Tangled in the Great Escape
23
We’ve been on the road for about 10 minutes with the music loud so I won’t ask Jaime a million questions. Next thing I know, Jaime pulls into our driveway and kills the engine then helps me out of the car. “Stay here, I’m going to unlock the door.” I hear him walk away and unlock the door then he comes behind me. He places his hands on my hips and leads me forward, through the doorway and then through the house to our room. It’s so easy for me to tell exactly where I’m at in the house, I have no idea how though. Once we walk into our room Jaime kicks the door close and slides my blindfold off.
When I open my eyes I see rose petals on the floor making 2 trails. One leads to the bathroom and I’m guessing to the bathtub since Jaime knows how much I love baths. I follow the other trail of petals a large fort in the corner of our room made out of blankets and pillows with strings of dimmed white christmas lights. There’s a lantern with a few unlit candles in it right outside of it. Sitting inside of the fort there’s more rose petals and my favorite drink, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, I laugh at the fact that Jaime knows I’d rather have that than wine. Along with the alcohol there’s a box of chocolates. Already this is the best birthday I have ever had.
I walk towards the bathroom but Jaime grabs my hand and pulls me tightly against him. He presses his lips to mine, seconds later I run my tongue along his bottom lip. Before deepening our kiss Jaime takes my bottom lip between his teeth. He doesn’t need to do this to turn me on, I’ve already wanted him all day. We’ve been making out in our room for what feels like hours with our bodies pressed so tightly against each others. When I try to take his shirt off he pulls away from me making me groan out of frustration. “We’re not getting into that yet baby. Are you comfortable in those?” He gestures to my clothes.
“Well I’d be happier if they were on the floor right now.”
“Just get in comfortable clothes.” I take off my jeans and tshirt and throw them into the hamper on my way to the closet. I return to our bedroom in black yoga shorts and a turquoise tank top. “You look sexy,” he says with a smirk.
“Shut up,” I reply as I walk to him, turning off our light and follow him down the hall to our living room. We reach the living room I hear multiple people yell ‘Surprise.’ I can’t help but smile like an idiot. Standing around our living room is Vic, Emily, Tony, Steph, Mike and Kate and they’ve got a stack of presents against one of the walls.
“It’s ‘bout damn time you got out here, god what were you guys doing,” Kate says, making me blush, as she pulls me into a hug. Everyone gives me hugs before we sit around the living room. “Yea so you don’t like having attention well too bad, you’re getting it anyways.”
“How’s the song coming along Hales?” Tony asks, referring to me learning how to play the guitar.
“It’s going good I think. Not sure though, can’t get it to the right tempo because I’m still shit at going between chords. My fingers are so raw. Literally no one came into the shop today so I just sat around and played for 4 hours straight. I thought my fingers were going to start to bleed.”
“You’ll get used to it soon if you keep playing that much. Does that guitar still need to be tuned?” Vic asks from his spot on the floor. He’s sitting up with Emily laying next to him, her head on his thigh.
“I did it last time I visited,” Tony answers for me. We continue to talk for awhile about so many things. The conversation would go from work to music to partying to the guys going on tour to our relationships and so many other things. Basically everything we could think of was talked about. We had been snacking on things and drinking, surprisingly no one’s gotten anywhere near drunk yet. I made Jaime, who will not let me get near the kitchen, make me food earlier since I had barely eaten all day. Kate and I convinced Emily and Steph to dance and spin around on the hardwood floor in our socks with all four guys watching and laughing at us from the couch. It’s nice that we can be ourselves like this. No hiding anything, just being crazy and having fun and laughing like hell. Emily runs across the floor and slides into me making both of us begin to fall so I grab onto Kate who grabs Steph. We all end up falling, piling on top of each other unable to stop laughing. The guys are nearly in tears from laughing so hard at us.
We finally pull ourselves up off the floor even though we’re still laughing. I just realize the ache in my side is from my tattoo. I have no idea how I even forgot, I guess I’ve been extremely distracted. The thought of my tattoo make me turn my attention to the presents. I may not like being center of attention but that does not mean I don’t like presents. “So, can I have cake or presents now?” I ask and Kate skips to the kitchen and opens the fridge. I follow and see her place an uniced lecon cake on the counter. “No icing?”
As everyone else walks in she’s pulling a couple containers of different flavors of icing out of the fridge. “You guys always complain about either the flavor or the amount. If you want icing then get a spoon and have what you want. But I made Haleys favorite kind of cake so I will warn you now that if you complain about it then you will get your face shoved into your piece.” I cut into the cake seeing that she really did make my favorite, lemon cake with fresh strawberry and chocolate filling. I take the piece I’ve gotten for myself and sit on the floor with my plate in my lap and eat my cake while everyone else comes in and sits.
Jaime takes place next to me and nudges me in the side with his arm so I do the same to him, going back and forth with it. I watch as Mike puts icing on Kates nose so she takes some and spreads it across his cheek. Tony and Steph share a plate of cake and Emily is trying to shove cake into Vics face but it ends up all over both of their hands. Once finished eating, or messing around, I gather everyones plates and go to the kitchen to take care of it all. Vic and Emily followed me so they could wash up and I tossed Mike a damp washcloth to get the icing off his and Kates faces. When everything’s taken care of I return to the living room seeing a large white box covered in music notes in the spot where I was formally sitting.
“You don’t have to tear the paper, Steph wrapped it so all you have to do is lift the lid.” Tony says with a huge smile. I already know I’m going to love this one.
I open the box and see multiple vinyl records. There’s Futures and Bleed American by Jimmy Eat World plus Blink-182’s self-titled record and Enema of the State. “Wow, oh my god, thank you. I just - I don’t have a record player.” I mumble the last few words.
They’re all still smiling as Emily pushes a new box in front of me, this time it’s a dark purple and in the same fashion as the other, only needing to lift the lid. When I open the gift from her and Vic I understand why they’re all still smiling. There’s a record player inside and I can’t think of a single word to say. “It was Em’s idea. Every time we’ve gone to visit you at work you were messing with the vinyls and she saw you always looking at those. So the four of us decided it was what we should get you,” Vic tells me as he comes over and picks up the record player.
“Thank you guys so much. I’ve been wanting this so bad. Thank you,” I watch as he sets up the record player and places the Futures album in it to play. I begin to tap out the rhythm of the song and softly sing along.
Mike tosses me a black gift bag with 5 t-shirts shoved into it. “You’re hard to get presents for. You’d think it’d be easy ‘cause you’re so simple with all of this shit, but I couldn’t really think of anything besides this since Kate would let me join in on her present,” he hands me a pack of my favorite drink as I pull out the t-shirts seeing that they’re all band shirts and they are Jaimes size, not mine. They consist of Fall Out Boy, Blink-182, Jimmy Eat World, Yellowcard, and Linkin Park.
“It’s perfect, Mike, I’m definitely going to be wearing these a lot. Thank you.” I smile up at him and open a bottle of the drinks he gave me and take a gulp of it.
“My turn,” Kate basically yells. She’s got a devilish smile on her face when she hands me a blue gift bag with white and grey tissue paper sticking out of the top.
I pull out the thing thats wrapped in the tissue paper. As soon as I have the items free from their wrapping, my face turns red and my jaw drops. I quickly shove them back into the bag hoping no one saw them. I was definitely not expecting a lace bra and panties. Especially not while opening the gift in front of all of my friends. “You little shit! Seriously Kate? Seriously? You’re so dead. Oh my god,” I yell at her and she’s dying of laughter.
She’s barely able to fight off the laughs just to say, “It’s a reasonable question. We all know what’s going to happen after we leave so why not?” Everyone else is trying to hold in their laugh which lets me know that they saw. I push the nag away from me and burry my face in my hands. “Okay, before you kill me I want to see what Jaime got you besides what we did to your room. Yes, I’ve seen, so did Emily and Steph we helped set it up. And yes, they saw what I got you, they went with me to get it.”
“God I hate you all,” I stand and lift the side of my shirt to show them all my new tattoo.
“Holy shit, that’s fucking nice Hales.” Mike says, admiring it.
“So, there’s one more present.” Jaime says from the entry of the hallway to the living room, awkwardly leaning against the wall with his hands behind his back. I didn’t even notice him leave the room in the first place. Jaime comes to me, desperately trying to keep the object behind him, lucky for him I’m completely oblivious. “So since you keep stealing mine and won’t be able to when I’m gone,” He pulls a beautiful light wood guitar from behind his back. I take it from his hands and sit on the arm of the couch, “It’s already tuned so you can play if you want.”
He leans down and kisses my forehead and hands me a pick as I place my hand in the correct position for the first chord. The sound comes out a lot better than I thought it would. I really thought that the nervousness would keep me from being able to actually play but after the first strum the nerves disappear.
“What song is that? It sounds familiar,” Emily questions me.
“Hear You Me by Jimmy Eat World. This is the only part of the song I know and it’s the only song that I know how to play so far.” I really don’t want to put this down but I do anyways to give Jaime an actual kiss and say thank you. Vic reaches for it the guitar, “Don’t even think about it, Victor,” hearing me he quickly pulls his hand away and backs away from it with his hands up. Everyone laughs at Vic as I turn my attention back to Jaime and give him another small kiss.
Kate comes to my side and hugs me, “Okay I think we should all leave before you guys start fucking right here.”
I mumble, “Fuck you,” Into her ear.
“I have Mike for that,” She whispers to me as she pulls away and gives me a smirk. Mike hugs me after her and grabs her hand, pulling her out of the house. After Jaime and I receive goodbyes from our friends Jaime walks over to clean up the boxes and tissue paper from the gift. I pick up the bag with the present from Kate and quickly skip to our bathroom. I get naked and pull on the bra and panties Kate bought for me for tonight, they’re meant for this so why not wear them.
Jaime knocks on the bathroom from the other side of the door, “Baby can I come in?”
“No need to,” I say as I walk out and go to him, seeing his shocked expression.
When I open my eyes I see rose petals on the floor making 2 trails. One leads to the bathroom and I’m guessing to the bathtub since Jaime knows how much I love baths. I follow the other trail of petals a large fort in the corner of our room made out of blankets and pillows with strings of dimmed white christmas lights. There’s a lantern with a few unlit candles in it right outside of it. Sitting inside of the fort there’s more rose petals and my favorite drink, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, I laugh at the fact that Jaime knows I’d rather have that than wine. Along with the alcohol there’s a box of chocolates. Already this is the best birthday I have ever had.
I walk towards the bathroom but Jaime grabs my hand and pulls me tightly against him. He presses his lips to mine, seconds later I run my tongue along his bottom lip. Before deepening our kiss Jaime takes my bottom lip between his teeth. He doesn’t need to do this to turn me on, I’ve already wanted him all day. We’ve been making out in our room for what feels like hours with our bodies pressed so tightly against each others. When I try to take his shirt off he pulls away from me making me groan out of frustration. “We’re not getting into that yet baby. Are you comfortable in those?” He gestures to my clothes.
“Well I’d be happier if they were on the floor right now.”
“Just get in comfortable clothes.” I take off my jeans and tshirt and throw them into the hamper on my way to the closet. I return to our bedroom in black yoga shorts and a turquoise tank top. “You look sexy,” he says with a smirk.
“Shut up,” I reply as I walk to him, turning off our light and follow him down the hall to our living room. We reach the living room I hear multiple people yell ‘Surprise.’ I can’t help but smile like an idiot. Standing around our living room is Vic, Emily, Tony, Steph, Mike and Kate and they’ve got a stack of presents against one of the walls.
“It’s ‘bout damn time you got out here, god what were you guys doing,” Kate says, making me blush, as she pulls me into a hug. Everyone gives me hugs before we sit around the living room. “Yea so you don’t like having attention well too bad, you’re getting it anyways.”
“How’s the song coming along Hales?” Tony asks, referring to me learning how to play the guitar.
“It’s going good I think. Not sure though, can’t get it to the right tempo because I’m still shit at going between chords. My fingers are so raw. Literally no one came into the shop today so I just sat around and played for 4 hours straight. I thought my fingers were going to start to bleed.”
“You’ll get used to it soon if you keep playing that much. Does that guitar still need to be tuned?” Vic asks from his spot on the floor. He’s sitting up with Emily laying next to him, her head on his thigh.
“I did it last time I visited,” Tony answers for me. We continue to talk for awhile about so many things. The conversation would go from work to music to partying to the guys going on tour to our relationships and so many other things. Basically everything we could think of was talked about. We had been snacking on things and drinking, surprisingly no one’s gotten anywhere near drunk yet. I made Jaime, who will not let me get near the kitchen, make me food earlier since I had barely eaten all day. Kate and I convinced Emily and Steph to dance and spin around on the hardwood floor in our socks with all four guys watching and laughing at us from the couch. It’s nice that we can be ourselves like this. No hiding anything, just being crazy and having fun and laughing like hell. Emily runs across the floor and slides into me making both of us begin to fall so I grab onto Kate who grabs Steph. We all end up falling, piling on top of each other unable to stop laughing. The guys are nearly in tears from laughing so hard at us.
We finally pull ourselves up off the floor even though we’re still laughing. I just realize the ache in my side is from my tattoo. I have no idea how I even forgot, I guess I’ve been extremely distracted. The thought of my tattoo make me turn my attention to the presents. I may not like being center of attention but that does not mean I don’t like presents. “So, can I have cake or presents now?” I ask and Kate skips to the kitchen and opens the fridge. I follow and see her place an uniced lecon cake on the counter. “No icing?”
As everyone else walks in she’s pulling a couple containers of different flavors of icing out of the fridge. “You guys always complain about either the flavor or the amount. If you want icing then get a spoon and have what you want. But I made Haleys favorite kind of cake so I will warn you now that if you complain about it then you will get your face shoved into your piece.” I cut into the cake seeing that she really did make my favorite, lemon cake with fresh strawberry and chocolate filling. I take the piece I’ve gotten for myself and sit on the floor with my plate in my lap and eat my cake while everyone else comes in and sits.
Jaime takes place next to me and nudges me in the side with his arm so I do the same to him, going back and forth with it. I watch as Mike puts icing on Kates nose so she takes some and spreads it across his cheek. Tony and Steph share a plate of cake and Emily is trying to shove cake into Vics face but it ends up all over both of their hands. Once finished eating, or messing around, I gather everyones plates and go to the kitchen to take care of it all. Vic and Emily followed me so they could wash up and I tossed Mike a damp washcloth to get the icing off his and Kates faces. When everything’s taken care of I return to the living room seeing a large white box covered in music notes in the spot where I was formally sitting.
“You don’t have to tear the paper, Steph wrapped it so all you have to do is lift the lid.” Tony says with a huge smile. I already know I’m going to love this one.
I open the box and see multiple vinyl records. There’s Futures and Bleed American by Jimmy Eat World plus Blink-182’s self-titled record and Enema of the State. “Wow, oh my god, thank you. I just - I don’t have a record player.” I mumble the last few words.
They’re all still smiling as Emily pushes a new box in front of me, this time it’s a dark purple and in the same fashion as the other, only needing to lift the lid. When I open the gift from her and Vic I understand why they’re all still smiling. There’s a record player inside and I can’t think of a single word to say. “It was Em’s idea. Every time we’ve gone to visit you at work you were messing with the vinyls and she saw you always looking at those. So the four of us decided it was what we should get you,” Vic tells me as he comes over and picks up the record player.
“Thank you guys so much. I’ve been wanting this so bad. Thank you,” I watch as he sets up the record player and places the Futures album in it to play. I begin to tap out the rhythm of the song and softly sing along.
Mike tosses me a black gift bag with 5 t-shirts shoved into it. “You’re hard to get presents for. You’d think it’d be easy ‘cause you’re so simple with all of this shit, but I couldn’t really think of anything besides this since Kate would let me join in on her present,” he hands me a pack of my favorite drink as I pull out the t-shirts seeing that they’re all band shirts and they are Jaimes size, not mine. They consist of Fall Out Boy, Blink-182, Jimmy Eat World, Yellowcard, and Linkin Park.
“It’s perfect, Mike, I’m definitely going to be wearing these a lot. Thank you.” I smile up at him and open a bottle of the drinks he gave me and take a gulp of it.
“My turn,” Kate basically yells. She’s got a devilish smile on her face when she hands me a blue gift bag with white and grey tissue paper sticking out of the top.
I pull out the thing thats wrapped in the tissue paper. As soon as I have the items free from their wrapping, my face turns red and my jaw drops. I quickly shove them back into the bag hoping no one saw them. I was definitely not expecting a lace bra and panties. Especially not while opening the gift in front of all of my friends. “You little shit! Seriously Kate? Seriously? You’re so dead. Oh my god,” I yell at her and she’s dying of laughter.
She’s barely able to fight off the laughs just to say, “It’s a reasonable question. We all know what’s going to happen after we leave so why not?” Everyone else is trying to hold in their laugh which lets me know that they saw. I push the nag away from me and burry my face in my hands. “Okay, before you kill me I want to see what Jaime got you besides what we did to your room. Yes, I’ve seen, so did Emily and Steph we helped set it up. And yes, they saw what I got you, they went with me to get it.”
“God I hate you all,” I stand and lift the side of my shirt to show them all my new tattoo.
“Holy shit, that’s fucking nice Hales.” Mike says, admiring it.
“So, there’s one more present.” Jaime says from the entry of the hallway to the living room, awkwardly leaning against the wall with his hands behind his back. I didn’t even notice him leave the room in the first place. Jaime comes to me, desperately trying to keep the object behind him, lucky for him I’m completely oblivious. “So since you keep stealing mine and won’t be able to when I’m gone,” He pulls a beautiful light wood guitar from behind his back. I take it from his hands and sit on the arm of the couch, “It’s already tuned so you can play if you want.”
He leans down and kisses my forehead and hands me a pick as I place my hand in the correct position for the first chord. The sound comes out a lot better than I thought it would. I really thought that the nervousness would keep me from being able to actually play but after the first strum the nerves disappear.
“What song is that? It sounds familiar,” Emily questions me.
“Hear You Me by Jimmy Eat World. This is the only part of the song I know and it’s the only song that I know how to play so far.” I really don’t want to put this down but I do anyways to give Jaime an actual kiss and say thank you. Vic reaches for it the guitar, “Don’t even think about it, Victor,” hearing me he quickly pulls his hand away and backs away from it with his hands up. Everyone laughs at Vic as I turn my attention back to Jaime and give him another small kiss.
Kate comes to my side and hugs me, “Okay I think we should all leave before you guys start fucking right here.”
I mumble, “Fuck you,” Into her ear.
“I have Mike for that,” She whispers to me as she pulls away and gives me a smirk. Mike hugs me after her and grabs her hand, pulling her out of the house. After Jaime and I receive goodbyes from our friends Jaime walks over to clean up the boxes and tissue paper from the gift. I pick up the bag with the present from Kate and quickly skip to our bathroom. I get naked and pull on the bra and panties Kate bought for me for tonight, they’re meant for this so why not wear them.
Jaime knocks on the bathroom from the other side of the door, “Baby can I come in?”
“No need to,” I say as I walk out and go to him, seeing his shocked expression.
8/27/13