One Shots

The Last Chapter: Can we just go with the flow?

A/N

This is written like the last chapter of something hence the title. 

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The acoustics in Kieth's basement were crappy at best. The paint was an ugly shade of pale green, and the wall was dented from where a racquet ball had been thrown a little too hard. Most people were high, or passed out on the couches, and bean bags. I felt kind of bad for Kieth. He'd meant for this to be a really cool thing, one of the moments our young teenage minds would remember forever. Something the movies would categorize as legendary. A story to tell our grandkids to make them think they were born in the wrong time.

It was hard to think that I'd actually ended up here. After a night of actual legendary. After a night of meeting an amazing, amazing girl, and a night of sky scrapers, and driving half way across Toronto for a decent burger. It was hard to think that after everything that had just happened we'd actually ended up in Kieth's basement after all. It was hard to think that currently my jeans which had been sold to me for two dollars by a fifty year old Rockette were sitting next to a Coke stain. That I was sinking into the same couch cushions that I'd thrown up on in the third grade after eating too many Doritos at Kieth's super hero themed birthday party. That I was listening to the sound of Mrs. Chang's washing machine's midnight cycle as it clanked away.

I looked at Kieth's makeshift stage that I'd helped him build so eagerly this morning. The stool and the microphone which had been rented for eighty bucks from his brother's best friend's band. It was a real let down. Then, I heard her voice. From the staircase behind us Cassie's gangly form leaned out.

"I heard that if I wanted to be a part of something legendary I had to show up here," she said. I turned to peer over the back of the couch. She moved further down the stairs on her long, giraffe legs. Her blonde hair falling messily out of the braids she had it pulled back in. She hadn't traded in her dress from the dance. It, in it's, sparky, silver, open-backed glory still hugged her, though her shoes from earlier had been changed to hot pink crocs. I could've kissed her right there and then.

From beside me Kieth grumbled. "No one's singing anyways."

"I could." I heard her suggest it and my heart did an olympic worthy catapult into my throat. Something about picturing Cassie singing made me slightly unsure. "I mean I'm not a very good singer, but I don't mind...I don't have any stage fright that is. And Lilly's here, and she can actually play piano, for real," she winked at me.

I watched in amazement as a dark skinned, curly haired girl stomped down the stairs after Cassie. "I mean I am good," she said looking at me, like I could challenge her. Which I wouldn't. Ever. "My cousin Eddie says I could be fucking Mozart."

Cassie made her way further into the basement's one, dimly lit room. "I mean your party already seems pretty dead," she said. "It's not like we could ruin it any further."

"No," grumbled Kieth. "No, you couldn't."

Cassie leaned over and whispered something to Lilly, who shrugged and made her way over to Mr. Chang's baby grand piano from Norway, that no one in their family played but they kept down here in perfect condition anyways. "Nice instrument," she commented, cracking her fingers over the keys. Kieth just waved his hand around in the air, floppy, and dead like. "Kay," Lilly said unperturbed. "Cool."

I watched Cassie. I watched her knock the stool to the side with her foot, and move the mic stand up so it was more her height. I watched her, and she watched me, and I thought that when I retold this story to my grandkids, I'd get to say that this was the moment where something secret, and electric passed between us. It didn't really. In real life Cassie flipped a braid over her shoulder, and Lilly began to play and I didn't recognize the song until Cassie had already started singing.

"They're gonna tell us that young love dies out fast./Like ninety-nine cent stores, and Van Halen/ it wasn't meant to last./ But I'll know it burned brighter than the burn out./ The polaroid pictures, with sharpie dates, and journal pages fuel the flames./ I'll shout-/ Murder!/ Death to poetry in life./ Who killed all thing beautiful and bright?/ Who decreed that what we needed was a house, and job, and wife?"

I knew what she was singing then. I wanted to laugh. It was the song the looney in the record (and other necessary items) store had been singing to us. When it had interrupted that moment, right before I swear she'd been about to kiss me, I'd wanted to punch something. Now I wanted to laugh. I wondered if Cassie was making fun of me. Of my failed attempt at making-out. Or if she was attempting to let me in on some type of inside joke. Or maybe she only chose to sing this song because she'd recognized some of the lyrics, done a quick Google search, and thought it fitted our theme of teenaged angst quite well.

"But darling I'm not stupid, there's no Cupid, I'm rough around the edges/ can we just go with the flow?/ I don't believe that I'll be twenty and still in love with you/ can we just go with the flow?"

I got it. Sort of. In a very sad, ironic way. With the kind of cynicism in which I understand everything. If you don't get it by now. I can't explain it to you. It was all of the above all at once.

"We're just two kids, who wanted purpose/ and sex, 'cause yeah we're young,/ and kinda dumb."

I did laugh at that. I laughed at the words. I laughed at the hideous tune, and the way Cassie's voice didn't quite reach the low notes. I laughed at the fact that I'd spent all night on the most wild ride of my life, and now was attempting to feel legendary sitting in Kieth Chang's basement. I laughed because said basement sort of smelled like day old cheese, and wet socks. I laughed because I, for some reason, never got what I wanted.

I had wanted a girl to kiss me, ask for me number, dance with me, and love me like she was Kate Upton, and I was Leo DiCaprio and this was the Titanic. Instead I got a wild goose chase around the city, and a girl who talked a lot. I got that, and a finale that finished with me listening to an old, unpopular song, in a basement that I related with sleepovers, and Nerf wars.

I caught Cassie's eye, and I laughed because I could feel myself falling in love. It's not the way people describe it normally. Not fireworks, not a calm, not a knowing, not an epiphany. Maybe that kind of love is reserved for when your twenty-five and you meet your soulmate. This kind of love, was a one-night kind of love. An accepting kind of love, that left me on the sofa knowing that if I stayed like this until senior year I would be happy.

"And we met last night, and this is alright/ I like that it won't hurt/ can we just go with the flow?"

We could go with the flow.