What If

Chapter 38

"Holy shit is it freezing!" I said, rubbing my arms and shivering as I walked through the icing city.

It was finally New Year's Eve and it could not have been colder. I was completely miserable where I was: walking on the sidewalk covered in patches of snow and black ice, wind destroying my hair and reddening my cheeks, and nose running like a leaky faucet.

Christmas went by so fast and now the next holiday came rushing along. Time in general seemed to be passing by extremely quickly. The more time I spent in the 1960's, the more I felt that the future never actually happened and that I really was going crazy. Whatever. I was just going to ride out my craziness for all it was worth.

George was walking next to me on our way to John's friend's party. He didn't look half as gloomy as I did. I didn't know whose house we were going to, but George seemed to know and insisted that even if I didn't know the guy personally, I would still be let in anyway because I was a girl.

"Yeah, it is," he said calmly and cheerfully as if it were any other normal day. He seemed to be in an abnormally good mood. He wouldn't stop smiling even if neither of us were saying anything. He was looking around at his surroundings, not that there was much to look at. It was obscenely dark, almost nine-thirty at night. The only illumination came from the streetlights, most of which were broken or so dull that they were unusable.

I was staring down at the sidewalk, trying to block my face from the wind, but that didn't stop the frigid air from making red streaks across my cheeks anyway. "What friend of John's is this anyway?" I asked, shivering and rubbing the sides of my arms, trying to warm up.

"Oh, 'is name's Ivan," George answered, tightening the scarf around his neck. "He introduced Paul to John a long time ago. That's 'ow they met, ya know."

Ivan Vaughan? I thought. "Oh, I didn't know that," I flat-out lied. "Mutual friend?"

"Yeah."

We came upon a house where people were loudly laughing and screaming and had records blasting loud enough to hear them outside the entire house. Every single light inside the home was turned on and the shadows of people through the windows showed that there were an enormous number of them.

George crossed in front of me to go to the front door. "We're here," he said, turning the doorknob open.

The noise grew deafeningly in volume when we stepped inside. There were tons of boys wearing their leather jackets and drainpipe trousers and girls with cute dresses and fancy hair. I normally would've picked out a cute outfit and done something special with my hair, but I did not have the energy today. I looked like crap, even worse from the weather outside, and I couldn't care less.

It reeked even worse than the Cavern did. The smell of alcohol was slightly less than the club, but the scent of cigarettes and sweat was ten times more concentrated and made it hard to breathe.

"Georgie!" John yelled as he came over with a beer in each hand. He handed one to George and took a sip out of his own. "Good, ya made it. And Colleen too!" He wasn't drunk yet, but by the smell of beer on his breath, he was well on his way. "Are ya really not gonna drink?"

I shrugged. "Sure, why not? I drink on the holidays," I said.

John's eyes lit up. "Really?" he asked excitedly. "Well, come on! Let me get ya a beer." He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and dragged me away to the kitchen.

I turned my head and said "I'll catch up with you later, George."

George nodded, drinking his beer, and moving along to some group of people in the middle of the living room.

There were beer bottles scattered across the kitchen table: some empty, some full, and some not even opened. There were also wine bottles, both red and white, that I'm sure had been sneaked out of Ivan's parents' storage.

John found a brand new beer that was still sealed and handed it to me. "Here ya go," he said.

I just looked at the drink in my hand. They didn't have twist-off beer caps nowadays and I didn't have a bottle opener, so I just stood there, looking like an idiot, with a beer in my hand. "Can you open this?" I asked awkwardly, holding the bottle back out to John.

He laughed heartily at my inexperience. "You've never opened a beer bottle before?" he asked. I shook my head, laughing with him. He took it from me and pressed the cap against the edge of the table, opening it expertly. He grinned as he gave it back to me and watched me take my first sip. "Ah, so she does drink."

I nodded, glancing at the brand of the beer. "Hmm," I hummed, considering the taste. I liked some beers more than others, depending on the brand. This one was in the middle somewhere. "Not bad. Not my favorite, but not bad." I took another sip, getting used to the sour liquid sliding down my throat.

We stood there for another second before John heard a small commotion from the living room and grabbed my free arm, pulling me yet again to another room. "Come on. We're gonna have some fun."