by B. B. Easton
“Actually…” Ken peeked at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Oh my God!” I squealed. “No way! You really are the enemy of fun! What about caffeine?”
“Nope.”
“Sex?” My eyes went wide as soon as I heard my own question. I was just about to apologize when Ken turned to face me, wearing a smirk that said he was anything but offended.
“I’m a fan.”
“Oh, you’re a fan.” I smirked back, arching a brow.
Lifting my almost-empty beer bottle in a toast, I said, “Well then, to sex and cursing, the only two things we have in common.”
Ken smiled and lifted his Gatorade bottle. “Cheers.”
The plastic container met my glass bottle with an unsatisfying thud.
That ancient conversation played over and over in my head as I drove to Gusto’s Trattoria to meet Ken for dinner on February 14. I told myself not to get my hopes up. I reminded myself that we’d only been hanging out for a few weeks and hadn’t done more than awkwardly kiss on his couch—once. I replayed the audio clip of him telling me point blank that he didn’t celebrate holidays, do commitment, or even eat chocolate. I made sure to keep my expectations for the night nice and low.
Or so I thought.
Dinner was fine. The food was delicious. I overindulged and hated myself for it, as usual. And, even though Ken didn’t acknowledge that it was Valentine’s Day, he did at least pick up the check, which I know had to be unpleasant for him.
Things were going about the way I’d expected—until I handed Ken his gift.
I’d made the card myself, remembering how he felt about Hallmark. On the front, I’d drawn a Celtic knot, my favorite thing to doodle, and if you looked closely, hiding inside the intricate design were the letters K, E, and N. I don’t even remember what I’d written on the inside of the card, probably something sarcastic. Then, I’d tucked it into an envelope and taped it to a gift-wrapped All-American Rejects CD. I hadn’t wanted to get him anything expensive, just a little token, and since we’d had a car sing-along to the song “Swing Swing” the week before, I’d thought it would be the perfect gift.
A gift…
That Ken…
Refused…
To fucking…
Open.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said, his tone almost punitive as he stared at my offering.
“Why not?” I snapped, thrusting the package at him again.
Because you don’t like me like that? Because I’m cool enough to hang out with but not hot enough for you to invite upstairs or break your Valentine’s Day rules over? Because you’re a serial killer, and you don’t want to own anything with my fingerprints on it?
“Because, if I wanted something, I’d buy it for myself.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Maybe I don’t want anything.”
“You want this.”
Ken watched me pout the way an exhausted parent watches their toddler have a tantrum. His whole being seemed to say, Can we not do this right now? and, Are you done yet?
But I wasn’t done. I was Brooke fucking Bradley, a spoiled only-child whose parents had inadvertently taught her that no simply meant I hadn’t been a big enough pain in the ass yet. Ken might not want anything, but I sure as shit did.
“Listen,” I snarled as soon as our server left with Ken’s credit card, “either you can open this, or I can do it for you, but we are not leaving here until you’ve seen your fucking present.”
Ken sighed, his shoulders sagging in defeat, but he made no move to reach for the gift.
“Fine,” I hissed. Pulling the envelope away from the package unnecessarily hard, I tore open the flap and yanked out the homemade card. “Ooh, would you look at that?” I cried in my sweetest Southern belle voice, blinking my biggest Disney princess eyes. “Isn’t that just the prettiest thing you ever did see?” I gasped and placed a hand over my heart. “Oh my goodness, I think it even says your name.” I slapped the card on the table where Ken’s plate had been. “And there’s more!” I tore the silver gift wrap off the CD and turned it around to face him. “The All-American Rejects. Oh, I just love them! What a nice gift you got, Ken.” Tossing the CD next to the card on the table, I fell out of character and slumped back in my booth. Napalm pumped through my veins as I glared at him, imagining a thousand and one ways that I could hurt him, using only the cutlery on the table.
“Can we go now?” Ken asked, unaffected by my performance.
Pulling on my harshest resting bitch face, I grabbed my purse and Ken’s gifts off the table. “Great idea.”
In addition to being a holiday engineered by American greeting card companies, Valentine’s Day was also Jason’s birthday. He was throwing himself a birthday party that night, and we’d promised to go.
“You still going to Jason’s?” Ken asked from somewhere behind me as I stomped across the dark parking lot toward my black Mustang.
I caught a hint of remorse in his voice. Or maybe it was trepidation because I was acting like such a stabby psycho.
“Yep,” I replied flatly just as Ken hit the unlock button on his key fob.
The headlights on his Eclipse blinked a few spaces away, and before I had a chance to even think about it, I’d already broken into a full-on sprint. I raced to his car, yanked open the passenger door, and tossed both the CD and card inside. Slamming Ken’s door, I turned and power-walked back to my Mustang, making direct eye contact with him the whole way.
They’re yours now, motherfucker. Suck it.
Ken watched me with a look of absolute boredom on his beautiful face.
I peeled out of there and was back on the highway before Ken had even cranked his engine. Even though I was doing fifteen over the speed limit, the drive into Atlanta felt like it took an eternity. I spent my time alone replaying every aspect of my Valentine’s date from hell and then moved on to psychoanalyzing our entire relationship. I came to two conclusions during that trip across town.
One, Ken was a stubborn, rigid, self-restrictive asshole.
And two, I’d been right all along; he just wasn’t that into me.
I threw my car into a parking spot beside Jason’s apartment building and marched up the four flights of cement stairs without waiting for Ken to arrive. The way he drove, I’d probably beaten him by a solid ten minutes anyway.
Jason opened the door after the fifteenth knock, reeking of brown liquor and smiling from ear to ear.
“Whasss up, buttercup?” he slurred.
I raised my arms to hug him around the neck. “Happy birth—ahh!” I squealed as Jason picked me up and spun me around.
Kicking the door shut and almost dropping me in the process, Jason turned and carried me into the living room where more people than usual were gathered in clusters, drinking and yelling over the aggressively loud electronic dance music blaring from Jason’s high-tech home stereo.
“Look what I found, muhrfuckersss,” Jason announced to no one in particular.
Setting me down on my feet, he steered his stumble toward the couch, snatching a half-empty glass of scotch off the coffee table along the way. Jason landed on the sofa, sending amber liquid flying.
I dived into the spot next to him and clasped my hands around his highball glass, steadying it before he dumped the rest of the caramel-colored contents on himself.
“Easy there, birthday boy. You might wanna pace yourself. You haven’t even blown your candles out yet.” I gave Jason a small smile that he didn’t return.
“Whasss the fuckin’ point?” he slurred, his glassy, droopy eyes searching for my face but landing somewhere near my shoulder. “Nobody cares.”
“Hey, what are you talking about?” I asked, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Look at all these people who came to your party. Everybody cares. What’s going on?”
I’d never heard Jason say anything negative before. I’d never really heard him talk about his feelings at all. Usually, I saw him
happy drunk, then sloppy drunk, then passed-out drunk, but never sad drunk.
Or sober, for that matter.
Jason went to take a sip from his glass, hitting his chin instead of his mouth.
Jesus.
I took his drink—the remaining contents inside worth more than my hourly wage—and placed it on a coaster on the coffee table. Looking around for help, I locked eyes with the only other sober person in the apartment.
Ken was standing in the kitchen, talking to Allen, but his eyes were on me.
With that single desperate glance, Ken crossed Jason’s living room, met my look of pity with one of his neutral aqua stares, and placed his hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Hey, man. You okay?”
Jason’s head slumped forward violently, a bead of drool hanging from his open mouth.
“Shit.” Ken looked at me with genuine concern peeking through his facade of nonchalance. “Let’s lay him down. Maybe on his side in case he pukes.”
“Okay.” I stood and watched as Ken guided Jason’s sad, lifeless body onto its side on the sofa. “I’ll get a trash can!” I ran to the hall bathroom, returning seconds later with a white plastic receptacle.
Unlike his fucking Valentine’s Day present, Ken accepted the trash can from me without hesitation, placing it on the floor beside Jason’s head.
I looked around, hoping to share a pitiful glance with someone over the state our birthday boy was in, but not a single pair of eyes was watching. Everyone was laughing and shouting and drinking and dancing as if nothing were wrong. Not one of them had noticed that the person they were supposed to be celebrating had already drunk himself unconscious.
Maybe Jason had been right about them.
I couldn’t just stand there and watch him sleep, but I also didn’t feel right about partying when my friend might or might not have alcohol poisoning.
I could smoke though. I could always smoke.
Reaching into my purse, I realized that I’d left my cigarettes on my passenger seat.
“Hey, I gotta run to my car real quick.”
I hated that I felt obligated to tell Ken where I was going, and I hated even more that he felt obligated to come with me. We weren’t a couple—he’d made that abundantly clear over dinner—but Ken followed me anyway, grabbing his black wool coat off the back of the chair in the foyer on our way out the front door.
We headed down the stairs without a word. I led the way around the side of the building, annoyed to see Ken’s maroon Eclipse parked right next to my Mustang. He stood in between our cars as I opened my passenger door and retrieved my babies.
“Fuck, it’s cold out here,” I complained, fishing a Camel Light out of the flimsy cardboard box.
“You could quit smoking,” Ken deadpanned with an arched brow. His arms were folded across his chest, and his shoulders were pulled up around his ears.
I knew he was freezing, too; he was just too fucking stubborn to admit it.
I popped a cigarette into my mouth and rolled my eyes before lighting it. Warm, dirty smoke filled my lungs, and I relaxed. With a long, delicious exhale, I gave him my signature response. The one I told my doctors, my parents, my employers—basically, every responsible adult in my life—when they suggested that I give up my favorite vice.
“I’ll quit when I get pregnant.”
Ken’s other eyebrow shot up to join the first. “When you get pregnant?”
Simmer down, asshole.
“Yeah. In, like, ten years,” I sassed.
Relief washed over his face.
Oh my God. Like I’d actually want to have your apathetic babies. Puh-lease.
“How much money do you spend on cigarettes a month?” Ken asked as I took another drag.
I wished he’d go back inside and let me enjoy my bad habit in peace. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.” A flash of interest danced on the edges of Ken’s always-neutral features.
I did the math in my head and cringed. “Jesus. Like, a hundred bucks.”
“Damn.” Ken shook his head. “If you put that money into a total market fund every month and let the interest compound over time, you could have”—he paused, his eyes looking up and to the right as he crunched the numbers—“around a million dollars by the time you retired.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I exhaled on a cough. “How do you know that?”
Ken shrugged. “Investing is kind of my hobby.”
I snorted. “Investing is your hobby? I don’t think you know how hobbies work.”
Ken’s smile made a rare appearance, softening his serious, square-jawed, all-American face. He opened his mouth, a smart-ass comeback at the ready, but I never got to hear it because, a split-second later, his body lurched forward and slammed into mine.
I yelped and dropped my cigarette as my hip crashed into the side mirror of my car.
“What the fuck?” I screamed into Ken’s chest, which was crushing me against the passenger window.
Craning my neck back, I found him hovering over me with his arms stretched up over his head as if he’d just caught a fifty-yard pass. Only, instead of a brown leather football in his hands, Ken was holding a brown leather loafer.
Following his gaze, my eyes traveled up, up, up the side of the building until I, too, saw the source of the projectile.
Perched on the railing of his fourth-floor balcony was the birthday boy himself. Jason’s head lolled forward. His feet dangled over the edge, and one of them was missing a shoe.
“Oh my God. Ken…”
Ken cupped a hand around his mouth and yelled up to Jason, “Stay there, man! We’re coming up!”
Jason yelled something incoherent back, but we were already gone. Taking the stairs two at a time, Ken and I flew back up to apartment 441 and burst through the door. Techno pulsed, and people danced as Ken and I pushed our way through the oblivious assholes Jason called friends and out to the balcony.
Closing the door behind us, I sighed in relief to see that we weren’t too late. Jason was still sitting on the narrow wooden railing, staring down at the parking lot below. But he wouldn’t be for long. Gravity was tugging at his heels. I could almost see it beckoning him from below. One wrong move and it would steal him from us forever.
As I stood in the doorway, struggling to catch my breath and trying to figure out what the fuck to say, Ken tiptoed toward Jason.
“Stay ’way!” Jason yelled, swinging his arm out in our direction.
Ken froze and held his hands up.
“Jason!” I screeched. “Don’t move like that! You’re gonna fall!”
“No’m not,” he slurred, dropping his hand and returning his gaze to the asphalt below.
“Honey, I don’t know what you took tonight or what’s going on, but this isn’t like you. Come back inside. Please?”
Jason snapped his head around, his glassy eyes unable to find mine in the dark. “Thisss me. Ffffffuckin’ real. You ’on’t know. You ’on’t fuckin’ care.” Jason tried to turn around enough to point at Ken, who was almost behind him, causing his body to slip a fraction of an inch and my heart to stop. “You come-see him.” His head lolled again as he turned back toward the parking lot. “Not me. Nobody c-c-c-come-see-muh…” Jason’s words became unintelligible as his teeth began to chatter, and his body began to shake.
Do something, BB!
“Jason,” I sputtered, my mind reeling as I watched my friend teetering on a tightrope between life and death, “of course I come to see you. You’re one of my best friends. I moved into this apartment complex last year because of you. Everybody loves you. I love—”
Everything happened in an instant, yet it felt like I was watching it unfold in slow motion. Before those three words could even leave my mouth, Jason spun around, ready to argue. I watched his face morph from enraged to terrified as the force of his spin caused him to lose his balance. As he realized a moment too late what he’d done.
What he would never be able to undo.
I leaped forwar
d and reached for him on instinct, my mind refusing to accept the fact that I was too far away to save him.
But Ken wasn’t.
One moment, Jason’s frightened brown eyes were begging me for help as his hands grasped at nothing, and the next, Ken was grabbing him by the arms and pulling him to safety. Ken yanked Jason over the railing so hard; they both tumbled backward and landed in a heap on the cement floor. I held my breath and watched in horror as Jason thrashed and kicked and fought against Ken, but Ken didn’t let him go. Not until his body went limp and his face crumpled in defeat.
The second he stopped fighting, I rushed to Jason’s side, cooing to him that it was okay, touching his arms, his shoulders, his face.
I watched his chin buckle as he curled up into the fetal position and buried his face in my lap. His body shivered against the freezing cold cement, and his quiet, keening sobs broke my heart.
Stroking his short brown hair and trying not to let him hear me cry, I glanced over at Ken. He had scooted as far away from us as he could get and was sitting with his back against the farthest wall of the balcony. One leg was out straight in front of him. The other was bent with his knee pulled up toward his chest. His eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them, and they were fixed on mine in the dark.
I stared at him in wonder.
Ken, the man who didn’t believe in gifts, had just given me my friend back.
Because he was sober, he’d been alert. Because he was an infuriating gentleman, he’d accompanied me outside. Because he was freakishly calm, he’d kept his cool during a crisis. And, because he was a jock, he’d had the reaction speed and strength to pull a grown man to safety. All the things I’d considered turn-offs, all the qualities I’d rolled my eyes at, I suddenly saw them as assets. They were the reasons Jason’s head was in my lap instead of splattered across the sidewalk.
I watched Ken watching us—so uncomfortable in the presence of emotion, so unsure of what to do now that the time for action was over—and I was overcome with appreciation. For him. As a person. For the things that made him different from everyone else. Everyone else was partying in the living room but not Ken. Ken didn’t care about fun. Ken cared about shit that mattered, like art and music and his credit score.