Pretty Vacant

Angie

"Do you like the Stones?" Sid smirked at her.
Kaya felt a little anxious. "Yes", she beamed "I love them".
He smiled brightly, stood up and left the living room.

He came back a few minutes later, holding a vinyl in his hand and layed it into the vinyl player carefully.
Kaya enjoyed watching him.
She loved how he treated the vinyl as careful as a timebomb.

Soft guitar strumming filled the room.
Sid sat down on the ground in front of the vinyl player and tapped next to him.

"Angie...Angie"
Kaya smiled and sat down next to him.

"When will those clouds all disappear?"
He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and handed her one.

"Angie, Angie
Where will it lead us from here?"
He leaned forward and lighted her cigarette.

"With no lovin' in our souls and no money in our coats
You can't say we're satisfied
But Angie, Angie
You can't say we never tried"
After she had a few draughts, Sid took it from her to have some too

"Angie, you're beautiful
But ain't it time to say goodbye
Angie, I still love you baby
Remember all those nights we cried"
They passed the cigarette back and forth until it was gone and Kaya started humming along.

"All the dreams we held so close
Seemed to all go up on a smoke
Let me whisper in your ear
Angie, Angie
Where will it lead us from here?..."

Sid joined her and they had already hummed along for a while when Sid suddenly started to sing along while making dramatic gestures with his hands:
"With no lovin' in our souls and no money in our cooooats
You can't say we're satisfiiiiiiiied"

Kaya first watched him laughing and then joined his wild gestures:
"But Angie, I still love you baby
Everywhere I look I see your eyes
There ain't a woman that comes close to you"

Now they almost screamed along, making even weirder gestures, pretending to die:
"COME ON BABY DRY YOUR EYES
BUT ANGIE, ANGIIIIIIE
AIN'T IT GOOD TO BE ALIIIIIVE?"

They fell backwards and bursted out in laughter.
For ten minutes straight they just lied on the floor laughing like little kids.
"W-W-WHY ARE WE EVEN LAUGHING" Kaya gasped and tried hard not to laugh while talking.
"I DON'T EVEN KNOW" Sid giggled back.
His giggle was so adorable, that she just wanted to hug him.
But she held herself back.

When the two of them finally calmed, Kaya sat up
"That was my high school song."
Sid looked at her asking.
She sighed.
"I was an outsider at school, noone really liked me.
Sometimes I would have loved to just burn the whole school down.
I hated that place and the people in there.
So when I came home I would always listen to this song because it...some kind of put me into another world, y'know?
This song got me into the Stones and the Stones got me into Rock N' Roll and later punk.
I discovered this whole music world and found out it could be a little escape to me.
So I started dressing differently, isolated myself more and spent 90% of my life in vinyl stores or my room.
My parents hated it all.
They hated the music, the clothes and the isolating.
They burned my stones vinyls a couple of times but they stopped when they saw it didn't change anything, I just bought them new"

She stopped for a while and nibbled on her lower lip nervously.

"...Well yea...the bullying in school got worse and worse and I ended up getting death threats and stuff like that.
They would beat me up every day for how I looked.
My parents didn't care.
They said it's my own fault for dressing like this and I'd have to deal with it alone..."

Kaya didn't notice that tears started streaming down her face as she talked.

Sid looked at her.
She looked incredibly hurt.
It burned in his chest to see her like that.
He basically couldn't stand it and he felt the urge to just hug her tight and never let her go.
He reached for her face to wipe away her tears carefully.
She looked up at him surprised.

He stroked her her back softly.
She still sobbed.
She didn't even know why.
The past was the past, wasn't it?
She had to realize that over the years she hadn't got over it, she had just simply pushed it away.
She had just been running away from it instead of facing it.

Sid pulled her on his lap, carefully as if she was made of porcelain and pulled her really close.
Kaya just slowly layed her head on his shoulder.

Sid felt his heart beat really fast.
"It's okay", he heard himself whisper.
"It's okay."