Perfect Ten

by L. Philips

  “Thanks for the drink. Or drinks,” I sort of slur out. I sway a little to the music still humming in my brain.

  “It’s called a Black Widow,” he says, eyeing me. “They’re pretty but lethal. How many did you have?”

  “Three,” Meg answers for me at the exact moment I hiccup through the words, “Just one, I swear.”

  Travis chuckles, and Good Goddess is he sexy when he chuckles. I lay my head on his shoulder. His whole shirt is soaked with sweat. He smells like someone who has been doing cardio for a few hours, but yet, somehow, he doesn’t smell bad at all. Just sort of manly. Rocker godly. I giggle into his wet shirt.

  “Feeling okay?” Travis whispers to me, and I pull back so I can look into his face. It’s like he’s said some magic spell and now we’re the only two people in the room.

  Heh. Magick.

  “I feel awesome,” I hear myself answer. And then, with all the finesse I can muster (which isn’t much after three Black Widows), I cram my tongue down Travis’s throat. He apparently isn’t too surprised, or maybe he’s just used to people sticking their tongues in his mouth, because he kisses back without the slightest flinch. When we pull away, we’re both panting, and my ego balloons at that.

  I go to kiss him again and he stops me, his hand cupping my jaw. “We should get out of here,” he murmurs, glancing around us pointedly. I follow his gaze. Most of the young crowd that came here to see his band have left, and what remains are older men who look like they’re ready to round up a posse and be a little less tolerant of the boy in eyeliner kissing another boy.

  “Huh. Yeah. Where should we go?” I ask, doing my best to act innocent. I fail and giggle, and there goes the last of my dignity.

  “I think he needs to go home,” I hear Meg say somewhere off to my right, and damn, the spell is broken.

  Travis’s hand is on my chin again, turning my gaze to meet his. “You really had three?”

  “Just three,” I say, to clear up the confusion.

  “Right. A mere three Black Widows.” Travis is amused. “I forget how to play guitar after three.”

  “But you’re so good at guitar,” I say, and it’s all whiny. Landon snorts and I reach behind myself to give him a playful punch. I miss.

  Travis breathes a very creative curse. “I told Melanie to go easy on you.”

  “I can handle liquor,” I say with a pout. Then I sort of sway into him and bump my nose on his shoulder.

  “Obviously,” Travis says, but he’s not upset. He’s still just amused, perhaps even entertained. Ha, now he’s the one getting the show.

  “You need to go home, Sam,” Meg says again.

  Travis doesn’t take his eyes off me. “You want to go home?”

  “With you,” I say. Finally, the answer to the question that he never really even asked, the question I’ve been debating all night. And now? There’s not a doubt in my mind. Even after all the discussion and arguments with my friends. And maybe it’s the Black Widow (nope, Widows, plural) talking, but I feel like I can trust him. Like maybe he has no intention of seeing me again after tonight, but he has no intention of hurting me either.

  Travis grins at my friends. “I guess he’s decided.”

  That’s when Landon straightens to his full height, which is just about the same as Travis’s, and shakes his head. “I don’t think so, man. He’s wasted.”

  “He needs to sleep it off. And probably take some aspirin,” Meg says.

  “You think I don’t know how to handle a drunk friend?” Travis asks, and I think we all know that out of the four of us, Travis most likely has substantially more experience helping drunk friends than we do. I mean, he’s a rock star.

  I giggle uncontrollably again and Travis shrugs my arm over his shoulder so that he can support my weight.

  “It’s the handling him I’m worried about,” Landon says. It registers somewhere in my hazy brain that he says it with more anger than is really necessary.

  Travis just stares at him. “Really? Who are you? His mother? His boyfriend?”

  “I’m just a friend.”

  “A friend who doesn’t think Sam is capable of making his own decisions.”

  “You call this being fully capable of making his own decisions?” I sense Landon is gesturing at me, and I’m pissed at his implications, and all that manifests as giggles. Again.

  But then I’m being transferred to Meg for support, and Travis and Landon step away to the side of the bar. I can’t hear what they’re saying over the other voices in the room and the classic rock coming from the jukebox that I hadn’t noticed before, but I can see that whatever is being said is not pretty. Then Travis leans in to Landon.

  For a second I think Travis is going to kiss him. I mean, as far as strategies go, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Kiss Landon as stupid as he kissed me the other day, then we can sneak out the door. But Travis says something directly in Landon’s ear. Landon stiffens, but then something changes. He blows out a breath and nods to Travis. Then Travis is back, his arms around me.

  “I promise, I’ll get him home in one piece,” he says to Meg, and I nod.

  “Trust me, it will be okay,” I say to her.

  She looks like she’d like to fight about it, but Landon shakes his head, and she relents. “I’ll tell your mom you’re staying with me. Goddess, Sam, be safe. Text me. Continually, okay? Like every five minutes.”

  I can’t promise her that, but I tell her again that everything will be okay. With one last glance at Landon, Travis turns us toward the door. He leads me outside to a bright orange Mustang that looks like it’s on the verge of death. He helps me into the passenger seat and squats down next to the car. His shirt is still soaked with sweat, and his hair, I notice now too, is damp as well. He has to be freezing in this night air. I can’t help myself. I reach out and touch his hair. He smiles at me, warmer than he ever has before, and gives my hand a squeeze before reaching under my seat and rummaging around for something.

  He finds what he was looking for and hands it to me. It’s a plastic bag from a local pharmacy, with the receipt still in it. I pull it out and read. He bought three things: Mountain Dew, 16 oz., Haribo Gummi Bears, 1lb., and Rolling Stone, September issue. I feel like this receipt sums up Travis in a way anything I’d write could not.

  I look at Travis in question. “A plastic bag?”

  He jerks a shoulder. “In the words of the great Garth Algar, if you’re gonna spew, spew into this.”

  I don’t ask him who Garth Algar is. I’ll Google it when I’m sober. And luckily, I don’t need to use the bag as Travis drives.

  Travis’s apartment is entirely too bright when we enter, but I like that it’s a little familiar, as if that somehow makes all of this strange night not so out of the ordinary. I wobble slightly at the top of the stairs, and Travis catches my elbow, steadying me.

  “Good?”

  “Good,” I reply. Then start off down his short hallway, toward his bedroom.

  “Hey, Hemingway, where you going?”

  “Bedroom,” I say, although the echo in my ears sounds more like “bwedvoom.” Way to go, Sam. Then I get it. I turn and point at Travis. “Ha, you’re funny. And smart.”

  “Nah, I’m just using all my writer material on you. I mean, who else am I going to use it on?” Travis takes my hand. “Water. Ibuprofen. Then bed for you.”

  “But, I thought—”

  “I know what you thought. I spent the better part of the night thinking it too. But you, Mr. Self-Control, had to go and have three Black Widows.”

  I open my mouth to protest but Travis has fully adopted the role of the responsible designated driver for the evening. “Nope,” he says, wagging a finger at me. Then he sighs when I pout. “Okay, maybe a little kissing. But then sleep. And if you still want to be in my bed when you wake up sober, we’ll see about something more.�
��

  He gives me a bottle of water, a couple of pills, and crawls into bed with me. There are several more protests, which are silenced each time by Travis kissing me, and after a while I do fall asleep, visions of a sexy rock god dancing in my head.

  My skull is splitting open when I wake up. I check to make sure it’s still in one piece, and that’s when I remember I’m not in my own room, but in Travis’s, covered in his dark gray comforter. I sit up so fast I could swear my brain sloshes against my skull, and I grab my aching head and moan.

  “You okay?” a scratchy voice says in the dark. Travis. Although my eyes haven’t adjusted well enough to see him, I can feel the heat of his slim body against mine. “Need to throw up?”

  I shake my head, which hurts, and say, “No. But I need to pee.”

  He gestures to a door across the hall, and I get up, carefully. I pee (how can I pee for five minutes straight when I’m this dehydrated?), flush, and fall with graceless apathy back into his bed.

  “Here, drink this,” I hear him say, and I open an eye. Travis is sitting up, offering me a bottle of blue Gatorade. “It’ll help, I promise.”

  “What time is it?” I ask, my voice weak and whispery.

  “Almost three a.m. Now drink.”

  I stare at him, confused, so he waves the bottle in front of my face. I take it and weakly unscrew the cap before downing half of it. I look around myself. Travis’s room is how I pictured it: messy, masculine, and all shades of gray and black. His bed is hard, a little lumpy, and none of the sheets are tucked in at the sides. There are more posters of scantily clad women covering his walls, but also posters of the Cure and Depeche Mode. On the shelf next to the bed, there’s even an autographed picture of Travis with someone, and I have to squint to make out the writing.

  “David Bowie?”

  “Yeah,” Travis says, not taking his eyes off my face. “He was a great dude. Positive vibes all over the place.”

  I drink more of the Gatorade and his hand wanders over the comforter, coming to rest on my knee.

  “My head hurts,” I say dumbly, because I don’t know what else to say and all I really want to do is curl up under the covers and die.

  Travis nods and motions for me to drink more Gatorade, which I do. I screw the cap back on the bottle and hand it back to him. It’s then that I notice for the first time that he’s placed a bucket next to my side of the bed.

  “You thought of everything.”

  He shrugs. “Brendon has a tendency to drink too much. So does Vanessa. I’m a seasoned caretaker of drunkards.” He squeezes my knee. “You all right? Remember everything?”

  I try to think, but my thoughts are muddy. “You guys sounded awesome. The waitress wasn’t wearing much. Meg and I fought, but Landon seemed okay until you came along. Then we came back here and . . .”

  Travis looks down. “And we made out more than we probably should have. You were pretty trashed.”

  “But that was it.”

  Travis nods.

  I close my eyes. So many what-ifs and should-haves and could-haves crowd my thoughts, so many possibilities that could have turned into regret, and he took all of those possibilities away and made me safe instead.

  I swallow. Hard. “Thank you, Travis.”

  He understands what I’m saying to him. “Of course.” He grins, wide and entirely too proud of himself. “I’m a gentleman and a scholar.”

  I laugh, which makes my head throb in ways I didn’t know it could. I must make a noise at the pain because Travis reaches out and runs a hand through my hair. The gentle lift makes my scalp tingle and numbs some of my headache.

  His gold eyes are fixed on mine, and his voice is gentle. “Any particular reason why you drank so much tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” I whine, and hate how pathetic I sound. “The Black Widows were good and . . . I was a little confused, I guess. So I just kept drinking them.”

  “Hell of a way to search for clarity.” Travis shrugs. “Whatever your method, dude. I’m just sorry I didn’t have Melanie cut you off after the first one. At least Meg was there for you. And you should have warned me you were bringing a boyfriend along. I mean, shit. I thought he was going to kill me for a second.”

  “What?” I ask, my still-drunk brain futilely trying to catch up. “Jamie?”

  “Jamie? I meant Landon. There’s a Jamie too?” Travis snorts at me. “And here I thought I was the one being a player.”

  “Landon’s not my boyfriend.”

  “But Jamie is?”

  “No, he’s not either. Why would you think Landon’s my boyfriend?”

  Travis lies down on his side, stretched out next to me. He’s changed out of what he was wearing onstage, and now he’s in a pair of green flannel pajama pants and a wife-beater, revealing artistic tattoos on his arms that I’d ask about if I wasn’t in so much pain. “Oh, just his totally over-the-top ‘hurt him and I’ll kill you’ act.”

  “He’s just protective.”

  Travis’s lips twitch. “Sure. Dude hated me.”

  I force a laugh, which makes my head feel like it might burst. “He wants you for himself. He was probably just jealous.”

  Travis eyes me. “I don’t think it’s me he wants.”

  If I had any fight in me, I would argue with that and explain that Landon and I are just friends. An especially close type of friends, I suppose, but still, just friends. “I’m sorry if he was rude,” I say instead.

  “Nah. He was fine. There was some yelling involved. Bared teeth, that sort of thing. Nothing I can’t handle.”

  I remember now. How Landon acted, how Travis took him aside, out of earshot. I roll over on my side and look at Travis.

  “What did you say to him that made him change his mind?”

  “I told him he could punch me in the face if I laid a finger on you while you were drunk.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Why do you doubt me?”

  I stare at him, then chuckle. Gingerly. “Well, I’m not sure he’ll be happy that he doesn’t get to punch you, even if I get to keep my virtue.”

  “Your virtue? Please. I’d guess Landon took your virtue long before last night.”

  “Shuddup.” My cheeks grow hot, and Travis laughs a gravelly laugh. I choose that moment to move closer to him (hey, I’m an opportunist), and he follows my lead, pulling me until we’re facing each other, our legs wrapped around each other’s backs.

  “Feeling sober?” he asks.

  “All too sober,” I say, and the joke lands with a thud.

  “Clear head, though?” he asks, and as he does, he nips at my bottom lip.

  “Um, well, not when you do that,” I say as his lips trail lower, straight down my chin to my neck.

  His laugh now is low, sexier. Dangerous. “Trust me, at least?”

  “I think so. It’s me I don’t trust,” I say. “I haven’t acted like myself since I first saw you. You do something to me.”

  “I have that effect on men.” I feel the curve of his smile against my neck. “And women.”

  I hum. “I bet you do.”

  “But you can trust me, Sam. Badass jackets and eyeliner aside, I’m not a bad guy.”

  Then Travis shifts us, expertly, and suddenly I’m flat on my back and his weight is on me, all one hundred and fifty-five pounds (rough estimate) of pure James Dean swagger. And I can’t say I mind.

  “And it’s a good thing I’m not a bad guy. ’Cause I wanted you. Real bad. Still want you.” He leans down and kisses me, just as dirty as the first time, all messy tongues and teeth and spit. His hair falls into my face, and I reach up and take it into my hands, surprised at how soft it is, and at the groan that comes from his mouth as I tug it a little. “You’re hot. This geeky, smart kind of hot.”

  I lean my head back so that he can nip at my
neck. “You’re into geeks, huh?”

  “That’s top-secret information. I’d only admit it under severe torture,” he answers between bites, and although I’m hardly the sadistic type, I have to admit that kissing like this is the best kind of torture there is. I’m about to crack some stupid joke about the UN approving making out as a torture technique when his hand wanders down. Too far down.

  I freeze up, suddenly all too aware of the direction his hand is going, of the direction we’re headed.

  Travis notices the change immediately and draws back, sitting back on his heels. “Sorry, I forgot how old you are.”

  “It’s not my age,” I say, although the petulant manner in which I say it does nothing to prove that. “I’m not a virgin.”

  “Nah,” Travis says, a smirk playing at his lips. “But you haven’t since Landon, have you?”

  I don’t like the implications behind that statement, and I most certainly don’t like how he knows that so confidently.

  “I want you,” I say to him, because that’s the biggest truth of all the truths wandering through my hazy head right now.

  “I know,” Travis agrees, but somehow manages not to sound cocky. “And it’s okay to be scared of that.”

  I don’t argue with him. What’s the point? He sees right through me. Instead, I reach up and brush his hair back from his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he replies, then he stands up, stretching. “Look, I’m not one of those relationship guys. I mean, I may be a good guy, but I’m also a musician, ya know? So I’m not promising anything, but . . . I would like to see you again. Maybe someplace that doesn’t serve Black Widows.”

  “Really?” I ask, unable to believe it. He wants to give me a second chance.

  “Yeah. I mean, nothing serious, okay? I don’t do the whole romance thing. I just want a shot with you when you aren’t drunk. Or hungover.”

  I laugh, but I have to look away from him because it is seriously regrettable that I got too drunk to really enjoy him tonight. I sit up and start looking for my phone, but Travis is a step ahead of me. My phone is resting on top of my clothes, neatly folded, and when I investigate my messages I can see Travis has already added himself in my contacts, and Landon and Meg have texted me a million times checking up.