MFEO

This is another story I did for my creaitve writing class my senior year. The assignment was music, and we had to incorperate a song in some way throughout the story. I chose to follow the plot given in one of my favorite songs, "MFEO (Part 2)" by Jack's Mannequin.

I'm sorry I've had such a writing hiatus lately, but architecture is a hard major.


MFEO


You can breathe, you can breathe now
You can breathe, but the air is running out


Breathing was hard. Agony ripped through my lungs every time I took a breath. It felt like a hand was pressing against my lungs, and I couldn’t get enough air. The cold, stinging rain should have felt good on my hot face, but all I could do was gasp through sobs, close my eyes, and wait. I was standing under the streetlight on the hard sidewalk. Probably he would see me.

Not that I really wanted him to see me. But, I was stuck. I had no one to call, because no one was talking to me. I couldn’t call Caleb, but I knew that he would see me when he left work. That’s why I went there. Everything was relying on Caleb, which was actually pretty ironic, seeing as Caleb was most of the problem. Okay, so the whole problem.

The rain had soaked me through while I was walking to the edge of the parking lot, far away from Andrew. I almost regretted my hasty exit. If I had waited…
Fuck waiting. I had waited long enough for that stupid, self-absorbed bastard.

I took another breath, and watching the door to the supermarket. There weren’t any cars coming down the road. The only light was from my streetlight and the rapidly dimming supermarket. I had a distant feeling of being watched, which made me too uncomfortable to move. If I moved from under the light, I would be more vulnerable—plus, Caleb would have no chance of seeing me. The wet, rustling leaves seemed less threatening standing under the light.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I heard, shouted from across the lot.

I whirled around, slapping wet hair against my neck. Caleb was walking out of the empty supermarket, staring at me. Before I could say anything, he got into his car and slammed the door. Over the pounding rain, I heard the engine turn over. He floored the car, and disappeared.


You get in my car where it’s warm
Cold hands, lips blue, clothes stuck to you
You could have phoned me for a ride
It's a mess out there
You said the rain's the rain, some air'd be good for you
Well, good for you



“Get in,” Caleb told me through the open door. I had lost him from sight for a second, only to discover that he had pulled up to the sidewalk next to me. The passenger side door hung open, and the hard rain slapped against the plastic of the door. “Livvy, get in the car. Now.”

I slumped my shoulders in defeat and got in. Isn’t this what I wanted? But once I was in the car, it didn’t seem like such a good idea, anymore. The tight anger on Caleb’s face made me uneasy. His eyebrows were drawn together, and his blue eyes were icily hostile.

“You could have called me,” he said angrily, aggressively hitting the gas. “It’s a fucking mess out there. Why did you wait in the rain, instead of coming in and getting me?”

Shrugging, I whispered, “I didn’t think you would talk to me if I came in.” I was suddenly embarrassed about waiting outside for him. Before, it had seen romantically spontaneous, but now it just seemed stupid, and overly dramatic. “Besides, I thought the rain would clear my head.” My head was clear. The rain had baptismally cleansed me. The freezing rain had helped me purge Andrew from my system, and I felt different. Looser, maybe. More detached from reality. For the past few weeks, I had been so burdened with absolutely everything, and now I had dropped all the baggage and ran away. Now I could float.

“Well, good for you,” Caleb snarled. “It’s always about your well-being, though, isn’t it?”


You cannot forget
Skin new, hands true
My hands all over you
So what’s another night?
The seats rolled back
We can't see through


I looked away from the window, reflecting wide rivers of black rain, and looked over at Caleb. His brief tenure in the downpour had left him soaked. His gray t-shirt was stuck to him in a good way, and his jeans were dark and damp. He looked like he had been casually inconvenienced during a photo shoot, while I was soaked through to the skin, and probably looked horrific.

“Caleb?” I asked quietly. As though talking quietly would make me less offensive to him. As though talking quietly would keep him from sneering at me. Every time he grimaced at me, I flinched. I wondered if there would ever be a time when he didn’t grimace, and I didn’t flinch.

“What?” Ice. Venom. Daggers.

Instead of making me more timid, his tone pushed anger to the surface, pulsing through my raging blood. Okay, so I fucked up. I knew that. The whole Andrew thing was sort of a stupid move, but I wasn’t with Andrew, especially not after this afternoon. Someone only has to tell me that I’m not worth the fuss once—I’m not going to go back and pick at the scab, in hopes that it’ll become infected and need amputation. I’m fond of all of my limbs, thank you very much.

So, instead of trying to repent, I raged. “Get the fuck off your high horse. Like you’re so perfect?”

“I may not be perfect but at least I didn’t fuck random people.”

“Andrew is not a random person!” I shouted at him. Um, wait—not the point, there, Livvy. “And I told you, I didn’t hook up with anyone!” Well, we sort of hooked up, but we definitely didn’t have sex. But, because Andrew was pretty drunk, and is a total bastard, so he told some people that we’d had sex. Never mind that that’s a lie. Never mind that Caleb should believe his girlfriend and not his least favorite person in the senior class. “And you’re sort of an asshole for not believing me.”

“I’m an asshole, huh? Where were you today, then?” Caleb had stopped the car. We were pulled over on some back road, under a tall canopy of trees. The rain still pounded the roof of the car and the windshield, especially since the hum of the engine wasn’t drowning some of it out. He still sounded utterly disgusted and hateful, and I realized how isolated we were. Not that I thought that Caleb was going to hurt me, but the location was a little disconcerting.

I debated. I could lie. I could lie a lot. I could lie my ass off to Caleb, but it wouldn’t fix anything.

“I was at Andrew’s.”

The muscles across his shoulders tightened, and all of his veins seemed more prominent as his whole body clenched. “Well, there you go, Livvy. There you fucking go. I’m sure there’s nothing going on. Right. Sure.”

“If you would shut up for like, three seconds, then maybe I could tell you what I was doing there!” I yelled over him.

He was quiet. The whole car was quiet, except for loud, harsh breathing. Caleb was trying to control himself, and I could see that he was almost failing.

“I went to Andrew’s today, but it wasn’t to keep up our nonexistent tryst. I told him that he was a liar, and reiterated the fact that I would rather lose it to the skeevy guy that works at Subway than to him. Then, I told him that I would find a way to personally destroy any chance he thinks he has with getting a girl for the rest of his life.” Caleb snorted at this, and all his veins were back to normal, so he must have stopped clenching. “And then he called me some names, and told me that I wasn’t worth all this trouble anyway. And I left.” I decided to edit out the part where I told him that he could have stood a chance with me if he hadn’t wrecked everything. Well, I had wrecked everything, for going to Emily’s party out of spite. I shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

I was surprised at my calmness. I had definitely glossed over a lot of things that Caleb never needed to know. He didn’t need to know all of the obscenities Andrew had screamed at me, or the fact that I walked out because I was afraid I would hit Andrew and he would just laugh at me. Caleb also didn’t need to know that I hadn’t ever been as angry as I had been in Andrew’s living room. He just needed to know that I was sorry for everything.

“You know I’m sorry about going to that party, right? It was kind of a stupid thing to do.” I watched his face, and he broke. For one second, his face faltered, and that’s when I knew it would be okay. If he could let his anger down for even one second, then I had a chance to make it up to him. “And I would never do something like that again—not after this disaster I made.”

He was trying to keep his features harsh, but after he slipped that one second, it seemed like he couldn’t get them totally back. Slowly, as though I was trying to sneak up on an anxious doe, I moved my hand across the car, and let my fingers match up against his. Caleb watched me, only looking down, but feigning disinterest. He always teased me for being such a hand-holder. At the movies, or during dinner, or driving, we always ended up the same way: his long, neglected fingers slipping through mine, as I tried to ignore the rough patches of dry skin and destroyed cuticles.

My thoughts about Caleb’s cuticles were interrupted, and not replaced by my usual remote thoughts of his cracked, un-chapsticked lips. As Caleb finally—finally, finally, finally—kissed me, I couldn’t have thought of anything else if I had wanted to. I didn’t say anything, afraid to ruin his momentarily insanity, or whatever had let him suddenly forgive me.

“I don’t know how I forgot this,” Caleb said against my cheek. His breath was hot and ragged.

“I didn’t forget this,” I told him. “I don’t know how you could.”

Then, we didn’t talk again for a while, until Caleb broke away, rubbing his eyes with his fists. For a second, I thought he was crying, but then I saw the dazed look on his face, as he blinked at me. Uncomfortably, I looked away, noticing that the windows were a little foggy, as our warmth reacted with the cold rain splashing over us.

“What the hell,” Caleb mumbled under his breath. “What’s another night?” But the words only came out halfway, because he gave up and kissed me again.


And you walked for miles down the shores of California
To the Coast of Mexico where you could hide
And no one had to know


I had walked for miles. The coast was going to run out soon. The shore was getting rockier, and I knew soon the sand would give way to mansions tucked into tall cliffs. Then, I would have to turn around. I wasn’t ready to go back. I wanted to stretch out on one of the flat rocks, worn smooth by hundreds of years of waves, and sleep in the sun.

Maybe I would never turn around, and keep walking. I could slip over the border undetected, and walk all the way down the Baja peninsula. When I hit the end of the peninsula, I could take a boat, maybe just a little fishing boat, and make my way all the way down to Panama, then hang a left, and move my life to the Keys. I would sail little blue-and-white sailboat with nothing but food, sunscreen, and a compass during the day, and dock for the night. Then I would do it all over again the next day. Life could be simple. I could float for the rest of my life.

“Livvy!”

I whirled around, and saw Caleb walking toward me. I forgot everything I had decided to do—Baja, sailboats, sunscreen. All I could remember was him, watching his now-dry jeans drag in the fluffy, white sand, smiling timidly at me. “Oh. Hey. Sorry—did you come looking for me?”

“Nah. I mean no offense, but I figured you had just gone to find a bathroom. I left you a note that said I was going for a walk.”

Caleb had driven to the beach last night after the rain stopped, and we spent the night reclined in his seats with the sunroof open. This morning I had woken up and snuck out of the car for a walk to clear my head. I guess Caleb had the same idea.


And maybe we were made for each other
You can breathe, but the air is running out


“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’m sorry, too.” As Caleb took my hand, he smiled at me softly.

The ocean breeze filled me with cool, salty air, and I smiled back.