Snake Pit
Present, Alex’s POV:
The engine dies as I turn my key. I'm sitting in front of the recording studio. The gray sky looms above; nothing new. I push open the glass doors. Matt, Jamie, and Nick are sat on couches, doing nothing.
I step through a tiny office to get to their area. On my left is the recording room and a tiny unused workroom with its blinds down, “Hi!” Nick yells when he sees me.
I drop onto the couch sitting next to Jamie, “I got a dog.”
Jaws drop, as they usually do with my awesomeness, “What?” Matt asks.
“Her name is Marley,” I smile innocently.
Nick blinks a few times, “You are the reason I don't like gay people.”
“She's a six-month-old grey pitbull,” I show them my lock screen which is already a photo of her.
“Why?” Matt asks.
“I was bored.”
Jamie sighs, “Talk about that in a minute, the new secretary, unused tour manager thing human girl woman student is in the office. The blinds are stuck, though. You know how to undo them.”
“I thought she was a lizard,” Matt says as I walk to the office, they restart their ongoing lizard-people conversation.
The door is out of their sightline, luckily, because when I see what is in the office I gag, trip, and almost scream.
It's an ominous feeling as she slowly turns in her rolling chair, the gears squeaking, the dim light making her face a little less visible, and the bag of goldfish crinkles in her hands as she chews. When she sees me, she snorts, almost falling out of her chair. Her black and white hair is ruffled over her shoulders.
The door is on her right, in front of her and her desk are the windows with broken blinds that would usually display the couches.
I don’t know what to feel, I close the door and whip to the front of her desk, she looks up at me, giggling with her hand covering her mouth. Long black claws pressed against her face, “There's no fucking way,” she laughs, clearly extremely amused, looking much younger than she felt in the club.
My eyes are wide as I swallow staring into entertained blue eyes, Nick said we'd be getting a student, “You’re in college.”
After some deliberation, she puts her feet on the table, a move I can only interpret as faux confidence though her smirk still manages to boil my blood, “Oh my god… I bagged Alex Turner.”
“You didn't even know who I was,” I lean in further, only heightening her amusement, bushy dark brows are raised–a silver piercing drilled through the right.
She shrugs, “I was drunk.”
I do the math in my head, whisper-yelling, “You are twenty-two!”
“Actually I’m a sophomore.”
“Twenty?!”
She holds up a pointer finger, correcting me, “Late birthday.”
My eye involuntarily twitches, I don’t think it’s ever done that before.
She moves her pointer finger to the back of her head, scratching the nape of her neck, “You should probably calm down, you could get a heart attack.”
“I'm ten years older than you!”
“Okay, eighteen and twenty-eight is weird, twenty and thirty is also weird, but nineteen and twenty-nine isn’t that bad. The two nines sound very pleasant together.”
I stare at her, my chest rising and falling, “You don't seem like the music major type.”
“Law,” she informs, stretching her hands behind her head, “friend bagged me this job, her dad is mates with Clay,”
She says mates in a mocking tone, I speak disparagingly “And you're an American.”
She winks and clicks her tongue, “Caw caw.”
“I don't even know your name.”
“Remera.”
“You’re too cocky,” she shrugs, “I guess the age makes up for you squirting.”
She narrows her eyes, that's one weak spot. I get the feeling she hasn’t begged for anything before, “Are you just mad now because I’m going to know it's you when I find out I got chlamydia?”
“Are you calling me a slut?”
“Yes.” She chuckles at her own joke.
“You're eating goldfish right now.”
She's wearing a ripped and cropped Guns ‘n Roses top and green cargos, not very professional though it's not like any of us do better, “Jamie gave them to me, told me they were yours.”
“The minute I can, woman, I will have your ass out that door.”
“Yeah,” she nods, “but do it quick 'cause I can learn things fast and I signed that N.D.A. with my fake signature so I can argue it's forged,” my hand is begging to slap that grin right off her face.
I spin around, hitting the top of the blinds in exactly the right places, letting in light and a view of the rest of my band, their attention falling on us. I turn around with one last word, “I will talk to you never.”
She's still smiling and I try to look normal as I walk out, now in a bad mood, “We have to record.”
Jamie groans, “What's up your ass?”
“Motivation, get up.”
Five hours, a dead voice, and not one good track later I bang my head against the glass. Matt and Nick run off like their asses are on fire. Jamie and I stay back to clean things up. She's still in the office, sorting through old documents.
I sit down on a couch and stare at Jamie until my odd expression gets his attention.
He looks up as he closes his guitar case, his long hair is disheveled and there are dark circles under his blue eyes, “Yes?”
“Remera,” I state plainly, her name new to me. I've never heard it before, though it's a little too reminiscent of the name Arabella. It describes her, the silver jewelry, the dark appearance, and the vexed eyes.
He raises a brow, calmly taking a sip of water, informing, “New assistant.”
“I've had sex with her.”
He chokes, coughing violently, Remera notices the disturbance only for a second before returning to her work. With the glass barrier even her open door won't let our voices travel to her if we whisper.
“She's-”
“I didn't know!”
Jamie finishes with his guitar and flops down next to me, “How old did you think?” With her not paying attention he gestures crudely to her tits.
“She acted older,” I argue, my voice pitching up.
He pauses for a beat, “Was it good?”
I nod, “Top ten.”
“When?”
“Last week. Sunday.”
“No way,” he struggles with laughter, like a giddy little girl, “Did you not get her name? I said it.”
“It- Well-”
“You forgot her name?!”
“We didn't give names! We were in an American club and we just shagged in my car.”
“You didn't drive her home?”
“She took a taxi.”
He tsks and shakes his head, “She is a child Alex.”
I chew up the inside of my mouth, “Jamie it's not like I feel good about it. I should've been more suspicious, and I barely asked for consent.”
Jamie chuckles at me, he ponders silently for a moment. He’s likely the most stable member of our group and he is probably the most observant person I know, “She seems like the kind of person that can handle herself.”
I'm taken aback, so much that my head rears up, “She's nineteen.”
He takes a breath, secretively glancing between Remera and me, “She reminds me of Tara.”
“Who?”
“I was twenty, she was nineteen?” He tries to spark a memory.
I shake my head, “Nothing.”
He rolls his eyes, “I am only giving an analysis, and only because you’ve been acting weird and fake for the past few months and I want to voice a theory. When I was twenty I was still a child, when Tara was nineteen she was an adult. I was the first person she had dated and the woman was so perfect at communication, and boundaries, her standards were high, and she knew herself. She knew she hated to live with people, she knew she couldn’t handle going out more than once every two weeks. But that's not it, she- she was just grown. She hasn't changed at all, she doesn't need to. It’s not like the awareness came from any good raising, I've only seen it a few times, I think it's a personality type. There was still a child in there but Tara was a nineteen-year-old adult. I've only talked to Remera a few times but they seem similar.”
"I cant imagine what it would take to be full grown at nineteen," I was not expecting that, “What do you tell people about me behind my back?”
He laughs, “You do not want to know.”
I shift, sitting against the armrest of the green L-shaped couch while Jamie mirrors me in the parallel corner. Our gazes occasionally dart to the young woman sitting at her desk, making sure she isn't hearing anything, but I wouldn't put it past her to be an actor good enough to make us believe she isn't listening, “She was drunk… so was I. She knows how to handle alcohol, there were no more awkward moments than usual but she made me feel like I was young. Am I really hot enough to bag a nineteen-year-old?”
It's an odd question to ask a mate but Jamie has always seemed... into men. In fact, we all know he is, and I don't appreciate the atmosphere we have accidentally created, none of us care but he thinks we do. I *think* he feels a bit more comfortable around me than the others, but I still regret my question.
“Yeah,” he shrugs, “They like the messy hair, presumably if she didn't recognize you then it wasn't the fame for her. You're attractive, you don't have to be Peirce Brosan to shag any girl. And it looks like you’ve laid off the scones and gone to the gym for once, I've seen some abs. It’s impressive.”
“Are you fat-shaming me?” I narrow my eyes playfully.
“Mmhm,” he leans his head back, “I need a smoke.”
We hear a sticky window being shoved open abruptly and both start, Remeria turns and sits and her desk again. When she hears silence and feels her eyes on her, “Sorry? I can close it again if you need privacy?” she looks up with scrunched brows, “Secret songs?”
I stare a little too long at her expression, she uses her eyebrows a lot, raising a corner of her mouth with it, angling her head the smallest bit down so her eyes look up. It's disturbingly attractive. Jamie answers for me, “You're good. Did you listen to us much before this?”
“Yeah,” she says, peering at us through a gap in old monitors, getting a better view of me, “Favorite song is Pretty Visitors.”
Huh? Not Arabella, not Do I Wanna Know?, not R U Mine?, not 505, and not *Snap Out Of It?
“But mostly country and rock,” Jamie laughs at her, “oh you're one of those.”
“Country?” He clarifies.
She nods, saying, “Yes” like she’s talking to a child, “Zach Brian, it's all the American version of your romance.”
“Really?” I ask, laughing at her.
“Listen to Tourniquet, Something in the Orange, and Stick Season. It's all kinda similar”
“Sure,” I say still mocking her, “What kind of rock do you listen to?”
“Nickleback, AC/DC, Joan Jett, Guns ‘n Roses, Motley Crew, and a little Nervana. I’m picky with music, don't change much.”
“At least it's not meaningless pop,” Jamie scoffs.
“Good luck babe!” She cheers in a fake high pitch, we both know she’s referring to something but neither of us has a clue as to what, after a long silence she makes a concerned snort, “God you really are old.”
She continues typing for a minute and I see Jamie raise a brow at me, I choose to ignore him, “Do all Americans listen to country?”
“Do all British people have shit teeth?” We don't respond, “I lived in Mississippi till I was fifteen; of course I listen to country. I have a cowboy hat and ride horses too.”
I laugh at her, “You don’t have a Southern accent.”
Then she pulls out a horrific voice I can barely understand, “Well, I reckon I can drop it anytime I want, ain’t that true y'all?” I'm lucky to hear it, cause the attraction immediately dies. With an unamused look, she returns to typing, leaning her face on her hand.
She sits in grumpy silence until Jamie speaks up, “It's late you, can clock out.”
I sit and watch as she silently throws some stuff in her bag and walks out. I think to ask if she needs a ride, I didn't see any different cars so I assume she has to take the bus, but the nearest stop is already pretty far from here. It must be inconvenient for her.
Eventually, me and Jamie are left in the studio and I get off my ass, say goodbye and get in my car ready to crash.