When I woke up,
Mom and Dad are rolling on the couch,
Rolling numbers,
“10”
Rock and Rolling,
“9”
Got my Kiss records out!
“8”
Mommy’s alright,
“7”
Daddy’s Alright,
“6”
They just seem a little weird,
“5”
Surrender,
“4”
Surrender!
“3”
But don’t give yourself,
“2”
Away,
“1”
Awaaaay!
“Happy New Year!!!”
The music goes loud and the screams go louder, twenty or so people hugging, kissing and celebrating the start of yet another year. Happy New Year to us all... I hit “Send” as soon as the countdown ends, no use in calling her since the lines are all jammed up with fuckers like me trying to call someone special with whom they just couldn’t be with this day.
They say the way you spend your new year is the way you’ll spend the rest of the year. So we should all try to make the best of those last 24 hours. I don’t believe that shit. I spent my last three or four new year’s eves as a bachelor, fucking the brains out of twenty-year-old girls whose names I can’t even recall, and I haven’t spent those years fucking twenty-year-old girls. So, as long as I can tell, the whole “New Year’s Eve” myth was lost on me long ago...
“Happy New Year Dean!” I turn around and there they are, three of my closest friends, drunk as shit, their eyes shining with inebriation, reflecting the flaring lights of the fireworks in the sky, which they won’t remember tomorrow morning. I’m way behind in the whole “drinking myself stupid” tradition, so I take one of their glasses and chug it down as they all cheer.
“Well, we’re off to town to try and score some blow and some women. You coming?” Asks Rick. The overpronunciation on each of those words, lets me know how hammered he really is. Rick was only happy when those three elements could be combined: drinking, drugs and women.
“Yeah I just gotta try and call her; I’ll meet you guys there,” I reply.
“You know, one of these days, you’ll have to show me your balls…cause I’m starting to doubt you even have them” said Bill, tilting his glass back and forth as he spoke, spilling half his drink on the already flooded tiles. “Screw her man, she bailed on you, didn’t she? Let her call!”
Bill didn’t have that many friends. He was always straightforward in his answers, and most people thought he was crude and offensive, but honestly, he was the only guy who just spoke his mind. He meant no harm with what he said, but he wasn’t going to soften any blows. He just spoke. No filter on. That’s why I valued his opinions. And once again, he was right. I close the lid on my cell and tell myself “Fuck it, she’ll call.”
As soon as I end my line of thought, the vibrating buzz on my pocket lets me know Bill was right. She should be the one calling. I look at the lid. Johnny’s number comes up. Maybe she was calling from his cell.
“Hey Johnny, Happy New Year man!”
“Hey, man! Happy new year to you too. Listen, do you have a minute?”
“Sure, let me just go into the bathroom so I can hear you.”
I slide past a drunken crowd with relative ease. Lucky me no one was puking on the toilet so it was free. I get in; lock the door behind me and the music fades down to a tolerable volume.
“Yeah, I’m here, what’s up Johnny?”
“Well…I’ve grown to like you over these years man so I just thought you should know…it’s her…there’s something wrong.”
My heart skips a beat as soon as that sentence reaches my side of the phone. I slam the wall with my fist closed. I should have fucking been there. Something’s wrong with her and I’m drunk and 30 miles away…
“What happened? Is she okay? What the fuck’s wrong?”
“Well you’re not gonna like this man…she’s…well she’s clearly blackout drunk…she was talking to her ex…and they both got in a room and haven’t left for twenty minutes…”
My concern turns into blind rage. I hit the wall again, this time strongly enough to stain it with blood.
“Thanks Johnny” I calmly say, hanging up the phone. I scream out in anger, hitting the wall consecutively, each blow to the concrete spraying in red speckles from my now injured fist.
“Save it Dean” I think to myself. I stop for a minute. In my head, everything goes silent. No music, no voices, just my heart resounding in my ears and Johnny’s words echoing in my mind. Fuck…this isn’t going to end like this.
I come back to reality, someone’s knocking on the bathroom door, angry at my delay.
“Get the fuck out man, other people need to go there!”
I ignore them. Pick up the phone and call the only person I know who is still sober on New Year’s Eve.
“Hey Dean! Happy new year!!!”
“Thanks Mary, happy new year to you too babe. Listen…I need a favour…a big, fucked up favour right now…are you still sober?”
Mary takes her time answering my question. She knows I never ask her any favours so she’s undecided between her obvious will to help and the effort she knows she’s going to have to put into doing it.
“Yeah, I am…what do you need?”
“I need you to pick me up and drop me off at her place.”
“Fuck…something’s wrong?”
“Yeah…” I let out, in an herculean effort to keep myself from crumbling down to tears. She knows I’m serious, I hear the hastiness in her voice as she asks me:
“Do you need me to do anything?” the soft tingling from the car keys in her hand lets me know she’s already coming.
“You’re doing it already…just drop me off there. Please.”
She hangs up, no goodbyes necessary, I’ve known her for 22 years and she knows I’m way too shocked to worry about being polite.
Ten long, painful minutes later she arrives, opens the door on my side and lets me in. We don’t share a word on the whole way there. She’s stepping on the gas, we’re going as fast as her car allows us to go. Knowing her fear from high-speed driving, I know she’s desperately trying to help me get there as fast as she can. In my mind, I am thankful. But my lips stay sealed.
We get there in ten minutes. The house was a mess. Coloured lights coming from every window, the music, loud enough to cater to a whole fucking town. Roughly fifteen people outside, half of them puking, the other half making out with each other…the door wasn’t even opened - there was no door. Someone kicked it off its hinges, resting now, horizontally, three feet behind where it should be.
I get inside, climb on top of the nearest chair and look for Johnny’s face amid a smoke filled, booze-smelling half-conscious crowd.
“Johnny!” I yell out. Some girl pulls me down and screams into my ear.
“Johnny’s in the living room, back there!”
There’s bound to be about thirty different Johnnies in this party, yet this drunken girl’s lead is all I got to search for him so I thank her and move in.
Luckily to me, there’s Johnny, in the living room, half drunk and half worried to see me. Yet he comes over to me and shakes my hand.
“Where is she?” I ask. “Which room?”
“Look man, if she knows I called you, she’s going hate me for a long time…” Johnny was one of her closest friends, he knows he was doing the right thing yet he also knew I wasn’t going to go down easily…and that scared him. “What are you gonna do?”
I smile at him. It was clear he was making an effort to take my side. He loved her, as a friend, for as long as they have known each other. Kind of like me and Mary. Yet he knew how much I liked her…so he was stepping down from the good friend position into the good guy spot…and it was aching him to do so.
“Don’t worry about me, I don’t want you getting involved in any way…you’ve done enough.”
“I just hope I haven’t done too much…”
I go into the room he pointed me to, and there they were, both drunk, already half naked, she was beneath him, arching her back, head leaned back as he kissed her neck. They don’t even notice I’m there. I pick up her cell phone. It was on the nightstand. 1 Unread Message… what a fucking surprise. I come out, close the door behind me and go over to Johnny.
“Read it,” I say, handing him her phone. He asks no questions, takes the phone, unlocks it and starts reading the message.
“Happy New Year…I Love you. Move in with me.*”
Johnny smiles as he reads it, he is now sure he did the right thing by calling me over. I was glad I could provide him some closure in this whole goddamn mess…
“Why the fuck did she have to screw this up…”
“Don’t worry Johnny, better now than in ten years.”
“I’m gonna go put the music louder, that should buy you some time alone in there with them…he’s a fucking prick. I’m guessing the only people who will try and fight back are his two friends sitting by the bar over there…the rest of the guys couldn’t care less.”
I hug Johnny and thank him. We both knew this was probably going to be the last time we spoke for a long time. He liked me but she was his best friend…no way I could compete with that. Too bad. I was going to miss Johnny…
I get in the room, he’s still on top, half-naked, caressing her breasts as she runs her hands through his chest. I was smiling, thinking to myself I should probably hit her, not him. But my dad always taught me not to hit a woman…too bad for him.
I pick up the lamp, standing unlit by the bed, pull out the cord and swing the object as hard as I can into his head. The smashing hit, followed by the awakening sound of the lightbulb, shattering down as its million pieces rain all over the bed, wakes them up from their sensual trance. She starts screaming, confused. He grabs on to his head still shocked by the blunt trauma. I pick him up by the neck with one hand and slam him into the nearest wall. My fist cringes as it closes down, still bleeding from the practice hits on that bathroom wall. This was no practice hit. I smash my hand into his chin with the strength of a man who knows he is right. There’s no stronger punch than that. A blow delivered not by hate but by self-respect. Pride. And stupidity.
The hit resounds in my ears, echoing louder than her screams, everyone else’s voices and the loud music. In my head, that was the sound of a five-year relationship ending with a bang. No sound could compare to it right now.
Her exes’ eyes roll up before closing down, his head tilts to the left as his whole body falls down to the ground, unconscious.
She keeps screaming, asking me how could I've done this in between sobs and "I'm Sorry"'s. Fuck her. I'm not even gonna dignify that with an answer.
Finally, the door opens, and some guy leans in his head, probably startled by the screams. There was glass everywhere, a bleeding guy on the floor and a girl crying. Then there was me. Needless to say, I'm the bad guy in this scenario for any clueless soul that walks in.
"What the fuck man? What did you do?" he yells at me, getting some more attention from the other clueless morons standing next to him.
"This is none of your business, he's okay, I just punched him." I say.
As I'm finishing up my sentence, the two guys from the bar start moving through the crowd in my direction. They knew this was the room where his friend was about to fuck my ex-girlfriend. They knew. Let them come. Once again, the blinding rage of being betrayed clouds my judgment. It's her fucking fault, yet two more guys will pay her price. Because I'm proud. And stupid.
They come at me, one guy pushes me back yelling "See what you did? It's your girls' fault. She was the bitch here, not him."
That did it. Thanks "soon to be knocked down" idiot. You just fueled my rage for the next two minutes. I move at him, dodge the first punch to the face, and take the second one in the stomach as I'm already rotating my body clockwise, my elbow to his face with the momentum of a full-body swing. Blood everywhere, that's a cracked nose to say the least. He holds on to it as he curses me off, moving, hunched over towards the ground into the kitchen, keeping his free hand a little lower to catch the dripping blood that runs towards the floor.
The other guy looks confused, his courage diminished by his friend's unfortunate fate.
"You're a fucking idiot! Those are my friends you just hurt!"
"I'm not in the mood to chat, you either move up or shut the fuck up and move away" I answer. Courage I didn't know I had spoke in my name...
He moves away, looking for his friend to try and help him with his nose job.
Fuck this. This whole mess could have been avoided...Fuck her decision to spend New Year's with her friends. Fuck my decision for not wanting to tag along. Fuck our fight this morning. Fuck me for still being in love with her. And fuck her for not loving me back when alcohol eluded her conscience.
"FUUUCK!" I scream, now outside. The drunken idiots by the house's entrance stare at me as if I'm about to explode. I was.
I smile as tears fall down my face into the asphalt. It's been so fucking long I've cried, I had forgotten how good it can feel.
That damn "Cheap Trick" song comes up again.
It's my phone.
It's her.
I let it ring...
"Mommy told me,
yeah she told me,
I'd meet girls like you.
She also told me,
Stay away,
You'll never know what you'll catch..."
