CHATROOM LOVE
Chapter Forty-One

Banff, AB, Canada
December 31, 2001

Loud music sounded through the house. In the kitchen, the table was covered with dishes of food. An ice chest sat in a corner of the kitchen, filled with sodas, bottles of water, and beer. Bottles of champagne and sparkling cider were chilling in the refrigerator. The New Year’s Eve party was in full swing.

The five kids were in the family room, along with seven guests that Dawn and Tommy had invited, people they knew who were spending the winter holidays in Banff or who lived there year-round. The youngest guest was a thirteen-year-old girl named Candy who had taken an immediate liking to Fabrizio, much to his dismay. She sat beside him on the couch, scooting closer when she thought no one was looking, while he kept moving away from her until he was pressed up against the arm of the couch. Candy was giggling and trying to talk to him, while he stammered nervously and pretended not to understand her.

Candy’s sister, Claire, was the oldest guest at the party, a twenty-year-old university student who had brought the beer and champagne. Their brother, Charles, was a friend of Tommy’s, and he was the one who had been invited, but his parents had refused to allow him to go to a party where Tommy’s parents weren’t present unless Claire came along to supervise, and they had also insisted that Candy not be left out.

Two of the other guests, Brittany and Eva, were acquaintances of Dawn’s. They had run into them at the pizza place the night before, and Dawn had insisted that they come to the party. Both had brought their significant others to the party—Brittany had brought her boyfriend, Greg, and Eva had brought her girlfriend, Lisette.

Thus far, Claire’s "supervision" had been the life of the party—she had already drunk three of the beers she had brought and was currently dancing barefoot on the coffee table. Tommy was watching her worriedly, hoping that the table wouldn’t be damaged—his parents would be furious if they found out about the party—and they wouldn’t be happy about the damaged furniture, either.

The two couples who had been invited were dancing, as were Jack and Rose. Candy was looking at the dancing couples longingly, wishing that Fabrizio would ask her to dance, but he kept avoiding her gaze, much to her disappointment.

Dawn came out of the kitchen with her second plate of food—she had been hungry in the evenings the past few days. She sat down next to Tommy, slapping his hand when he tried to steal a cookie. "Get your own!" she whispered.

The song playing on the stereo came to an end, and Jack stopped whirling Rose around. She staggered against him dizzily, laughing.

Jack was panting. "Let’s sit down for a bit."

"Want me to get us some drinks first?"

"Sure."

"What do you want?"

Jack thought for a moment, then grinned. "How about a beer?"

Rose laughed. "Sure." She hurried into the kitchen, returning a moment later with two cans of beer.

"Thanks." Jack took his beer and opened it.

"Have you ever had beer before?" Rose wanted to know.

"Yeah. Once."

"When?"

"Back in California, not longer after my parents’ funeral."

Rose stared at him, wide-eyed. "Did it help?"

"Help what?"

"You know…make losing your parents hurt less."

Jack thought for a moment. "Sure…for a little while. Then it wore off, and they were still gone."

Rose leaned against him. "I know what you mean. When my dad died, I was so upset I couldn’t function. The doctor prescribed some Valium, and it helped…but my dad was still dead."

Jack took a sip of his beer and made a face. "A party’s a lot more fun than a funeral…but the beer doesn’t taste any better."

Rose opened her beer and took a drink, then tipped the can upward and gulped it down as fast as she could.

Jack stared at her. "Show-off!"

Rose giggled. "What? You think a girl can’t drink?"

At that moment, Claire, who had just finished a fourth beer, tried to execute a fancy move on top of the coffee table and fell off, slamming into the easy chair that Jack and Rose were sharing and causing Jack to drop his beer, splattering it all over Rose and her sequined red dress.

"Hey!" Jack grabbed the beer can from Rose’s lap. "Watch it!"

Claire got up with difficulty, hanging onto the arm of the easy chair. "Sorry." Her voice was slurred. Charles was laughing, and Candy looked embarrassed.

"Jack, I’m fine." Rose pulled him back down beside her. "I know a good dry cleaner in Edmonton. I’ll take my dress there when we get back and get it cleaned so Mom won’t find out."

Jack glared at Claire, who was sitting next to Candy on the couch, laughing and causing her embarrassed sister to scoot away from Fabrizio, who looked relieved at the distraction.

"I think I’m going to go change, though," Rose said, drawing Jack’s attention back to her. "That beer was cold."

"You still look good," Jack told her, taking in the soaked front of her dress.

Rose glanced down and squealed a little at the sight of the beer-soaked fabric clinging to her front. "Quit staring!" She got up and headed for the room she shared with Dawn.

Jack watched her go, looking away when Dawn nudged him with her toe.

"Nice move, Jack." Dawn lifted her can of Sprite in a mock-salute.

"I didn’t mean to spill it on her! That girl ran into the chair…"

"Claire. Yes, I saw." Dawn paused at Charles leaned over and whispered in her ear. "Okay. I can do that." She looked back at Jack. "I’m giving Charles and his sisters a ride home. I know it’s only eleven o’clock, but Charles wants to go home before his sister does anything else embarrassing." She looked at Tommy. "I’ll be back before midnight."

"Be careful with my car!"

Dawn rolled her eyes, then glanced back at Jack. "I skidded on ice once when I was learning to drive and put a little dent in the bumper of my dad’s car, and Tommy has never let me live it down." She set her soda can down and went to find her coat.

Jack looked at Tommy. "How come she’s the designated driver when it’s your car?"

"’Cause she’s the only one who hasn’t had any alcohol, except Candy, who’s too young to drive. I’ll have to go get Claire in the morning so she can get her car back. She’s sure in no condition to drive right now."

As Dawn walked out the front door, Tommy got up and put on a new CD. Fabrizio got up, relieved to see Candy go, and walked out into the middle of the family room, where he started imitating a dance he had seen Jack demonstrating to Rose earlier that evening. Greg, Brittany, and Tommy stared at him, while Eva and Lisette glanced at each other and then joined him.

Jack grinned, glad to see Fabrizio finally enjoying the party. He shook his head when Fabrizio got a few of the moves wrong, standing up and joining in. Lisette watched him for a moment, then corrected her moves and demonstrated them to Eva and Fabrizio. The four of them danced for a few minutes before Jack stepped away and looked in the direction Rose had gone.

Fabrizio followed. "Where did you learn that dance?" he asked, watching as Lisette grabbed Eva’s hands and whirled her around in much the same way as Jack had whirled Rose earlier.

"My mom learned it in a class she took, and she showed it to my dad and me." Jack leaned against the wall. "She tried to teach Trudy, too, but she wasn’t much interested in learning."

Fabrizio nodded. He had met Trudy, though Jack hadn’t told him much about his sister’s past. He knew that she had survived the attacks on the World Trade Centre a few months earlier, and that she spoke Spanish reasonably well—though it was a slightly different dialect from the one he spoke in El Salvador—but not much else. Though Jack and Fabrizio were friends, Jack did not find him nearly so easy to talk to as he found Rose. Part of it was the language barrier—Jack spoke some Spanish, but not a lot, and Fabrizio’s English was still rough—but more than that, Jack had found Rose to have a sympathetic ear, and they were close.

Jack glanced in the direction Rose had gone again. "I’m going to go check on her," he told Fabrizio. "She’s been gone for a while."

Jack found Rose standing in front of the mirror in a blue dress, trying to repair her makeup, which had run when the beer had splashed into her face. "Rose? Are you okay?"

Rose jumped, startled, the mascara wand in her hand bouncing against her cheek. "Jack! You startled me." She dabbed at the mascara, trying to remove it from her skin. "I’m trying to fix my makeup, but it isn’t going too well."

Jack watched her attempt once again to apply the mascara to her eyelashes. Her hands were unsteady, and she almost poked herself in the eye with the mascara wand.

"Maybe you shouldn’t have gulped down all that beer," he told her.

"No, I’m fine…" Rose squinted at the smear of mascara she’d gotten under her eye. "Well…maybe not."

"Maybe you should just wash it off and go without makeup. You’re pretty enough anyway."

Rose looked at him. "You’re sweet."

"I know." He looked at the stuff sitting on top of the dresser, trying to figure out what she would use to take her makeup off.

Rose reached for a package of cleansing cloths. Slowly, she pulled one out and rubbed it over the smears of mascara and blush on her face.

"Better?" she asked.

Jack nodded as she dropped the cloth into the trash. "Yeah…you don’t have all those funny-looking smears on your face anymore."

"What time is it?"

Jack glanced at his watch. "11:35. Twenty-five minutes ‘til 2002." They heard the front door open and close. "Dawn took Claire and her brother and sister home. Her brother was afraid Claire would do something even worse than dance on the table and make me dump beer on you."

Rose laughed. "I bet that made Fabrizio happy."

Jack chuckled. "Yeah. When I went to look for you, he was dancing with those two girls, Eva and…uh…"

"Lisette?"

"Yeah, Lisette."

"I noticed he was looking at them funny earlier."

"I’m guessing he hasn’t seen girls together so…openly much where he’s from. I don’t know if it bothers him or not."

"You said he was dancing with them."

"Yeah…well, he’s probably not worried that they’ll come on to him or sit there and giggle while trying to get his attention."

Rose shook her head. "Middle schoolers. Although I’ll admit to being a little shyer than that when I was thirteen."

"When I was thirteen, I thought girls were both fascinating and scary."

"We’re not so scary anymore, are we?" Rose raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well…only sometimes."

Rose laughed, going to sit on her bed. "Let’s stay here for a few minutes. We haven’t had much time alone lately."

Jack sat next to her. "It’s amazing that we get more time alone together when we’re around your mom and my aunt and uncle than when we’re with our friends."

"My mom and your cousins don’t want us to spend all our time with them."

"True." Jack pulled Rose into his arms, enjoying being alone with her for a while. Rose kissed him, a smile spreading across her face.

"How long ‘til midnight?" she asked.

Jack glanced at his watch again. "About twenty minutes."

"Good. I don’t want to go down yet."

Jack kissed her, one hand caressing the back of her neck. Rose responded in kind, her fingers toying with the buttons on his shirt.

He pulled away. "Rose, what are you doing?"

She looked at him, a bit uncertain now. "You don’t want to?"

"I…um…oh, hell…the others might hear…"

Rose got up and closed the door. "No, they won’t." She sat down next to him again, pulling him close.

Jack grinned, kissing her and reaching for the zipper on the back of her dress. Rose lay back on the bed, pulling him with her and unbuttoning his shirt.

"Are you nervous?" Jack asked as Rose sat up slightly, shrugging out of her dress and dropping it in a heap on the floor.

Rose shook her head. "No…not really."

Jack pulled her into his arms again, their kisses deepening as they ran their hands over each other’s bodies.

The door flew open.

"Hey, are you guys coming back to the party or not? It’s almost midnight…"

Jack and Rose pulled apart, looking up in embarrassment to see Dawn and Tommy standing in the doorway.

Dawn turned red. "I so did not want to see that."

Jack ran a hand over his flaming face. "You didn’t see anything. We didn’t get that far yet." Jack reached for his shirt, discarded at the edge of the bed.

Rose, clad only in her panties and bra, grabbed her pillow and held in front of her. "Don’t stare at me!" she snapped at Tommy.

"Don’t stare at her, Tommy!" Dawn agreed, trying to cover his eyes. "You’re only allowed to look at me that way!"

"I wasn’t staring!" Tommy protested.

"Yes, you were!" the other three responded, Rose trying to slip back into her dress while still keeping the pillow in front of her.

"You guys were gonna use birth control, right?" Dawn asked, putting a hand on her stomach and looking at them seriously.

Jack and Rose looked at each other guiltily. Neither had even thought about it.

"Good thing we interrupted you, then," Tommy remarked. "You don’t want to wind up like us."

Jack mumbled something unkind under his breath. Rose touched his arm.

"I guess we’d better go out there before anyone else comes looking for us." She turned so Jack could zip up her dress. Sighing, she said, "It’s probably just as well. We don’t have anything for birth control, and I don’t want to get pregnant."

"Yeah." Jack sighed. "My little cousins and Trudy’s kids are enough trouble already…I don’t need one of my own right now." He got off of the bed, smoothing his hair and offering Rose a hand.

"Come on." Rose stood and pulled him towards the door. "Let’s celebrate the new year by not getting into trouble."

Chapter Forty-Two
Stories