorkeled sap suckers. And when they talked, bubbles came out of the top. Bad—ass.
“No.”
“You might find the man of your dreams. Come on, it will be fun. That old guy on TV says 90% of their matches end up in marriage.”
“Oh yeah? How many end up in knees to the nuts?”
“That’s the other 10%, duh.”
“No. Don’t make me say it again.”
“Damn, you’re so testy about boys.”
“Shut up, Vera. You’ve been married since you were legal and practically married two years before that. Just shut it. Can we please talk about something else?”
She blew out a breath that fanned her tendrils out around her face. Her hair was all spiral curls and beautifulness. My hair was messy chic. That’s what the lady at the place called it when she chopped off the front part of my hair into what she dubbed chunky bangs. All I knew was that my ‘chunky bangs’ made me look like a fuzzy freak in the humid weather if I forgot to put that gooey stuff on them. And I forgot a lot. Usually I just piled it all on top of my head and stuck a clip in it.
“Where are we going?”
I thought about the options. I loved a good jazz club late on a Friday night.
“Let’s go to The Note. It’s close and we can watch all the stupid drunk people—that includes you.”
“Ok, deal. Give me something beatnik to wear.”
“Come on, you’re so preppy. How did we ever get to be friends?”
“Because Fitz was going to beat you up. You were too cute to get beat up.”
We raided my closet until she found the perfect outfit. She grabbed my jeans with holes in the knees and an off the shoulder black shirt. I chose some lace leggings, jean cut-offs, a white tank top and suspenders. I would top it off with black boots with pink ribbon laces. Plus, there was my beret, if you’re going to a jazz club, you had to have a beret.
We walked through Jackson Square, past the creepy man in the window frame and the mime who painted himself silver. Vera wanted to stop and get her caricature done but the man was cleaning up his stuff for the night. Friday nights at The Note were open piano nights. Sometimes we’d go in there and it would be an absolute bust. But most of the time there was some decent music. I didn’t drink, but Vera did, so it was always funny to see the evolution in her from sober to sloppy in fewer than five drinks.
That night there was a guy, really broody looking, and he consistently played sad songs. His whole body shook as he pounded the keys and once I swore I saw him wipe tears away. He played River Flows In You like he’d written it himself and it brought me to the verge of tears. Even Vera did her slobbery clap where her hands didn’t quite meet and then she’d look at them like they weren’t working properly. She needed to inspect her brain as the culprit instead. After ten, the open piano turned into full fledge jazz and then we decided to walk to the French Market and grab some po-boys while it was still open. I got the catfish po-boy and Vera couldn’t decide, so I got her the same, plus a big order of onion rings. I loved the French Market mostly because I could count on the fact that their bread was fresh and good. I knew, because I made it myself.
We got back to my place and she ate while still spouting out made up words to the piano songs. The phrase, ‘Vera is beautiful’ was repeated a lot. Her husband worked on the oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico and was gone for weeks at a time. She usually stayed with me on the weekends or when she got lonely. I never minded. I appreciated the company and she was my best friend.
The other bakers in the bakery had the early shift on Saturdays, so I made sure to turn off the two a.m. alarm. Not that I wouldn’t wake up anyway, I would. I’d lay there awake, analyzing and re-analyzing some sin I’d committed when I was twelve. I’d replay the entire event in my head. Then, I would turn over, look at the clock, seriously consider calling my mom to repent, come to the conclusion she’d be angrier for me calling at that hour in the morning, and halfway forgive myself and then move on to the next event. After scrolling through all of my major offenses, I’d begin to fantasize about a life I didn’t have, may never have. Sometime later those fantasies would turn a little obscure and then I’d let myself go back to sleep only to wake later feeling like shit on a stick.
I’m so awesome.
Really, there’s no words for how cool I am.
Somebody stab me.
The next morning I woke a little after ten, crawled out of bed and wished I’d gotten more sleep. I would have to work a noon to six shift and then rush to the bout. After dragging Vera from her bed and donning my regular white uniform, I took all my frustrations out on the dough—it deserved it for being all white and yummy smelling. It was just annoying.
“Look what I have for you. Skatin’ fuel.”
Vera shoved a muffuletta in front of me and I nearly fainted from just the smell. It was our own bread stuffed with deli meats of all kinds and slathered with an olive salad. It was my favorite and she knew it.
“Thank God, I’m starving. But share with me, this is too big.”
“Deal,” she said as she pulled out a knife to cut it in half.
We ate like queens and then three cakes later, it was time to go. I drove Vera and me to Skate Heaven—and we were late after fighting the kooks in New Orleans traffic. I grabbed my bag and bolted for the changing room, still in my whites. I threw on my tiny black skirt, my holiest fishnets and my team shirt, skillfully turned into a tank top thanks to Pinterest. I wrapped my hair into makeshift pigtails, slapped on my helmet and skates and barely made the part before the bout where they introduced all the players. I barely had time to pull on my wristbands—they were non-negotiable. I was volunteered, not so gently, by Nellie to participate in the mock bout, showing the audience what would happen.
I wasn’t the best derby player by a long shot. In fact, I hadn’t been playing since junior league like most of the other girls. I started at the age of twenty needing to feel a little like Wonder Woman. But Wonder Woman couldn’t rock rink rash half as well as I could.
So, I spent a good deal of time on the bench, which was fine with me. But I did enjoy blocking girls from passing, hearing the frustration in their breaths as they tried to break through the pack—scoring points they had no business scoring.
Sitting on the bench during the first half was when I saw him. He stood off to the side of the infamous Black family—near enough to know he was with them, but far enough away to make me question his status. Standoffish, that was the word I would’ve used to describe his demeanor. As if he wanted to be close enough to talk to them, but not close enough to become attached to anything they had
to say. But Scout Black, the red haired beauty that belonged to Nixon, our ref, wasn’t having his off-putting for one second. She was tugging on his pant leg, blabbering on endlessly about something. And then I saw it, he tried to deny it, tried to brush her off, but one look downwards and he was a goner. She lifted her arms up and he bent down at once to lift her up and push one of her curls behind her ear. Then she threw her arms around his neck and the ice melted. Everything about him changed with just one embrace. The creases across his brow relaxed, the frown lines vanished—replaced with a caring smile, and the stiffness in his shoulders was now a bobbing motion, laughing at something the tike had to say. And it was then, enthralled with the metamorphosis of emotion, that he stilled me with one look. Frozen in place, all I could do was stare and let it happen. He looked at me like I was alien to him—like he’d never been stared at before. I knew that couldn’t be true, his caring eyes alone were enough to make any girl melt. Scout reached out and turned his face so that she completely held his attention, but his eyes were firmly fixed on me.
This wasn’t my typical guy pick, by far. He was the perfect mix of business and pleasure and I wasn’t talking about a mullet. His face was scruffy and it looked like he couldn’t decide if he was at work or at play. And just for the record, I’d never seen a guy younger than sixty wearing a pair of suspenders, but damn, it was a shame.
Suddenly, the whole family was looking at me and I wondered what I’d done. Then I heard it, my derby name being called over the loud speakers but it still took a second to register in my head.
“I Kilda Girl, please stop ogling those fine ass Black family boys and get your ass to the rink.”
Nothing like getting called out—in public—in front of the guy you were ogling—on skates.
I looked around to see several shopping carts on the rink with fans in them and apparently I’d been recruited to push one of said shopping carts around like an idiot version of a Knight’s Tale while the fans battled it out in passing with swimming pool noodles. I loved derby, no mistake, but the halftime shows were just not my thing. And I was not, ever, skating around in a fur coat to the beat of any Macklemore song. I didn’t care how much it entertained them.
So after playing through the halftime show and pretending not to absolutely hate it, I went back to the bench and only played one more jam and then it was all over but the crying. We didn’t win but we always celebrated like we did. I’d known of some rivalry among teams but this team was from Baton Rouge and we were all like sisters. So even though we lost, we would act like we didn’t give a damn.
We went to a pizza place/bar near the rink and settled in for tons of post-game carbs. Vera sat down at a place while I was still chatting up a girl from the other team, because her tattoo was the same as mine, but on the other leg, when Vera pulled my skirt hard, causing me to sit in the first chair available. I shrugged and continued to talk to the girl who was originally from North Carolina and had the best accent.
But when the toast was made before everyone dug in, I figured out exactly why Vera had been so adamant about having me sit there. Because across from me was Suspenders in all his glory—and damn what a glory it was.
Rex
Here I sit
All Broken Hearted
Paid a Nickel to Shit
But only Farted
Falcon is an ass. Granted, I’m the only one on the face of the Earth who doesn’t praise his Mohawked self—and the guy was pretty decent. But the sucker punch he just threw at me—it was that of a true ass. I sat down first and then their scheme came into play. I never saw it coming. Reed skipped ahead of me and sat down, so when I sat, I was sitting by a very pregnant Reed while Falcon was on the other side of me. So, being the semi-decent guy that I was, I told him to switch with me. He did, with a smug grin.
“What?”
“Nothing,” now Reed giggled with him. How had he talked me into coming to yet another social function?
“Spit it out, Bird Boy.”
Reed ticked her head across the table from me and that’s when I knew I’d been hoodwinked. Across from me sat—hell, I didn’t even know her name.
“Hayes,” Reed whispered over Falcon.
I gave Reed the most gentlemanly form of the stink eye I could manifest and she feigned terror at my reaction. Hayes—it fit her. Unique, pretty—sounded like a heated breath against a frosted window. She talked to the girl next to her, something about tattoos. I was such a stalker.
“Talk to her,” Falcon elbowed me in the ribs.
“Go to Hell,” I retorted. But somehow my quips never hit base with Falcon. He always laughed at me or just plain ignored me. I didn’t know which one was worse.
She’d captured my attention during the bout and she had it again, undivided, at that table.
I can’t do this.
I don’t know how to do this.
I’d only dated a handful of times, and the hours were spent riddled with guilt for leaving my mom by herself with him. One girl just got up halfway through the movie and walked out—I’d been ignoring her inadvertently.
Was I just one of those guys who was perpetually bad at dating? Was I just not as into the girl as I thought I was? Or was I just obsessively preoccupied with the affairs at home? I didn’t know.
What I did know: she was staring at me at the bout when she should’ve been helping out on the rink. And if it were possible to feel the heat of a gaze from across the room, then those were the tingles I felt in my shoulders. And Scout, the girl didn’t miss a thing. She’d turned my face towards her and said, ‘Stop looking at that lady and look at me.’
Hayes—I didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse for me to know her name because now it would take center stage in my thoughts. Finally, I had a name to go with the face; the sweet girl whose life was a cake walk—I didn’t mean it negatively, it was a good thing. Someone with a great disposition like her deserved a cake walk. But someone like me—the damage had been done and I was still living in the aftershocks.
I stared down my pizza just to avoid looking creepy. I really wanted to watch her talk to the other girl more, see the way her jaw tinkered back and forth while she listened. Take the chance to look at her face once again, instead of watching her skate from afar.
I did overhear her ordering two lemonades with no ice.
Yeah, creeper.
Driving home, after eating in a hurry and then scooting out before I could completely embarrass myself, I turned up the radio in my truck and tried to let some of the tension in my neck go. It seemed like my muscles were constantly constrained, never relaxed, just tense. It kept me on edge, which sometimes worked to my advantage and sometimes it didn’t.
Just like every single social situation.
It did work to my advantage at work and at school. The stress in my head helped me get through it all. I was one of those people who is better, more organized, and more industrious as more was piled onto my plate. In a lump, I was one busy little effer.
Climbing the steps to my tiny apartment, I shed my suspenders from my shoulders, kicked off my shoes, and plopped down on my bed. There was no point even trying to get any sleep, so I unzipped my backpack, pulled out my books and settled in for a night of studying.
The next morning, I showered and hit the gym with Owen and Mad. It wasn’t really a social situation since there was more huffing and groaning while lifting weights than actual conversation. At least that’s what I always hoped would happen.
“So, how’s school Rex?”
Nevermind.
“It’s school. I only have one more semester.”
“And then what?” Owen was extra peppy that day, too much joint juice or muscle milk—whatever in the hell was in those ‘special shakes’.
“Just work, I guess.”
Mad shook his head and Owen laughed.
“What?” Dumb and dumber were severely pissing me off.
“There’s more to life than working,” that was my brother. Alw
ays shining the spotlight on my non-life, my lack of life. But what he really meant was the lack of his life, the lack of his idea of life.
“Yeah, like getting married and the never-ending procreation conversation.”
“No, asshole. Like travelling, like getting out and experiencing something other than work and school. And yes, if you met a girl, it wouldn’t be a damned curse.”
I moved to the other side of the room from them. And damn them to hell, they moved with me.
“What do you want me to do pack up and go to France or some shit?”
They shared a look, “I think America would owe France a formal apology for making them put up with you for any extended period of time.”
“Yeah, it would be like them sending Mr. Bean here,” Owen joked.
“Mr. Bean is from England.”
“Same difference,” he shrugged.
“Just do something. Stop living in the past,” Maddox pressed.
Why couldn’t they just leave me be? I wasn’t asking them for anything. I especially didn’t ask them to interfere. I was perfectly miserable wallowing in my somber. And misery didn’t like company.
“Fine. What do you suggest wise one?”
“You can start by asking that girl out, the one who was eyeing you like you were the last ice cream cone on a hot day.”
“Can’t we just pump iron without you two getting all guru on me?”
They looked at each other and then looked at me, “No!”
Falcon
Reed loves it when I rub her belly.
“I put your bag by the front door. I loaded up your iPod with thunderstorm and ocean waves tracks. Your Kindle is in there too.”
I was a nervous wreck.
“It’s fine, honey. I’ll only be there an hour or so. Then I can come home. It may not even be that bad. They always overdramatize things on TV, especially that Lifetime network. I’ve never seen such bull.”
“Mom, I can’t believe you watch that crap.”
“Well, some of it is entertaining. Are you ready to go?”
“Yes ma’am. Are you sure you don’t want Dad to bring you?”