A short story I recently wrote and posted on my Deviantart account. I don't think it's the best writing I've ever done. Plus, it's romantic, which means I basically left my "man card" at the door while writing this. But it was an idea I've had for a long time. In fact, it started out as an idea for a film. So I basically tried to put some ideas down from the framework instilled in my memory. This piece will continue to evolve, because I plan to revise it continually in order for it to be a better piece:
The diesel-fueled bombast of Ryders and U-Hauls woke David Procnahl instead of the usual sound of cardinals perched in the large oak outside his bedroom window. She arrived without fanfare in August 1994, the new girl next door, skipping playfully out of her car and into the glass-faced doorway of her new life. A permanent smile glued on her face, Amber Pauley was an innocent girl in those days, a future teacher, the next Prime Minister of Canada, Ben Savage's biggest fan, an expert in geography who could name nearly every country in the Western Hemisphere by heart if she so desired. She had many friends in Moncton and cried when she had to leave them all for a strange new British Columbian existence. Although she heard Daddy would be happier there and meet new friends of his own at his new job. Mommy, of course, adored their new house and promised Amber a bigger bedroom with her own television. All she had to do was be a big girl, at least for a little while.
Her long, brown hair bounded on her thin shoulders as she ran into her empty future. The house was barren, boring. Nothing except for slippery wooden floors and a cavernous echo bouncing off every white wall and ceiling in sight. Her pale, pudgy face morphed into a spunky pout, raven-eyed and disappointed. She turned around and ran outside the front door. And saw her new neighbor, a skinny, sand-haired kid of about six, still in his pajamas, standing directly in front of her doorway. She jumped six feet into the air and landed like a cat with two legs. He smiled.
"Heh-low," his Charlie Brown voice said. Amber was frozen in fright. Who was this strange boy? She couldn't move. They stood, facing one-another in awkward silence. A look of confusion crept up from behind the boy's freckles and messy red hair. "Heh-low?"
The word, without thought, emerged out of Amber's open lips in a soft ribbon. "Hey." Her face turned tomato red and she relaxed. "Sorry."
"It's all right," he said. "I kinda wasn't expecting you either. Are you moving in?" This boy seemed awfully inquisitive.
"Yeah," puffed Amber.
"I kinda wondered," said the boy. "Your moving trucks woke me up, and I ran outside to see what was happening, and I ran to your door, and I ran into you." He smiled in his childish sense of accomplishment.
She giggled, strangely finding a sense of comfort with this new face. "But you're still in your PJ's!"
"I know, but you gotta do what you gotta do."
"Are you embarrassed or something?"
"Not REE-lee," the boy pouted, tilting his head down and briefly staring at his favorite pair of matching yellow fleece racecar pajamas. "I don't get 'umbarrased a lot. But my cousin Jeremy told me that he sleeps naked so if he was here, I think he'd be more embarrassed than me right now." He turned his head up and focused his attention on her dark blue eyes, which instantly wrinkled into distaste.
"Ugh! Dis-GUST-eeng!" She wore a face of utter repulsion.
"I'm sorry," the boy sweetly said, choosing to stare at the ground.
"You better be, kid," belted Amber. Her soft voice had turned to sandpaper. "'cuz you're really kinda staring to get weird!"
The boy found a newfound sense of anger develop in his chest. He faced the girl as if defending his city from an incoming invader. "Hey! Don't call me weird! You just moved in so that means you're the new kid and that means you're weirder than I am, so ha-ha!" He smirked in victory, arrogantly tilting his head to the sky like Max from Where The Wild Things Are.
She wasn't amused. And with good reason. "Well, least I don't go around talking to kids I don't know about some naked cousin! That's, like, crazy!"
"Did you just say crazy?"
"Yeah!"
"Like, to me?"
"YEAH!" Amber smiled evilly, flicking her hair away from her eyelids. She was winning the war. This kid couldn't outsmart her if he tried.
"Well, I think you're crazy too!" The boy wouldn't stop.
"Really? Why?" She placed her right hand on her hip and defiantly stared the stranger in his beady eyes.
"…ummm, cuz…" He couldn't think of anything. Suddenly, he didn't feel quite like King of the Wild Things anymore. A girl outsmarted him. Again.
"…cuz? Why?" Amber looked more annoyed by the moment. She tapped her left foot willfully as a stereotypically busty, headstrong secretary would in a low-grade office comedy.
He found his tongue. " …cuz you're a girl, that's why!" He relaxed. Maybe he had a shot after all. A subsequent remark popped into his head. "And girls don't call me weird, never!"
She paused. After a couple seconds, her intimidating stance subsided. She took a deep breath and blurted the first words that came to mind. "I'm Amber," She felt as if she knocked herself out in the fifteenth round with a clear unanimous decision on the judges' scorecards. Game over. Hit the showers. Just make fun of me again for being a girl and get it over with.
"I'm Dave," said the boy. And he smiled at her. And she smiled back. And many more smiles were on the way.
"David Prochnal, tell me the truth," shouted an older Amber Pauley, "what do you really think of how I look?" She was stubbornly pulling the rest of her flowing brown hair out of her blue and green Vancouver Canucks hat, the one that matched her jersey. They were about to head out, catching another average Canucks regular-season game on another average October night. David was looking in her direction but she knew a song she never wanted to hear was floating though his head, landing him in temporary space travel. He was fooling around with his keys again, finding immense interest in spinning his lanyard around his ring finger. She stomped her right foot down onto the hardwood floor of the living room. With a jolt, David re-emerged from his mental hiding place and scrambled for a thought among the trillions suddenly appearing in his consciousness.
"Wha...? Oh, yeah, yeah, I…I think you're on to something…" David replied as he brushed his unkempt red hair from his eyes. She reeked of androgyny with that look. For God's sake, put on something feminine. "…but I really think you should ditch the contacts and put your glasses on." He secretly held a soft spot for them inside his subconscious. But she wasn't amused.
"Ugh, Dave, the game starts in forty minutes!" She didn't feel like facing the mirror again. She'd find something wrong. It always happened. She didn't want to seem like she was lacking confidence in front of her closest friend.
"Well, shouldn't it take you, like, ten seconds to do?" He was a bit annoyed but not angry at her concern. He looked up at her from his seated position with an air of need in his eyes.
She sighed and walked away, heading toward the washroom. "Okay, whatever. But Dave, just keep in mind that these glasses are going to make me look like even more of a hockey nerd!" He admired her when she walked away from him like that. She exuded a strange confidence that he couldn't quite pinpoint. But it had always existed with her. She was always like that…always outsmarting him, always having the upper hand, but always keeping her cool. In fact, she rarely lost her temper in front of him after their first meeting. Every argument had been relatively civil. That's why he saw something in her that transcended mere friendship. Someone he always knew had a level head.
After all, Amber took personal tragedy surprisingly well. Maybe she knew that she had a confidant in David, someone she could always bounce her troubles off of, someone who would always listen to her rants, no matter how absurd or boorish. Yet on a rainy April afternoon, David heard his doorbell ring three times and found Amber soaking on his front porch with a look of longing in her eyes that he had never seen. Her hair, soaked with rainwater, fell in tendrils around her neck and face. Her sharp blue eyes bore a pink stain. Her shirt looked as if it were skin tight around her fragile body, wettened by the downpour. She sniffled in between breaths. Her arms, tense at her sides, slowly lifted and wrapped themselves into a slow embrace around David's ribs. Here they were, fifteen years old, platonic friends, definitely not affectionate. Something must have happened.
"Am-ber?" He softly, inquisitively asked, confusion emanating from his concerned eyes. She tightened her grip. The sniffles and sobs came more frequently, more intense. He begrudgingly returned the gesture. She felt frozen and desolate to him, a winter's midnight on a spring afternoon.
"They…it's…over, Dave…" she exhaled. "…Dad's not coming back. Dad's never coming back…" Oh, shit. They couldn't have. Divorced. It was bound to happen sooner or later. David began to feel a wave of concern rush over his eyelids, drowning him in Amber's arms. "...please," she pleaded, "let's go inside, it's terrible out here..."
He led her through the front door. He didn't know what was going on with her, why she seemed so fragile. She was always the strong-willed one. If anything, she was the one who straightened his head out. Today was different, he thought. It's my turn to be the rock. He closed the door behind him and silence instantly enveloped the doorway. Only the drone of rainfall persisted, broken only by the soft pattering of rain from Amber's hair and clothes on the linoleum floor. They stared at each other in sadness and concern. Amber's eyes slowly grew confident, as if a decision was made behind her agonized expression. She briefly looked at the ground. A droplet of water rolled off the tip of her nose and fell…landing on the floor with a soft tap. She licked her lips, then quickly drew her head up, placed her pale palms on the back of David's head, stood up on her toes and let a wet kiss slither on the lips of her best friend.
It only lasted three seconds. Three short seconds, permanently ingrained in David's psyche. His first kiss. With someone he never thought of loving. He never saw it in her. But there it was. It just happened. He was floored. And he smiled. And consoled her in his embrace. She stayed over that night, never once wanting to go next door to face reality and her bitter, drunken, divorced mother…they laughed tragedy off, watching their favorite childhood movies, singing, dueling acoustic guitars, playfully dancing to whatever silly song they could…anything that could take their minds off the heartbreak next door. They stayed awake until the following afternoon, sharing embraces and creating fun along the way but never once replicating that moment in the doorway, going no further than a kiss.
The concern ended with Debra Pauley, hung over and concerned at 3:00 PM, knocking on the front door and demanding Amber's return. And every personal emotion reverted into platonic friendship. Amber never once admitted "love" for David. David soon repressed the love that enveloped him in that moment…until it gradually returned.
One night in a scheme of a relatively normal friendship may seem like an anomaly, but David thought about its meaning for years. Twenty-one and unlucky, he had seen his fair share of relationships, all ending in disaster. No one was as close or as special a friend or a supporter as Amber Pauley was. Maybe it was desperation, maybe it was delusion, but it made sense. And he sensed that Amber still possessed the emotion she displayed for those three seconds. She was unlucky in love as well, always bringing home another boyfriend and always losing him to someone more attractive or shallow. They'd touch her passionately in a drunken haze and she'd allow them a night in bed. Nothing ever became of either gesture. And nothing ever resulted. David felt she was losing confidence by the relationship, slowly becoming another automaton of the club scene and nothing like the unique girl he learned to admire throughout his entire life.
"Unique-looking enough for you?" Amber joked. She had emerged from the washroom with her thick-rimmed glasses, arms out, smiling widely.
David laughed with an overtone of sarcasm. "Holy shit, you look like a fucking Hanson brother!" he joked. "But it fits you." Of course he wasn't going to compliment her. Not now.
"Geeee, thanks, eh," Amber chortled in a stereotypical Canadian accent, "remind me to put on the foil the next time you tell me th-aat."
"Yah, eh, like I'm really wanting to get beat up by you again," he sarcastically retorted. He put the faux hoser accent away and got down to business. "We have a game to catch, girl."
"Right behind you," she answered. "Let's do this."
David shook his head while opening the front door. "One more thing…you should really lay off the action games, Amber. They're messing up the way you speak."
"Can't help it," Amber softly replied. "It takes my mind off how much you criticize me for being clever."
David stopped momentarily and looked at Amber in the doorway, wondering if she ever remembers being fifteen and in his arms on a rainy day. He shook his head again to clear the thought and stepped outside, closing the front door behind him. "Yeah, I'm such a dick, aren't I?"
The game came and went. The Canucks had a poor showing. They didn't care. They had seen too many games at GM Place, taken in too many experiences over the years that this loss was simply run-of-the-mill to them. But they had a good time taking in the atmosphere, chanting their vocal chords hoarse, laughing at drunks, splitting a beer and chatting about nothing in particular…movies, TV shows, actors, music, high school friends, whatever kind of spur-of-the-moment topic they could hold on to. A night in the life of two twentysomething friends. David, however, didn't feel content with normal conversation tonight. All night, he failed to find the moment he thought was appropriate through nearly three hours of hockey. So he felt that the car ride home would be his opportunity to let Amber Pauley, the girl he felt most important to him, his unrequited love, know his true feelings.
Shadows and streetlights coated Amber's face in the darkness of the passenger seat as David drove into the fall Vancouver night. She was beautiful in this light, as adorable as she was when they had first met but as attractive as the woman she had become along the way. Was it the fading alcohol in his system? He couldn't tell. He felt honored to be sitting next to her in that moment, in that hour, in that day, in that year. He turned down the Gorillaz song Amber was bouncing around to…was it "Dare"? He didn't know what song it was anymore. He just wanted to talk.
Amber became temporarily confused. "Hey! What did you do that for?"
"I'd like to talk, Amber, if you don't mind," said David calmly.
Amber nodded, "Yeah, I guess so." She turned her head toward David in the driver's seat. "What's up?"
"Just wanted to know how you and Trey are doing." Trey was her current single-serving bedfellow.
Amber pouted. "Do you really want to know what I think of Trey Fortin, Dave?"
"That's what I asked," David replied, glancing for a brief moment toward the reflections of the yellow highway lights that were caressing Amber's body through the window.
"Well, Trey…" Amber remarked, before pausing briefly. She sighed, flicking her hair over her ear. "…to be honest, Dave, Trey is nothing special. He's just a face. I mean, we slept together and all, but he's just…he's just a face, Dave. He's a guy you pick up at the club and fuck and say goodbye. That's all Trey is."
"Well, to tell you the truth," David replied, with a lump in his throat, "I'm really concerned about who you're allowing into your room." Ouch. That didn't sound right.
"Dave, who I allow into my bed is none of your business," Amber angrily replied, gaining steam with every other word, frequently turning toward Dave and looking away in fury. "Unless you're turning bisexual and want to get in on the action, I suggest you stay the hell away from that topic."
David stuttered while trying to collect his thoughts. "I didn't mean…I didn't mean it that way, Amber. I don't want you to do something you'll regret. I mean, we've been through a lot, we know each other too well…I just don't want to see you get sick or anything serious like that."
"I use condoms, I do everything I'm supposed to, you don't have to worry."
"No, Amber," David replied, a level of concern growing in his voice.
"No? Why the fuck not, huh?" Amber's anger was growing, much to David's chagrin. Something needed to break the ice. The car grew silent for a few moments. The tension became unbearable between them.
"Well, to tell you the truth…and you know a lot about this…I haven't found anyone worth a damn in my entire life. No one, man or woman, has ever given me the time of day. The girls I've went out with, went to dances with, went to the movies with…they had different priorities. They wanted me to spend money on them, to buy them drinks, to…to screw them after going out for a week. But when it came down to talking, I never found anything in common with them."
Amber had noticeably settled down. "Dave, you just need to…to get out some more, to talk to these girls a bit more, there'll definitely be someone out there for you."
David found the moment he needed. His arms were shaking in fear and nervousness behind the wheel. Tell her. "But I've found this person already, Amber. And she's sitting right next to me in this car. The truth is, you and I are so much alike that there's no one else I can truly find confidence in or relate to. You have been the one this entire time. And you made me realize it yourself."
"I did?"
"Remember the first day we met? You could have teased me until I cried, but you decided to introduce yourself to me, and that made me realize that you have a heart behind your toughness. Remember the day we came home from seeing 'Toy Story' in first grade?"
"…we sang 'You've Got A Friend In Me' all the way home, it was so corny,"
"Yeah, exactly, but it was real. But…the moment that did it for me was the day your parents divorced. We never talked about that day." She grew fidgety. His teeth rattled. Both remembered the moment well. "I had never seen you like that since. You were a shell of who you normally are, you were…you were destroyed, Amber. You didn't have to do what you did, and I know you remember what you did."
The car grew silent except for the slight whirring of the highway beneath the car's tires. A small tear crept down Amber's right cheek. "Yes, I remember," Amber whispered.
"That was my first kiss. Fifteen years old and it was my first fucking kiss. But I wouldn't have thought of it had you not done it yourself. From that moment forward, I knew something was there, and although both of us deny it, we continue to realize how important that moment was for our friendship."
"It was my first as well," Amber replied, half sobbing. David's jaw fell in between the brake pedal and the throttle as his heart became lodged in his throat. No fucking way. "I never wanted to tell you that…I always wanted you to believe I was this ultra-confident girl in relationships, but I was nothing. Guess it serves me right with all the…one-night stand bullshit I have to deal with now." Tears began to soak Amber's face in greater number.
"I forgive you, Amber, I really do. I just wanted you to know how much that moment meant to me."
"I kissed you…because I had no one else to turn to but you at that moment. You were always the boy who I felt comfortable with. Even though I always told myself that you were more of a brother to me than a friend, and that I could never truly "love" you…you were always there for me. And I'm so, so grateful for that. So that's why I did what I did."
David sat there for a few seconds, glancing briefly at the sobbing Amber in the passenger seat, the lights shining perfectly on her face, the smoky, crisp fall air blowing through the barely-opened driver's side window, the rolling of the tires on the highway pavement…and he smiled and opened his lips to say the only thing that mattered. "Amber Pauley, I…love you. You're everything."
Her sniffling intensified, just as it did on that rainy spring day. And it happened. Amber's voice emerged confident, strong, adamant. "I have ALWAYS loved you. I was afraid and scared and stupid to never admit it, but you are the only person who has ever been this important to me, David."
She had finally won the war that had started nearly two decades ago with that weird, crazy kid next door in the yellow pajamas. After years of burying it deep within herself, Amber Pauley finally was at peace with the world, knowing the love she felt for her closest, most personal friend was not only reciprocal, but genuine.
David Prochnal's car pulled into a driveway in a new world, one completely different from the one he had already known. Every familiar surrounding seemed new, unadulterated, perfect. Even Amber's room, which he had often walked into during his childhood and observed with different eyes, had transformed into an otherworldly paradise. And as the lights fell on Vancouver, two lifelong friends became one unified consciousness.
Come to think of it, the plot is a lot like "Zach and Miri Make A Porno". In a way, some of this is actually my response to the faults of that movie and the way it handled its romance between the titular characters.
Yes, this is long. But the idea was pretty complex to begin with. Like I said, it began as an idea for a movie.
This is also my first crack at writing something "romantic". So corny dialogue may ensue. If it does, I apologize. It's something I plan to revise. But I usually write my dialogue in a realistic fashion in the first place, so I try to go by what real people would say to one-another. IDK.
If you've seen this story a million times before, big deal. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel, just put some of my own ideas in motion. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.
The title is based on the Alexisonfire song by the same name. It's the only song I know from them, honestly...thank NHL 10 for that one. It actually fits the story a bit since the band is Canadian and the characters involved are rabid hockey fans from Vancouver.
Some of the events are connected to events in my own life, but this is in NO WAY autobiographical. I only wish I could have had a relationship in this manner, actually.
Revisions will be on their way in the future, hopefully, as this was basically written unedited at the drop of a hat. So, this will continue to evolve down the road.
Enjoy. Comments or bashing or questions of my manhood? Feel free to reply.
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