Part 1: The Ruby Red Sneakers

I loved my boyfriend’s shoes like as if they were part of him. They were part of him. When we say that our souls fell in love with each other, we’re talking about the souls of our shoes first and our immortal souls second. Don’t get me wrong, I love my boyfriend. I love him more than anything except, maybe, his shoes.

He had a lot of shoes for a guy, but I knew ever last inch of every last one of them. The red and black checkered vans had a hole in the bottom of the soul of the right one and the left one had a tear in the side from climbing over a fence in his trouble making days. There was this pair of chucks that was completely destroyed. I think they were originally green. Now they look kind of blood-puke colored. Apparently he got in a really bad accident on his dirt bike and had to walk to get himself help. When he got to a hospital, he started vomiting blood all over the place and lost consciousness for the next three days. He had a pair of gray-blue cowboy boots that were in perfect condition, because he hated them almost as much as he the step-aunt that gave them to him.

Out of all of his shoes, my favorite pair was his vintage pair of red Charles Taylor signature Converse All-Stars. They were only slightly worn in spite of how long he had them. They were a lot more durable back in the day. I knew every micrometer of them. I knew where they were and where they had been. Right now they were on the floor by my couch. Their owner was lying on the couch, half asleep listening to the music I put on when I come home from school. I put some cookies on a plate and set them on the coffee table. He lifted his head to look at me as I walked into the room. I lifted his head up and sat down under it. He put his head on my lap and I stroked his hair gently.

“There’s no place like home,” he sighed, looking at my shoes. This had become our catch phrase when we started dating. It was the first thing he said to me after our first kiss. It had been awkward and sudden and we had been staring at our shoes: his red chucks and my sparkly red flats. They were flats that were fashioned in a kind of sneaker style with sequins and glitter on the sides. It was after that first kiss that he dubbed my shoes, “the Ruby Red Sneakers.”

We sat silently together, each enjoying the other’s company as we did. I was sipping my tea, while Jay caught the wink or two his insomnia had kept away. After a while his deep grumbling voice would rise up from the dark depths of his chest and say what ever was on his mind. Sometimes it was the dream he had, or sometimes, nightmares. Other times he’d tell me about his real life nightmares and flashbacks from more emotional times.

“A bunch of the guy want to come over after the show Saturday. I told them it was cool if you were fine with it.” Jay was the lead singer/bassist in one of the more accomplished local bands. In fact, that’s how we met. I was playing keyboard in another band and we had played a venue with his band. He met me back stage and told me he wanted to do a side project with me. I later found out it was a side project of a non-musical nature. I should have guessed when he started our conversation with, “I like your shoes.”

“I don’t mind if the guys come over for a while.” It was true. I didn’t. We got along. I just didn’t really fit in with them.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” even though I didn’t sound it.

“Well if you get tired then you can go hang out in my room and…” he started trailing off. He did this when he had just woken up.

“Is Hunter going?” Hunter was Jay’s ex-girlfriend of three years ago, but she still liked to pop up and ruin his life.

“I don’t think so. God, I hope not.”

Jay hated Hunter now, but he still harbored some sympathy for her, being as pathetic as she was. When they were kids and they were in love, he promised to always be there for her and she promised to never leave him. He kept his end of the bargain. She didn’t. She left him out in the cold and took his virginity with her.

“I’ve been thinking about starting up a new band with Jessa again.”

“Mhm, babe, let me know.”

After another short pause, he squirmed into a different position and opened his eyes. He smiled big when he realized that I had put out a plate of oatmeal raisin cookies: his favorite. He picked one out and sat up munching it as fast as he possibly could without being a monster. I took this opportunity to curl up on the couch. He got up to get the book he was reading out of his back pack. I was comfortable 

by the time he came back, so he took his jacket off the back of the couch and put it over me like a blanket. He sat next to me on the floor and after finishing his chapter, he put his head on my exposed hand and fell asleep again.

†‡†

“Hey! I like your shoes!” This might be taken as a compliment but they way the guy said it, he meant to be making fun of me. I didn’t like him either. He was too old and too into swastikas, which was outright creepy. He could have been cute physically, if he let his hair grow out and if his blue eyes weren’t so clouded with hate. He made some really disgustingly racist comments towards the members of Jay’s band before finally saying, “Let’s get out of here. This music sucks.”

“Actually, I like this band. They are very talented if you know anything about music, and by the way, my boyfriend is the bassist.”

“Yeah right,” he laughed. He put his arm around my waist. “You’re funny, and a real fire starter. Just my type…”

I was most definitely not his type. I don’t know why he liked me so much other than my blonde hair and blue eyes. Jay must have seen what was going on because he changed the set list and they started playing the song he wrote about me and my ruby red shoes. He caught my eye in the middle of the intro and I motioned that the guy wasn’t going to leave me alone.

“This next one’s from my girlfriend. It’s called ‘There’s No Place Like Home (Or Hey Girl, I Like Your Shoes)’. She’s the blonde chick over there with the ruby red sneakers.” Jay pointed at me, and to my surprise, the Nazi took the hint. He withdrew his arm from around me, muttered some kind of insult, and slinked away. I stood up tall and smiling in my momentary victory thanks to my wonderful boyfriend. Jay smiled back at me from the stage, as he sang about my shoes. I don’t think anyone could really understand how much we really loved each other, nor could we ever explain or love. No one in the world ever loved another person even remotely like the way either of us loved the other.

After the show, I met him backstage and helped him pack up. We were just about done when he got a call on his cell phone. He stood outside shivering in the cold while he had what seemed to be a very heated conversation. It really upset him. I could tell from the way he got into the car. He slammed the door and put his head on the steering wheel.

I told the guys that I’d catch them later and climbed into the passenger seat of Jay’s car. He took in a sharp breath and turned on the car. Mike came out and climbing into the back with his guitar.

“So Angel, who was that guy?”

“What guy? The creepster who was trying to get me to sleep with him?”

“Yeah, did you find out how old he was? He looked ancient.”

“No, I didn’t really care. He lost me when he started making fun of my shoes.”

My conversations with Mike were usually simple like this. He was one of the nicer guys and I got along with him better than most, but I preferred not to have very deep conversations with many people.

“Really? What did he say?”

“He just said that he liked my shoes and then laughed at me. The n he tried to get me to leave with him ‘cause he thought the music sucked.”

“What did he say when I dedicated that song to you shoes?” Jay asked breaking his silence. It was the first time he spoke since the phone call.

“He just left. He seemed pretty pissed, which of course meant that he was embarrassed. He didn’t think you were my boyfriend when I told him, but he was convinced when he mentioned my shoes.”

“I like your shoes…”

…and we lost Jay again.

“What did his shoes look like?” Mike laughed picking up on Jay’s mood, and breaking the Jay-induced silence. He also elected to shove it under the carpet until he wanted to talk about it.

“They were plain black combat boots all mashed up with misuse.”

“How do you misuse shoes?”

“There are certain types of combat boots that you can wear in the mud and woods. There are certain types of combat boots that you could probably do anything to and they will be fine. You don’t buy those boots at Hot Topic.”

I took pride in my momentary mastery of the art of humor. Unfortunately the after party was drier than my usual humor. Four more guys came with a video game console, a couple six packs of beer, and more slim-jims than anyone should ever eat in their whole entire life, never mind in one sitting. Boys get boring when they sit and play video games. They turn on the console and its all down hill from there. ‘Cheater!’ ‘Screen-watcher!’ ‘Mother-fucking-cunt-ass-bitch!’ It’s just a bunch of yelling and a couple pretty lights. It gets old. This is the reason I found myself napping in Jay’s bed upstairs.

Jay woke me up an hour later. My first guess was that he got sick of the video games, but his expression was more grave than had he just come up to rest. He sat on the bed facing away from me. I put my hand his arm and he turned suddenly. He raised his hand and pushed a few strands of my hair back behind my ear.

“I have something I need to take care of.”

“At quarter of one in the morning?”

He got to his knees beside the bed so he was at eye level with me and stroked my hair again. “Just trust me. I’ll explain later. I promise.” He held my hands and looked at me pleadingly.

“Alright, I’ll be fine here.” He didn’t seem at all relieved that I let him go, but I knew he had to do what ever it was he had to do. His solid sober face only broke to kiss me on the forehead before he left.

I tried to get back to sleep, but I simply couldn’t, so I picked up Jay’s guitar and stared to play it. When I stopped to tune it, I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. When I heard the voices I got paranoid. Nobody should have been roaming around Jay’s house without Jay home.

“Where’d Angel go?”

“She sure is an angel for letting Jay go like that.”

“So she doesn’t know why he left?”

I had an idea.

“Wait, why did he go?”

“I’m sure you remember Hunter.”

“No… He doesn’t have her on the side does he?”

He didn’t…

“He does.”

That wasn’t true.

“But angel is such an… angel! Plus, now, he’s so much better off. Hunter was nothing but an energy drain.”

The steps were getting closer. I panicked and decided to feign sleep if they came in the room, so I put the guitar back.

“Is that her real name?”

“Angel? I think it is like Angela or Angelina… or maybe Angeles.”

It was Angeline.

“Oh, I’ll stick with Angel then, even if it sounds like a boy’s name.”

I frowned and curled back up in Jay’s bed. It was perfect timing because my head hit the pillow at the same time the door opened. Mike and Jordan walked into the room.

“That’s so fucked up. Look at her sleeping there, living up to her name.” Mike said as he pulled a blanket over me.

“Yeah, she looks like an angel… that got pulled out of heaven, hit by a truck, and hasn’t slept since.” Jordan was an asshole and he was proud of it.

“Shhh...”

Mike ushered Jordon out of the room and closed the door.

“Leave her alone. She has enough to deal with what Jay is doing to her.”

“She hasn’t the slightest clue. Jay has got it made.”

“I think if she didn’t know, she wouldn’t have let him go.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Well, if she didn’t know, she might have suspected something strange was going on when he left so late at night. She wouldn’t have let him go. If she knew something then she would have no problem letting go of him because he would be letting go already anyway.”

“Unless she was asleep when he left, and doesn’t know he’s gone.”

“But we saw him come up here.”

“But we didn’t see him talk to her.”

Listening to their conversation made me feel detached from the rest of the world. They really didn’t know me, nor did they know Jay or the relationship we had. We lived in a different world entirely. We lived in a world where it was perfectly acceptable to go out in the middle of the night, and it was typical for us to stay up all night together. I didn’t care if Jay was with Hunter because it wouldn’t be for the reasons everyone assumed. I didn’t see her as a threat. It was strange things like normal every day things that made me stop and think.

“Hey, man!” It was Jordan’s voice again, then feet on the stairs. He must have come up through the garage.

“Hi,” Jay said almost inaudibly.

“Hey, the rest of the guys left and your girlfriend is sleeping in your bed.” Mike said this with emphasized contempt.

“O.K.” Jay sighed passively. “I’m going to bed.”

“Long night, eh?”

“You know you guys can leave now. Why you’re still here is beyond me.”

“We were keeping your girlfriend company, if you know what I mean…” Jordan was an asshole and he was proud of it.

“I personally didn’t want to leave her by herself, and honestly, this is really suspicious. She’s a good girl; treat her good.”

“I’m going to bed.” Jay started walking toward his room. “And I’m not cheating on my girlfriend!” He added before they closed the front door. He entered the room. I watched him as he walked to the opposite side and leaned over his dresser. I could tell he was crying. I could tell before he turned to me, before he found emotional refuge in my arms, and before he lifted his head from the burrow it made in my shoulder and told me what happened.

“Hunter’s dead. She killed herself. I was there to hold her hand as she passed.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about this news. I quietly contemplated what all this meant. He must have gotten there as she was slipping away and bolted the second she was gone, because he wasn’t gone long.

“I’m free, Angel. I’m free. She’s gone!” Jay sunk into my shoulder again and I stroked his dark cinnamon hair gingerly. The torment that his soul had endured would leave scars forever. He would never be truly free, but I allowed him his momentary victory.

“Wait.” He got up and got a brought a box from the other room. It said ‘Jay’ on it and had maybe three thousand dollars worth of girl’s shoes in it. My whole wardrobe plus Jay’s whole wardrobe couldn’t have cost as much as these shoes did.

“I was thinking, maybe we could have a bonfire.”

I smiled and pulled my lighter out of my pocket.

“Outside.”

†‡†

Jay and I lay next to each other on a blanket as the chilly morning dew settled in our hair. The embers of our bonfire were long gone and we were breathing heavily from dancing around the fire all night. The dew mixed with sweat and dripped down my forehead. Jay wiped it away and kissed me on the nose. I put my head on his chest and listened to his erratic heart beat as the sun rose slowly.