By Emi Gruender
BA DUM, BA DUM BA DUM BA
The thunderous drum riff was a rude awakening, for sure. Considering the fact that the guitar and keyboard didn’t come in at that specific moment made me realize that Stanley was probably being a jerk. Again. I opened my eyes groggily. My bandmates stared at me from the other side of the garage, dumbfounded, as I woke up from my nap on the soiled couch. Stanley threw his drumsticks to the floor, irritated. Astrid’s electric guitar whined through the amp as she dragged her fingers across the frets, obviously annoyed. Link stared at me from the keyboard, his usually neutral face pulled into a taut expression.
“What are you doing, Ricky?” Astrid hissed exasperatedly. “‘I’m just gonna sit down for a second,’ you said. ‘I’m resting my eyes,’ you said. Five minutes later you’re sleeping?”
I groaned incoherent words as a retort, shoving my face into the green cushions. It smelled vaguely of cat urine and Cheetos.
“It’s Lena, for sure.” Link chimed in.
“Are you serious?” Stanley groaned. “Ricky, didn’t we talk about this? Eight times, maybe?”
“He’s obviously heartbroken,” Astrid interrupted. As the only member of the female species in our band, she felt as if she had some mystical power in decoding the actions of every girl, ever.
“Yeah, doesn’t mean he has to flake out during our sessions,” Stanley snapped. “Come on, man, my mom only lets me use the garage for an hour every day. You’re the only one out of us who can sing.”
“I can sing—” Astrid interjected.
“No, you can’t.” Link and Stanley droned in unison, as if rehearsed.
I felt the cushions bend as three bodies sunk into the space beside me.
“You’ve dated so many girls, Rick.” Astrid said, in what she must have thought sounded like a comforting tone.
“Yeah, Astrid, I’m no stranger to love.” I replied sarcastically, my voice muffled through the cushions.
“Then you know the rules.” Link chimed in helpfully. “She does, too. She knows that your relationships are short and sweet and” – Link made a chef’s kiss motion with his hands— “done.”
I grunted again, turning my face away from the pillows to face my bandmates, all of which were clustered way too close to my fetal position on the couch.
“It’s surprising, though,” Stanley leaned over to tousle my hair, much too roughly. “That you get all those girls even though you’re, like, ginger enough to rival Ed Sheeran.”
I rolled my eyes at him as a response. “Ha, ha.”
“Wait. I think I can name them all,” Link ventured, his eyes trained on the ceiling. He snapped his fingers a couple times, trying to sort through a plethora of names and faces.
“Ashley was first, right? ” he asked. Astrid nodded in approval. Stanley just sat there.
“Sarah was next, I remember,” Astrid interceded when Link hesitated.
“Taylor, too,” Link said, with a wistful expression. “God, I don’t know how you pulled her.”
“Link! Do you remember Lexie?” Astrid asked, eyes suddenly energetic. In unison, they both mimed gagging.
“Either Emi or Erin was next,” Link continued thoughtfully. Stanley rolled his eyes.
“Yve— I don’t remember her name, wait— Yvette!” Both Astrid and Link roared with laughter, doing an uncomfortably accurate impression of my most recent ex.
“You guys are awful.” I said, knocking Link square in the face with a cushion that had a suspicious brown stain on it.
Astrid fixed me with an inquisitive look before motioning for Stanley to come closer to her. With a cupped hand around his ear, I watched, annoyed, as Stanley’s mouth broke into a knowing grin. Link’s ear was next in line.
“No…” Stanley muttered. “You don’t think…”
“It’s very likely,” Link agreed.
“What are you guys talking about?” I demanded, mock-impatiently.
“Someone thinking of a full commitment…” Astrid sing-songed, clasping her hands together like a disney princess.
“Wow, I would not have expected that. Especially from a who–” Stanley started.
“Hey.” Link warned. “The author wants to write an appropriate story and get into college, thank you very much.”
“So?” Astrid prodded, delighted to be having “girl-talk” with her bandmates. “You want her to be your girl? For more than two weeks, this time?”
“Oh my god, Asty, you’re so right! Lena would be so lucky. She couldn’t get what Ricky has from any other guy!” Stanley trilled in a high-pitched, girly tone.
“Don’t call me Asty, you make me sound like a synonym for flatulence,” said Astrid, suddenly stoic.
“Isn’t Lena moving to her dad’s house soon? In, I don’t know, England? In a week, maybe?” Link asked thoughtfully. “Going to Surrey, I think. British towns have weird names.”
“Yeah, which means you don’t have a lot of time!” Astrid stressed, more invested in my love life than I was. “You should just tell her how you’re feeling.”
“She’s known me my whole life,” I complained. “She won’t understand why I’m suddenly wanting to stick to one girl instead of many.”
“Then you’ve gotta make her understand,” Link pushed emphatically.
“You should go to the grocery store—” Astrid started
“And get some flowers—” Link continued.
“And then go up to her door—”
“Just talk to her. She’ll understand that—”
“Maybe you could keep in touch with her when she moves to her Dad’s house—”
“And then you can focus on the band,” Link and Astrid finished in unison, out-of-breath. They looked at each other, accomplishment and satisfaction in their eyes. After a resonant high five, they turned to Stanley, who stood at the foot of the couch, arms folded.
Stanley sighed heavily, looking at the beat-up clock on the wall in defeat.
“Fine,” he gave up. “Jam session is over today. You better have things straightened out tomorrow, though, Rick.”
“Wait, hold on, I didn’t agree to any of this, I didn’t even say that it was Lena that was the issue—” I sputtered. Stanley interrupted me with his large, heavy hand on my shoulder.
“I believe in you, son.” He spoke solemnly. “Even though your hair looks straight out of a cartoon.”
— — —
I’m not quite sure how it happened, but a couple hours later, I found myself in the flower aisle of my local Safeway. I couldn’t believe that my bandmates had somehow bullied me into this.
But she was leaving soon. What was I going to do? Not say anything?
I heaved a great sigh, skimming the tags on the plastic wrappings. Roses were $11.99, but Daisies were $5.69. But Daisies were also too friendly. I wouldn’t want her to think I’m friendzoning her or anything—
“Rick! Hi,” A cheery voice said, so sudden that my heart jumped into my throat. My wallet fell out of my hand and clattered against the ground, flipping open. As I turned on my heel, I saw a familiar head of blonde curls and dark blue eyes, crinkled around the edges in a smile. Lena.
“Lena. Hey! How are you? What—what are you doing here?” I muttered, uncomfortably running a hand through my hair. God, I hope that didn’t look as stupid as it felt.
“Grabbing some dinner for my mom and I tonight, before I leave for the airport.” Lena sighed, her gaze falling onto my wallet on the floor. “You dropped something—”
“Oh, yeah! I did, thanks.” I wasn’t even thinking about my wallet at that moment. Much too quickly I bent down where Lena was already grabbing the wallet. With a chonk, our heads bounced off of each other as our hands collided over my wallet. Lena hissed in pain. I snatched it from the floor, clutching my skull with the other hand.
Both of us now laid sprawled on the linoleum floor, stunned. Her mouth cracking into a great smile, Lena’s eyes dropped to the wallet in my hand. She laughed– a beautiful sound.
“What’s that?” She asked, plucking a piece of paper from the clear pocket. I yelped in protest, but she had already unfolded it, gently handling the delicate creases. Her brows puckered in confusion for a half of a second, until melting into a touched expression. Turning the piece of paper to me, she pointed at the singular drawing of a duck and said, “I drew this for you, right?”
Busted.
“Yeah, I think that’s been in there for a while. I forgot about it, though—”
“You wrote a date on it,” she breathed, pointing to the date in blue ink on the top right corner, in adult handwriting. “Wow.”
She took a moment, staring at the drawing with wonder.
“I can’t believe we’ve known each other for so long. Doesn’t your heart just ache thinking about it? How long has it been? Five years? This is from sophomore year.” she marveled, folding up the paper again.
“Yeah, you were really shy back then. You could barely say anything to me,” I responded, accepting the paper and tucking it back into my wallet.
She laughed again, a sound like windchimes.
Sure, girls have come and gone throughout the years. Ashley and Sarah in junior year, Taylor and Lexie in senior year, Emi and Yvette in college. But Lena had always been in the corner of my mind, present in her illustrations whenever I opened my wallet. Even then, standing in front of her, my heart ached. I could only hope that her heart was, too.
“Someone has a crush, then?” Lena teased, nudging me towards the flower displays. Her eyes sparkled with a mischievous air. Oh, god.
“Yeah. I’m getting her some–uh— flowers, right now. She told me that she wanted–” I flailed wildly at the floral displays. “ –Roses.”
I would have missed the way Lena’s face fell if I didn’t know her as well as I did. I saw the crinkles around her eyes disappear in tandem with the vanishing of her dimples. I felt my inner self facepalm. Come on, Lena, I thought. How don’t you know what’s going on? Don’t tell me you’re too blind to see?
“You should introduce me to her sometime. We gotta hang out more,” Lena finally said with an air of indifference. “I’ll see you around.”
I watched her walk toward the Produce aisle, her arm attached to her bicep behind her back. I didn’t miss the disappointed expression on her face.
Wow, I thought. I am so extremely bad at this.
It felt like I had just chosen the wrong option in a game. I could almost see the floating type in the air– Game Over. Like we had just pranced around the truth in front of each other. We both know the rules, and we’re still going to play it.
Like a zombie, I grabbed a bouquet of assorted blossoms and sauntered toward the self-checkout. Every nerve in my body screamed to run to where she was, interrupt her pear-picking, and just ask her how she was feeling. If she felt the way I did.
I wasn’t usually such an idiot in love. As Stanley loved to call it, I was a “player.” But even still, I couldn’t understand how she was so blind. How she didn’t see how I froze up whenever I was near here, how she didn’t see what I truly felt.
“$14.50 is your total,” the self-checkout machine chirped. I paid the machine, feeling defeated, flowers already seeming to wilt in my hand.
What am I doing with myself?!
— — —-
As Stanley’s garage door creaked open, the only light illuminating my bandmates’ faces came from a fluorescent lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. My hair was damp, misted from the light drizzle outside. When I got inside, the garage door creaked closed again, evicting the cold outside air with a bang.
“So?” Astrid prodded excitedly from the couch. “How did it go?”
“It didn’t.” Stanley announced, without tearing his eyes from the comic book he was reading. “He’s still holding the flowers.”
“Ricky.” Link said suddenly, emerging from the shadows. I gasped, pressing a hand to my chest.
“Link! What the fu–” I gasped.
“She’s leaving tonight, at 8.” Link said solemnly, holding up The Brick— a loving nickname for Stanley’s mother’s ancient telephone from 3000 BCE. “She called just before you got here. She wanted to let us know. Astrid and Stanley already said goodbye over the phone.”
“She’s— She’s WHAT?” I demanded, snatching The Brick from Link’s hands.
“Hey— careful!” Astrid warned. It was too late. The Brick’s complete lack of maneuverability and crushing weight caused it to slip from my grasp and tumble to the floor. With an earth-shattering crack, The Brick fractured into a million pieces, dead on the floor.
Silence.
“Well,” Stanley ventured, detached. “That was a perfect twist of fate.”
Lena’s words came back to me like a flash.
“I’m grabbing some dinner for my mom and I tonight, before I leave for the airport.” she had said. I had completely ignored it.
“If you wanna be honest with her, you better do it now,” Stanley tossed a glance up to the beat-up clock on the wall. 7:39. “Good luck.”
Panic rose in my chest. I grabbed the flowers from the couch and ran to the side door. I could not wait for the archaic garage screech open again.
“It’s raining,” Astrid called out to me. “You need an umbrella! You’re in a T-Shirt! Ricky!”
I slammed the door in their faces, wincing a little at the sudden impact. It’s fine, I thought. I’ll apologize to them later. Now, all I could focus on was my shoes pounding against the concrete, the muddy water sloshing around my shoes. Rain dripped into my eyes as I tore through the street, until I finally stood at her doorstep.
I barely registered walking up her porch and ringing the doorbell. I didn’t register anything until I saw her appear at the door. “Ricky? Hey. What’s going on?”
The words tumbled out of me before I could stop them.
“Lena, I know I let you down. But ever since sophomore year, you’ve been on my mind. Nonstop. I won’t let you down again. I know that throughout high school I ran around, jumping from girl to girl like crazy. But I will change. I can change. I will never desert you.” I blurted, red in the face. Lena stared at me, speechless.
“Rick–” she started, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.
“Lena, it’s okay. The last thing I want to do is make you cry. And I know you’re leaving soon, but I can’t say goodbye. I promise you that I will never tell a lie. I would never hurt you like that.”
Lena’s eyes were unreadable as she looked at me like she had never seen me before.
“What are you saying, Rick?” she finally said. I could hear in her tone that she was waiting for one answer, specifically. I am not one to disappoint.
“I’m never gonna give you up.”
Link emerged from the shadows with a diabolical grin. With a voice like a possessed demon, he uttered the words of the author.
“You didn’t see that coming, did you? You should have.”