The Death Card - Part 4

Rewriting this part, I realized that this p.o.v is particularly angsty. Apologies. However, we are seeing things from a very naive girl's point of view, and we get to see a different side of the usually irritating and immature George. If this gets too CW-formerly-known-as-the-WB for you, then you can stop reading and I won't feel bad. It's hard to write 20-year-olds without having angsty drama thrown in.  After all, this is the life-blood of all the people my age that I know. Maybe that'll be a challenge for later. Without further ado, Alice...


        Watching Max walk away after he handed me the Death Card, I really wished I had listened to Shelley more.  She's a much better judge of character than I am; after all she knew that Freddie was a jerk long before I ever found out he was cheating.  When I told her I kind of had a crush on Max, she tried to warn me off right away, telling me that he was kind of a player and I deserved better.
        Sighing, I turned around and started to walk back to our apartment.  Why was it so hard for me to find a decent guy?  Fortunately I hadn't gotten too far away from home, and I was rummaging around for my keys when I spotted George coming down the street.  I groaned inwardly.  He was the most annoying of Freddie's friends, even more annoying than Freddie most of the time.  I wanted to duck inside fast, but he saw me and called out.  Jogging up to my door, he said, "Is Shelley home?"
        I didn't know what it was about, so I said, "I'm not sure, let me go check."
        "Well, can I come in?"
        I wanted to say no, George had a way of overstaying his welcome, but I didn't want to be mean either.  I said sure and let him come in.  Making him sit in the living room, I went to Shelley's room to see if she was still home.  She was, lying on her bed with a pillow over her face.

        "Hey Shel, what's going on?  You've been really down all day."
        She tossed the pillow aside and said, "I don't think I'm ready to talk about it yet, Alice."
        "Well, that's alright.  Let me know when you are.  Anyway, George is here and he says he wants to talk to you.  I can get rid of him if you want."
        "Yeah, just get rid of him."  She pulled the pillow back over her head.
        I really wanted to ask her more, but when she says she doesn't want to talk, nothing on God's green earth can make Shelley talk.  With George's unexpected visit, I assumed the trouble had to do with Jake.  It occurred to me that she should have been with Jake, actually.  Wasn't it his birthday?  But I didn't want to make her angry on top of being depressed, so I closed the door behind me and returned to the living room.  Even though he was sitting on the couch, George had a way of looking like he was bouncing all around the room.
        Before I could tell him that Shelley wasn't home, he said, "I see she's going to play hard to get, that's ok.  Just tell her that whatever she did to Jake, it was low, especially on his birthday."
        "I don't think she did anything to Jake.  She hasn't even seen him all day."
        "Yeah, whatever.  Any other guy would have been thrilled to get the Death Card, but he was pissed, and it's her fault."
        "Any guy would be thrilled to get the Death Card, huh?  Well here you go then."  I still had the card in my pocket, so I pulled it out and dropped it in his lap.  "Now can you please go?  My roommate doesn't want to talk to you, and neither do I."
        He looked at the card in disbelief.  "Hey, why are you being like that?  And where the hell did you get this?  You know, if it weren't for me, you'd still have a cheater for a boyfriend."
        "You really expect me to thank for you that?  He's your friend, isn't he?  How long did you know about it before you decided to 'tell' me?  You only spilled about it because you were drunk."
        "That is not true, Alice."  He jumped up from the couch and stood over me.  George was at least a foot taller, so I had to crane my neck to look up at him.  It made me even more annoyed with him.  "I found out right before I told you.  I caught him in the act and decided right away that you needed to know.  Unlike some guys, I actually care about your feelings."
        It kind of surprised me to hear him say something like that.  George was usually pretty immature. But at that moment, he was actually acting his age.  It made me feel strangely uncomfortable, though, hearing that sort of thing from him.  I really didn't want to be mean to him when he was trying to be so genuine, but I said, "George, just go, please?  Shelley doesn't want to talk to you, and I certainly don't want to talk about what Freddie did.  I'd rather forget the whole thing."
        "Fine, whatever."  He walked out the door in a huff.  I felt like such a jerk treating him that way, but I never had much patience for George.

The Death Card - Part 3

Here's the third part of "The Death Card." Now we see the infamous Max from his point of view, and it's not pretty...

Apparently, calling Jake a dumb blonde was a bad idea since Shelley immediately slapped me. In the cold air, it didn't sting that much, but the shock was enough to make up for the lack of pain. She looked pretty damn furious, flicking some piece of paper at me before walking to her front door and going in without another word.
I picked up the piece of paper she had thrown at me; it was the two of hearts. At first, it made no sense, but then I remembered an incident when Freddie pulled a similar card out of his wallet when George was being annoying. More annoying than usual, that is. For some reason, he shut up after seeing it; they called it the Death Card or something. I didn't really need to know the story behind it to know what it meant. One thing I've always been proud of is the fact that I know when to cut my losses and book it, but for some reason that little talent had failed me where Shelley was concerned. The card reminded me of that.
Instead of trying to appeal to Shelley again, I thought, fuck it, and left. I didn't get very far before I heard someone shout my name from behind. Thinking Shelley had changed her mind, I turned around right away. But it was just her roommate, Alice. Great.
"Hey, Max, what are you doing around here?" she asked. Her voice was always just a little too peppy for me. The only good thing about the fact that Shelley wanted to us to hide all the time was being able to avoid Alice. She was cute enough, but I wasn't into brunettes.
"Just walking home. I happened to be passing by."
"Really? Well I'm going in the same direction. Mind if I walk with you?"
Perfect. Now I had to make small talk with her until she went on her own way. But I always thought of myself as a gentleman, so I said, "Sure."
"Awesome!" she said, then started chattering on about something or other.
I wasn't really paying attention to anything Alice said, just interjecting an, "uh-huh" and "hmm," whenever I remembered to. I liked Shelley because she mostly kept her thoughts to herself. We did what we came to each other for, and that was it; nice and simple. Alice, though, just didn't seem to know when to give up.
Finally, I couldn't stand her anymore and just said, "Alice, I've kind of had a rough day. Do you mind just going on without me?"
She looked pretty crestfallen, but didn't really take the hint. "What's wrong? Not girl problems, I hope. I can't imagine that you'd have any issues there."
The way she smiled at me was the way girls smiled when they wanted something from me. It was the smile that Shelley gave me right before she told me she wouldn't mind another guy on the side whenever Jake wasn't around.
"Look, I really don't want to talk about it. Thanks anyway."
"Well, if you ever want to talk," she started to say, but I wasn't about to let her continue deluding herself. Just as I was about to cut her off, I realized the card was still in my hand.
"Here, I'm sure you know what this is all about. Maybe that can get my point across a little better." I handed her the card and walked away. It was pretty shitty of me, but after getting stomped on by Shelley, I didn't really care about pretending to be a nice guy anymore.

Next time, we'll see how Alice copes with Max's insensitivity.