16 #2
“Wow, thanks. Glad to hear I’m just a little bit stupid,” I shot back, narrowing my eyes.
“What I mean is I realized what you were capable of that night when you sat down at the poker table and took on Aegan,” he explained, surprising me even more.
He waited for a few seconds, before adding, “It was interesting. You outdid yourself in the cafeteria when you said you didn’t want to go out with him.
I thought you had a brain until I started seeing you together. ”
“I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that you never talk or the fact that you start spilling everything the minute you drink,” I said, and snatched the bottle off him once he’d had another swig. “Sorry for letting you down then, idiot.”
“That’s what people do.”
I turned to look at him. Surprisingly, I actually liked Adrik’s opinions. They were realistic.
“Is there anything at all that we like about each other?” I had no idea why I’d asked that.
Adrik also turned to look at me. I felt the weight of his gaze, heavy with nostalgia. He had a faint smile. “Why don’t you tell me.”
“Well, you know how to shut me up, and that’s not easy,” I confessed. It was like I had just gone into the honesty phase of my drinking and there was no going back. “You put up a good fight.”
“We’re all born with some sort of talent,” he replied, lifting the bottle like he was making a toast.
We laughed, me more freely and him, trying to hide it.
“Now it’s your turn,” I demanded, getting comfortable, dying to hear what he had to say.
Adrik ran his hand through his hair, deliberately messing it up. He stared off into space for a minute, maybe wondering what makes the world go around.
“It’s complicated because there’s nothing I should like about you.”
“Whaaat?” I said, sharply. “Why not?”
He shrugged.
“Because you’re not beautiful, you don’t turn heads when you walk into a room, you aren’t sweet or friendly, and you’ve got nothing that makes you stand out.
In fact, you’re clumsy, nosy, unbearable, you show up at the worst possible times, you think you know everything when you know nothing, and sometimes you’re dour and boring.
Not to mention you have terrible taste in books and have a broom for hair.
” He said it all so effortlessly and matter-of-factly that it barely even sounded like he was insulting me.
I was speechless, but I was more sad than angry.
I knew he was right. He’d even missed out quite a few things, so all I could do was take a swig and shut my mouth.
I was completely blindsided by what he said next:
“But that’s what I like about you.”
I quickly looked at him, flabbergasted, as he kept going.
“You’re nothing like you should be, nothing like this place wants you to be.
You’re just the way you are, and—although you’re unbearable—you don’t try to hide it.
You’re like a fascinating mess. That’s why I still can’t get my head around why you’re going out with someone as thick and spiteful as Aegan. ”
Did he really think I liked Aegan? Then I must’ve been playing my part well.
Anyway, I focused on what he’d said. It was the first time one of them had been open with me. That made me feel like Ralph from The Simpsons: happy and angry.
“Adrik,” I starting to say, blinking in amazement. “If I had any self-esteem left, you just knocked it out of me.”
To my surprise, he found that funny. Then, amid the laughter, he let out a loud, grotesque burp that set me off into an uncontrollable fit of giggles.
We laughed like fools until I stumbled into the next stage of drinking: rage.
“No, fuck, I don’t know why the hell I’m laughing,” I blurted out, shaking my head from side to side in a drunken rage. “I hate this. I hate what I pretended to be at that stupid party! I hate this stupid makeup! I hate this fucking dress!”
Adrik finished taking a swig. The bottle had barely left his lips before he spoke.
“Burn it.”
I stopped. My hair stuck to my face.
“What?” I said, sounding a little unstable.
“I’m not talking gibberish, Jude. You heard me.”
“Yeah, but how would I burn it?”
Adrik tried to get up. I looked at him, half confused, half disorientated. It took him a bit, as he was struggling to stand steadily. Hunched over, and still holding the bottle, he managed to make his way to the entrance and put a foot on the ladder.
“Come,” he said.
With my mind fried from booze, all logic and common sense had gone out the window, so I attempted to go down the ladder as well. Luckily, we both made it down in one piece.
Once on the ground, Adrik walked around the base of the tree. From the faint moonlight shining on him I finally realized he’d been shirtless the whole time. All he had on was the white tie and trousers from his suit—now wet, wrinkled, and dirty.
I swallowed like an idiot.
“Come on, Jude, don’t just stand there,” he said from behind the tree.
I followed him and saw that Adrik had piled branches near some old boards that must have been left over from when the treehouse was built.
I stood there watching him, through more adolescent and vulnerable eyes. He looked really hot with his hair messed up and his toned torso exposed. The best part was that he wasn’t just hot—he was different.
Adrik wasn’t pretentious, and he didn’t think he ran the world. He was straightforward and raw. Yeah, he was also a bit distasteful and a bit hateful. Yeah, he was extremely sarcastic and aloof; but I had a feeling there must be a reason for it.
I wondered what had pissed him off so much. Was it really Aegan? Was it really just that?
I blinked sharply and shook off my strange thoughts as he poured a stream of booze over the branches and wooden boards. Then, he stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. He lit a leaf on top of the pile.
The rest caught fire slowly but surely. He helped make it bigger and bigger until the flames were big enough to . . . what?
“Well, take it off,” Adrik ordered.
“What?” I said, not having a clue what was going on, shifting my gaze back and forth between him and the flames.
“The dress,” he said. “Take it off to burn it.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I asked, stunned.
“You just said you hated it, didn’t you? Well, I also don’t like this fucking suit, so . . .”
He put the bottle on the ground and started taking off his trousers.
They were off in a flash, and he was left standing there in his white boxer shorts.
I’d never seen someone look so good in boxer shorts before.
Until then, boxer shorts had never looked like anything more than regular underwear.
But on Adrik, it was like he could have been a Calvin Klein model or something.
I snapped out of it when he threw his trousers on the fire. He then took off his tie and threw that on too. Next, he threw his shoes and socks into the flames, which were getting bigger and bigger.
He had nothing left to throw. He was in his underwear. For a moment, I thought he’d take his boxers off too, but he didn’t.
“It’ll make you feel better,” he said.
I believed him. To be honest, in my state, I would’ve believed a dog if it talked to me.
I moved closer, thought about it for a second, and then started taking off the dress.
I felt Adrik’s gaze on me, but I didn’t care.
The straps came off, then I slid off the dress from around my waist and shook it off with my legs.
I took a deep breath and threw it into the fire. I couldn’t stop smiling. Yeah, it had made me feel great. It was like telling everything that had happened that night to go fuck itself, like freeing myself from the party.
“Come on, the necklace too,” said Adrik.
“But it must be expensive . . .” I said, unsure.
“Who gives a fuck how much it cost?” he blurted out, without a care in the world.
Well, if he said so . . . I took it off and threw it into the flames.
We stood watching the fire. As it grew, the clothing started to burn little by little. I didn’t know whether it would completely disintegrate, but this was enough for me.
When I plucked up the courage to turn around, the orange-and-yellow glow of the flames was washing over Adrik’s skin.
Their shadows danced across his body. His hair was all over the place.
His lips looked wet and had a faint pinkish hue from the bottle.
His eyes seemed both darker and brighter—maybe because of the booze, but they were utterly spellbinding.
He saw me looking and gazed back. My skin felt like it was burning, but not because of the fire.
Adrik had a way of looking at you that made you feel weak in the knees.
He seemed so hard to crack, so enigmatic, almost like he could read your mind.
And I was starting to see him in a different light.
In ways I shouldn’t . . . Things I . . .
“Jude,” he said, breaking the silence.
My stupid heart started pounding, and I wondered if I was going to have a heart attack or something.
“Yeah?” I asked, breathless and nervous about what he was about to say.
“Now I’m cold,” he said.
I laughed. It came out of nowhere, but I was also slightly relieved. What had I expected him to say?
“We didn’t think about that,” I admitted, scratching my head.
We needed to head back. We both looked off into the distance.
The lights and the music felt like echoes of a world to which—at least for me—I no longer belonged.
I was more than certain that being there, in the darkness, half-naked, was far better.
And being able to get a glimpse of Adrik in his boxers was icing on the cake.
“Would you go back in like this with everyone looking at us?” he asked.
“Is there no other way in?”
He shook his head.
“Only in the front. And through the kitchen, but there will be loads of people. They won’t leave until the morning.”
I exhaled.