Punk Love

“Is it roofied?” I peered at him from behind the stem of the beer can before taking a sip. At this point, I was just messing around. Buying time. I so didn’t want to learn how to play the drums. I’d already decided I was going to be horrible. My dad once tried to teach me how to play the guitar. After seven lessons, the only thing I could manage was the first five notes of “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple. Then it went downhill from there and basically sounded like I was having a physical fight with the guitar. And losing.

So. Not great.

“I put a few spoons of date honey in it.” Alex frowned, like the idea of him ever doing something so cute and considerate was offensive. And maybe it was. I was fed so many horrific stories about him from Ryan, I kind of expected the worst.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s fucking good.” He scowled. “What kind of question is that?”

“One you didn’t want to answer, apparently.” I raised my eyebrows, taking another slow sip.

“I just did.”

Well, then. Now we were arguing over basically nothing. Hold on the wedding invitations, Houston. We have a problem.

Alex, apparently, was dead serious about teaching me how to drum. Which was catastrophic, because I couldn’t possibly concentrate on looking pretty and learning a skill at the same time. One of those things had to go, and that thing was not going to be my careful pout and extensive hair tossing, so y’all know what came next.

“Well.” Alex blew air out after an hour of teaching me how to play the drums. “Let’s hope you suck dick as good as you suck at playing an instrument.”

I punched his arm so hard I was pretty sure I broke a few fingers. But it was worth it. Because—what the shit? Who says stuff like that to a delicate wallflower like moi?

“You’ll never find out.” I narrowed my eyes at him, tossing the drumsticks to the floor dramatically.

“Maybe so, but Ryan won’t, either. That makes my ass happy. Why is that, I wonder?” He fell to the couch by his drum kit, smiling at me devilishly. He grabbed my beer from a nearby table and took a pull.

I picked up the sticks and clutched them like they were his neck.

“Because you like gloating and are petty?” I offered helpfully.

He lolled his head on the headrest, jutting his lower lip out, considering this.

“Hmm. Sounds about right.”

I looked down at my phone. Somehow, I’d been there for three hours.

Three. Entire. Hours.

It was crazy, how fast time flew by when you were pining for an emotionally unavailable dickbag. The good news was, whatever this thing was, it certainly didn’t fail miserably if we spent so much time together.

Or maybe we were both masochists. It was an either/or kind of situation.

As if reading my mind, Alex said, “You should probably head home. I’ll give you a ride.”

“You just drank beer.” I pointed at the beer he was holding, for a reason beyond my grasp. What I really wanted to say and couldn’t was that I’d like to stay a little longer. Because Friday nights were the time to make delicious, epic mistakes, and I didn’t want him to make any of them without me.

“One pull.” Alex held a finger up. The middle one, naturally.

“Your point?”

“I drink more for breakfast.”

“That can’t be true.” I scrunched my nose.

“It can, and it is. On weekends, anyway. Weekdays, I try to stay sober.”

He wasn’t kidding, either. Great. My parents always wanted me to have an underage borderline-alcoholic boyfriend. I bet they’d be proud.

We got into his car. The drive back home was easy, nice; we laughed and talked about fun, light things. Like new bands to watch out for and cool vegan recipes and what would be the best way to kill yourself if and when you were over this whole living life thing.

Yeah. Okay. Let’s dwell on that last one for a second.

Alex said he wanted to die of hydrogen sulfide poisoning, which was apparently all the rage in the suicide scene in Japan.

He started explaining to me the mechanics of such death, and I’m not going to lie—I was equal parts freaked out and impressed. The detail in which he spoke about what the human body goes through both fascinated and grossed me out.

Two things were immediately obvious to me during the car ride:

This guy was smart and probably good at chem and physics and math (which turned out to be more than true).

He was batshit crazy, and if I had one sensible bone in my body, I’d use it to run for the hills and never see him again (which arguably wasn’t true, although he did end up breaking my heart into a trillion miniscule pieces).

But as y’all know by now, toxic men are like cookies. They all taste the same, yet somehow you can’t stay away.