บท 46: You don’t even know, Girl

Burt

The buzz from watching Jamie punch Steve in the face didn't go away for hours. Seriously, I could still feel the adrenaline surging through my body after four beers. It's the kind of adrenaline that can only be spent by having really rough sex until you unload your balls of all its junk. You don't do stuff like that to your wife, so I'm here, getting drunk in this seedy bar instead.

"I feel like I should be running a few kilometers," Mark said. His adrenaline was still high, too.

"Or fucking someone's brains out," I took a swig from my fifth beer bottle. I clearly have only one thing on my mind, but let's try to think happier thoughts.

Mark sighed and looked at the two phones lying face up in front of him. "I texted Kate hours ago and she hasn't replied."

I nodded and swallowed my beer. I swear, I should talk to these guys more often. From what I remember, Kate and Mark broke up already. "Why do you have two phones?" I asked instead.

"This is Jamie's," he said, pointing to the busier one. It lit up each time a notification arrived, which was every other minute or so.

"Why do you have it?"

"I use it to check social media," he chuckled, as if embarrassed. He picked it up and opened an app, scrolling through it. "Check this out," he said.

He was showing me a video of us performing Can't Breathe at a concert. "Wow," I snorted, having decided to humour him.

He ignored my sarcasm. "Do you know what fan accounts are?" he asked me.

I pointed at his phone. Or Jamie's phone, as it were. "You mean like that one?"

"No, you know, it's an account where all the posts are about us, and there's nothing about who they are, it's an anonymous page that reposts photos and videos and updates and livestreams and even our individual schedules and stuff like that."

I pointed at the phone again. "Yeah, like that one."

"No, no, this isn't a fan account, it's a real person who usually posts about her actual life," he was scrolling through the page and showing me the other stuff in this girl's life that isn't Boy Next Door. "She's a ballerina, as in that's her job, she dances ballet and performs in a theater, and she likes to jump but she has a hard time making her legs go fast. And she likes to eat but she's skinnier than LJ was at 13."

"Wow, nobody's skinnier than LJ at 13," I said. The "Wow" is genuine this time.

"And she has a dog named..." and he starts cackling.

I peered at the phone. The dog in question was a German Shepherd, very handsome looking dog, so far I couldn't detect anything so funny that I wouldn't be able to finish a sentence. "Nice dog," I prodded him with my beer bottle.

"Yes, but seriously, the dog's name is Girl," and he starts laughing.

People from the other tables start to look at us. I pull my cap down lower and slap Mark's arm to make him stop. He realises he's laughing too loud and tries to tone it down, but sadly, there is no such thing as toning down Mark from Boy Next Door.

He giggles in hisses and finally tries to compose himself to explain what's so funny. He wipes tears from the corners of his eyes and pulls his cap down lower too. He scrolls and finds another video and makes me watch it. "When she calls Girl to come to her, she ends up singing Girl."

"Our Girl?" I ask. I can't hear the video very well with the bar's pipe-in music. In the video, the dog is too distracted by different things so even if she often looks and wags her tail at her human who is taking the video, she quickly looks away again. Typical big dog with ADHD. Kind of reminds me of my own kid at home.

"Put the thing to your ear so you can hear her call the dog," Mark presses the phone to my head. Yep, reminds me of this kid in front of me, too.

"Girl!" Human girl calls dog Girl in the normal human girl way. "Girl!" Human girl sings, recognizable from our song Girl. "Oh Giiiiiiirlll!" Human girl copies Steve's infamous ad lib. Marky's right, this is hilarious. I can't wait to show this to Michelle, she might be more amenable to getting me and Billy a dog if she sees this.

"You don't even know, Girl!" Human girl does Mark's rap and I have to crack up.

"See?!!!" Mark is triumphant because it _is_ funny. He takes the phone back and giggles at the screen.

I watched him scroll through her feed with a smile on his face as I take another swig of beer. "So you like this girl?" I asked. He looked up at me like I said something weird. "Human girl, not dog Girl," I clarified.

"I don't know," he shrugged. He frowned and smiled at me at the same time, looking quite embarrassed. "I don't even know her."

"You know more about her than I knew about Michelle when I first asked her out," I shrugged back.

"Yeah, but Michelle's a real person," he countered.

I pointed at the phone again. "We're talking about human girl, not dog Girl," I said and he laughed. "What's her name?"

"Juliette," he replied. He was smiling and it was beautiful. "I think I was just happy that she's an actual person with an actual life. I mean, I'm sure that all our fans have actual lives that have nothing to do with Boy Next Door, but I never really saw how that was like. You know what I mean?"

"You don't even know," I raised an eyebrow at him and he started giggling again. Oh god, remind me never to bring Mark to this bar or any bar ever again.

When this round of laughter died down, he finished off his beer and continued his train of thought. "And I was happy that she's really cool. We have cool fans, Burt!"

"Of course we do," I tsked at him. "And she's why you have Jamie's phone?"

"No!" he snorted. But he started thinking about it because he got really quiet.

I got up and patted his shoulder. "While you reflect on that, I'm going to take a leak."

I kept my head down as I headed to the toilets. Finding your way to the toilet in a bar with your head down while possibly drunk has become a skill I am exceptionally good at. Except, I bumped into a couple this time. I could have sworn their shoes weren't in my line of vision just now.

"I'm sorry," I spoke curtly to them, keeping my head lowered. As they apologized back, I walked around them, turning my head to their direction so that they think I'm being polite and courteous. I nodded before I turned back to the way I'm headed and made sure I don't bump into any more people.

Mark was awfully somber when I got back to our table. I saw that he ordered us our sixth beers. As I sat down, he said to me, "I guess I like her."

"Of course you do," I nodded.

He smiled. "I'm her fan."

I chuckled. "Yes, you are." I held up my bottle. "To Juliette."

He chuckled, as well, and clinked his bottle to mine. "To all the fans in the world."

"To Girl!" I clinked his bottle again. And, spontaneously, we both burst into our last note of "Giiiiiiiirl..." in a really bad harmony that collapsed as a new fit of giggles. We didn't care anymore if people were looking at us, we probably just looked like a couple of drunk jerks.