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Apparently,Kaleb’s friends didn’t get their drink on hard enough last night, as we’re making a three block walk up the street to his buddy, Ryan’s house, who’s having a bonfire in his back yard.
With his fingers linked with mine, Kaleb explains there’s just little else for young adults our age to do – the downfall to living in a town like this one. It doesn’t sully my outlook on the place though. I feel like a person can breathe and think out here; draw inspiration from the beauty and the quiet.
The white noise of chatter gets louder, along with crackles and pops from the fire I can see burning in the backyard of a brown house just about thirty feet away. Kaleb leads me around the side of the house to where a handful of people drink and joke around the orange blaze.
“If you were to fly over this town at night, you’d probably see little orange fires everywhere,” Kaleb indulges me with a fun fact. That’s how people do it here in CC, Indy,” he sighs out, shortening the name of his town and state.
“Corporal Shane!” Some guy with longish blonde hair pops up and snaps off a salute, to which Kaleb rolls his eyes and does a half-assed one back. “Shut up,”
“Jeez, sensitive,” the guy mumbles before sitting back down in one of the many folding chairs that surrounds the fire.
“That’s Ryan,” Kaleb leans in to murmur to me. “All he does is party and talk shit. Don’t pay him any attention if you can help it.”
I nod up at him, just as we’re approached by another guy with hair as dark as Kaleb’s, and though I can’t see his eye color in the minimal firelight, he’s a little shorter than K with softer features.
“I’m Alex,” he says and immediately holds out his hand. I’m impressed with his manners.
“Hi, I’m Luna.” I shake his hand and I see his lower jaw drop open slowly.
“Luna?” I nod and so does Kaleb as he pulls me in a little closer, and Alex blinks, shaking his head. “But… wait a minute. You were at the club last night. This is Luna?”
“The one and only,” Kaleb’s voice is affectionate, and I can’t tell if I’m feeling warmth from his tone or the fire.
Alex takes a moment to find his voice before finally shaking his head in disbelief. “Camp girl showed up.” He tilts his head towards Kaleb as he takes a pull of his beer, and pins him with some kind of knowing stare.
Kaleb stares back, a reluctant smile trying to pull at the corners of his mouth. “Keep chugging that beer, comrade. Whatever keeps words from coming out of your mouth.”
Alex swallows while holding both his hands out. “I should’ve put money on it, that’s all I’m going to say.”
“Shut it,” Kaleb warns, still trying not to smile.
“I’m just saying from here on out you can refer to me as the Prophet. Oh look,” he dramatically turns his head and gasps, “Miranda’s here!” he announces before dashing off in the direction of an approaching brunette who looks happy to see him.
Just as I tilt my head back to ask Kaleb what that was all about, Ryan, the apparent shit talker pipes up again. “Hey, K, who’s the little slice? And since when do you take your game into overtime? Didn’t you go home with her last night?”
In about half a second Kaleb is dashing me behind him, and in three strides is right in Ryan’s face.
“You looking to get laid out early tonight, fucker?” All chatter ceases as people look to see what’s about to go down. Kaleb for sure towers over this guy who thinks he’s hilarious. I tuck my hands up under my chin, bracing myself. I always knew Kaleb had a short fuse due to his unfortunate childhood, but I’ve never seen it in action before.
I hold my breath as Ryan gets a goofy look on his face and waves Kaleb off like this is an everyday thing. “Come on, bro, you know this is just how I say hello.”
Good lord, whatever happened to this poor kid?
Ryan leans around Kaleb’s solid frame and waves at me as if to illustrate. “Hi, girl that Kaleb banged last night,” he sings out, but before I can even respond with ‘that’s okay, I’m also the girl he humped in the lake at summer camp, he’s in the air. Kaleb has raised him up off the grass by his jacket and is snarling in his face.
“Alright, listen up, asshole. You don’t talk to her for the rest of the night. You don’t even look at her, you hear me?” Without waiting for any sign of compliance, Kaleb drops Ryan as if he’s a sack of potatoes and doesn’t even look to see if he landed on his feet before heading to the cooler where he grabs out a beer bottle and a water.
“Need a shot to start off with, K?” some other guy asks him from my right, holding out a familiar looking bottle of whiskey.
“Not tonight.” Kaleb shakes his head to my surprise before leading me to a couple of empty seats and handing me the water.
For the next hour and change, I laugh at stories of Kaleb from high school and get to know Alex’s girlfriend, Miranda, who works in the salon in town. Ryan obeys Kaleb’s orders as I don’t hear from him again – well, not directly anyway. He’s still running his mouth and drinking however much his stomach can hold, while I intermittently think about whether I want to get to know him in some other setting. Like maybe a church.
In between chatting with Miranda, I catch the occasional wind of more bullshit he spews, and catch him just in time to start in on Kaleb again.
“What did you sign up for anyway?” Ryan sneers, clearly one more sheet to the wind than the last time he opened his mouth. “You should be sticking around here and making sure your legacy auto shop doesn’t go under.”
“I can work on bikes but I don’t know shit about the business end,” Kaleb snaps in defense, his head tilted to the side. “Ever think about how I’d actually run the place? I need to take business courses and the military is going to pay for that. All I have to do is serve my year and get out and that will pay for my schooling. I just need Jackson to hang in there for a couple of years and I’ll be helping out as much as I can,” he grumbles, bringing his beer to his lips.
