A Broken Pair

     Percy

The girl at the counter gives me a nervous look. The customers stare at me, confused. 

“Mister, wouldn't you rather buy the ice instead of sitting on the freezer,” an employee asks.

“I’m only 23,” I respond. “And it’s too hot out there for you to be judging me.”

The employee lets out a faint smile and walks away. This is what Josh’s reduced me to. A crazy person sitting on a freezer, in a broken-down gas station, trying to escape the insufferable heat. After a minute or two, he walks in and talks to the girl at the counter. She then points to me and he walks over.

“I told you to get us some snacks,” Josh says.

“But the freezer looked so hypnotizing.” 

He stares at me, sighs, then laughs.

“What’re you laughing at?”

He ignores me and continues to laugh. I take out my case of cigarettes from my pocket. Only three left. I take one out and light it up. I stare at Josh, annoyed, however, listening to him laugh makes me start laughing as well.

“Why are you laughing?” he asks.

“Because you’re laughing. Why are you laughing?” 

“Because you left the cash at home.” His laughter grows louder, but I immediately stop. 

“How was I going to pay for the snacks then?”

He shrugs.

“Did you not get gas?” 

“How could I?”

I jump off the freezer, put the cigarette in my mouth, and drag Josh out of the station. When we get out, we sit on the floor of the gas station parking lot. 

“You were in charge of the cash by the way. Not me.”

He looks at me and touches my bottom eyelid.

“You know you can’t lie to me.” He comes closer. “I could see right through you.”

I blow in his face and he just smiles, then stands up. I stick my hand out and offer him my cigarette. He shakes his head. I do it again and he shakes his once more.

“Take the freaking cigarette,” I demand

“I don’t want to.”

I scoff and continue smoking. He starts walking away from me. 

“Except for this gas station, there’s nothing for miles. Where are you going?”

He doesn’t answer me, he just keeps walking. After a while, he comes back and sits on the floor next to me. I offer him the cigarette again and he takes it. 

“I told you the car was out of gas,” I say.

“When?” 

I take out my phone and play a recent voice recording. In the recording, I’m telling Josh that we’re running low on gas and he just dismisses me and changes the subject. After the recording ends, he starts laughing. 

“You’re the worst.” He starts to laugh and I unintentionally join him. His smile grows wider and wider as he laughs. It’s been a while. I miss his smiles. The sun starts to set and we lay on the hot pavement smoking our problems away and looking at the sky. He gets up and extends his hand to me. 

“Let's go get some help.” He pulls me up from the ground. We take some things from our car and start walking. The cool breeze whistles a nice melody, but it’s interrupted by Josh singing “On the Road Again'' by Willie Nelson. He knows I hate that song, yet he always sings it just to annoy me.

“Can you not sing that song right now?” I ask. 

He just comes closer to me and starts singing louder. I start yelling loudly, but the louder I scream the louder he sings. After a while I yell “Stop” and we both get quiet.

“Why do you act like a five-year-old all the time?” Josh whispers.

“If I’m five years old, then you’re three.”

“If I’m three, then you’re a fetus.”

“I might be a fetus, but I still somehow manage to be more mature than you.”

We both continue walking in silence. After what feels like two hours, we stop for a break. I check the time on my phone. 9:43 p.m. I tell Josh and he lets out a groan and sits on the floor. I take out a can of vodka soda from my bag. It’s my favorite thing to drink after a stressful day.

He looks at me, confused. “Is this the smartest thing to drink right now?”

“When have we ever been smart?”

He shrugs and takes the bottle. I think of something and chuckle.

“We’re indirectly kissing right now,” I say.

Josh looks at me and smiles. “We could always just actually kiss.”

“Our lips are too dry. It’d be a turnoff.”

“Not for me.”

I look at him and stick my tongue out. As I laugh, he lies on the floor and looks at the sky. The sun has moved on from us and the moon has come to take its spot. I join him on the ground and we revel in the bits of wind we feel. Before getting up to continue our journey, I kiss him.

“That was nothing,” he says.

“You’ll get something after we find somewhere to stay for the night.”

He shoots up and starts speed-walking forward. I laugh and follow behind him. We keep walking and before I could even think of an excuse to stop for the day Josh starts screaming and running towards something. I follow him and scream when I see what’s up ahead. A motel!

Josh

I don’t believe in God, but this has to be the job of a miracle worker. I  was just about to think of an excuse to give up, but then I saw the light. I wish the light would have led me to a better place, but beggars can’t be choosers. Perc and I walk closer and closer to the motel. It only has two floors and it looks like it’s on the verge of breaking down. God, it’s worse than the gas station. We enter the motel and we’re greeted by a woman standing behind a cashier. Percy lies on a couch inside the motel and drops all the bags on the floor. I walk up to the cashier. 

“Cash or credit?”

“Either.”

I take out my card and give it to the woman. 

“Are you two dating?” 

I look at Percy for a while then back at the woman and answer, “I’m not sure as of now.”

“You are in room 119.” 

She gives me the keys to the room along with my credit card and her phone number. 

“Call me if you need anything.” 

She gives me a wink and I smile back at her as I put the card, keys, and her number in my pocket. I carry Percy on my back and carry our things in my hands. Once we get to the room, I sigh. The room has twin beds, which I push together to form a whole. To Percy, it’s not a romantic thing. He just has a fear of being alone, even while he's sleeping, so I always have to cuddle with him. To me it’s romantic. I put Percy on the bed and lie down next to him. Looking at him sleeping peacefully makes me feel guilty about taking the receptionist's number or even thinking about calling her. I put everything in my pockets on the dresser next to our bed and I go take a shower to wash all my bad thoughts away. The water is cold because this motel wanted to disappoint me more, but it helps me think over things I’ve been repressing for a while. Why’d I even want to go on this trip? He told me everything was fine between us. I don’t know why I didn’t just listen to him and stay home. The water starts to feel a bit warm. But we have been distant. Ever since graduation, we haven’t been the same. I mean, I still love him, but does he even feel the same way? The water starts turning cold and starts sputtering. With a heavy sigh, I turn off the water and get out of the shower.  I put on Percy’s clothes and go back downstairs to the receptionist.

“You’re fast,” she says.

“Very funny. I’m here to ask you-” I stop. “This is going to be embarrassing, but I kind of need some cash to get some gas for my car so I could go back home.”

She takes some cash from the cash register. 

“Could you do that?”

“It’ll be our little secret.”

She winks at me and walks out of the cashier’s booth. 

“Aren’t you busy?” 

“Have you seen this place? I’m lucky enough that you came in here or else I would’ve closed up.”

There are two voices inside me right now. One tells me to just go with her because nothing's going to happen, but the other one is trying to convince me that if I go, I’m going to end up cheating on Percy. Fortunately, I have enough trust in myself.

“Let’s go!”

Percy

I wake up in an empty twin bed in a shady-looking motel bedroom. I’m pretty sure I slept as soon as we got here, which means that Josh had to carry me, along with all our things. I let out a deep sigh. I forget how much of a sweetheart he is. I search around the room to find him, but he’s nowhere to be found. Worried, I open my cigarette case, light up a cigarette, and head to the elevator of the motel to look for him. Once the elevator doors open, I enter and stand next to a man wearing a nice suit and has nice thick hair. I feel intimidated by him for some reason. I start humming, “On the Road Again'' to take my mind off things, but he starts humming along with me. I turn around and raise my eyebrow at him. 

“Didn’t peg you for a Willie Nelson fan.”

He chuckles.

“I just know that one song.”

I chuckle as well.

“This is going to sound weird, but would you mind sharing that cigarette?” 

I nod and hand over the cigarette. When I give him the cigarette, he gives me a nod of thank you and gives a sign for me to join him on one of the dirty couches in the lobby. I don’t intend on staying long so I shrug and follow him.

“Name?” He hands me the cigarette. 

“Jacob,” I respond. 

“Yours?”

“Jeremy.”

“Wow, your parents must not have really cared about you to give you such a boring name.”

He starts laughing loudly. It wasn’t intended as a joke but to each their own. 

“Jeremy is short for Jeremiah,” he says.

I let out a faint chuckle. “I guess I’m the one with parents who didn’t care about me.

Josh

We finally reach a gas station after a couple of minutes. Surprisingly, conversations with her flow easily and we laugh at each other’s jokes and have fun. Things are so light and easy with her.

“It’s weird we haven’t asked each other this, but what’s your name,” the receptionist says as we enter the gas station. “Mine is Emily.”

“Robert,” I answer. If there’s one thing I learned from Perc, it’s that you never tell someone you just met your name. When we first met, he told me his name was Jacob or something. I automatically knew he was lying though. I could always see right through him. 

We grab five gallons of gas from a shelf at the store and we head to the cash register. She pays the cashier and we head on out. We start walking back to the motel, but Emily stops us.

“Could we take a quick detour?” She points towards this bar across the street from us. “I’m extremely thirsty after that long walk.” She grabs my hand. “Come on!” 

We run across the long street and enter the nearly empty bar. We sit on these two stools and she orders a martini, but I order a vodka soda. We start talking about how messed up, but kind of hilarious our childhoods were. Talking to her reminds me of my fifth date with Percy. That was when he actually started opening up to me and stopped feeding me lie after lie. As we’re talking, Emily’s favorite song plays on the speakers. She grabs me and drags me to the middle of the bar and we start dancing. As we dance, she starts getting closer and closer to me and I don’t push her away because I'm too busy getting a whiff of her perfume. Love Spell by Victoria's Secret. Perc puts this on every time we go on dates because he claims perfume smells nicer than cologne. 

“This is nice,” she says.

“It is.” I watch her eyes glow as she looks at mine. Before I know it, her lips are on mine, but I don’t push away. Not because I like it, but because she feels familiar. 

Percy

I stare at Jeremy's lips, eyes, and hair as he talks. He’s such an interesting person. Every word he says flows better than the last. He has such an interesting life and it’s kind of weird but I have a weird urge to upstage him. I used to do the same with Josh. He could always see through me though and try to make his stories less interesting to make me feel better. 

As he’s talking, I interrupt him. “You know, I had a pretty sad childhood.”

“How so?” 

I hate that I love him for not being mad at me for interrupting his story.

“Well, I grew up in a conservative African household and once my parents found out I was bi, they stopped contacting me. It was a sad time for me, but I eventually got over it.” That’s a lie. My parents didn't care about me enough to care that I was bi. I call them every other week.

He starts laughing. “You’re lying.” 

I scoff. “No I’m not.”

He touches my bottom eyelid. I flinch and move away. 

“You’re a really bad liar.”

“Why’re you wearing the suit?” I say, trying to change the subject.

“Why not the suit? I like to live every moment like its my last and if I’m living my last moments on earth, I’m going to live it right.”

I nod my head, impressed with his response. He continues telling me stories about his life and all I could do is sit in awe. He’s everything I’ve ever wanted, but for some reason, I don’t really want him. Something just doesn’t feel right. He starts talking about how he made this song with his friend when he was younger and he starts playing it.

“How old were you when you made it?”

“Around 17.”

I smile and groan.

“Seventeen years old and you already sounded like an angel? Amazing.”

He lets out a faint laugh. “Do you want to dance?”

He extends his hand out for me and I gleefully grab it. We start dancing and as we dance I put my head on his chest. I smile as I take in his scent. He smells like Old Spice and it’s not a smell I’m in love with, but it reminds me of when Josh sprayed a bunch of it on our first date. It was so cute and embarrassing. Where’d he go? Why didn’t he call me yet? Is he thinking of me right now? Thoughts of Josh start creeping into my head. I hate this stupid trip. I told him we were fine. Did he see through me again? 

When the song ends, I lift my head from Jeremy's chest, look up at him and smile. He looks down at me and smiles as well. He then starts inching closer and closer towards my face. Instead of following suit, I move my head and cough.

“Nice song,” I say.

“Thanks.” He lets me go, but as we break apart I see Josh at the entrance of the motel. He raises his eyebrow and stares at me, but I just stare at him, expressionless. 

Josh

Percy continues to blankly stare at me. 

“He’s hot,” I say, trying to break the silence.

“So is she,” he responds.

“Why the suit?”

“He claims it’s because he wants to live every second like it’s his last. Why waste time doing things that don’t give you pleasure?” He walks past the guy he was just dancing with and starts walking towards me. “What would you do? If this was your last second alive?” I stare at him, then I grab his face and kiss him. Not just a soft kiss, an end of the world kiss. The kiss that Emily or anyone for that matter can never recreate. 

“I love you,” I say to him as we break apart.

Percy

“I love you too,” I say. 

“Want to leave this place?” 

“Please.”

As we leave the motel, I take out the last cigarette from my case and share it with Josh. 

“What’d you ask the cashier at the gas station?” I ask.

“Why’re you asking that right now?”

“I want to know how you describe me to random strangers.”

He lets out a soft laugh. “I asked him to point me in the direction of a guy who looks like he could care less about what anyone thinks of him.”

I chuckle and look at Josh. “I do care about what  this one person thinks about me.”

He turns to me and smiles. “I care about what you think too.”

“I wasn’t talking about you, I was talking about Jeremy, the guy I was dancing with. I mean did you see that suit?”

Josh nudges me and laughs. This time, I intentionally join him, reveling in the sound of laughter that surrounds us and forgetting about our past woes as smoke fills the air.