(Written and created with help from Llalania Marble)

“I got the car loaded up with my crap. You sure I can’t twist your arm to come with me to the coast?”
“Brian and I have plans for the week. I’ll be okay.”
“Plans, right. You’ll wing everything just like usual.”
“Maybe. It’s the spontaneousity of it all.”
“First off, that’s not a word.”
“Second, it describes everything, Kat.”
My roommate, Felicia Nomiko, loved to berate me. Her actual name was Sakura, but went by ‘Felicia’ or “Kat”. She tried to explain where all of the came from but I completely spaced on the reason. It has something to do with Japanese animation and arcade games, which her boyfriend was heavily infatuated with. We sometimes wondered if he was attrached to her because she fit what was called the “otaku dream girl”.
“Come with us, Les. Brian’s going to make up some reason that he has to stay in town or even worse, go off with the band to some town in East Tennessee and you’re gonna get dragged along.”
I only nodded.
“I’m going to take that as “thanks, Kat, but I’m going to take my chances.”
“You always say to seize the day.”
“Don’t try to take it literally.”
“I’m going to crash with him. If he goes with the band, I’ll go too. It will be an adventure.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I don’t want to be around when David and you get into one of your moments, Felicia.”
“I love my kitty.”
“Yeah,the whole complex knows.”
Four months prior, Kat and David started what they called the “The Blue Girl Project”, which caused several of our neighbors to call the police after they failed to realize they could be seen in the dark with the lights the way they had them. It took several hours explaining to the police that since we were on the third floor, anyone who saw them were the ones in the wrong.
Still, her dad somehow found out about it. I had never heard such a low voice shout Japanese in rapid fire. Kay’s face also turned several shades of red as the one-sided conversation occurred.
We climbed into Kat’s SVU and drove out of the parking lot. The plan was to go and meet Brian and David out where Brian’s band was playing. David and Kat would leave that night for the Alabama gulf coast to spent time with his family and I would let fate take me where it wanted to.

“Why do they always perform way out in the boonies?”
“Brian says Len likes it that way.”
Brian was the drummer for “Stone Ground Kelly”, a “don’t call us garage or cover, we’re an art form band, band, dammit”—as Leonard, the lead singer would mutter as he drank from a Starbucks coffee cup that usually held anything BUT coffee. Maybe they went to out of the way bars for the booze?

“They work hard,” I said as I adjusted the radio, which was not picking up a thing by then.
“Work hard? Brian? Who you trying to kid? I set you two up, remember?”
David and Felicia did introduce us and it shocked her to the core that I would want to be with Brian as we were, as she put it, subs in a dub world with my over-doing it at times high model persona. I wasn’t a stuck-up snob, but it had been a dream of mine to succeed in modeling so I always tried to wear something that could be on the cover of a magazine and not just an Instagram pic with a bad-ass filter.

Would that make me petty or a diva?
Some would and I admit there were times I placed myself on a higher cloud. I wanted something for myself and I knew I had the looks for it.
I just had to find the right contact.
I thought I had a chance at a photo shoot that was done at the local mall. I waited in line for over two hours to walk fifteen steps in front of a faceless panel of judges as we were to walk as if they weren’t there. I did enough of that at school when walking past a couple of fraternity houses, so that was easy.

We arrived at at the ramshackle bar on the outskirts of everywhere. I could have sworn I heard banjos in the distance.
“This looks like some sort of country-western joint,” I said as I pointed at the five wagon wheels on the side of the building. They were barely hanging on and looked like they could fall if you looked at them just right.

I could hear the steady hit of a loud bass guitar.
“They’re already playing.”
“Started early?”
Felicia shrugged. “I guess the first act failed to show.”
We walked into the darkened bar and showed our ID’s to the guy standing in the foyer. He spent more time ogling us then looking at our ID’s, and then stamping our wrists
“I’ll be right back!” Felicia yelled over the din of the music.
“Where are you goin’?”
“One frappe too many” She said with a slight bow.
I shook my head, waved her off and took a few steps into the main room, only to have someone slam into me. He had what looked like two beers in his hands and with his hair all over his face I wondered how he had managed to get even that far without spilling anything. The horror was that he had to spill one of them all over me!
“Oh sorry!” Which sounded like half a sentence. The other being “you made me spill me a beer.”
I shook at my clothes and face. He had literally soaked me in suds.
He held the other glass to me.
I flashed my wrist showing the club’s “Under 21” stamp.
“Oh, you okay?”
The thought of telling him off ran through my mind, but, combined with eau de Heineken wafting from me would get us both thrown out—no matter how I tried to defend myself. I did the only thing I could: I took off my long-sleeved shirt to reveal the mid-riff baring top I had underneath. I had thought of taking the shirt off earlier, but it was ruined