Chapter Two:
Would You Like Some Coffee?
I was so warm. A cushiony feeling beneath me. Something wrapped me that was soft and comforting. And my head sunk into plush cushion. I was in bed. I felt around with my hand, my eyes not yet open. I could feel the wrinkles in the sheets and the tenderness they supplied. I smiled. This was a good feeling.
I finally began to break the barrier from sleep that kept my eyes shut. White sheets being the first thing into view. I then rolled over on my back. Facing the smooth off white ceiling. It really set off the black walls. Black. Hm. What an odd color for walls. Yet I liked it, and was almost jealous my walls weren't the same. Then it occurred to me.
These weren't my walls.
These weren't my sheets and this was not my bed room. No wonder it felt so good, there was no way my apartment supplied cheap sheets and pillows could feel this good. And certainly not this warm. My apartment was freezing due to the fact that it was winter and there was no way I could afford heating. I shot straight up. The happy warm feeling going away. I looked around. There was little to no other furniture in the room. Nothing on the walls. Just a dresser. But the floors were completely covered in papers. Correction. Drawings, pencil drawings. Where was I?
I turned quickly slinging my legs over the side of the bed to start to get up. The breathe got taken out of me and I jumped letting out a little yelp which I covered up with my hands. What the hell? There sat..sat..? It was coming back to me. Last night. Everything had gone haywire. And this was the guy from the coffee shop, and the guy who saved me a the bar (even though I did not want to be saved). But he was not only that anymore. He was Gerard. That was the last thing I remembered. He had carried me back, for I was to hurt to walk. He was sleeping soundly in the skinny cushioned chair next to the wall facing the bed. His hands lay in his lap and his head falling back with his mouth slightly ajar. His breathing was heavy, yet sound. He had cleaned up where his nose and lip had been hurt. But there was a deep cut on his lip and a dark bruise on his nose that had started to seep down under his eyes. I stood up slowly onto the floor, trying not to wake him. Pain shot through my body confirming last nights events were true. I had to cover up my mouth again to prevent making a sound.
I looked down at my own clothes. I was in the same ones as yesterday. But my once white tank top was now a rusted color. Blood. I hadn't known I was bleeding, let alone enough to cover the front of my shirt. But It was no where else on my front. I felt my tank top, it was wet. Gerard had attempted to clean it while I was sleeping. But had failed to get the stain out. But the rest of my front was clean, so he had succeeded on cleaning me. Why was he doing this? Why did he care? I was just some stranger. Well, not a total stranger, but pretty damn close. All I did was give the man coffee, and didn't do a very good job at it at that. He went up against a man much, much stronger and bigger than him, just to help me. But he didn't know me. That could not just be taken lightly. This was Jersey, every man for himself. You didn't just go around fucking with people for the hell of it. You didn't who they were, they could be "somebody, and that "somebody" could had a lot of power. Which could get you killed. I could tell he was hammered last night. Maybe it was his drunk self coming out and just being down right stupid. Not only what, but he had taken me back to his house. To HIS house. That was also not safe. I could be a insane person or a murderer. He couldn't know. I could have just gotten up and took his shit and left. He was not being very smart, or safe. And that's exactly what you had to be in Jersey. But also tough. And by the looks of him. Gerard had none of that. But he had beaten that guy up. Well, his drunk self had beaten that guy up. How did he do it? I didn't remember him throwing a lot of punches. I could only remember him hitting the guy with a beer bottle getting hit with a chair. How did he...then it came back to me. My stomach lurched. It know made since why Gerard wasn't sacred taking me back to his house, letting me sleep in his bed. With the possibility of me being a murderer.
Because he was one.
He had stabbed that man. Right in the stomach. Well, maybe it wasn't fatal. But it very well could have been. And what else could be your intentions when you stab somebody? I looked over at Gerard who was still sleeping soundly in his chair. I was becoming frightened by him. Yeah he had saved my life, but he had also, possibly, taken another.
My head was throbbing badly. But I couldn't know if that was from being thrown onto a table, or falling backwards off my chair hitting my head, which had started the whole thing. I began to walk towards the door, tipping toeing over the many scattered drawings. When I finally reached the door I stopped tip toeing and started to walk faster into the front living room. I could tell right away this was an apartment. The floor plan was similar to mine, but bigger and nicer. Or it appeared that way. Gerard's apartment was not that different from mine, it was just covered and covered in creativity. The walls stayed pretty bare. But he had paintings and drawings just duck taped to the walls, not popperly hung. I could see where he had tried to nail something into the walls, but had given up leaving ugly wholes with veins of cracked paint growing out. He had pretty old fashioned chairs with one deep red pattern couch that an old blanket that looked like it belonged in an antique store. I would say it seemed out of place, but everything seemed out of place. Nothing matched. There was wonderful drawings mixed with open comic books flung every where and old furniture. Beer bottles and cans seemed to take the place of actual vases and nick nacks. But don't get me wrong. Gerard definitely had nick nacks. Or, as he would probably want to call them, action figures. Some I could name, others I had no clue. There was the well known stars wars Star Trek, and horror movie phenomenons, super hero's such as Batman and Spiderman. But also some not as well known comic figures. I started to walk more around the room. I passed his very small TV which had tons of movies laying out all over the set up. Along with disks that he had not put back in their cases. It was obvious he was not well organized. But that thought didn't seem right. Maybe it wasn't that he was disorganized but that he was just very passionate about his interests. They had all seemed to be used and looked at recently, as though they were part of his daily routine. He could reach everything and it was there. It reminded me of a small boys room. I giggled a little bit at the thought. Not that it was making fun of him, but I thought i was cute.
I turned away from the TV set and went over to his old timey coffee table. I ran my fingers over its dark old wood. He had beer, pencils, and comics, spread out. It was obvious he had a drinking problem. I scanned over it more. An ash trey sat with dozens of cigarette butts. It was then I realized the over bearing smell of tabacco and nicotine. So he had a drinking and smoking problem, well okay.
What was I doing? I should have left by now. This was a strangers home. And not a stable one at that. His belongings seemed innocent and almost childlike, but his actions said different. He had stabbed someone for gods sake. And this wasn't like me. I kept to myself, I didn't just go through peoples shit like this. If I knew myself the way I thought i did I would have run out and found my way home by now. This wasn't like me. The affect that Gerard had given on me yesterday, I realized, was now happening again. He made me not act like myself. He made me linger, he made me think, he interested me. I didn't like my head played with. I wanted to keep my thoughts straight. I needed to get out. To try to forget. No matter how much I had wanted to be around Gerard, I realized that I shouldn't.
I started to walk out the door when I looked down and saw Gerard had also taken off my shoes. Damnit I needed to get out! Where could they bed? I turned and scanned the room, trying to spot the black converses. I moved more in ward and turned facing the door again. Maybe he had set the down next to the couch? I don't know, I need to check everywhere. I bent down and peered next and around the small front table searching.
"Hello."
I jumped what seemed a mile high. The wind got knocked out of me and my heart stopped. I spun around to see the, possible, murderer Gerard standing in the gap between the kitchen and the living room.
"Would you like some coffee?"
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