It Started with a Getaway

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The leaves are a hue of bright green I haven’t seen in a long time. Summer out here isn’t swelteringly hot like it is back home where the humidity hangs in the air thick and oppressive. My friends came here to enjoy sitting around the living room drinking and playing games, but I came here to write and connect with the person I feel like I lost along the way. It’s difficult being a writer, when you tell people you write they look at you differently. It’s almost like you tell them you sell umbrella insurance or you’re a therapist for stressed out butterflies, they don’t see it as viable. Writing is an art, a passionate thing that I feel is like a living breathing entity that controls my emotions. I get depressed if I go too long without writing. My characters are real to me, they’re my friends when no one else is around. Being a writer means long hours of researching just so you can get that one detail in a scene accurate. It’s staying up half the night, and then some, because you just can’t sleep until you finish this chapter.

Jessica is arranging the liquor bottles on the counter, making sure the mixers are in the refrigerator and the shot glasses are organized. Don’t get me wrong, I like my whiskey probably more than I should; but unlike most people my age, I don’t need alcohol to have a good time. I believe alcohol should be reserved for relaxing over a good book or while creating something whether you’re a writer or an artist. I consider myself both by the way, a writer and an artist that is.

“Amber?” Jessica is looking at me with those big doe eyes of hers, and I realize she’s asked me a question.

“Sorry,” I say, “what?”

“Amber, get your head outta the clouds,” she rolls her eyes, tossing her short black hair eccentrically. “I asked you if you could get the rest of the bags.”

“Oh, sure.” I tuck my hair behind my ear, knowing I could never pull off the short bob that Jessica is sporting. She seems effortlessly feminine and guys are always attracted to her, not like I’m homely or anything but I’m definitely more awkward in my skin than she is. My hair is brown and wavy, not the cute waves that you see in the movies where the hair falls perfectly around the girl’s face and frames it. Nope, mine is frizzy on top where it parts off center with little tufts that stick up no matter how much product I use. Even her eyes are flashy, they’re a bright blue that she uses gold toned eyeshadow to enhance. Yet another thing I’m no good at, makeup. I frown as I gather the rest of our bags, my eyes are brown and I have no idea what I’m doing with makeup. Contouring is a foreign concept to me, and I mean really, what’s the point?

Connor comes through the front door, bag slung over his shoulder, bangs falling messily into his eyes, and suddenly I can’t breathe. I’ve had a crush on Connor since I met him. He’s muscled in all the right places, his voice is deep and what romance authors would describe as husky. The sandy hair just puts the icing on the cake, the cherry on top of the sundae, the sprinkles on the cupcake; and God he looks good enough to eat.

“Hey babe, which room’s ours?”

And there’s the problem, Connor is Jessica’s boyfriend. Am I a bad friend? Yeah, I’m a bad friend. I have a total thing for my best friend’s boyfriend.

“Second one on the left,” Jessica calls over her shoulder. Does she even appreciate what she has? Connor is a lot like me, we’re both avid readers and Jessica makes fun of us for swapping books nonstop. I watch as Connor saunters to the room the two of them will share, the room right next to mine in this cottage in the middle of nowhere that looks and feels like it came straight out of a fairytale or some campy B movie.

A few of Connor’s friends are here too, but they’re jocks and not my type at all despite Jessica trying to set me up with Matt every chance she gets. Matt is a bodybuilder wannabe and a gym rat that spends all of his free time picking up heavy things and can’t walk past a mirror without flexing and checking himself out. Yeah, I don’t even know if the guy knows how to read let alone shares my interest in genres. Then there’s Josh, and I’m wondering if our group of friends could have more generic names. Connor, Matt, Josh, Jessica…sounds like someone just randomly pulled names from the top ten most common baby names and stuck us all together. Josh is a nerdy jock, not in the way I’m nerdy of course, no that would be too simple. He likes shoot ‘em up war games with very little storyline and lots of blood where he can talk smack about his teammates’ mamas over his headset.

I play video games, I’m not a total drag to be around after all; but I play mostly roleplaying and relaxing games like Skyrim and Animal Crossing. How do I fit in with these people again? Josh and Matt are outside preparing a campfire and checking their fishing gear, their deep voices carrying their “bro-ness” into the house. There’s an empty room in the cottage, we invited Cassie but she caught a stomach bug and is probably at her apartment back home on her knees worshipping the porcelain throne. Honestly, I’m kinda glad Cassie didn’t come. She’s ditzy and flighty, and when she’s around Jessica they never shut up about their makeup and hair and drunken nights out at the bar. They invite me to these expeditions, though what Jessica is doing going out to a bar when she has Connor just boggles my mind.

Matt and Josh come inside, Connor is helping Jessica in the kitchen, and suddenly the room is too small and I can’t breathe. Okay, so I just don’t like watching Connor fawn all over Jessica like she hung the moon. I grab my notebook and head outside. The view here is gorgeous, rolling hills of countryside with sun kissed mountains in the distance. It’s breathtaking, and I curl up in a surprisingly comfortable chair and put my pen to paper. I’ve been working on a novel that I’ll probably never publish, a novel that if Jessica were ever to read she’d know for certain that the main character was Connor and the woman he falls in love with isn’t her…it’s me. Connor would read it, he’s read my poetry and my collection of short stories that I published last year. He said he really liked my work. Thanks, Connor, can you really like me? Not as the friend who suggests good reads and lets you borrow all of her favorite books, but as more than that. Like I’m attractive, and you want me to want you, and I do want you but it’s wrong and…

Stop it, Amber. It’s wrong and you know it, Jessica might not appreciate him the way you would but he loves her. I keep writing until the sun dips behind the mountains and I can’t see the pages anymore, I am so engrossed in my fantasy I barely hear the glass door slide open and Jessica’s bare feet pad onto the porch.

“Hey, Amber,” she has a melodious voice, “we’re about to go roast marshmallows, you comin’ or are you gonna bury your nose in that book all night?”

“I’m coming,” I jump at the sound of her voice. I knew she was here, but I get lost when I write.

The campfire is already lit, and Matt is sitting shirtless on a low bench with two sticks for roasting marshmallows or weenies with in his hand. He looks up at me and smiles, patting the empty spot next to him in invitation. I resist the urge to roll my eyes, it’s no secret that he likes me but considering I think his taste in women is awful it’s not flattering; and it’s not you, Connor. Jessica has a large tumbler that her parents probably paid too much money for in her hand and I can smell the vodka from here. She mixes it with various juices until that tumbler is full and she can barely swallow the concoction due to the bite of the alcohol.

“I got you a drink, whiskey right?” Matt offers me a glass.

“Yeah,” I say shyly and sit down, but I leave space between us. Gotta leave room for Jesus my mom used to say, and this is one time I will not only happily abide by that rule but enforce it.

“Remember the night after finals?” Jessica is prattling on about one of the most frequently told stories about our lives. “Poor Matt got so drunk he fell down the stairs to our apartment twice!” She hands me her tumbler, “You’ve gotta try a sip of mine, Amber.” She returns to the story louder and more flamboyantly than before, “So, anyway, there I was in the middle of the street in front of our apartment with Matt out cold at the bottom of our stairs…”

She’s talking about her apartment like Connor lives there too, with her arm intertwined into his and her fingers rubbing his delts like she owns them. We go to the same university and met during our prerequisite classes before splitting into separate majors. Matt is riding on a scholarship, I’m not even sure what he’s majoring in other than playing football and bodybuilding. Josh is going into biology, he’s thinking med school. Jessica wants a degree in business, big surprise there considering her family owns one of the largest businesses in the area. Then there’s Connor, he’s going for engineering but is minoring in english. Really I think he should swap his major, he’s brilliant and can tell a story so well it will make you weep.

I let my mind wander as Jessica relives that night of drunken debauchery, her hands waving around as she gets “to the good parts” and I can’t stop staring at Connor and the whiskey is making my imagination go wild. Stop. You have to stop, Amber. Stop thinking about his arms around you, that wonderful chest underneath his shirt with a tuft of fine hair poking up out of the neckline, and how good your lips would feel on mine, maybe your lips kissing a line down my neck and between my breasts down to my…STOP IT, AMBER!

I feel dizzy, the whiskey is doing a good job of throwing my inhibitions down the drain. I can’t get the images out of my head, so I get up and wobble my way into the house for something more substantial to eat than marshmallows and hot dog weenies. I should hear the door closing behind me, but I don’t and suddenly Connor is in the kitchen with me. No, no, no, you shouldn’t be in here when I’m like this. I don’t know if I can control myself, but you’re talking to me.

“Hey, Amber,” he says, and I realize he’s just as drunk as I am.

“Hey, Connor,” I said stupidly, and you must know that I’m in love with you. My cheeks are hot and flushed, my skin’s on fire from being so close to him and I’m afraid he’ll be incinerated if he touches me.

“You should get to bed,” he tells me in that deep voice I love so much.

I realize I’ve had a lot of whiskey at this point, more than I realized, and maybe the glass was laced with a little something extra. Jessica liked to do that kinda stuff sometimes, maybe that’s why she wanted me to drink hers. I don’t even know what it was I may or may not have just taken, but Connor is steadying me and leading me to my room. My head’s spinning and I can’t stop myself from pulling him down onto the bed with me, he kicks the door shut behind us and maybe he’s taken some of Jessica’s little white pills.

His lips are just as soft as I’d always imagined them to be, like satin as they glide over mine hungrily. Your hands roam my body and I’m helping you take my shirt off. The pressure mounts as our kisses become more and more desperate, bare skin touching more bare skin; and suddenly we’re in sync as you move on top of me. I can’t hold off and neither can you and we’re both basking in the afterglow and panting and…

OH. MY. GOD. WHAT THE HELL DID WE JUST DO?!

Oh no, Connor isn’t mine. Connor doesn’t belong to me, he has my best friend’s heart and I’m such a shitty person for getting drunk and for taking advantage of Connor and I started this and…I’m rambling, this doesn’t even make any sense anymore. Nothing makes sense anymore, why did I agree to come out here? I’ve always been afraid of being alone with Connor for this reason, and he’s intoxicated and maybe high. It’s all because of you, Jessica! It’s your fault! You gave everyone here drugs! I don’t do drugs, I’ve never even smoked marijuana for God’s sake!

Oh, I’m a terrible person, or you’re a terrible person, or Connor is…I don’t even know anymore. Connor is touching me again, and it feels too good to—wait a minute, that’s not Connor. Who is this? The hands are still soft, but they’re too soft to be his and most definitely too soft to be Josh or Matt.

“Jessica?” I’m suddenly sober, and she’s running her fingers through my hair, and her lips are on mine.