“What the fuck is wrong with you, dad?” I just…can’t anymore. The lies, the poison, and the anger in him are in excess, pus ready to burst and hurt. “You want to marry off your daughter right after high school? How sick are you? You think because mom died after I was born that you have the right to take away my life from me? How dare you insult her memory? How dare you? She was the woman of your dreams and you tarnish what is left of her by declaring your own daughter won’t go to school? Why? Why would you be so heartless that even the slightest memories of how happy you were still won’t sway your black heart? You found a person for me to marry. You’re an old fool if you think I’m going through with such nonsense.”
My knees are too windy to move. I breathe hard, making an effort to bring my brain to sanity, to stop before he raises his hand again at me, to take care not to say anything foolish, but the lack of oxygen is a catalyst to prove my point. It’s a revolution indoors, and he will remember.
“Oh, I’m sorry Harvey. That your sweet marriage fell apart even before I got here. If I were mom I wouldn’t even care for treatment if it meant spending the rest of my life with you. I don’t…I don’t even care for this anymore. I’ll go; I’ll run away and never look back old man. You think just because the one person that could stand in your way has gone and will stay there for a little while is gone that you can endanger my rights as you wish? Hear me and read my lips; Fuck. No.”
He settles his fingers on his desk, eyeing me carefully, like a bird in a zoo about to get the taste of a blade. I wane warily by, seething after the bright echo of a lash I’ve simmered through his skull. I feel something coming. Something heavy.
“His name is Carl Glenns. I’m sure the name is quite familiar to you; even in you fan pop lifestyle of bourgeois music and lack of current news. His family is the richest on this side of the country, as well as the most powerful. He took a liking to you at the gala we attended three years ago, but you were a minor then. Now, there is nothing stopping this. He has waited for years for you, Jasmine, and now there is not a single obstacle stopping us. You will find him quite the handsome man, on his face as well as in his pocket lining. The manner in which you speak to the man who has raised you single-handedly is a trait not many men look for in a budding young wife such as the one you are going to be, and I advise to change it.
I do not give a swimming penguin’s fuck if you agree or don’t. This is the man for you, and by my will, you will marry him. Forget Spencer. He will only bring you anger and pain in all the moments to come. Take it from a soul that knows and understands; nothing lasts forever.”
His back is turned, and he faces the outer ledge that leads to the marble bird bath outside. All I see is the many books lining his bookshelf, adorned in leather and cracked spines. The smoke from the ashtray thins, and the hair atop his head, the only thing that I can see from this point, moves slightly and quietly.
“My love for Spencer will never die old man. Never. He has been there for me in ways you can never imagine, and yes, he might be gone from my reach for now, but fate always has the last call, always. You have no hold over me, even if you dare not look at my face for fear of me being right, as always. I got that from her, you know, the urge to be right, even when in your face you know you are wrong.”
Courage has seeped into my legs, and I can move. Muck around, more like it. My arms are shallow, and the color from my skin drained into the throbbing pangs within the meat of my earlobes. The nose has run its mile, and the eyes have shed their wells. I am spent, and as angry as I know I am with him, I leave silently by his door and up my stairs, to gather more valor and cry my aching spirit to sleep. I call for my mother, not audibly, but with the faint rush of the wind. If there is one person to make him see any sense, it’s her.
As I lock the mahogany behind me, I hear a faint whisper. I stand corrected, as it becomes more audible in my mind, like a drum beat gong after gong getting louder with each passing moment.
I hear a cry.
Chapter 5 – Spencer
“Hey man, need some select herb for the party tonight?”
It’s all I hear in this massive cesspool of educated nitwits. From one corner to the next toilet stall, exchange and shift of ownership of the good stuff to the next guy happens loudly. I doubt I can ever have that stuff, not since I saw what it did to Gramps. He was a genius by all standards, or so I hear and see by his dusty trophies in the basement back home for science experiments gone right and his name on a certain protein bar overseas, but too headstrong for his own good. He never lacked the opportunity to utilize a hard-on, and always left them satisfied. He was my kind of role model during my time as a budding teen, but damn, he had the libido only the men of yore could envy. Not drug-related of course.
Many fresh scents and calling for adventure abound, and at certain times it is tempting to think about them. Fair at hand and choice at laugh, the young ladies here are mesmerizing, more than donuts or chocolate or even the Milky Way, but not more than Jazz.
In the last nights that I have been in my sickly paint-fogging dorm room, I have made an acquaintance. He shares my passion for most things, but his surpass mine on the tastefully neglect manner of euphoria. Bryce is the kind of mate anyone would need in times of restlessness. His wise words of wisdom keep ringing over and over in my head, especially in his divine moments of inebriation.
“Forget her man; I don’t think you realize what opportunity has wrapped itself around your little mind.” “She’s so not worth the time bro, and even if she was, wouldn’t she have called by now?” “Have some weed bro, come on, it’s gonna get you some sweet pussy.” And my personal favorite, “Stacey Brown sent me a text last night asking me for a three-way with you. I’m not gay, but man, chance or what? You down?”
In a way he is right. We haven’t talked with each other in a while, and maybe it’s partly my fault. I can’t seem to find my phone, even though I was sure I had packed it in my bags one way or the other the day before I left. Maybe she’s been calling me the whole time and it’s been going straight to voicemail. I can’t help to think how worried she must be, given the strict lines of communication within the grounds.
The night is long tonight. I dream hurriedly of monsters under my bed, grabbing my ankle, yanking me down under and whispering into my sweaty ear that Jasmine forgot me the second I sped off with mom. The ride to Brown was classic, the scenery and magic fading even with mom trying to cheer me up. She couldn’t stop yammering on and on over how excited she was to have taken her one and only to college. The driver was not pleased. A butt was between his lips the entire time.
Jasmine left me at the cab door before I could kiss her goodbye. That hurt. It still does. I wish she would have grabbed me by the hair and crossed me to her lips with no fear of reprimand. That morning had been sullen, waking up to the thought of never seeing her again as much as I would like. The colors were all wrong, especially the grey and green cereal of Cornflakes in my bowl.
“You’ll miss her more than me, that much I know,” mom silently gnawed, her arms akimbo and her head cocked defiantly to the side. I scoffed and swallowed the tiny bits in my mouth and rose. I grabbed her silly face and smooched her on the cheek.
“Mom, it was us before and always will be, alright? She’s just someone special to me, but you I can’t replace even if I got paid for it?”
“What? There’s money at stake? Then betrayal is swift my boy. If we’re getting money from the deception then act quick,” she joked, laughing away her misery with a side of bacon. The kitchen withstood the test of time, even all the years that had passed since dad rested. The pictures on the fridge stapled on by some fish magnets stuck on proudly, and even the pixelated picture of our hands all painted on a piece of white aged peacefully in the quiet and less dusty breeze that fluttered the kitchen. I’ll miss that rickety cupboard, where I first banged Jazz on after our dinner with mom off to her shifts. If I squinted just right, I can see the ooze of our juice still stuck on
the bottom leg. Ah, the memories. Maybe that weed will help lull them.
I turn to Bryce’s bed. Empty. Our dorm room is quiet, save for the banging on the walls from our neighbors playing heavy metal through the roof for the entire frat to loosen up with. The walls are grey. Floors sparkling. Tiles old and creaky. Clothes all over, clean and nasty all in the same corners. Magazines in disarray. Nude pictures of men and women stuck under the bed of the coolest guy I’ve ever met. His bed stands out with green and white sheets, pure and smelling of cotton candy and pine, for it is the only order in the chaos. I bet he’s somewhere right now with Stacey Brown banging her knees off.
My back is restless and slightly impaled in angst. Sleep is avoiding my chamber. My thoughts swirl from one to the next, in the hope of finding peace with how she is. Harvey is not a bastard to be trusted with her duties as a father, and I just hope mom is keeping her promise and having a gossip session with her. If only there was a way I could be lightning. Just this once; to be the man that I had promised to be.
The hours are long, and time ignores my silent wishes. I have to call home, but it’s a bit difficult asking around for a phone on campus. I don’t want to be the weirdo knocking in doors for emergency handouts. Dad raised me in dignity, and only to ask when I really need to.
But this is an emergency!
I count the sheep in my head. Backwards, then forwards, then side to side. One of them yodels in a kilt and two more dance rap in the sunset. I think one of them plays a harp on the sun while the other one thousand, three hundred and twenty two million more half it out and wreck the field with a dance battle…
“Bro…”
“Hmm?” It’s all fuzzy and incomplete. I feel like salt and ash in my mouth. Clout and distaste tickle my taste buds, and there is a constant shaking by my elbow. Someone is getting a little too friendly for my liking.
“Hey Spencer,” I open my groggy eyes to a shit-faced and gleaming Bryce. His shirt is gone all over the wrong way, and his pants halfway done. One shoe is missing, and from my guess of the putrid smell coming off of him, I’d say he had a batch of weed cookies, a rotten bag of meat, and if I’m not entirely wrong, a proper keg of beer. All that coupled in morning breath can be pretty intense. Wait.
Shit. It’s morning?
“Bro…Brown is sweet as a puck man. Ha-ha, you missed out on something really sweet back there. You could have had your chance, but she already called Max from upstairs. He was weird. But I suppose she likes it funky and fresh. Get what I’m saying?”
Umm…no thanks man. His eyes droop and his mouth drools. I don’t know why, but I’m not disgusted even in the slightest of ways. It has to be his personality. Even when his face spells shit, his smile and warmth just make him friendly. Like a friendly neighborhood hobo of some sorts.
“Thank Bryce, but you seem to have had a better time without me you know? Hey, what time is it?” I ask, getting one foot off the bed. It’s a bloody cold floor.
“I dunno man. Maybe around midnight or something?”
“Midnight?” I ask incredulously. It can’t have been that slow! No way…but he’s right. The watch that was found on dad’s body down in the gutters on the night he died checks my mate. The silver lining along the bronze face, with a little crack on the side leading up to the brown leather straps…nostalgia bundled. It’s the watch of a lawman, I remember him whistling. It was old I’ll say, but he would pride it in never losing a second.
His ass is hostile to the bed. Such a fragrance landing on his neat sheets, I wonder how this will work out tomorrow. He’s about to hit the hay snoring, when something swooshes from his lips, almost subconsciously.
“Hey man. You should try the old wired phone down by the hall? Two cents bro…is all you need.”
Bryce plops with his belly in the air and a grin on his face. The satisfaction on him is nothing on mine. I slap his showing belly in gratitude and run all the way, wallet in tow. The halls are quiet and dimly lit. Some moans explicitly wrap on some of the doors as I swiftly move along. All I can help thinking is how happy they must be, but how much more I am. Their meaningless sex has no mark on what Jazz and I have. None.
I find it tucked away at the corner. Some torn stickers serenade the metal casing. More of them, mostly campaign stickers and flyers, litter the canopy wall behind it. I pick it up warily, unsure of the sticky substance I feel at the back of the plastic tubing. I ignore it, and flip in a set of coins. One number after the next, I dial the one number I have memorized in case shit hits the fan. It beeps twice.
“Hello?” the sweet but melodically angry tone of a woman roused from sleep retorts at me, and it is hard not to smile at the reception.
“MOM! It’s me ha-ha-ha. I know it’s late but-”
“Spencer? I love you son, but for the love of Christ hang up and call me tomorrow! Do you have any idea how long the cab ride back was? And not to mention expensive!”
“I love you too mom,” I smirk back. Oh she’s pissed, but very pleased. No one ever calls this late, and I’m sure it’s a welcome notion.
“Wipe that smug off your face Spencer. I know it’s there. Go on then, what’s the matter that makes you think it’s okay to call an old sleeping lady at this crazy hour?”
“Well,” now that I think of it, it could have waited till morning, “umm…I need a new phone.” She falls silent. “Mom, are you still there?”
“Spencer…you can be thick sometimes, you know that? Just like him. He never considered how late it was any night he was on a case. Always smiling when he said ‘Hallo’, never minding how cross I was with him. That man was something else, you know? His energy in the weirdest hours of the morning to really satisfy-”
“Hey, mom! On the phone with me, remember?” She does get carried away sometimes I suppose.
“Oh, sorry Spencer. Old memories, ya know?” She sighs deep and breathes in, a utopic smile running through the air waves. “Okay, how about I send you some money to get a new one bright and early in a few hours, and you go on and get some rest for class. I know the one person you want to talk to is miles away, but couldn’t you just give her some space?”
“Space?” I’m not entirely sure I understand where she is going with this.
“Spencer, you’re a big boy and I’m not gonna lie to you, okay?”
The pit in my belly, the one that lit up when she had found me fiddling with myself at the start of my teen years, spins.
“Okay, mom.”
“Spencer, you know I love Jasmine as a mother would a daughter. She’s more than your girlfriend; I know she’s your first. Don’t worry, I just realized it the day you borrowed my car for that fair after Macbeth died. She loves you, as do you. But this is college, and it’s supposed to be the best time of your life son. This is where you experiment with people, women and drugs, but you did not hear that from me. I guess all I’m saying is, this is the part of your life where you’ll know if it was meant to be or not.”
My coins are used up. I can hear the beep.
“Okay, mom. I hear you. But before I hang up, she’s the one. I’ll prove it to you and everyone else that doubts.”
“That’s the same spirit he had when he wooed me,” another long sigh. Maybe it’s the tired that can’t be fixed by sleep. “Study smart Spencer, and call when you can. You’ll get the money tomorrow, I promise.”
“Thanks mom. I miss you too.”
“Goodnight son.”
“Goodnight-”
Bloody bureaucracy. I place the receiver on its holder and walk back slowly, mincing through her words. In a way, the hallway is darker and much more deathly than I remember. A cloud, more of a hovering sickly madness is draped atop my scalp, and I can’t help this feeling of…dread. Mom’s instincts are always right, even when in doubt. She has that level of clairvoyance that we always joke about in the house, but in her state of half-sleep she must have been muttering her insecurities out loud. More banging across room 422. This time it’s two women moaning a
nd crying out. Lucky bastard. He gets to fiddle, and I get to worry.
I open my door and walkthrough the length that is Bryce Chapman. His feet are on the wall, and his back dispensed at the edge of the bed. Looking in introspection, I would say he was trying to jack off when I was at the phone, but his efforts were desperately inconvenient. He managed the zipper, but that’s it.
“You’re gonna be one hell of a roomie Bryce,” I whisper. There is a blanket on the chair by my desk. I grab it and wistfully straighten it. My boy needs all the strength he can get for the hangover on its way tomorrow. He snorts a little, and moves to his side. I cover him up and tuck him in. He mutters something about the platypus and tongue, I shake my head and leave him be.
On my bed now, cold and empty it is. Is mom right? Is this where we find other interests? Is this where Jazz and I become…no more? I forget how to count sheep. The barn is too cold for it.
*
The blackness of it is daunting. The fresh new smell sickens the pit of my belly, and the clamminess on my hands, quite peevishly, has moved to the base of my throat. Buying the phone was one thing, punching the numbers in another. What if she…
No. I need to sort this out soon. If I don’t I’ll go mad. One finger at a time, I dial her number. It’s too far from my ear, and the urging musings from Bryce don’t help. The distance between hand and ear is long, longer than the highway to hell. I try…oh, I try, and it is done. Hard, but it is done.
Beep.
It’s a funny thing, distance.
Beep.
Without it, the greatest kisses would never have been had, the smoothest sex never experienced, the longest mile never cycled, the journey to the highest peak never accomplished, the greatest love song never written, the fastest car never made.
Beep.
For me? I would never have known she moved on.
Disconnected.
*
“How long will you be like this bro?” he asks, tossing his tiny orange basketball in the air and catching it like a pro. Bryce is on his bed, trunks on legs and vest on shoulder. He’s going out to play ball, and his snappy comments in the past three minutes have all been in the aim of making me join him. In the past three minutes, I’ve been waiting for her to call me back.
Triple Pass: An MFMM Reverse Harem Romance Page 38
