"What's up." Aden inquired.

Kelly still felt momentarily dumbstruck by the spectre of death that passed over her friend's face. The cadaverous countenance dissipated when he spoke, releasing its startling grip on her senses. She took a long draw off her beer, making a significant dent in the pint. The dark beer was thick and cool, but not cold, just the way it was supposed to be. The relaxing powers of a good beer washed over her immediatly, allowing her to regain a bit of her usual cockiness, at least enough to hide the terror that had swept over her face a moment before. She removed a cigarette from the breast pocket of her jacket, then waited for Aden to swivel towards her to light it, as he always did. True to form he turned on the stool, ever the gentleman, hand extending his open Zippo.

Aden clicked the lighter shut, dropping it to the hard wood floor with a wheeze. Kelly inhaled a wave of pure nicotine triumph and let it roll over her as she removed her fist from his solar plexus. "Don't ever do that again," she instructed him.

Halfway to the floor already, Aden reached down for his lighter, then slowly attempted to right himself relative to his beer. Kelly already faced hers, cigarette drooping lackadasically between the fingers of her right hand. She watched Aden pull himself to the bar in a half hunched manner, still hampered by having the wind knocked out of him.

"Don't do what again?" he grimaced, his eyebrows arching in query and consternation. Ade looked sallow and pale. Stubble dusted the edges of his jaw in a curious mix of black and copper, neither of which really matched the rich brown of his natural hair color. However that much stubble meant he had not been looking after himself for at least a week. Aden was anything but furry. His scruffy looking goatee and sideburns had taken months to get to their current meager proportions. As for the rest of him, it was pretty barren too.

She thought about the last time she had seen him naked, laughing inwardly when she realized he was the last man she had ever seen naked. She thought to herself that he was probably the first, and last, boy who had ever made love to her. The memories this fact dredged along with it were painful and proud.

She remembered him, that morning at her apartment, coming back from the bathroom. The room had been dark. The hazy gray glow that seeped in past the black out shades cast the room in a two in the morning hue. Her beer clouded mind had looked to the clock to confirm the night before had happened. Two thirty three PM glowed in red from the panty festooned clock. The night had most definitely happened

Aden's hair was longer then, down past his rounded cheeck bones, dyed dark magenta. He had been scratching the nape of his neck with one hand and covering his yawning mouth with the other as she looked at him. His body was lithely muscled then and, as she had found out hours before, deceptively strong for such a thin build. He had sleepily crossed the room to the floor bound futon she looked up and down the youthful chest and body. His casual dress at that period tended to make him look broader than he actually was. She noted exactly how much narrower he seemed without clothes. Naked he had been almost copletely smooth and pale. Very little disturbed his babe like smoothness, just a few scraggly looking hairs near the pierced nipples; otherwise he was bare down to the dark trail of hair starting immediately below his navel, then flaring out in a thin, dark layer above his penis. His legs showed little hair down to past his knees, then just a light dusting of dark hairs covered his calfs, stopping just about the ankles.

She had lifted the worn covers off the pallet, welcoming him as he crawled under, snuggling his air cooled body against her sleep warm frame. They had both luxuriated in the feeling of skin on skin, warm and cool, male and female. Aden had craned his neck over her shoulder to bury his face in the nape of her neck. He'd growled playfully in her ear, following it with one of the softest kisses she ever remembered recieving. She'd rolled to face him, placing her forehead against his, looking down into the sleepy face of the pretty boy she had known for so long, even then.

They had gone through a case and a half of Rolling Rock the previous night, before, between, and even during the time they spent exploring each others' bodies. She had shared mouthfuls of cold beer with him in long, warm, lingering, hop flavored kisses. Together they had kicked and bumped half full bottles onto her cheap rug while while plunging, feeling and intersecting.

But the beer had gone, and she had begun sobering. There was a nagging pain in the back of her mind, a void of indiference swallowing her heart. In her mind she had known she would always care for the quiet young artist who had helped her through so much, and never known it. She had hated herself for caring about him, even more that he cared about her. But last night had clinched and affirmed everything for her. She had to tell him they could never be.

The memories swarmed in her mind hazy around the edges like often handled photographs. They were warm moments in what had been a cold time for her. She knew that breaking it off with hime, even after that one night, had hurt him. Seeing him go hard edged and cold as she told him had been a terrible thing to see.

"When are you going to shave that thing?" She said aloud, shifting the gears within her mind.

Aden rubbed his right hand over the soft scrub on his chin, running it up over the line of his jaw, feeling the roughness of the stubble that had just started coming in.

"Never, hon." He picked her cigarettes up off the bar and lit one. "See, I'm an artist." Aden replayed one of many scripted speeches she had heard dozens of times, this time embellishing the act by lighting up one of her Dorals and inhaling. "As an artist it is my duty too look the part. If I was a business man, I'd wear a suit." This was good, Kelly thought to herself, now he's adlibbing. "But I'm not a suit, I'm an artist. So I am simply living the look and looking the life."

"You look like hell, " she smiled.

"Then I'm living in hell."

He gave her his devastatingly atractive sidelong smirk. Not even the adolescent scruff along his jaw could stop this from being charming. Instead of looking like a malnourished street rat, he took on the look of a cunning and stylish hipster. While the clothes were the same, it semed as if an entirely different person now sat next to her, someone unrelated to the desicated figure she had sucker punched just moments before.

"So why the fuck d'ya punch me?" he complained.

"That was for disappearing last night without telling anyone." She lied, covering what she thought was probably a hormonal moment. "As well for crashing here when your apartment is just up the street."

"Excuse the fuck out of me, Miss Robbing the Cradle. When I left last night you were about five minutes from having your face firmly lodged up Nena's skirt. So I would be fairly surprised if you know when I left." He looked into his beer, and sipped some, slipping out of his righteous accusation mode. "And as for crashing here, that was kind of an accident."

She could see the bold moment of self assurance draining out of him. Before her eyes he transformed again, from straight backed self confidence to stoop shouldered heart pains.

"Basically I stopped by to have a drink with Jinny before she locked up. You know how it is sometimes, you just don't want to be alone with yourself." He gulped the last sip of his beer, holding the pint glass aloft and waggling it to catch Vicki's eye. Kelly turned and held up her hand, stopping Vicki from coming down to refill the pint.

"Yes, mom." Aden looked at the empty pint, then continued. "Well, Jinny and I were talking and I started thinkning about Elizabet." Kelly scowled at how delicately Aden spoke the syllables of the cunt's name. "I told her that I didn't want to go back to my place. That it still held a lot of memories about her on nights like last night." He sucked hard on the cigarette held oddly between his middle and ring fingers.

"So she took pity on you and let you crash on the couch?"

"Well, I couldn't crash on hers," he said, throwing up his arms, "she has that putz of a boyfriend. She can do better than that jerk."

"Oh, and you can't do better than that.." Kelly bit her tongue hard, pushing back anger with the taste of her own blood. She started again, slow and measured, trying not to rage. "And you can't do better than someone who would walk out in the middle of the night? It's been six months, man."

Aden's brow furrowed, a storm behind the hazel eyes. "Oh, please do give me advice on relationships. At least I'm not out jumping sixteen year old girls."

"Hey, you're the one who turned me off men, it's not my fault." She had hoped to diffuse the tension with that, but sarcasm is a dangerous form of wit. Aden's shoulders raised, as he fumbled through his pants pocket, lifting the collar on his jacket high enough so she could only see his eyes glaringly fixed on some invisible spot on the bar.

"Fuck you," his voice hissed, almost inaudibly, freezing her. He stood with enough force to send his bar stool toppling violently backwards. Tossing a crumpled bill out of his fist onto the bar top he seethed quickly out the door, followed by everyone's eyes except Kelly's. She could not feel her hands or her chest, and was only vaguely aware of the tears streaming down her cheeks.

She went to lift Ade's stool off the floor, but Ed was already there, picking it up. She thought he was trying to smile at her but couldn't really see straight enough to tell. Vicki's arms were around her, leading her back to the couch where Aden had spent the night. Vicki was speaking, but Kelly could not imagine what she might be saying, or trying to say. She could only sob and try to steady her hands enough to light a cigarette. She couldn't light it, but Vicki could. After a few minutes some words came through to her.

"... if you're sure you're okay. I'm still going to try and get off as soon as possible though." Kelly nodded, realizing that she must have said something to Vicki, but her mind drew a blank when she tried to recall what. Vicki stood up warily, walking away slowly, back to the front bar.

Kelly found herself lighting yet another cigarette, the last in the pack, the lucky. She thought about that, alone in the back of a seedy dive bar in the early afternoon. Pool tables and dart boards, mute and deaf.

"How the fuck did I get here," she asked them. They said nothing. "How the fuck did this get to be my life?"