Chapter 14: Will

Chapter 14: Will

Sometimes, it’s not the brute force of a hammer that breaks a stubborn rock but the gentle pitter-patter of water droplets over time that cleaves it into two. Failing that, a bolt of lightning shows that even the biggest boulders are torn apart.

That kiss with Alexis hit me with the force of a hammer, felt as gentle as a drop of water, and jolted me as ferociously as a bolt of lightning. Were my heart a rock, it would have surely given in to the affectionate, spontaneous, and eclectic kiss.

But my heart was filled with darkness akin to the one that lies in the middle of a black hole. You cannot break darkness with a hammer. You cannot fill it to the brim with water. And you can only momentarily light it up with a lightning bolt, but the darkness is long and unending, and that sliver of lightning is a mere blip that only accentuates the infinite nature of that darkness.

And yet, there was more to that moment than just the kiss. When she learned that forces were conspiring against me, she became genuinely worried for my safety. As a mate would. In the past, whenever trouble came my way, I looked to my pack members for solace. More importantly, I would look to Ariana to give me a word of encouragement or to bolster my spirit. She never did. At best, she was generic in her diction, and at worst, she was completely indifferent.

Alexis had shown more emotion in that single night than Ariana had done in the entire time I had spent with her.

“We’re here, mister,” the cabbie said.

I cast a look at the fare meter. Inflation was one of the things that I was having some difficulty coming to terms with. In the ‘40s, I could buy groceries for two weeks for ten dollars. Now, a few miles from the commune to this apartment complex cost ten dollars.

Regardless, I fished out a ten-dollar bill from my pocket, handed it to the cabbie, and got out of the taxi.

I watched the cab drive off, leaving me standing in the parking lot of Alexis’s apartment building. This time I hadn’t come for help. This time I came out of my own volition. After last night’s kiss, I had trouble sleeping. To release my emotions, I even went to the shooting gallery and emptied a whole magnum clip on one of the crash test dummies that were standing at the far end of the gallery. But this was not anger that I was feeling. This wasn’t even some sort of confusion.

It was yearning.

Bittersweet yearning. Burdened with the realization that I had rejected her, hurt her feelings, and had been the primary cause of her leaving the commune, I could not feel the yearning in its purest form. I had to experience it mixed with the distorted emotions that my actions had caused.

But she had kissed me first. What did that mean? Was she ready for a deeper forgiveness?

I hesitated at the apartment building’s entrance. I had done something foolish. It was only nine in the morning. For all I knew, she might be sound asleep.

I scanned the parking lot for her truck, hoping that would give me some insight. But unfortunately, at this time, there were tons of cars parked here, making it nearly impossible for me to determine where she had parked her truck. Maybe she hadn’t parked it here at all. Maybe there was an underground parking lot or garage system where she had parked it.

Oh, God. I was getting mind-boggled just standing here.

This was ridiculous. I wasn’t going to accomplish anything by being confounded. I made up my mind and climbed the stairs leading to Alexis’s floor.

But I stayed strong and walked to the end of the hallway and knocked on Alexis’s door. My heart hadn’t hammered this fast in a long, long time. I was suddenly nervous, unable to think of what to say when she opened the door.

I knocked again, my hands feeling cold and clammy.

When there came no response, I knocked a third and final time.

Perhaps it wasn’t fated that we’d meet today.

“Will?”

Or perhaps it was.

“Alexis?” I turned around fast enough to make myself dizzy.

It wasn’t Alexis. It was her friend, Maliha.

“Alexis was being super mysterious,” Maliha said. “Didn’t even tell me where she went.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. I was up all night doing a coding marathon. She came by my place at around six in the morning. She didn’t even, like, tell me where she was going. It’s not like her to be super mysterious. But then again, I never knew that she had a relative who lived in Germany, so maybe that girl’s pretty mysterious after all,” Maliha said. She was sucking on a lollipop in a most comedic fashion. She was dressed in almost the same attire as when I had last seen her. She’d swapped the top she was wearing for a floral shirt.

“I’ll just come back later, then,” I said, turning to leave.

“Or you can wait for her at my place. I saw you looking at my rigs. Don’t tell me you want to have a go at them.”

“I don’t even know the first thing about computers,” I confessed, hoping that it didn’t reveal too much about me.

“Old fashioned. I like that,” she said, twirling her hair around her finger. “Just to be clear, I’m not putting the flirts on you.”

“Do you have any more of that Monster energy drink?” I asked.

“You bet. Come on now, weirdo. We’re going to wait for your fraulein.” She strutted back to her apartment, holding out her lollipop as if it were some sort of cigarette.

In all my life, I had never seen a more bizarre character.

***

Maliha insisted that she wanted me to have fun, so she poured me a Monster energy drink into a glass and added a third cup of whiskey to it. In her own words, this drink was called the devil’s venom. After the first gulp, I didn’t care for how it tasted. It just warmed me up and sent jolts of energy through my body at the same time.

But she didn’t just stop there. She piqued my curiosity by introducing me to an altogether new form of digital entertainment.

“So, this is a video game. You’ve heard of video games before? No? You must be one of those Mennonites or those Pennsylvania Dutch Country folk. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said, making me sit down in front of a giant computer screen. The words GTA V were swimming across the screen next to a very lewd picture of a woman revealing half her bosom.

Then she handed me a remote controller with many multicolored buttons on it. “These are analog sticks. You make your character move with them. You press these keys to shoot a gun, X to run, and so forth. It’s really intuitive.”

The screen with the lewd woman disappeared, giving way to a vibrant display of a metropolis. And there, smack in the middle of the road, stood a bald guy with a rocket launcher.

“Oh, yes, that’s Trevor. You can press the weapon key and make him shoot those rocket launchers at cars and shit,” Maliha said.

“Like this?” I asked, pressing the key. Immediately, Trevor shot a rocket at an approaching sports car, blowing it into pieces.

“Well, what do you know? You’re a natural,” Maliha said, slapping my back.

At first, the absurdity of controlling a character overweighed any enjoyment that I was experiencing. But the more I controlled Trevor with my controller, the more I understood that this was just a simulation. None of this was real. I could go to town in this game and do whatever I wanted.

I did not know how long had passed. I really didn’t. All I knew was I had traveled across the fictional city of Los Santos, driving any car I wished to drive, shooting anyone who came in my way and outrunning the police helicopters as they chased me through the city. Now and then, Maliha quipped and let me know which key did what, guiding me on how to play the game. I turned around to see what she was doing. She was just propped up on a table, cross-legged, puffing out strawberry-scented smoke from an electronic cigarette.

I had never played a video game before. If this was how most video games were, I could grow to like them. The very notion that I could control a character in such an omniscient way was addicting.

I had lost all track of time. It didn’t help that Maliha’s apartment’s windows were boarded up, not letting a single sliver of light through. The more I played, the drunker I got, both on the Monster/whiskey combo drink and on the entrancing visuals of the game.

“Do you have any more games?”

“Honey, I have the entire Steam Library, the entire PlayStation collection, and an Xbox Game Pass that lets me play any game whenever I want. I’d be more than happy to show you more games if you want,” Maliha said.

“Why are you being nice to me like this?” I asked, finally putting away the controller and forcibly veering my gaze away from the screen.

“It’s cuz you’re fucking weird. Like me. I’m drawn to weird people. You, Alexis, me, we’re all just a bunch of fucking weirdos. Most people spend their whole lives trying to be anything but weird. They try to fit into the societal construct of normalcy. I don’t get that feeling from you. You’re different, marching to the rhythm of your own drum and whatnot,” she said.

“And you’re quite astute. Alexis is lucky to have a friend like you,” I said, half-solemnly, half in a drunken state. I did not realize that the drinks that she kept pouring for me could inebriate me this much. The Monster energy drink seemed to make the whiskey more potent. I could not have drunk more than three or four glasses of that bizarre cocktail. And yet, I could feel crossing the borders from tipsy to lightly drunk.

Speak of the devil, just as I had mentioned Alexis’s name, Maliha’s apartment door opened, and there she was, standing there looking at Maliha and me with the most puzzled expression on her face.

“What the hell’s going on here?”

“Your German friend seemed lost. You know I have a thing for strays. I couldn’t just let him stand there in the corridor,” Maliha said.

I was far too inebriated to give her a proper response. So, naturally, I said, “We drank a lot of alcohol, and I destroyed Los Santos.”

“Maliha, what’s he talking about?” Alexis asked during bursts of giggles.

“Oh, I was teaching him how to play GTA,” Maliha laughed.

“I took a rocket launcher and blew a police helicopter to kingdom come,” I said, barely managing to complete the sentence without slurring my speech.

“Will, what are you doing here? Are you okay?”

As drunk as I was, I had enough propriety to know that such matters could not be divulged in front of Maliha. I staggered and struggled hard to maintain my balance as I stood up from her wobbly chair with wheels and trudged to the apartment’s entrance.

“He’s all yours,” Maliha said, closing the door behind us.

“Will, what the hell?” Alexis grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard. At once, I felt intensely nauseous.

“I came to see you,” I said, unable to help myself in this compromised state. “I…we kissed…I didn’t sleep at night. I thought of y-you.”

“How much alcohol did Maliha give you? Did she freaking mix it with Monster? That’s worse than absinthe! Jesus Christ. Let me make you some coffee and sober you up,” Alexis said, dragging me by the shoulder to her apartment.

The world whirled around us as we walked, the floor swapping places with the roof and the walls shifting as if this were some mystical labyrinthine maze protected by a minotaur.

I saw with blurred vision as Alexis prepared some coffee. I needed to rest my head. The mattress looked really tempting. I collapsed on it face-first, feeling utterly goofy. My eyes were closed, and still, the world was spinning. But this state was deeply pleasing. I could not feel any of the pain of the mental baggage that I had been carrying. As much as I tried to fixate on it, it kept slipping away. And with it, I kept slipping away, barely able to stay awake.

“Here. It’s bitter and hot, but you need it.” Alexis handed me the pungent-smelling coffee and stood back as if expecting me to do something outrageous.

“I’m so drunk,” I whispered.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Maliha has a strange sense of humor. She probably thought it was hilarious to get you drunk.”

I was too far gone to speak anymore. In silence, I drank the coffee, enjoying its bitter flavor surge through my mouth. She was not kidding. It was extremely strong. By the time I had finished it, my head was no longer spinning, and my body felt back to normal.

“Why did you come here?” Alexis asked, this time gently and with much less worry in her voice.

“The way we left things off last night, it felt strange. We kissed, and I don’t know what that means,” I said, rubbing my temples as a faint headache started growing.

“Oh.” This was followed by a long spell of silence. “I don’t know what it means either. It was a very human moment. I was vulnerable and feeling quite worried. I’m sorry about that.”

She’d done what I had feared she would do. She’d gone defensive. I had to set things right.

“Please. Don’t apologize. It was both of us,” I said. Now that I was sobering and the emotional baggage was resurfacing, the rage was coming back too. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Whatever kind of relationship Alexis and I had formed, it was in a very delicate state. A mere shout would shatter it.

“Hey, I have an idea. Do you wanna just hang around? Let’s just do that, shall we? Not as rejected mates, not as partners in crime, not as people who kissed last night, and not as werewolves. Just two people, vibing,” she asked. “It would take the pressure off.”

I smiled at her. “That sounds like a wonderful idea.”

“But there are ground rules,” Alexis insisted, counting the rules on her fingers. “You don’t get to mope about your whole sob story, and I won’t start self-pitying about my sorry-ass life. We’ll just spend some time together, as you did with Maliha, although I promise I won’t make you drunk. Also, nothing sexual will transpire. No kisses, long hugs, nothing like that. We’re not ready to cross that bridge yet, if ever. Lastly, you’re not going to be angry at me, and I’m not going to be impatient with you.”

I got up, no longer swaying, and held out my hand. “A gentleman’s agreement.”

“Agreed.” She shook my hand firmly and smiled at me.

***

If I could say one thing about humanity’s evolution in the past seventy-six years, it was that they had become more decadent. There was no other word for it. Alexis took me to this strange shop called a 7-Eleven. It just so happened to be quite near the apartment building.

This was the first time I was walking into a modern-day store. The thousands of colorful items displayed on shelves, racks, and in the aisles were just too bedazzling and confusing to look at.

“What are we doing here?” I whispered fearfully in Alexis’s ear as we walked further into the store.

“We’re fixing our mid-day munchies,” Alexis said gleefully. “Catch!” She threw a huge bag of something called Doritos at me, which I caught at the last second. From the description written quite boldly across the bag, the contents seemed to be quite spicy. Spicy Nacho, whatever that meant.

“Here, you go, some Twizzlers, some fizzy gummy worms, Skittles, and a mega-size Mars bar!” Alexis just appeared out of a random aisle and unloaded the contents on my arms. I was already struggling to hold the overlarge bag of Doritos.

“One human cannot possibly eat all of this,” I said in protest.

“Just shut up and let me do this for you. You’ll get to see what you’ve been missing out on,” she said, trailing towards a machine that seemed to dispense red and blue colored ice.

“What is that?” I was too afraid to find out what that swirling liquid inside those containers was. It seemed like some classified military chemical was on display.

“That’s a Slurpee. Utterly cold, utterly delicious, and it’s gonna give you a brain freeze. Take your pick! Red or blue?”

“Okay, the blue one,” I said, finally giving in to my curiosity. As I said, decadent.

Five minutes later, when we both emerged from the shop with the junk food and the huge cups containing the Slurpees, I was at a total loss for where to sit and eat this hodgepodge meal.

“Come,” Alexis beckoned me. She was going behind the 7-Eleven building. Given my recent experience, I was a little too nervous as to what fresh hell she was hiding back there.

Behind the building, there was a lot of colorful wall art and a ton of colorful curse words.

“Is that like modern art?” I asked, pointing at the wall.

“That’s just graffiti. People use spray paints and vandalize all sorts of property. It’s counterculture. You know, punk, anarchy, hipster stuff,” she said.

“I don’t understand it. You must explain what all of that means sometime,” I said, still looking at a rather obscene cloud of blue paint spelling out the word “ASS!” What did that achieve? Painting that word on the back of a departmental store?

“Look here. You’re focusing on the wrong thing,” Alexis tugged at my sleeve.

It wasn’t until I had turned around to see what she was beckoning me towards that I gasped in awe. There was a deep chasm in the ground with a lot of slopes and a completely smooth surface. It resembled a swimming pool more than anything. Inside it, there were teenagers, kids, and some adults performing tricks on top of—

“They’re called skateboards,” Alexis said. “Now do as I do. Sit down at the edge of the skating rink. Put your feet down. Watch the skaters while you eat and drink.”

“All right,” I said, following her lead.

We sat side by side, watching as the skaters flew in the air, crashed on their knees, performed strange tricks with the board, and collided with each other. Alexis shared the giant bag of Doritos with me. Crispy, coarse, and spicy, those Doritos were burning a hole in my tongue. But thankfully, the ice-cold Slurpee immediately numbed the pain. I experienced what Alexis had called a brain freeze. I drank a little bit too much too fast, and my head felt like it had turned to ice.

Gorging on this weird combination of food made me realize just how much hungry I had been. Alexis showed me how to eat the Twizzlers. I was a bit disgusted by the look of the fizzy gummy worms, but Alexis assured me that those were not real worms and that I should try one of them before I made up my mind.

“Fine!” I exclaimed as I pulled one of the fizzy worms free and put it in my mouth. A sour explosion took place in my mouth, making my eyes water. “Holy crap, they’re delicious.”

“Told you,” Alexis said with a smug face. “Now try the Mars bar.”

“It’s just a thick slab of chocolate,” I said, looking at the bar and calculating if I’d be able to eat it all or not.

“Don’t think too much about it. Just close your eyes, take a bite, and then let me know what you think,” Alexis said.

I complied. This was all her idea. I had trusted her this far and was not let down. And by golly, she was absolutely right. The caramel, the chocolate, the nuts, and the thick texture of the whole bar made for an excellent amalgamation of velvety flavor that filled my mouth immediately. Before I knew it, I was ravenously chomping down on the rest of the bar.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had enjoyed myself like this.

“Hey, thanks for this,” I said, feeling completely satiated and quenched.

“Oh, this is nothing,” Alexis said, waving her hand at me. “Don’t mention it.”

“No. I should mention it. No one’s ever taken the time out of their day to spend an entire morning with me doing nothing but shenanigans. It makes me feel like a child again. So innocent. So pure. And it was all so fun,” I said.

“I just figured it would be a nice change of pace for you. If you want, we can always go back to my apartment and start surveilling Maurice on the emulator phone. But I’d rather we didn’t do that. Out here, in this rink, there’s no danger. No vampires, no two-faced werewolves, and no vengeful heirs seeking to poison you. It’s just you and me and all the skaters in the rink,” she said while sucking the chocolate off her fingers.

“It’s like Buddhism,” I said. “You know, finding Zen in doing nothing.”

“I wouldn’t say we’ve done nothing. We’ve just devoured thousands of calories each. And you’re due for a sugar high any second now.”

Now that she mentioned it, I did notice my fingertips buzzing with a current. I could see brighter, too. All the colors around me became deeper and more vivid. I turned to face Alexis.

She looked like a dream.

“Sugar crash aside, this is the most normal I’ve ever felt in my entire life,” I said, noticing for the first time how magnificently her hair blew in the wind, how her cheeks reflected the light of the sun, and how her eyes glinted every time she looked in my direction.

“I bet I can do you one better.” Alexis was positively grinning now. “Come on. I have a surprise for you.”

“Why are you being so nice to me? I haven’t earned it,” I said, feeling ashamed upon remembering how I’d been to her in the beginning.

Alexis sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. Then she tilted her head sideways, looking me straight in the eyes, and said, “Because we all fuck up. But that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve a second chance. Life is all about second chances. You know, it’s not entirely your fault that you’re having nightmares, are suffering from PTSD, and are prone to outbursts of anger. Your suffering was long, and it takes time to detox from all that. I’m just helping you get back to normal. Detox, so to speak. We all deserve peace, some more than others, and you look like you need it. Happy?”

I was happy. I just did not know how to tell her. At least not in words.