Call it Fate, Call it Karma

You're In

I woke up to some shuffling sounds in the corner of the room. With my eyes adjusting to the brightness, I blinked rapidly and sat up, yawning. I spotted Adam pulling on a coat and smiled. "Morning." I croaked, then noticing I had a killer headache. "Ugh. What time is it?"

Adam turned around and smiled back. "Eleven. Wanna come out and get some coffee with me?"

"Sure." I sat on the edge of the bed, scanning the room. What was I looking for?

"Your shoes are in the bathroom for some reason." Adam informed me.

"Weird." I nodded and jumped up, stretching my aching muscles before heading into the bathroom. I noticed someone was passed out in the bathtub and laughed to myself as I pulled on my shoes.

Before leaving, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and had to suppress a shriek. I looked like a zombie. My makeup was smudged in dark circles under my eyes and my hair was sticking out in all different directions. I quickly grabbed some toilet paper to scrub the makeup off and I flattened my hair. I still looked horrific, but not as bad as before, so I figured it'd do.

"Shall we?" Adam said with a raised eyebrow, pointing his elbow to me.

I linked arms with him. "We shall!"

After getting coffee, Adam and I aimlessly walked around for a while until he caught a glimpse of a clock in a store window. He froze up and sighed as realisation seemed to wash over him.

"You okay?" I asked, raising my cup to my lips.

"I just remembered I have to go to work." he said with a blank stare.

"Oh..." I held back a sigh. I was having a lot of fun with Adam and I didn't wanna go home to face Julian just yet.

"It's only for a couple hours, though. Wanna hang around? We can do something after my shift."

"Depends...where do you work?"

"A record store."

"Oh, hell yeah!" I cheered, almost spilling my coffee.

"It's just in the next block over. If we run, we might make it in time for the last ten minutes of peak hour."

"What's peak hour?"

"It's when all the know-it-all hipsters come in after brunch and fight over the shit in the secondhand box." Adam explained with a mischievous grin. "It's fucking hilarious, the cheap bastards. They think by buying secondhand shit they're saving the environment or something."

"Holy shit that sounds great! Let's go!" I called back to him as I started to jog.

"Right behind 'ya!"

I spilled my coffee with every step as I ran, so I eventually threw it in a trashcan I jogged by and giggled as Adam whizzed past me.

As I was sifting through some records, Adam cleared his throat and spoke up. "Do you play anything?"

"Guitar...kinda."

"Are you good?"

"No way." I scoffed.

"Perfect, you're in."

"I'm in?" My eyebrows knitted together and I stepped away from the records to get a closer look at Adam. "In what?"

"Our band." he replied, tapping on the desk with a pen.

"What?!" I spat. "Are you crazy? I said I'm bad, dude!"

"That's perfect. I can't really sing...I have a really mediocre voice, and our tunes are messy. It's a great sound. You can't really mess that up. So...you in?"

I thought about for a second and shrugged. "I guess it'll give me something to do. Sure!" I laughed. "You can kick me out whenever you want. I won't get offended, I promise." I said, drawing with my index finger over my heart in a crisscross pattern.

Adam said nothing and just chuckled lightly to himself as he sorted through a pile of records.

Two or more hours later, after convincing Adam to hang with us until the show, we made our way back to my apartment.

"Jade, where the fuck have you been?!" asked Julian in a clearly agitated tone as he tapped his fingers on his thigh. He had a cigarette in the other hand and practically inhaled half the thing in one breath. He seemed quite mad and annoyed. It was strange to see.

"Why do you care?" I spat, rolling my eyes.

He exhaled the smoke through his nose, pursing his lips. "Don't get all passive aggressive on me."

"Julian, not now. We have a guest." I rolled my eyes again, motioning to Adam, who stood awkwardly behind me.

"Oh, hey Adam." Julian cleared his throat.

I pushed Adam in Julian's direction and he sat down on the couch next to him. "Sup, man?"

As they engaged in conversation, I stormed into Albert's room, glad to see him playing his guitar on his bed.

I paced back and forth for a bit until Albert finally decided to notice my presence and lay his guitar down. "What?"

"What?!" I huffed. "Is that all? No lecture about not coming home?"

"I've come to realise that my lectures don't mean shit to you and you do what you want anyways...so what's the point?"

"True." I sighed, sitting on the edge of the bed. "What the fuck is Julian's deal?"

"His dad's getting married again."

"What?" I gasped. "To who?"

"I dunno. Some model chick he met at his agency." He shrugged. "What's gross is she's about our age."

"What the fuck?! Ew!" I expressed my disgust by poking my tongue out with a grimace. "Is this why Julian's been so angry? Why didn't he tell me?!" I cried, waving my arms around in distress. "I thought it was all my fault! I thought I was fucking up his music shit or something."

"I don't know why he didn't tell you, but you should take that up with him, because, quite frankly, I can't be fucked with any drama right now...sorry." Albert said with a soft laugh.

"Fair enough." I nodded. "I won't bug him about it tonight. I don't want him in a bad mindset for the show."

"Wise decision."

"Yeah...can I hang in here for a bit? Adam's here and he's talking to Jules."

"Of course."