by Yarro Rai
“Hey, babe. Are you horny tonight? Because I am. Why don’t you come and lick my...”
I gasped, and he burst into laughter. Seeing him laugh made me start to laugh. The room spun a little bit, and I fell off my chair.
“Fuck you!” Johnny started to shout into the phone. I could hear Mr. Brad 's concerned voice repeating "Ma’am, are you okay?"
My drunken rage came out, and I started to shout the same in the background. Later, I would feel bad for Mr. Brad, who was only trying to do his job in the frustrating corporate world I found a prison. Johnny hung up the phone.
“So, Johnny, you were saying something about crazy stuff?”
The next think I remember was standing on a stage, screaming into a microphone.
I'm on the highway to hell
On the highway to hell
Johnny got up on a table, beer bottle in hand, and sang along with me, pretending his beer was a microphone.
Karaoke was one thing, but then Johnny and I went a step too far.
“Grab that guitar! Grab that guitar!” I shouted. Johnny grabbed the guitar right from a player's hand and pushed the drummer away and sat down. We laughed and banged at the instruments. It didn't take long before the owner of the club threw us out.
I remember brief glimpses. We were riding on my mom’s old scooter...I didn’t want any hassle from Mr. Brad... As we hit the road, no matter how fast I went, it was way too slow for us.
“I have to piss. Hey, watch me!” Johnny shouted and tried to stand by holding on to my shoulder.
“What are you doing? You'll get us killed! Sit your monkey ass down!” I shouted at him, trying to balance the scooter.
Johnny unzipped his pants and started to pee on a car passing by. Then he stretchws out his arms.
“Hey, look, I'm like the Titanic! Titanic!” He yelled to the city.
Now we all know what happened to the Titanic, and it didn't take long before we had a similar fate.
The next thing I saw were stars as we lay on the ground.
“Johnny, are we dead?”
“I don’t think we're that lucky.”
As we slowly got up, I saw a couple of concerned people staring at us. I lifted the hood of my sweatshirt to hide my face and tried to walk normally as if I wasn't drunk. My mom's scooter was in bad condition. It looked like it was begging us to call it a night. I felt little pain in my arm... Yes, it was bleeding. And if that wasn’t enough, I heard the siren of a police car and then two cops walked towards us.
“No, no, I'm okay, we're fine. It was just a minor accident.”
“Have you been drinking, miss?”
“No, officer. No. Why would you think that?” I tried to maintain my posture without shaking and swaying.
“I'm sorry, miss, but I think you are. What is he doing?”
Johnny was sitting back on my mom's scooter. Suddenly, he shouted.
“Come on! Quick, get on! We have to run!”
I ran over and sat behind him. We tried to start the engine and move forward, but it didn’t move an inch. The cops just stood there calmly watching us. We tried harder and harder to start the engine and go. Then we realized that the scooter had only one tire.
“Oh, fuck. Run!” Johnny threw the scooter towards the police, grabbed my hand, and then started to run as if our lives depended on it.
Until then, the policeman had remained calm, but as soon as they saw us running, they started to chase after us.
“Catch us if you can, morons!” We shouted mocking loudly. Two fat cops behind us already looked out of breathe. We looked at each other and then back at our pursuers. They were lagging behind us.
Yes, we can out run them. Yes, we can do it.
I was so sure that we could out run them, but then I heard a loud, metallic rumble. I looked down. Johnny was on the ground. He was so busy looking back at our pursuers that he hadn't seen a metal pole.
Naturally, the cops were frustrated and they showed us no mercy. Drunk driving, breaking traffic laws, not cooperating, mocking the officers in charge...It was a cocktail of bad things to do when you have a bad day.
The police station was quiet, since most of the officers were still sleeping. I fuzzily remember the cold steel bars between us. We didn’t sleep that night, but we talked and stared at each other from our cells.
“Don’t worry. It’s not that big of a deal. We'll get out soon, especially you.” Johnny tried to console me.
“No, I shouldn’t have drank that much, Johnny. I'm scared." I felt sick with shame.
What was I thinking?
"It’s my parent’s reputation at stake! And then there's the media! Oh god...” I sighed deeply. There was silence for a few minutes.
“You know, Johnny, I always felt that the profit was more important than me to my parents. But fuck, they were my parents. And I miss them so damn much...” A tear slid down my cheek as I leaned against the bars between our two cells. I closed my eyes.
Then I felt a finger on my cheek, wiping away the tear. I opened my eyes. Johnny was staring at me in the dim light of the cell.
“She cries for whole night, not knowing the value of the tears falling from her eyes.”
Before I could contain myself, I started to sob.
“I just miss them so much. Why did they have to go? I'm not ready for all this... I'm too young to handle all this... I'm just ... I'm just--"
I wish my dad was here to hug me. I rested my head against the cold bars.
Johnny remained silent for a while. “People say that when you're drunk, even the ugliest girl seems to be beautiful. Now I know it's true. Just look at you. You're beautiful all the time, but you're even beautiful when you're crying.”
I wiped my eyes and gave him a weak smile. Johnny kept gazing at me. And suddenly, I knew what that gaze meant. I had seen it over a thousand times in movies.
Johnny and I moved closer together, close enough that we could feel our warmth breath touching each other’s faces. Before I blacked out, I remember reaching to meet each other, but barely grazing through the bars. Even that little tickle of his lips shook my entire body.
But that kiss was not enough. We wanted to destroy each other with our passion. Like two caged birds trying to break the bars in between them, we reached out towards each other. That was the real me, and that was the real Johnny. We weren't hiding anymore. The sparks lit the whole cell that night.
But we weren't able to carry away the ashes.
The thumping sound of bars and a bright light piercing through my eyelids woke me up. “You're free to go.”
That was the first thing I heard. I got up and looked around, and then I remembered what had happened the night before. Johnny was still sleeping, and I couldn't help but smile at him. He looked much more innocent in his sleep.
I stood up and my head felt dizzy. But what I didn’t expect was a kiss.
“It’s so good to see you, baby. But don’t you think that was a little too rough? You should be careful. The reputation of the whole company rests upon your shoulders.” Aadish said politely and gave me some space.
And now, let me apologize. I apologize, diary, for not telling you everything. All I have been doing is telling you about me and Johnny. I guess it's because it was all I could think about. And Aadish is little complicated to explain, since he's something that I had still been trying to figure out since my parents' deaths.
Aadish and I had been together in school and college until I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore. I dropped out to study art. We were sort of dating at that time, for lack of a better way to describe it. His father was also a businessman and a politician. He was ideal for my parents, because he was their idea of a perfect man for me. They thought we were in love, and since he and his parents didn’t like Katherine, either, they were even better.
So (and hear me out here),after they died and their lawyers shared their will, I learned of a clever clause that I could take over, but only if I married Aadish. Basically,
they didn’t trusted me or my artistic instinct. My own parents. I know I hadn't grown up like they had wanted me to. I wanted to discover the other things. But it hurt to learn that my own parents didn't trust me. Once again, the business was much more important to them than their daughter.
Since then, Aadish and I had maintained a weird relationship. He gave me my space partly out of respect, but partly because he always liked the irrational side of me, the side that developed during my childhood time with Johnny. Aadish was a nice guy. He wasn't bad. But he wasn't...Well, he wasn't Johnny.
We got in the car and drove back home. My uncle was furious.
“What are you, sixteen? You are not a child anymore, Esther! The whole company is watching you, and there you were, drinking and partying like a teenage girl...risking your life, your parents' name, everything! It’s all over the news, do you know that?”
“Seriously?” I wasn’t expecting that.
“Yeah, they wrote quite an interesting article on you. On me, as well. Being a politician isn't easy now-a-days” Aadish looked exhausted and defeated. I felt terrible.
He showed me the front page.
“Oh, shit. Oh, I'm sorry...Did it hurt your campaign?” I asked him, concerned.
“No, it’s okay. It’s nothing new. They write about me every day, you know. They despise young politicians. It’s you that I'm worried about. You're new to all this. Just be careful, Esther." He folded up the paper. "And by the way, who is that mystery boy they mentioned in the paper?”
How could I describe Johnny to my...well, my fiancé?
“Just some guy I know,” I managed to say mildly.
But should I have told Jonny about Aadish? I knew I should have told him, but Aadish and I had never exchanged rings or anything else. It was an invisible relationship to me, far outshined by Johnny.
“Some guy you know? That’s interesting,” Aadish repeated uncomfortably. It was an obvious reaction. After all, his fiancée had been drinking and driving rashly with some stranger. Aadish went quite, and my uncle continued shouting at me until I was able to escape to my room.
“Are you okay?” Aadish asked me as he took me to my room.
“Yeah, I'm fine.” I managed to smile, but I could feel something was wrong inside of me. Something was very wrong, and it was burning. I stared at Aadish, who stroked my hair gently.
“You know, anyone who isn't used to drinking should never overdo it in one night. You got lucky. Here, drink some water.”
I drank in silence. Suddenly, Aadish moved closer to me.
“I miss you.” He kissed me again. It had been a while since he had kissed me. I felt nothing. It was just lips on lips, like tasteless food. There were no goosebumps, no ice cold chills running down my spine. It was then that I realized that Johnny had the opposite effect on me without even touching me.
“I'm feeling a little dizzy. I think I'm going to rest now.” I just wanted him to go so I could be alone and think.
He left the room, and my eternal war. I watched him enter his car from my balcony. The leaves were falling and the trees were half naked.
I thought for some time before falling asleep. They say that a secret is like poison: The more you hide it, the more it kills you. I guess it's true.
***
The next day I was sitting in a business conference while drawing circles in my notebook. The presenter was talking about how much we had grown and what our future plans were.
“If I can move your attention to the graph, you'll notice that..."
I couldn't focus.
There was a fire burning inside me. I didn’t want to acknowledge the cause, but it was there. I felt uneasy and restless, especially when I thought about Aadish.
Should I tell Johnny? What if I tell him and everything changes between us? No, I can't... But why am I so scared? Isn't that the logical thing to do? Why am so reluctant to tell him? Am I an--
"--idiot?"
Without knowing it, that last word snuck out of my mouth.
Everybody looked at me, even the presenter. The second I realized I had said it out loud, I smiled weakly and blushingly said “continue.”
Shit, what is happening to me? No matter how much I tried not to admit it, I was very eager to see Johnny.
I couldn’t sleep that night, mostly because I was thinking so much because Johnny had told me that he would visit at two-thirty in the morning because he wanted me to show something. Mr. Brad made a few phone calls on my behalf, and Johnny had gotten out of jail just about an hour after me. I set my alarm for two-thirty, but I guess it was unnecessary, because I never fell asleep that night.
It was two-fifty. I was standing on my balcony, waiting. Mr. Brad had told me not to do anything that would compromise my security, but there I was, standing there, waiting for trouble. I saw him coming on a bicycle. I waved by hand and signaled to him that everybody was asleep.
He threw me a rope and I tied it tightly to my balcony rail. I slide down, jumping off the wooden bars.
“Ready for your abduction?” Johnny winked at me. My heart pounded.
“We can share the profits,” I joked, and hopped onto the bicycle.
"Can I steer it?”
"No."
“Fuck you.” He was getting to be a bad influence on my vocabulary.
To be honest, it had been years since I had ridden a bicycle. I never had the need to. I had only traveled in luxurious cars.
“Okay, I'll teach you how to ride again, but first let’s get out of here before your uncle wakes up.” I climbed between him and the handlebars, feeling like a child again.
We rode through the city, a city that never slept. But that morning, it was drowsy. The big banners and LED screens shone brightly with continuous ads but all the shops were closed. We could even ride our bicycle in the middle of the road because there was no traffic, no rush. Just smooth driving and the dreaming city.
“I like the city this way. There's no hurry, no rush. There's enough space for you to breathe. Since there are less people, you can walk wherever you want. No one will push you, spit on you or throw you in the gutter.” Johnny said in my ear.
I was sitting right between his arms. The breeze blew through my hair and upturned all the leaves and plastic around us. The dawn was coming, tearing through the tall buildings, fighting with the artificial light. Only a few faint stars still shone in the sky, and colors were replacing the grey.
We sat down on a bench facing the city. We sat their quietly, mesmerized by the silent beauty. It was the first time I had seen the city like that. I didn’t think it could hold so much silence. There were no loud voices, only the dim light of the sun beginning to shine through.
“Living the horrible life in the streets, drowning myself in drugs just to forget the darkness I slept in...You know, seeing the horizon and sun coming behind those tall buildings gives me hope, the same hope I get when I see you." Johnny turned to me. "The light is so mild, not harsh or burning, but it still pierces through my heart. My soul.”
I listened to every word he said. We sat there and witnessed the birth of a new sun. Slowly, the whole city and our skin became painted in orange and yellow sunlight. We stood there in silence for a few minutes before he spoke again.
“Would you like to go dinner with me some time?"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He continued.
"I've started working a bit as a mechanic. I'm pretty good; I could be an engineer. Car problems, break-ins... I can do that.”
Maybe he wanted to impress me, to show me that he wasn't just some street thug, but something more.
What could I say to him? I took a deep breath.
"Hmm...I don't think so," I said playfully just to tease him.
He looked away and signed disappointedly. He must have been confident that I was going to say yes. I could almost hear him cursing himself.
I broke the silence.
“I'll only come if it's a date.”
Johnny turned an
d looked at me, surprised.
“A date? like..."
“Just friends. Don’t fancy yourself a charmer, okay?”
Ok, maybe that was a little too much. What had gotten into me?
I couldn't deny that no matter how high my heart leapt, though, I was surrounded by conspiracy and he was surrounded trouble. Bad combination.
“Or maybe you're not that lucky. Why would I waste my charm on you?”
“Fuck you.” Once again, being with Johnny made me feel like we were children again. It was liberating.
“Fuck you.” He replied. “Let’s shout.”
“What?”
“The whole city is sleeping. Let’s wake it up.”
He stood up, grabbed my hand, and made me stand on the metal railing. Then he started to shout at the top of his lungs. He shouted nonsense into the city. His face glowed in the early sun but his eyes still hid beneath the shade of his flat hat.
I also joined him and started shouting. We let out all our frustration and shouted until the entire city could hear our yells.
***
“I need a small favor from you,” I asked Mr. Brad, a little hesitant about what he would say. “Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you?”
“It’s...Well, you have to be a little secretive. I need you to cover for me tonight. I know I have some meetings and I'm already behind with all the data, so it would be wiser for you to go instead of me. Please? I beg you.”
“Ma’am, please. You don’t have to beg me.”
“I know, but I also want you to say that I'm in the meeting if anybody calls. Anybody like....Aadish.” Mr. Brad raised his eyebrow. He sighed.
“Okay, ma’am, anything for you. Are you going out with that boy?”
How did he know?
“Ma’am, be careful. You are..."
He looked like he wanted to say something, but he stopped.
“How do I look?” I ask him excitedly.
