Cheer Me Up Thank You

Jean knew a lot of things about her parents. She knew, for example, where her mother kept her secret chocolate stash. She also knew where they kept their private liquor store. And she knew that the next time they needed it, they wouldn’t notice a missing bottle or two.

She was wet as she stumbled into their bedroom, sopping.

Bathed in the ethereal half light of streetlight outside, she blinked water out of her eyes as she got to their dresser. She pulled out the second drawer and sure enough, beneath her father’s unmentionables, was their alcohol. The primo stuff.

Her fingers curled around the cool, smooth surface of a bottle of vodka. That’ll do, she thought as she pulled it out.

A lot of my friends tell me about their dreams.

I can never get fully involved in those conversations. I don’t remember my dreams. I do have them, I’m sure of that; sometimes, when I wake up, I have vague recollections of events that didn’t actually happen.

But I forget them again soon after.

I don’t know why. Maybe because I don’t feel the need to imagine that my dreams were reality.

A lot of my friends do.

I just… don’t.

Maybe my life is good enough for me not to have to. It isn’t that great. But I suppose it’s fairly cool. We, my family and me, live in an industrial space across the harbour from the city proper. My grandparents used to own this building. After they died, my mum inherited it, and moved us from the suburbs in here.

Dad took up his lifelong dream of being a chef in an arty little restaurant/café, which is located in the building across the road.

Our house is three stories tall, all angular and concrete, with a ladder leading up to the roof, which is flat. Mum grows plants off there, and out of most of the windows. There’s a beautiful old statue of the Virgin Mary up there, sitting on the wall right beside the wooden table where we eat breakfast most mornings.

The four of us, my mum, my dad, my brother and I, all sit around there, dad reading the paper, mum and my brother talking.

It’s always beautiful.

Jean pushed open the trap door that led from the ladder in the lounge room on the top floor out onto the roof. The cool breeze wrapped around her as she set the vodka bottle on the concrete, and placed two glasses beside it.

She scrambled onto the roof, only to see that he’d already taken the bottle and accompanying glasses and put them on the breakfast table.

“Are you sure, Jean?” he asked.

“Yeah, Michael,” she answered, brushing past him to the bottle. She unstopped the bottle, and inclined it over the first glass. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

The clear liquid sloshed into the glass. Once it reached half way, she turned the bottle on the other. She put the bottle down, and took a seat at the breakfast table, knocking the glass back.

She drained it in a matter of seconds.

“You might want to go easy,” Michael said, as he sat across from her.

“I don’t want to.” Jean shot back, as she poured another glass for herself. “Not tonight.”

Michael cocked an eyebrow in concern, but he took a sip anyway.

“Music,” Jean said, taking a sip. “We need music.”

With a glance at the Madonna, whose stony face still expressed so much benevolence, she leant across to the CD player at the statue’s base. She’d brought it up earlier. She hit the play button.

The music was soft, gentle. It was music to cry to, she realised, as she knocked back her glass once again.

“Are you alright?” Michael asked her, watching her with worried eyes.

“I’m fine.” Jean answered.

She turned, to look across the roof, over the wall, out over the harbour, past the Bridge, and the Opera House, to the city, to the CBD, so full of people, of light and energy and movement. So full of normality.

Jean didn’t want normality.

Not tonight.

She just wanted to be happy.

My dad was a chef at a big city restaurant. Very well regarded. And when my grandparents passed, he saw an opportunity to take up one of his dreams. It sounds horrible, I know, but it’s not like he was some vulture, just waiting for them to die.

He and my mum agreed to move over here, and they’d sell our house in the Eastern Suburbs, and he’d start a little café, a refuge for artists.

Mum thought it was a brilliant idea, and, being the practical one, also figured out that it’d be closer to her job at the uni. So we moved here, to this place. It was a warehouse, but not really. I don’t know how to describe it. I know it had multi-million dollar views, but my grandparents had got it dirt cheap, then fixed it up. My granddad was an architect, who’d taught at the uni, until my grandma died.

My grandma was an artist, who’d gotten cancer.

They were my mum’s parents, and she always said that one wouldn’t last long without the other. She was right. After Grandma had gotten sick, after she had died, Granddad had gone downhill.

Finally, about a year after her, he followed her.

My mum is an artist, as well as a lecturer at the uni. She uses most of the bottom floor for her studio, and she teaches some classes there now and then. The middle story is where we all live; there’s my room, and my parents’ and my little brother’s. Upstairs is the living room, and the dining room, and the kitchen.

But the roof is where my heart is.

Up there, with the Virgin Mary, and the table, and the deckchairs that look over the city.

Jean wasn’t drunk. Not totally. But she had a buzz on. The vodka had taken a while to take affect on the two of them, but with the bottle nearly two thirds drained, the two of them started to dance to the music drifting from the CD player.

Under the lights of the city in the distance, the girl named Jean danced with her best friend, the boy named Michael.

Above them, the dark night sky was starless, heavy; the breeze that swept among the rooftops cool. A lot passed between them as they danced, smiling and laughing as they bumped together awkwardly.

Thunder rumbled through the air, momentarily, and everything became still.

Nonetheless, the two of them kept dancing.

Even as lightning forked overhead.

They didn’t care about the lightning, about the flash of pure brilliance that split the heavens asunder for the briefest of times, throwing everything into harsh relief. They just kept moving, slowly, a glass in his hand, a bottle in hers.

When we moved, I was just going into Year Eight.

I had loved Year Seven at my old school. It was a private girl’s school in the Eastern Suburbs, and I was friends with everyone.

But then, when we moved, my mum decided to send me to a Catholic co-ed, closer to our new home, and far less expensive than the private school. It was a lot smaller, too, a little under four hundred students.

When I got there, I didn’t know anyone.

I wasn’t religious, and my family never went to Church, so there was no way to connect with any of them like that. I’d only been baptised to keep my dad’s Italian family happy. But, still I went along with everything. I didn’t complain much.

As expected, though, I didn’t have any friends.

I spent the first half of first term in the library, by myself, reading. Until one day, a boy came up to me.

I was reading Pride and Prejudice at the time. He’d sat down at my table, and to my surprise had said “That’s a good book, isn’t it?”

I had blinked in surprise. “You’ve read it?”

Michael had laughed. “Yeah, so?”

To my everlasting embarrassment, I had hissed “But… you’re a boy!”

We talked some more, and then, for the rest of lunch, we just sat at that table and read our books. I went home that night convinced I had offended him, and that he’d never talk to me again.

But the next day, when I was sitting at my usual table at Recess, book in hand, he sat down across from me, and smiled.

And that’s how I became friends with Michael.

The rain was coming down, now. Hard.

Jean was already wet; her sundress had been soaked through, and the hoodie she’d been wearing over the top had been getting damp through contact.

But, even as the rainwater sluiced over the concrete, as the sheets poured in sideways, coating everything in an ethereal mist, she kept dancing, and he kept dancing with her. He stopped, though, and she wasn’t sure if she was grateful or disappointed.

“I think we should go inside!” Michael shouted over the beating rain.

Jean just kissed him.

With reckless abandon, throwing caution to the wind, she kissed him, pressing her lips to his, and attacking his mouth, demanding attention.

“Or maybe we should stay here,” Michael said, as Jean stepped back.

She smiled at him, but she felt the smile. It felt like a mask, something fake, something to hide behind.

She hated it.

I’ve had boyfriends. All the relationships have ended badly. There’s always been something, something that was just minor that destroyed the whole thing. Occasionally, there were less-than-minor things. But most of the time, it was minor.

There was Tim, the basketball player. We got together and broke up in Year Nine. He was the first guy I ever made out with, and the first guy I ever dumped. He got annoyed because I couldn’t make his games.

There was Dave, the guitar player. He was really tall. Even taller than Tim , the basketball player. He was also a fan of crappy music. And whenever I went around, he insisted on playing it. Really loudly. I got annoyed with that, more than him, and I asked him to quit it, but he wouldn’t. So we broke up.

There was Kevin. He was a nice guy, a rugby player. Well, I thought he was a nice guy. I didn’t want to have sex with him, so he screwed someone else. I dumped him.

Through it all, I’ve gained friends, and I’ve lost friends.

Michael was there the whole time, though. He put up with everything, and he was always free for a hug. He’s my best friend.

Finally, they got inside.

They were both drenched. Jean was used to it, but Michael was sopping. He laughed as he pulled the trapdoor shut behind him and dropped to the concrete floor, covered with shag rugs.

Jean turned back to her friend, framed in the odd grey half-light. He was good-looking, she’d always known that. But she’d never realised she was attracted to him. Maybe it was the alcohol, the beer goggles. Well, the vodka goggles. But that didn’t matter.

She couldn’t help herself.

She kissed him again. She kissed him deeply, but this time, he was prepared. He kissed her back. And he was good.

They parted, and he looked at her.

His eyes were soulful, and sad, and hungry, though not in a sexual way. He was hungry for some feeling, some caring. It was that look, everything behind it, that brought the words to her lips.

“I love you,” she whispered, and she kissed him again.

“You’re just drunk,” he answered, when she pulled back.

Jean didn’t expect to be hurt when she heard this, because it cut surprisingly deep. She was drunk, yes, but she was telling him the truth. Why didn’t he believe her?

“I mean it,” Jean breathed. “I mean it.”

He didn’t move, didn’t answer, just studied her with those eyes. And then, when she couldn’t take the tension anymore, she kissed him again. She kissed him like there was no tomorrow, like she had never kissed anyone before, would never kiss anyone again.

“I love you,” she whispered into his lips. “I love you.”

After I dumped Kevin, I had a falling out with his friends. All of his friends had become mine, but they were his first. They’d sided with him over me, as I’d expected. Michael was still there, though.

That was two years ago, in Year Ten.

I had a bit of a crush on him them, and I let him know. Not obviously, but I had dropped a few hints.

He didn’t make a move though.

In time, I’d gotten over him, moved on with someone else. But we’d stayed friends. We’d stayed friends through everything. Maybe not through this, though.

Together, Jean and Michael collapsed into her bed, lips still locked together. Jean’s hands went to the bottom of Michael’s light blue t-shirt, and she pulled it up, off over his head, revealing his well-shaped abdomen.

Everything seem heightened to her, then; every sound, every smell.

Their deodorants, the slight scent of sea water she still had on her, the aroma from the sprig of lavender on her headboard, the earthy smell that always seemed to accompany rain. The drumming of the rain against her stained-glass window, and the wind chimes hanging outside, her breath, and his, and the beating of their hearts.

His hands were at her back, between her shoulder blades, fumbling with her bra strip, as she kissed along his jaw line, her hands sliding up his back.

A/N: This story was thought up after a binge of listening to the exceptional album 'Somewhere, Anywhere' by New Buffalo. She owns the name, and all the chapter names, as they are the names of tracks on this amazing disc. Anyone who can, check it out.