Fireworks: A Holiday Bad Boy Romance (75 page)

“I don’t know, man,” he
says. “I’m pretty pissed at you right now.”

“I’m pretty pissed at
you, too,” I tell him. “You’re kind of an asshole.”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Talk
sweet to me.”

“Do you really think I’d
be asking if I had anywhere else to go?” I ask.

His bottom lip comes up a
bit and he’s looking up and off into the distance.

“Rob?” I ask.

“Yeah?” he returns,
holding his general position.

“You all right, man? Your
eyes are kind of glazing over,” I tell him.

“You’re going to have to
sleep on the couch,” he says.

“Done,” I answer.

“Under no circumstances
are you allowed to beat off on my couch,” he says.

“That’s not a problem.”

“If you have a chick
over, you can take her to my room, but only if I’m not in there, you’re quiet,
and you make sure my shit stays clean,” he says.

“Have you noticed most of
your rules so far have been regarding how I’m expected to act with my penis?” I
ask. “I wonder if that means something.”

“Shut the fuck up, dude,”
he says. “I’m only considering taking you in ‘cause we’ve got history and shit.
If I wasn’t such a nice guy, you wouldn’t even be standing there right now.”

“I appreciate it very much,”
I tell him.

“All right,” he says.
“Your ass gets a job, though. I know you’ve got the big comp comin’ up and all
that, but I got bills and you’re another mouth to feed.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I
tell him, even though I have no idea how. The animal shelter doesn’t pay me,
and even if they did, they only ever call when they’re really overloaded.

“By the way,” Rob says.
“I walk in my sleep, so make sure to keep the front door locked after I go to
bed. I forgot a while ago and fucking woke up standing next to the train
tracks.”

“It’s good to know how to
kill you without ever having it come back to me,” I tell him. “I’ll keep the
door locked.”

“Sometimes,” he says, “I,
uh—well I’m not even sure that I do it, but my last gf, Jenn, the one with the
big nose and the DSLs?”

“You really think I pay
attention to the internet services of your exes?” I ask.

“Dick-sucking lips, bro,”
he says, punching me in the shoulder. “Dick-sucking lips.”

“Okay, what about the
girl with the DSLs?” I ask.

“Well,” he says, rubbing the
back of his neck, “she always used to tell me that I scream in my sleep. I
think she was just making it up as a guilt trip thing or whatever voodoo
females do, but just in case she wasn’t, you know, don’t be like freaked out or
anything.”

This is fucking rock
bottom.

*
                   
*
                   
*

Last night was one of the
most harrowing nights of my life.

I didn’t know this about
Rob, but he’s started going to bed earlier. He says he saw something about it
on the Discovery Channel, although he never mentioned exactly what “it” is.

It was going to be great.
I was going to have the place to myself for a little while. I mean, not that I
was going to tear shit up or anything, but I’d have some time, space and
privacy to think.

For a little bit, being
surrounded by empty beer cans, bottles and glasses, along with various fast
food bags and other assorted detritus didn’t even seem like such a big deal.
Maybe things weren’t ideal, but at least I had a nice evening in front of me.

Yeah, it was supposed to
be a really positive thing.

Jenn wasn’t lying to him,
though.

It began about two hours
after he went to sleep. I was able to get through a whole movie before it
started. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that
after the movie was over, the credits were rolling and I was walking up to the
Blu-ray player to take the disc out when I heard the most desperate, hate and
fear-filled scream coming from Rob’s room.

I dropped whatever I had
in my hand—I think it was the remote control, but my mind wasn’t really so good
with details in that moment—and ran over, around and sometimes through the
stacks of clutter Rob’s always too lazy to do anything about, trying to make it
in time to save my asshole friend from whatever terrible thing was happening to
him.

When I opened the door to
his bedroom, though, the screaming stopped. Rob was just lying there in his
bed, sound asleep.

Fight or flight died down
enough for me to remember that Rob had warned me of this possibility, but I
still flipped on a lamp and checked the room for bodies before I left him to
sleep.

I got back out to the
living room and sat on the only cleared-off piece of furniture in the house,
and also my bed for the foreseeable future, the couch. It took me a while to
get my pulse to ease its pace from Flight of the Bumblebee to Moonlight Sonata,
but eventually, my eyes started to close and I started to drift off to sleep.

My mind and body were
ready to check out for the night right until I heard the shuffle of someone
walking through the apartment.

“Could you just try to
keep it quiet?” I asked him. “I’m trying to sleep.”

There was no answer.

Maybe he was just passing
through on his way to the bathroom, or to the kitchen for a late snack. That’s
what I was thinking, or at very least, hoping.

When I didn’t hear the
footsteps ever make a return trip, I finally decided to open my eyes and Rob
was standing over me, his eyes open, but blank somehow. It was like he was
looking through me.

“You all right, man?” I
asked.

He just kept staring at
me.

Sleepwalking.

He’d warned me for this,
too, but it didn’t dawn on me, the various and startling reality of actually
having to be in an apartment with him.

Maybe it wouldn’t have
been such a shock to my system if Rob wasn’t all banged up from our fight
earlier in the day. For whatever reason, seeing him standing over me like that
screamed of some sort of revenge, but he just stood there quietly.

“Rob?” I tried again.

His gaze had started to
drift, but he focused on me in that moment. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Do you think this will
meet the dress code down at the club?” Rob asked. “I never can tell whether
these restaurants are going to require me to wear a jacket. Terribly
uncomfortable things, they are.”

I think that was the most
horrifying part of the whole night, hearing him talk like some blueblood with a
much better command of the language than I thought Rob could even process.

Apparently, that file’s
just too large to run while he’s conscious.

“Go back to bed, Rob,” I
told him. “We can talk about it in the morning.”

Three more times I woke
up last night to find Rob standing over me, always in a different spot.

I didn’t sleep.

Now, it’s almost noon and
I’m riding down to the skate park to clear my head.

I don’t know what the
hell I’d do if I didn’t skate. I’d probably lose it entirely.

The park’s animated with
about a dozen skaters and about as many skate groupies. I never really got the
appeal of being a groupie. Rather than simply be close to someone who you
greatly admire, why not
become
someone that can be admired?

Probably just a
personality thing.

I ollie the curb and
skate right into the park. There are a few people I know around, some
acquaintances and the like, but I’m not really in the mood to stop and chat.

There’s a growing chance
that I might actually kill Rob.

All right, it’s still a
tiny chance, but it is growing.

I drop in on a quarter
pipe and plot my course, making sure to avoid all the other assholes out here
with something to prove.

I’ve got decent speed as
I come to a rail and a quick nollie puts me in a crooked grind I ride all the
way to the end, coming off of it with a 180.

It was good of Rob to
finally relent and let me stay with him, but I don’t know if I can
psychologically handle staying there for very long. Right now, I think my only
hope is to work my ass off and win this competition—you know what? Who am I
kidding?

Even if I can get over my
problem dropping in, that doesn’t mean I’m going to just scoot right into first
in vert.

I’ve got to make sure I’m
solid on a few different approaches for the street competition or it’s not
going to matter what I do with vert.

The street course is
obviously not going to be the same as the layout of the skate park here, but
the basic elements are present in both.

I can fine tune the run
when I get a chance to skate that course, but until then, I can get some combos
put together to make sure I’m in the best possible position going into vert.

It’s funny, I never
bothered looking at what the prizes for second and third place are going to be.
Realistically, I’ll be pretty fortunate if I even end up in one of those
positions.

If I can lay down
something solid on the street run, though, that’s got to put me in the good
graces of sponsors. I mean, these people know not everyone’s a vert skater any
more than everyone’s a street skater. Hell, it took them years to convince
Mullen to go from flatland to street. I’ve got to be able to come out of this
with something.

I roll up one side of the
fun box slow, just enough speed to get me almost to the top and I ollie into a
backside flip and try to land in in a nose manual, but my momentum’s wrong, so
I just come down.

Pumping harder now, I’m
heading toward the halfpipe and just for my own self-spite, I lift the back of
the board so I get that nose manual after all, and I stretch it into a 360 flip
before rolling up the quarter-pipe, crooked grinding the lip and throwing in a
quick shove it on the way out for good measure.

I’m starting to feel a
little bit looser, a little less consumed by my dad’s bullshit and the true
horror of a night at Rob’s.

I launch into a nollie
flip, and I’m starting to feel like everything’s going to work itself out,
maybe not immediately, but eventually for sure. Of course that’s when I spot
Mia chatting it up with a couple of loose acquaintances of mine.

I forget what the fuck I
was doing and the board clatters in front of me as I land on my feet.

There’s nothing
particular I can think to say to her, but I know that I need to talk to Mia.
She keeps getting scared off, and I’m really not that scary a guy.

I did beat the shit out
of Rob, though. That was pretty cool.

As I’m no longer a
teenager, I don’t bother trying to impress with any tricks as I’m rolling up to
her. Even if I did go for that approach, she doesn’t notice I’m coming until
I’m coming to a scraping stop a couple of feet from the group.

A couple of people say hi
to me and I give a couple quick nods and single-syllable greetings before I
turn to Mia.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” she says.

She turns back to talk to
a short redhead chick I’ve seen around here a couple of times, but haven’t met,
and everyone’s back in their conversations.

In this group, I know
Tyler, Bret and, of course, Mia. There’s also the redhead and who I’m pretty
sure is someone’s younger brother, but I don’t really have much to say to
anyone but Mia.

For a minute, I just try
to join in the conversation—you know, take some time to map out my approach
here. It’s all bullshit skate tales where everyone’s talking about that time
they saw that guy and he did that thing and it was just so fucking spectacular
and I just want to talk to Mia.

“So Bret,” Mia asks,
pulling my attention away from whatever whoever was saying, “I’ve seen you
around, but we’ve never really talked, have we?”

She’s toying with me, messing
with me, just trying to make me jealous. I can assure you it is absolutely,
without question, working.

Still, that’s not how I’m
going to win back the heart of my punkish… fuck, I’m off today.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m
glad we’re making that right.”

What a dumbass.

“Me, too,” she says. “You
know, I’ve always liked really tall guys.”

“Really?” he asks.

“Can we talk?” I ask Mia.

She looks over at me and
makes a big show of rolling her eyes.

“Just for a minute,” I
tell her. “I just want to explain a couple of things to you so you don’t have
the wrong idea.”

Now everyone in the group
is looking at me, but I’m really not in the mood to care right now.

“Fine,” she says with an
exaggerated sigh and we walk away from the group together.

“What are you doing?” I ask.