Omit myself

Omission
He didn’t pick me up from the airport this time, even though I picked him up last time. I wasn’t there to see him anyway, but after a really strained moment waking up next to his friend at four in the afternoon, the sun already setting, I thought it might be a good time to pretend I wanted my space. I dialed his number and held the phone to my ear with my shoulder as I continued to get dressed.
“What up man?” I pretended that I always talked to other guys while putting my pants on.
“Yeahman, lemme see,” I pulled the phone aside,
“Casey, do you know where Joe Slaughter’s house is?”
“Yeah,” he was stuffing his wallet in his back pocket.
“Cool dude, I’ll be there in a few minutes…aight, bye.”
The sun was setting somewhere, but the grey sky diffused the light, making it seem like it was coming from no direction in particular.
“Do you need the address?”
He was driving fast, spraying slush onto the windows of his car,
“No, I’ve been there before.”
I felt like it was a stupid question, they had gone to Canada together, of course he has been to his house before, but I didn’t want the drive to be totally silent. My heart was pounding, I wanted to ask if he wanted me to come over to his house later that night, but my throat felt tight and I knew my voice would shake when I asked, which it did.
“Yeah, just call me later and I’ll see if I can come get you,”
“Cool, is this his house?”
“Mmmhmm,”
I gathered my backpack and makeup case, it didn’t occur to me till then that there was less of a reason for him to get me later if I brought my clothes and makeup with me. But I couldn’t pretend to forget them now.
“Mmmmkay, do you wanna come say Hi to Joe?”
“No, just tell him I said Hi,”
I twisted toward him in my seat, my hand on the door handle, waiting for him to lean over and kiss me,
“Alright…then, I will text you later, thanks for the ride.”
He kept both hands on the steering wheel, and pressed his lips together,
“ Yeah, have fun.”
I waved from the doorstep as Joe opened the door,
“What up girl?”
I dropped my luggage by the front door, there was an eleven foot Christmas tree in the foyer, there were at least three-hundred and fifty Hallmark ornaments crowding the front of the tree, each fifteen dollar bauble jockeying for attention. I thought they were incredibly tacky, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that the tree’s holiday outfit cost at least a couple grand.
“What up playa? Where is everyone?”
“Oh they aren’t gonna be here for a few hours,”
“I am hung-to-the-over man, Casey had to go to work right after we woke up, would it be weird if I took a shower here?”
“Go for it girl,”
It took me five minutes to figure out how turn on the shower, once I got it running I took the opportunity to answer the call of nature that had been unanswered for two days. I can never take a shit at the house of a guy I like, I become too aware that it takes more time to do that than it does to take a pee, so I take even longer, and then I get gun shy and can’t go at all. I was really glad to have the shower as an excuse to take as long as I needed. I hate showering at other peoples houses, at my house I have face wash, bar soap, shaving cream, shampoo and conditioner, wash cloths and almost anything else one may need to get clean. There is almost always a distinct absence of anything other than running water in other peoples houses. Just some sickly sweet body wash that makes me smell like fruity body odor, and a near empty bottle of shampoo. No wash cloth. The hot water brought some of the booze out of my skin, and washed it down the drain, my hangover lightened a bit. When I got out of the shower my hair felt squeaky and tangled. After a year of complaining about Portland humidity causing me to have marathon bad hair days, I realized that I had learned to work with it, and now the desert air was sucking my hair’s will to live. I rummaged through the bathroom drawers and found a comb to tear through my hair. I got dressed in the steamy bathroom, my jeans struggled to pull up over my legs as they clung to my wet skin. Forty minutes later I left the bathroom looking like a girl who hadn’t been rode hard and put away wet.
“I’m hungry,”
“Well, we have food, what do you want?”
“What do you have?”
I followed him to the basement, he opened a door to a dark pantry insulated with the Costco dried foods section. The cement floor froze my feet.
“Mac and Cheese! I want Mac and Cheese, Joe!” There were at least fifty blue and orange boxes, lined up like they were on display.
Joe laughed, “That’s what you want?”
I don’t know why it tasted better when it was made with his mother’s Williams and Sonoma pot, brand name margarine, on a stove top with bright red computerized circles of heat instead of coils that smelled funny when they became hot, but it did.
Joe didn’t seem to mind that I rested my head on his lap while we watched Children of Men on a television so big and clear it looked like I could stick my hand right through the screen, and a sound system that made it sound like the bullets in the movie were rushing past my ears. He rested his hand on the crook of my waist tentatively, as if he was poised to take it away if I showed any sign of discomfort.
“Man, this is a great movie, I didn’t think you would like serious movies like this,” I said to his knees.
“This is one of my favorite movies,” he said, and I felt his hand become heavier on my side.
The doorbell rang in the middle of the movie, and he turned on the lights before he went upstairs to answer it. The lights broke the spell and dashed the secret hope I had that nobody would show up for the party, and we could just stay in the dark basement movie room, with cold feet all night. I hadn’t anticipated hoping for that at all. Laughter tumbled down the stairs and echoed through the long hallway and was followed by Joe and four other guys I had known back when I used to go to bars in Salt Lake. One of the guys set down an eighteen pack of Heineken, tore open the cardboard and exposed the green bottles, shining, gold caps glimmering, the sort of Christmas ornaments I could appreciate.
“Want one?” a guy named Jonathan asked me as he popped the cap off, and it fell silently to the thick carpet that I was nervously burying my toes in.
“Hell yeah,” the beer smelled more like beer than beer usually does, I took a sip and watched Joe slither on his stomach underneath the television to hook up the cable. The TV was black and silent, then there was color and noise, men in underwear with bloody noses and rosy ribs fought in a cage for the next two hours, while the guys cheered and reminisced about past fights.
“There is a party on second south,” Jonathan said.
“Right on! Rachel, you ready to go?”
It was ten o’clock and I still hadn’t heard anything from Casey, my stomach tightened. “Sure,” I sent a text message to Casey telling him that I was being dragged to a party, hoping he would offer to “rescue” me. I didn’t hear back till we were halfway downtown, he said he wasn’t so sure about the weather, and didn’t feel too good about driving.
The snow had begun to fall during a cigarette break during the fight, but it thinned out the closer we got to the city. I told him it was letting up, and he said he’d let me know.
The party was crowded and humid with the breath of many drunk kids, we brought beer, Joe and I stood sentinel at the table we set the case on, protecting our property. The noise made it hard to keep a casual distance from anyone and try to tell someone something in confidence. Joe put his arm around my waist and pulled me close to him so he could whisper to me instructions to steal other peoples beers, and hide our own in my purse, the physical closeness a necessity because of the noise. Yet, his arm stayed wrapped around me even when he was talking to other people.
“Have you met Rachel Lamb?” he said as he drew me closer to him,
“This chick is awesome, she’s like the girl version of me!”
After my fourth beer, hair of the dog just became dog, and that day’s hangover would become tomorrow’s. The noise my phone didn’t make when it was supposed to notify me that Casey was ready to come get me became quieter and further away. When Joe laughed at things I said, and the sound closed the gap in my heart, the distance between me and him, the thoughts of wanting to be back with Casey that I held between us like a piece of paper between our bodies slipped away, and fell to the floor, becoming muddy with beer and dirt from peoples wet shoes.
“God, I’m so glad you are on my arm tonight,” he lifted a can of Bud Light in the direction of a fashionably dressed girl, who looked like she was trying to appear to be having a very good time,
“I used to go out with her, I’m glad she can see me with you tonight,”
“Want to make her jealous?”
“Yeah, how?”
I turned to face him, “Lets do a ‘Hollywood kiss,’ ya know? Like we kiss with our mouths open and pretend to be goin at it hardcore,”
“Hell yeah,” he pulled me in with one arm and held his beer out to the side with the other, I stood on my toes and crossed my wrists around his neck, I hesitated for a second, but he did not. The shape and texture of his lips felt foreign only in the way they can when you are comparing them someone you had only been kissing hours earlier. The moist empty space our mouths made when pressed together and wide open showed no activity from our tongues, but I could sense his stirring, and wanting to participate, it flicked mine, so I laughed and slid my hand to his chest.
“That’s why you are so awesome,”
“You think it worked?”
“Hah, yeah, look at her,”
The girl had turned her back to us.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, it was Casey telling me that he had been drinking and didn’t think his car would make it in the snow. I put up a quick argument, saying that it wasn’t snowing anymore. He just said sorry and that I should call him tomorrow.
“Great,” I said as I put my phone in my pocket,
“What’s wrong?”
“Casey can’t come get me, now I don’t know where I’m gonna sleep tonight.” I was leading him to offer to drive me to Casey’s house, but instead he said,
“Oh don’t worry, you can stay with me.” He grabbed my hand and led me outside to have a cigarette and to “fake” kiss some more against the concrete wall of the house. He straddled his legs around one of mine, and I could feel his pants tighten increasingly, between each stage kiss, which became less for show with each practice, I laughed, and took a drag off my cigarette.
There was no way Joe was sober on the drive home, but I told myself he wasn’t as drunk as he seemed.
“Man, I wish you would just move back here forever,”
“I know, I have so much fun when I am with you,” I was only sort of drunk, but drunk enough to have my heart swell when he played Omission by John Frusciante, a song I had thought no one else knew about, and the alcohol in my blood made it feel really significant, or maybe it just was really significant, but I couldn’t tell right then.
“You are so cool Rachel, I mean, its so easy to be around you, and you like all the things I like,” He let one hand drop off the steering wheel and rest next to mine, then he reached up and stroked his chin.
“I know, like when you came out to visit me in October, I was worried we wouldn’t have anything to talk about and it was going to be super awkward since we hadn’t hung out that much when I lived here. But instead when you left my house felt all empty, and I was sorta bummed,”
“Yeah, I mean, I’m not gonna lie, I sorta had a dumb reason for visiting you in the first place,” he was still stroking his chin.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, I mean, I came out cause I thought I was starting to like you,”
“Awe, well,”
“But when nothing happened with us I was cool with it, ‘cause we had so much fun and there wasn’t an awkward silence once,”
I breathed out quickly, a half hearted laugh, “ Yeah, and that girl Brooke kept texting you the whole time and calling you to make sure you weren’t having sex with me.”
Joe laughed, “Yeah, that girl was crazy….But I like it when you are here, I just wish that you could teleport, live there and be here with me whenever you want.”
Joe held a finger to his mouth as we walked up his driveway, I quieted my laughter after nearly falling on my ass after slipping on a patch of ice. He grasped all the keys on his chain tightly in his fist to silence them as he unlocked the door to his parents house.
“We have to be really quiet, or the dog will wake my mom up,”
I held his hand lightly as he guided me through the darkness, down the staircase to his bedroom. He turned on the TV and hurriedly turned the volume down. We ate burritos from an all-night Mexican food restaurant we had picked up on the way home, which we would both agree the next morning was a huge mistake, and we both swore we would never get so drunk where that would sound like a good idea ever again. In the light of his bedroom, it was clear by his glassy eyes, and speech that Joe had been too drunk to drive, he must have had a few shots before we left, because he seemed to be drunker now than we he started driving.
“So, should I sleep in here or on the couch?” I said when he turned off the lights.
“I don..don’t mind if you sleep in here, unless ya wanna sleep in the movie room,”
“Naw, I am no good on couches.” I turned away from him and took my pants off, I removed my shirt and took my off my bra, I saw him turn his head away quickly, then I put my shirt back on and climbed to the far edge of his bed.
I laid on my side with my back turned away from him, he turned the TV off and it was so silent. It was like the silence that happened when you were a kid at a sleepover with your best friend, when you are both stifling laughter in the dark, trying to find a right time to say goodnight, and when you finally do, the silence feels really loud. Joe turned to me and pressed his stomach against my back and held me too tightly.
“Ya know, I wouldn’t mind if you turned to face me,”
“Oh you wouldn’t?” I tried to be coy, I sighed and pretended to get sleepier. He pulled against me harder and coaxed me on my back. I tried to be limp like a person that was really half asleep. He crawled on top of my body, he was very heavy, I was embarrassed to feel him hard against my thigh a tiny bead of moisture forming on his boxers and sticking to my leg. My tipsy brain racked itself for a casual way to get out of this. He kissed me on my cheeks, and then on my mouth. Not a Hollywood kiss.
“What are you doing?” I said.
He propped himself on his arms, “I don’t know,” he said with his head turned to the side and I was glad it was silhouetted in darkness and I didn’t have to see his face. He rolled off me, but still held me close and too tight for the rest of the night.
I didn’t say anything about what happened the night before in the morning, and neither did Joe. We just spoke of our massive hangovers and then went to In-n-Out burger. When we got back to his house he turned on the Christmas tree in the movie room that as decorated with more Hallmark ornaments still, but these were all Star Wars edition. When all the lights were off the tree was beautiful, and you couldn’t tell that the ornaments were so un-Christmas-ey. We cuddled on the couch all day, both of us happy to feign amnesia about the night before. I wasn’t going to be spending Christmas in Utah, the tickets were too expensive, so I was going home to my empty apartment the next day. He offered to let me stay another night, but I told him I should probably stay my last night at my girlfriend’s place. Two blocks into the drive back to her place, he looked at me and said, “Are you sure you don’t wanna stay? Its really slick out here,”
“Well…I dunno, are you sure your car can’t make it?”
I saw Joe flash a look of concern, then disappointment at my answer, “I think it’ll be okay.”
I suddenly felt my face get hot, and I felt selfish for making him drive me to a friend I didn’t want to see that much anyway, while the roads where black with ice. I gave him a hug across the seat when he dropped me off, and he told me to have a safe trip and to let him know when I got home.
When I got home the next night I watched A Christmas Story on my couch, and my feet were cold. I was alone in my apartment, and found myself not wishing that I could warm my feet under Casey’s sheets, but instead I found myself wanting to rest my head in Joe’s lap, in the dark movie room, feet cold all night.