Shower Beer - Fiction
Elliot pushed past old friends, mostly people he’s never met to the front door to answer the knocking before whoever’s closest unlocked it. He looked through the peephole to see Megan. He took a deep breath and shook the nervousness from his face. He also fixed his hair.
“Hey! Fancy seeing you here!” Elliot said, as he opened the door.
“Looks like a real party in here! When did you get so many friends?” Megan stood in front of four of her friends, all eager to get into the party and use the 8 balls waiting in their purses.
“You know, I’m a pretty popular guy…” Elliot shrugged and raised his hands in the air by his sides. “Can I get you a drink?”
“I’ll take a drink,” said one of Megan’s friends. Elliot ignored her.
“Depends. What do you have?” Megan asked.
“Beer. Vodka.” Elliot pushed past the crowd holding Megans hand, he led her to the kitchen. Her friends dispersed elsewhere.
“Quite the selection. I’ll take a beer.”
Elliot grabbed her one and held it out to her. She looked at him, down at the can, and back up to his face. He stared at her confused. She held up her hands into claw shapes with red tips and hissed at him. He stared at her confused. “My nails, Elliot. Open it for me.”
“You could have said something.”
“You could have opened your eyes.”
Elliot noticed the eyes of his roommates on the two of them from across the room. They were making suggestive hand motions, and he repositioned himself across the island from her, so her back was turned to them.
“Do I smell or something?” Megan asked.
“No, no. It’s not that. I just wanted the light between us so I can see your eyes better.”
Megan rolled her eyes. “Is that why you invited me here? To fuck me?”
Elliot took a long drink of his beer without breaking eye contact.
A high-resolution photograph of a balcony on a high floor of a skyrise apartment building. Seven beer cans and four solo cups are scattered across the concrete floor of the balcony. There is a yellow cone with the number 12 next to the half-empty and crushed drinks. There is a wet spot of fluid with spots of solid material on the middle of the metal guard rail and on the floor of the balcony. There is a yellow cone with the number 13 next to the wet spot. There are two plastic lawn chairs, one with a broken front left leg on the right side of the balcony.
Elliot lost the drinking game he was playing with his roommates and the women his roommates desperately wanted to have sex with. He kept his eye out for Megan the entire game and never saw her. He walked around the house and checked the corners and knocked on locked bedroom and bathroom doors until he spotted her out smoking on the balcony with her friends and the wolfish men lurking around them. He sat on the couch next to a unconscious stranger and took a long drink of his beer while staring at Megan. He doesn’t know how much time he spent there, eventually the crowd filed in from their smoke break and Elliot got up to walk towards the sliding glass door. He grabbed Megan by the waist as soon as she stepped in and pulled her back outside, just the two of them on the platform hundreds of feet from the ground. He slid the door closed behind them.
“Someone’s getting handsy.”
“You ran away from me.”
“You were playing a game. And didn’t invite me.” Megan walked over to the guardrail and rested her forearms on it, looking over the city.
“You don’t like my roommates.” Elliot joined her. He looked directly at her.
“Nobody likes your roommates, they’re awful people.” She wouldn’t join his gaze.
Elliot changed the subject. “I wasn’t sure you were gonna show.”
“And what could have possibly made you get that idea?”
“I thought you were upset with me.”
“You thought correctly.”
“But you’re still here.”
“You did a shitty thing Elliot. I woke up and you were gone. No note, no text. I waited all day for you to say something.” She turned to him.
“I’m sorry.”
“Little late for that.”
“So why are you here?”
“Bored. My roommates wanted to go out.”
“Not to see me?” The corners of his mouth rose up slightly.
Megan turned away from him again. She looked at the lights around and below them, and turned around to go back inside. Elliot grabbed her waist as she put her hand on the door handle.
“Stay here with me tonight.”
She turned around and pushed him towards the corner with the plastic lawn chairs. He stumbled and fell. Elliot broke one of them under his weight. She gave him a disappointed look and continued inside.
He stayed on the floor and looked up at the balcony above him. The weight of the alcohol in his head pinned him down. He observed the cracks in the balcony above. He observed the fog over the city illuminated by the lights of the city below. The plane flying across the sky. The sound of the music seeping through the glass door. The fact that he was completely alone. The pain on his tailbone from falling. The rainbow LED glow from the lights inside. The beer he was barely holding on the ground next to him, soaking his arm and pants.
A high-resolution photograph of a red couch. In the background is a Bluetooth speaker, with various cans and cups surrounding the filling and background on the floor and tables. LED lights are strung up on the wall behind the couch. The speaker is lit up with it’s own set of LED lights. The three-section couch had crumbs and stains on the cushions. A yellow cone with the number 7 sits near the stains. An iPhone with a pink case and stickers is wedged in-between the left cushion and the middle cushion. A yellow cone with the number 8 sits near the phone. A brown hair tie lies on the floor in front of the couch. A yellow cone with the number 9 sits next to the hair tie.
Megan talked to her friends on a red couch in the living room. The speaker boomed from right behind their heads, she couldn’t hear anything. She sat there for a while looking at the people around her, at her friends, giving them eyes that it was time to go home. Her friends didn’t care. A man came up to her and asked her to dance. It wasn’t dancing music. He extended his hand to her. She took it. She danced with him and looked around for Elliot. He could still be on the balcony for all she knew. He moved his hands down from the middle of her back. She had to move them up three times before she pushed herself away from his embrace and sat back down on the couch. Her friends had disappeared. She looked for her phone and couldn’t find it. She tore up each cushion and it wasn’t there.
“Can I help you find something?” Elliot yelled over the music.
“What?” She yelled back.
“Are you looking for something?” He more so mouthed this time and made a gesture with his hands, putting his straight fingers up to his forehead and turning his head back and forth. She held up her thumb to her ear and pinky finger to mouth. Elliot gave a shrug in return. She buried her palms into her forehead and rubbed them hard into her skull. Elliot put his hands on her shoulders. She let him keep them there.
She looked up at him. “I think I’m to drunk.”
“Want me to find your roommates?”
“They don’t care about me.”
“Sure they do.”
“They’re only here to get high.”
“Do you want me to find them.”
“I think I wanna stay here tonight.”
A high resolution photograph of a full size bed taken from the foot. The bed is dressed in light blue sheets and a navy comforter. The bedding is messy on the mattress. There is one single black pillow with white stains at the head of the bed. A yellow cone with the number 20 sits at the foot of the bed. There is no headboard. On the left side of the bed is a brown wood nightstand holding an alarm clock, lamp, a copy of catcher in the rye, a pair of sunglasses, a glass half-empty of clear liquid, and a phone plugged into the wall to the left. There is a yellow cone with a number 21 next to the glass. Decorating the wall above the bed from left to right is a poster of Kanye West’s album “Graduation,” a poster of the movie “Baby Driver,” and a poster of Margot Robbie in a swimsuit. On the right side of the bed is a stack of shoeboxes higher than the mattress with a box of Kleenex sitting atop the pile. There are seven crumbled up tissues on the floor next to the bed in front of the stack of shoeboxes. Three of the tissues are stained red. There is a yellow cone with the number 22 next to the tissues.
Elliot handed her a glass of water from the other side of the doorframe and told her to lock the door as soon as he closed it. He closed it and waited for the click. He walked back to the living room and took in the gravity of the party. People were migrating out of the apartment. He had no idea what time it was. He saw his roommates scattered across the apartment talking to the women they’d brag about having fucked the next day. He saw one roommate with a girl he would deny ever having spoken to, even though it was clear they were going to hook up. She was pretty. His roommates were cruel like that. Elliot was cruel, sometimes. He walked past a group of people to the balcony and shut the door behind him. He stood on the edge and put his forearms on the railing. He put his head down and shut his eyes, trying to stop the spinning.
He heard a voice from behind him.
“You too huh?”
He turned around towards the glass door and a woman was sitting on the ground of the balcony to his right in the corner. He was too drunk to get jump-scared.
“Who are you?”
“Sarah’s friend,” she said from the floor. Elliot didn’t know a Sarah. She didn’t answer the question, and Elliot gave up and turned back to the city. She moved up off the ground and walked up to him on the balcony. “Don’t wanna talk to me? Am I not cute enough for you?”
Elliot looked her up and down. He turned back towards the city. “A lot of cute girls were in my apartment tonight. What makes you so special?”
“There were a lot of guys too, what makes you special?”
“Never said I was.”
“You were staring at the girl with the blonde hair all night. The one in the red nails and top. My friends were calling her ‘the temptress.’ What makes her so special?”
Elliot took a moment then looked up at the sky, his forearms still resting on the guardrail. He wasn’t sure if it was getting lighter out.
“She makes me feel.”
“Anybody can do that.”
“Nobody else has.”
“Maybe you haven’t met the right person yet.”
“Like you?”
“Never know till you try.”
He looked towards her again. She was staring right into his eyes. She bit her lip as he made eye contact. He leaned in to kiss her. She tasted like her fruity lip balm and vodka. He tasted like beer. Elliot wasn’t sure how long they were kissing for, though he pulled away at some point. He opened his eyes and expected to see Megan’s face. It wasn’t Megan’s face. He turned to the balcony and threw up.
She left as he was expelling everything he ate that day. He wasn’t sure how long he was out there. The sky definitively started to light up as he returned inside, Elliot needed to brush his teeth. The living room was empty, except for the trash that covered every open surface of the apartment. He walked to his room and knocked on the door. He hoped Megan wasn’t asleep, and he’d have to spend the night on the dirty couch. He knocked again. “Megan,” he called, just loud enough for her to hear from his bed. He gave up and started walking towards the couch as the door opened and Megan peeked her head out.
“Elliot?”
“Thank god. I need to brush my teeth.”
A high-resolution photograph of a bathroom taken from a doorframe. A sink with a small cabinet underneath is immediately on the right side, with a mirror above and a cream colored counter stretching to the left of the sink. A yellow cone with the number 32 is on the sink next to a powder substance, 4 gold rings, and a gold necklace. Four luminescent bulbs shine above the sink. The toilet is on the far side of the right wall, with the seat and lid flipped up. A crumped-up bathmat is right in front of the toilet, in the middle of it and the shower. A yellow cone with the number 33 is next to the bathmat. The shower is a tiled off cube, the inside not shown in the photograph, facing the toilet and the bathmat. In the middle of the photograph on the farthest wall is a towel bar. With a towel strewn without formality. On the left of the shower on the left side wall closest to the door is an open closet with shelves of bath materials and toilet paper. On the floor immediately in front of the door at the bottom of a photograph lay a black skirt, a pair of black lace underwear, one white ankle sock, and a red top. A yellow cone with the number 31 is next to the pile of clothes.
Elliot walked in to the room and saw the bed untouched. He made it earlier in the day. “Did you not lay down?” he asked.
“Wasn’t tired.”
“What did you do in here for so long.”
She shrugged and looked at his feet. He walked into the bathroom and saw the counter with a prepped line of coke and much more counterspace to the left of it, scattered with white crystal dust.
“Jesus Meg how much of this did you do?” He turned around to look at her squinting at the bright white light coming from above the sink. She sat on the bed looking at the floor, not saying anything. “Megan,” Elliot walked out of the bathroom, closer to her “how much coke did you do tonight?”
“I don’t know. I took it from my Grace’s purse. It’s been a while. My nose started to bleed bad.” The untouched glass of water Elliot gave her sat on his nightstand.
“Drink some water and lie down.” Elliot looked how to stop a cocaine overdose. His phone died as he was typing. She drank half of the glass and sat upright in his bed.
“You only have one pillow.”
“I only have one head.”
“You’re so self-centered.”
“That’s how you become successful.”
“You’re successful?”
“And you are? You do coke every weekend because no guy wants to be around you for more that two hours because it starts feeling like he’s taking care of a child.”
Megan grimaced and put her head down. She rolled onto her side facing away from Elliot and the bathroom. She bent her knees inwards, laid her head on Elliot’s singular pillow and quietly sobbed into the black fabric.
Elliot plugged his phone in and set it on the nightstand. He walked back into the bathroom and dispersed the line from the counter. He blew most of it into the sink and washed it away. He brushed his teeth while swaying back and forth. After he rinsed his mouth, he walked back to Megan and sat on the side of the bed facing away from her.
“Are you awake?”
She sniffled but didn’t reply.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t mean it.”
She rolled over to face him.
“You’re an asshole. Almost every time I see you, you’re horrible to me. And I come back every time you text me and I don’t know why.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you? Or are you just lying to me so I shut up and stop crying like the child you think I am?”
“I am sorry. I’m glad you’re here. It’s just really hard to think right now.” He looked at the time on the red and black digital alarm clock. “We should try to sleep. Get up for a second so we can get under the covers.”
“I want to take a shower.” Megan ran her fingers through her hair from the top of her skull to the ends on her right side.
“Be careful, please.”
A high-resolution photograph of a cubical tile shower covered by a shower curtain. The curtain has two layers, the plastic inside layer is sticking out on the left side. A left human foot is pushing the layer out, the ankle down to toes are visible. The bridge of the foot has dark hair, along with each of the toes and the shin barely visible above the ankle. The toenails are unkempt. There are old blisters on the heel and on the outside of the ball of the foot. A small puddle of water is visible below the foot where water beads off the heel. A yellow cone with the number 34 is next to the foot. There is a crumpled-up bathmat in front of the shower. A yellow cone with the number 33 is next to the bathmat. The outside layer of the shower curtain has a dark blue background, with light blue highlights to simulate waves, and cartoon angry sharks pattern the piece of fabric. Running water is present just above the shower curtain, a medium level of pressure and bloom.
Megan faced the comedown. She was drawn to get high again. She closed the bathroom door behind her, and saw her line she prepped earlier had disappeared. She looked for a non-existent medicine cabinet. She rifled through the closet by the shower and didn’t find anything. She put her hands on her head and looked at herself in the mirror. Her mascara was dripping down her face like she was Dalí’s canvas. Her hair was frizzy where she lay on Elliot’s bed. Her top was sagging down in places and riding up in others. She saw a black purse hanging on a towel hook on the inside of the door. She looked in there for any sort of stimulant, and at the bottom of the bag found an orange prescription bottle for alprazolam under a name she didn’t recognize. She shook out two pills and put them on the counter. She didn’t care what they were.
She took off her clothes, leaving them by the door and opened the blue shower curtain. She saw a bottle of three in one shower gel on one of the ledges inside the shower. She saw an unopened beer on another ledge. She saw a damp washrag hanging from the knob that controls the water. She turned the water on as hot as it could go.
Megan waited for the water to warm up and put her hands on the counter, stabilizing herself. Steam started to fill the room and fog the mirror.
Elliot knocked at the door. “Megan?” he asked. “Can I join you?”
“Give me a sec.” She picked up the pills and held them in her right hand. She stepped into the scalding shower and didn’t seem to notice the temperature. “Come in,” she called, once she was in.
Elliot walked into the bathroom and left the door to his room open behind him. He had taken his clothes off and put them in the laundry basket earlier. He stepped into the shower with Megan. Her makeup was dripping from the heat and the water. His stomach was bloated from the countless beers he drank earlier. Megan stood in the water as they looked at each other, Elliot still mostly dry.
“You’re so hot.”
“Not now Elliot. Not tonight.”
“You tell me to come in and then tell me not tonight?”
“Leave then, do what you want. As always.” Megan’s eyes fell and her lids struggled to stay open. The heat of the shower made her sweat the little water she had in her system.
Elliot took her chin in his hand and pointed her face up towards him. “I’ll stay if you want me to. Forever.”
Megan almost believed him.
She sat on the floor of the small cube and drew her knees to her chest. She rested her head against the tile wall of the shower. The water barely reached her. She still clutched the pills in her right hand, keeping them mostly dry.
Elliot joined her on the floor. His legs were too long to fold in. He spread his right leg to an inner corner of the shower and his left to the side with the shower curtain.
“Have you ever been high?” she asked, after a moment of silence. Her eyes were still closed.
“Weed, yeah. Never anything harder.”
“Do you want to?” She opened her eyes to look at him. She moved her right leg, so their knees were touching.
“I got rid of your coke,” he said, looking at her. He never closed his eyes.
Megan opened her right hand away from the rainfall of water. She took one in her left hand. And held the other towards Elliot. She put it between her teeth.
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Megan used her left hand to run her long nails up and down Elliot’s calf.
“I can’t take it dry,” he conceded. He took the pill from her hand.
She pointed her head up to the beer sitting on the ledge above them.
He reached up and grabbed it with his long arms. He cracked the beer and offered it to Megan. She shook her head slowly, the pill still between her teeth.
Elliot brought the pill up to his mouth and swallowed it, washing it down with half of the can.
Megan swallowed it and closed her eyes.
“I think I’m in love with you,” Elliot said.
Megan opened her eyes slowly, looked at his chest, and closed them. She leaned her head back on the tile without saying anything. She closed her legs and brought them to her chest again. She leaned to her left to the inner corner of the shower and rested her head there.
Elliot finished the beer in silence and looked up at the water falling in between them. He wondered if it were raining outside.