Jem…Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I look up from where I’m sitting with the girls and blinked a few times as it sinks in what just happened and I get to my feet and head upstairs. I head to Raven’s room and the door’s shut and I knock gently.

“Raven?”

“What…?” (Shaky and sobby voice.)

“Can I come in?”

“Okay…” (Kind of a whine.)

I open the door slowly and peek inside. The room is sort of messy and tidy at the same time. It’s cluttered a bit but everything’s in boxes and those Rubbermaid bins. There’s a beat up bed set against the wall and she’s curled up on a box spring and two mattresses but they’re on the floor. It kind of looks like she just moved in here.

I get it. She had to get out of her and Summer’s old room especially if Summer broke her heart. I move over and take a seat on the bed close to her and reach out and rub her back.

“You want to talk?”

“About….?” (Sniffly whiny.)

“About what happened downstairs. I didn’t mean to hit a nerve there with Washed Away.”

She rolls over to look at me and she’s gone through the full on ugly cry because whatever makeup she had been wearing was now all smeared and her eyes and cheeks were puffy. I’m not sure why I’m doing this but I lie down on the bed on my side facing her and take her hand and hold it. I’ve got no idea what I’m doing I have no experience with girls whatsoever.

“It’s okay Jem I mean Jason; it’s just that it hit a nerve tonight.”

“Angel.”

“Huh?”

“I’m getting ID’s made from one of Dad’s friends and I’m getting a new name…Angel Benton.”

“Oh. I better learn it then huh?”

“Yeah, I’ve got to tell the others too.”

“Angel?”

“Yes Raven?”

“It suits you.”

“Thanks. So what’s going on? You’re really upset.”

“I guess it’s that it’s all still fresh. Summer left…and she just didn’t just leave the band but me too…I mean we were together since we were fourteen, I came out because of her, I discovered myself because of her and I getting together.”

“They sat the first person you’ve been in love with has a huge impact in your life.”

“I thought she loved me Angel, I thought she really did.”

“Well she’s blind and stupid if you ask me.”

“It’s that and how she broke things off. Summer just walked in and took a few things she wanted and stole our songbook and a bunch of other stuff and just left me…”

“She even say why?”

“She said the band was going nowhere and I was dragging her down and that she’s got a new gig and.. and.. a new band and that this Muzz guy was her future and we were done…!”

“Just like that? That’s not right.”

“She had been taking gigs with him on the side and she’d been sleeping with him for months!”

“That fucking Skitch! Look Raven I’ve never been so much as on a date with anyone and I know you treat people better than that.”

“God! I loved here so much Angel!” She bursts into tears at that and I pull her close to me and hold her as she buries he face into my shoulder and cuts loose with these broken hearted mourning sobs.

I hold her close and rub her back and kiss the top of her head and just kind of pray that I’m doing this right and I even hum a bit to her and rock us back and forth on the bed a little.

There’s now a whole lot that I can do other than just be there for here and hold her against the storm of all that pain. She slowly gets to where she can stop and she sniffles a bit and then sits up blinking at my and rubs at her eyes. She’s suddenly waving her hands in front of her face going. “Oh shit, oh shit…” then her hand is over her right eye.

“Hey, here what happened?”

“I rubbed my eye and f-ed up my contact.”

“Here let me see it.” I sit up on the bed on my knees and move her hand away from her eye. I tilt her head back and I hold her head in my hands and look into her eyes. “Just….stay still…” I use the tip of my finger and wet it then sort of tamp in on my shirt until it turn a page tacky and I care fully and gently touch the edge of her contact and move it back into place then take it off of her eye….I set it on the edge of my other hand and carefully reach up with my finger and lift off the stray eyelash that was there as well.

I let go of her face before…before I do something like kiss her and can’t help but blush but offer up the eyelash. “I guess you’re supposed to blow and make a wish.”

Raven blushes too and looks at my finger and she blows it away and just seeing her do that just. Messed make up, tears stained face and those big blue eyes of hers staring at me from under her messed up jet black hair and I don’t think I was breathing when she took her own breath and blew the eyelash off of my fingertip.

I have to close my eyes and pull myself back inside before I crash and burn. She’s my friend and she’s a lesbian and despite everything I’m a guy.

“Thanks Angel…”

“I’m glad I don’t have to wear them, I can’t handle eye drops.” I try a smile and she smiles back then she takes out her other one. She slides off the bed and heads to a pile of things.

“I’m going to grab a shower, when’s the food going to be ready?”

“Oh..crap, if it’s not burn’t then when you get out of the shower!” I jump up and run down the stairs to the kitchen and carefully take out the chicken which thankfully isn’t burned but the carrots and the potatoes are really browned. That’s actually goof for the potatoes but I take off the carrots then put then in a dish with butter and bit of cream with a teaspoon of flour shaken with it and a lot of chopped fresh parsley and just a fine chop of a small red chili and some lemon zest and just kind of toss them in it the butter melts and the heat of the carrots makes the little bit of flour and cream into a sauce. It sounds fancy I know but I hate bland vegetables. Besides it’s not my recipe I stole this from Jamie Oliver.

The potatoes are fine by themselves and I carefully remove the bird and let it rest then use a paper towel or three to sop up the render chicken fat and then use a bit of water and flour to lift off all the brown bits and pour them into a big fat/wide coffee mug, they don’t own a gravy boat or anything like that.

I wash up the roaster before the stuff sets onto it right away and while I’m letting it soak in the sink I make chocolate pudding a la Jason. It’s just Jell-O brand pudding mix that I use an electric beater to make but once it’s done I dump a handful of those mini-marshmallows into it and fold them in and a drizzle of Hershey chocolate syrup and garnish it with two tablespoons of smooth peanut butter and a tablespoon of water heated in the microwave to make a peanut butter sauce.

I set the washed roaster to dry and had just wash going to wash the beaters when I feel I’m not alone and look over my shoulder at the three girls giving me this look like three starved puppies.

“Can we Pleaaaaassse eat now?” Roxy begs me holding her hands together in a prayer like gesture.

“Okay, okay…here then how about you girls set the table and we’ll eat.”

“Table? We had a table?” Brooklyn asks.

“Yes it was in the corner there buried under all the pizza boxes.”

“Yeah the place looks great by the way.” Brooklyn’s looking around and Raven’s nodding and there a bit of a smile there and she’s…she wearing these glasses that are those small rectangular dark framed ones and she’s just in sweats and an oversized guy’s black AC/DC tee shirt…hair damp and…I can’t help but to bite my lower lip when she says. “And we’ll try to keep it this way, right girls?”

“Right…” The other two say looking a little shamefaced by the mess they left here and that I cleaned it up and not just seen it.

“Thanks Angel…” she says and gives me a sort of long kiss on my cheek and…and did she just smell me? No…

“Okay let’s eat okay girls?” I offer and we set the table and eat and drink and talk about tunes and the sets and how this Friday they’ve got a gig at the Little River bowling alley and Saturday too and what we might play or practice at playing and stuff. I go over everything that happened at Dad’s and they must haven’t had a home cooked meal in a long time. I blush as all three girls rave about it.

“Oh C’mon it’s not that good.”

Roxy’s chewing on the soft end of the drumstick bone. “Best meal I’ve had in a long time.”

“Roxy, your folks have money right you must have eaten in a lot of really great places.”

“Yeah, but nothing like really home made Angel, I grew up with two too busy foe me parents and their idea of cooking was take out or room service. I’ve never actually had a chicken or potatoes and stuff like this, besides potatoes…my mom would have a fit over the carbs and she’d go into fat related anaphylactic shock over the gravy.”

I look at Brooklyn. “If it didn’t have an accompanying twenty four or more of beer or a big bottle of hard stuff it just wasn’t a meal home. Oh and a side order of verbal abuse and getting shoved around and stuff too. No herbs or stuff like that.” She puffs herself up like she’s imitating some guy and says. “If I wanted grass on my chicken I throw the fucking thing out on the lawn.” She sort of deflates and nibbles at the last carrot. “Then he’d bitch about the food or something else all night until he got drunk and passed out or got drunk and mad enough that he could take his shitty life out on the rest of us.”

“So how’d you end up here?”

“Ran away from home. Now I’m old enough he couldn’t do shit to me and met the girls through an audition notice and the rest is history. Kim’s folks got me into the school on a scholarship basis as a favor to Kim.” Roxy’s nodding.

Raven picking at the chicken bones, there’s barely even them left. I wasn’t a big chicken but still. It’s all gone even the apples I used to stuff it. I look at her and she smiles but blushes a bit. “It was really good Angel, My Mom would have loved the way that you crusted it with the herbs and stuff…” she looks down a bit and shakes her head sadly. “I haven’t had a home cooked good meal since they kicked me out of the house for being gay well for being lesbian.”

They’re rubbing off on me because I hug all three of them and bus the dishes into the kitchen and bring out the pudding. “Well I’m no chef or anything but you learn how to do some of the stuff a lot of guys take for granted when there’s no one to do it anymore.” They hug me back because they know that I’m talking about Mom and stuff and now I know some more of their personal stuff and there’s this…tight, good, close feeling now starting to form or I can feel it forming between the three of us and we move to the living room and watch a bit of TV and the girls keep talking about their day and then hit the books. I take the bowls and go into the kitchen and start the dishes and Raven comes in and I wash and she dries.

We get done and I reach into my pocket and take out some money and pass it to her. She’s looking at it. “What’s this for?”

“My part on the rent.”

“Angel, you don’t have to.”

“Raven, I’ve seen some of the bills. I cleaned up remember…you’re floating the others aren’t you?”

“Brooklyn’s in school and so’s Roxy we’re making it.”

“Barely, look this’ll help.”

“But you might need the money.”

“I need you girls more and this place, so yeah I need the money but I need it for this…okay…?” I look her in the eyes and even take a step closer and put the money in her hand and close my hand around hers and hold it. “Please…Raven?”

“Okay…” she’s biting her lower lip again and I wrap my arms around her and hug her again.

“Thank you….so…you want to give me a hand with my room? There’s some stuff there still and I didn’t want to touch it without your go ahead.”

“Sure.”

“Want a hand with yours after that too?”

“Okay….” She’s blushing and hiding from behind her hair again. My fingers twitch because I want to tuck it back out of her face for her. But…I can’t she’s been just hurt too much.

…………………………….. We get some cleaning things and some tools and we hit my room. Tools because there’s some stuff that I want to fix Like the crown moulding that is sitting in a pile in the closet and there’s some shelves that can be put up and I want to get some of the wall paper off and put up some of the stuff that I bought. We go through her clothes and bedding and we garbage it and the bed too. I’m going to get a new bed tomorrow.

We wash the walls and stuff down and use a egg turner and the steam iron to remove the wall paper and get the walls primer painted at least and then we go through my mom’s things in my boxes which turns into a sort and pile and this needs washed and that actually leads to me finding out that we have a washer and a dryer but the washer’s been broke for a few months.

So very guy of me I take the tools down and take a look and while the girls are very independent they didn’t have a clue how to fix it until I looked up some how to stuff online for the make and model and found out that the wires to the motor can get shaken loose with too many unbalanced loads and just everyday stress on the machine. I see where they were off and hooked them back up and fixed then a bit tighter with the handyman…well I guess that’s woman now right? Well once things are all attached with possum lake super glue I test every thing out on both the washer and the dryer and even fix the laundry sink/table and set up the ironing board and start washing clothes and things.

It was really weird. The girls came down and did a little happy dance and hugged me which should have had me bursting with male pride but can you feel male pride in a simple top and yoga pants and bra and panties with pink hair?

Raven’s smile said lots though. She looked genuinely happy. Three girls, the laundry must have cost a fortune. She kissed me on the cheek again and hugged me a little longer than Brooklyn and Roxy did. Well Roxy hugged me about forty times. I swear she's a little asian Carebear on Redbull.

We decide to tackle the rest tomorrow and tomorrow night and we set up downstairs to practice and we set up and strap on our guitars and tune then begin going through some of the proposed tunes to see how we sound playing them.

I’m singing lead again which is sort of fine by me but I always thought in my head I was just a songwriter and occasional singer but one the lyrics are in my head and the music starts to play I’m stepping up to the mike like it’s something I need.

We’re doing a Pretenders cover called Boots of Chinese Plastic.

“One!...two, three, four!”

“Nam Myoho Renge Kyo Buddha please.”
“Can you help a little peasant that’s begging on her knees?”
“Illusion fills my head like an empty can…”
“Spent a million lifetimes loving the same man!”

“Every drop that runs through the vein…”
“Always makes it’s wake back to the heart again.”
“And By the way you look fantastic…”
“In you boots of Chinese plastic!”

I’m keeping up the vocals are killer and wow can Raven ever play the guitar. Just the way she’s keeping up those licks and the energy that’s coming off of her I swear I’m soaking it up so much I could power my amp with my cord in my teeth.

We go from that one to some other tunes that we’re going to cover and surprisingly they sound good with me singing in my girls voice. Theses are a bit lighter and there two by the group train. Hey Soul Sister is the first one. I actually start girl sort of dancing arms up as I’m in front of the mike stand and Raven’s dancing too as she’s strumming the guitar for me and I kind of start to sing to her.

“Hey….hey…”
“Hey, hey….hey…”
“Your lipstick stains…”
“On the front of my…”
“Left side brains.”
“I knew I wouldn’t forget you.”
“And so I went and let you…”
“Blow my mind..”

This song is fun, I’m smiling as I really get into the mood of the tune and start singing my heart out. I can’t help the fact I really like this girl I’m playing and dancing and singing to…yeah I’m really singing to her.

“Your sweet moonbeam…”
“The smell of you in every…”
“Single dream I dream.”
“I knew when we collided…”
“You’re the one I have decided…”
“Who’s one of my kind.”

(CHORUS) “Hey…Soul sister…”
“Ain’t that Mister-mister…”
“On the radio, stereo…”
“The way you move ain’t fair, you know…”
“Hey…Soul sister…”
“I don’t wanna miss…”
“A single thing you do….”
“Tonight…”

“Hey…Hey.”
“Hey, Hey…Hey…”

“Just in time…”
“I’m so glad you have…”
“A one track mind like me..”
“You gave my life direction…”
“A gameshow love connection..”
“We can’t deny..I..I..I..”

“I’m so obsessed…”
“My heart is bound to beat…”
“Right out of my untrimmed chest…”
“I believe in you.”

“Like a virgin you’re Madonna…”
“And I’m always gonna wanna blow your mind.”

“CHORUS”

“The way you can cut a rug…”
“Watching you is the only drug I need.”
“So gangster, I’m so thug.”
“You’re the only one I’m dreaming of.”

“You see…I can be myself finally.”
“In fact there’s nothing I can’t be.”
“I want the world to see you’ll be with me.”

“CHORUS”

“Hey Soul sister.”
“I don’t wanna miss…”
“A single thing you do…”
“Tonight…”

“Hey, hey…hey…”
“Tonight…”
“Hey, hey…hey…”
“Tonight…”

By the time we’re done playing that one we’re kind of drained and for a second Raven and I are staring at each other before we break it up for a break. I slip into the kitchen and get a coke and lean against the counter my heart thumping in my chest. I never knew that singing with a band would be so intense. That singing to someone would be so intense…that the music would catch a hold of me like that.

I slip myself out to the living room and look at the girls who are putting the stuff away. I look at them. “Are we done already?”

Raven looks at me and nods. “Yeah we thought that we’d cut it short tonight and put some more effort in tomorrow. It’s been a long enough day really right? I mean I’m tired and you worked you butt off here today. Maybe we‘ll watch a movie and crash?”

“Okay, I could use some downtime and some sleep.” I try to fight the yawns but as soon as she mentioned being tired it kind of hit me.
Brooklyn and Roxy dig through their DVD’s and I go and shower again and slip into my new underwear and then my mom’s night stuff. I lotion and powder to get or rather keep my head in character and slip on mom’s red satin pajama bottoms and a soft big pink t-shirt and I take some blankets with me into the living room with the girls and Raven made hot chocolate for all of us and there’s a big bowl of communal popcorn and we all sort of gather around the sofa and watch Armageddon and I fall asleep right about that scenes where Ben Afleck’s doing that thing with the animal crackers. I fall asleep with Raven’s curled up to me… behind me…Her breasts pressing against my back and her arm around my waist…Her breathing, that girl smell…Just takes me away to this place that doesn’t hurt…and feels safe.

I hate being a guy and saying this…admitting to it but…

I haven’t had safe in a long time.

I…

I…

I think I cried.

I think I can remember her stroking my hair.