Fall From Grace(24)

Lea jumped to it.  She flew through the apartment gathering supplies for her little art project.

We ordered pizza and we all sat around and colored flyers for the auditions.  We looked like a group of five year olds on a play date.  When I mentioned that out loud, all hell broke loose.

Alex’s face scrunched up and he shouted, “Brayden picks his nose and eats it!”

Almost choking on a bite of pizza, Brayden shouted, “Alex has got the cooties!”

“So we look like five years old, huh?” Ethan asked coming up behind me.  He grabbed me in a gentle headlock and gave me noogies on my head.

I screamed and ran for my water bottle, and poured it all over Ethan’s head.  “Oh no,” I teased.  “Ethan just wet himself!”

Conner opened his water bottle up next and poured it all down the front of Lea’s shirt.  She screamed and tackled him, and poured the contents of her water bottle down the front of his pants.

Brayden climbed onto the coffee table and mooned everyone.

Shane just sat, watching the antics with a mischievous grin on his face.  He held a full water bottle in his hand, cap off, eyes blazing at me.  Oh, crap!

Our eyes locked and he sprang at me like a cougar on its prey.  I tried to get out of the way, but I slammed into the now disabled Alex, who was chanting for Shane to get me. Thank God, his open water bottle flew out of his hands in the opposite direction of me. I bounced off Alex and landed sprawled out over Shane. I held my arms out over him, trying not to touch his body.  Without a moment of hesitation, he flipped me over onto my back and while laughing, he pinned me down.  Alex kicked over a closed water bottle to him and he fumbled for it.  Grabbing it with his right hand, he brought it up to his mouth and tried to open it with his teeth.

I bucked hard underneath him, but he was so solid, I couldn’t move him.  He bent down, with his face hovering next to mine, and whispered, “She is a mortal danger to all men. She is beautiful without knowing it, and possesses charms that she's not even aware of. She is like a trap set by nature - a sweet perfumed rose in whose petals Cupid lurks in ambush! Anyone who has seen her smile has known perfection. She instills grace in every common thing and divinity in every careless gesture. Venus in her shell was never so lovely, and Diana in the forest never so graceful as you.”  He lifted his head slightly and his eyes looked deep into mine.

“Cyrano De Bergerac, Shane?  For a self-serving man-whore, you know way too many romantic quotes,” I whispered back.  How in the world would someone like Shane know a quote like that?

I tried to move again, electricity shooting up through my body.  Oh my!  I grabbed the only thing I could, my slice of pizza, and smashed it in his face laughing.

He rolled off me laughing just as hard.  “Oh shit, she got me good!”

For good measure, I threw a slice at Alex, catching him right in the middle of his forehead, where it stuck.  Everyone was howling with laughter.

That is, until Lea screamed, “Who the hell is going to get the cheese off the ceiling?”

It took us an hour to clean up the mess that took us five minutes to make.  We definitely acted like five year olds.  However, we all laughed and we had a plan to help with the situation they were in.  When there was no more cheese to be found on the furniture, we split into pairs to post up the pizza stained flyers.

Shane held the stack of flyers in his hands and gave out the orders as if he was elected president.  “Conner and Lea, you guys hit the Bowery Ballroom and the bars around there.  Brayden and Ethan, you guys hit the Highline and wherever else you can think of on the West Side.  Alex, you go home.  Both your arms are broken and you look like an idiot.  Grace and I will hit the East side.”