Admission by Travis Thrasher Page B

and a mesh shirt that looked see-through unless you studied it as Jake did without a care.
    “We’ve been here since ten,” she said. Two of her friends came over and joined them.
    Bruce rambled on about the show as Laila pressed up against Jake’s leg, looking down at him as he drank a beer and gazed at her from his bar stool. He wondered if his eyes were as revealing with their intentions as Laila’s were.
    Snapshots of the night downtown with Alec and Laila’s friend streaked through his mind. This time Jake didn’t bury them. He enjoyed them as the shadows and music and liquor and laughter proved to be too big an equation for his weak heart.
    She brushed back her blonde hair and licked her lips. “I was beginning to think you were ignoring me,” she said in his ear.
    Jake didn’t answer her and ignored the voice telling him
Look out—she’s a chick and she’s got your number and you’re a moron not to get up and run away
.
    And then, out of the blue, in the haze of the night, he pictured Alyssa’s sweet smile, so different from this temptress clinging to him. The image was so out of place in this context, and thinking about her only made him sad. He got up and bought another round of beers.
    Sometime later, maybe half an hour and three rounds later, Laila danced in front of Jake. He didn’t hide his eyes, the way they moved over her. And she moved closer and his eyes moved lower and then she took his hand.
    “Why haven’t you seen me since that night?” she asked him.
    And he could only smile and pull her close. They had a history and he couldn’t let it go, not now and not on a night like this.
    “I didn’t know you wanted me to,” he lied.
    She seemed okay with this fib. She moved between Jake’sopen legs and leaned down to kiss him. It was a long kiss, and not the first of the night.
    “I’ve missed you,” she said.
    But instead of replying, he kissed her again.

    It was a little later that Jake said something to a bouncer, and the guy took offense to it. But it was true, the guy didn’t have a neck and he acted like he had the brains of a bat. Jake probably shouldn’t have said it, though, or made jokes about the guy’s masculinity and the fact that he needed to lay off the Dunkin’ Donuts. It was all that, plus the fact that he was undeniably drunk, that led to Jake getting thrown out of Shaughnessy’s.
    The guy Jake called Rufus, the bouncer he’d insulted, led him out the door with the help of another guy. Jake tried to go back to tell the gang. The mistake he made was slapping Rufus in the face. It was an innocent slap and not really powerful. But the other bouncer put an arm around him and squeezed, not allowing Jake to breathe until the cold chill of night greeted him outside the door.
    They closed the door and Jake tried to open it. He hurled profanities and slammed his fist against the solid oak door several times, the last hurting exceptionally hard, even though he could barely feel much of anything in his body. His legs, his lungs, his breath, his mind. All felt like some endless dub, a high-speed continuous play CD that just kept going, a club song that never stopped.
    That’s when he took off running, heading toward a destination only his drunken mind could understand. He hit road signs and wavered between the street and the sidewalk and the grass and the parking lots.
    Jake didn’t remember the car turning into a parking lot of the Denny’s and blocking his way. But he saw an eager face behind an open window.
    “You left me,” Laila said.
    “They kicked me out.”
    “I promise I won’t.”
    Jake didn’t realize he had fractured the bone below his pinkie. He got into Laila’s car and picked up where they had left off.

    Eventually the high subsides … sometimes before a person can make an even bigger mistake.
    In the parking lot of Jake’s apartment, Laila asked him to come home with her.
    Perhaps it was her raw honesty or the fact that it was three in the