Apologies for the lateness of this chapter; my Internet is slightly dodgy these days. It's not quite 100% finished, but if I didn't post now it would be another week so I figured I would just have to send it out into the world and hope for the best!
Chapter 4: Messes
"It's not you," said Justin, tilting his head to the side and making his eyes wide and sincere, "it's me." For extra emphasis, he placed a friendly, comforting hand on the mop in its general arm region. "I hope we can still be friends."
"What are you doing?"
Justin spun around and shoved the mop under his arm; yeah he was just standing here leaning on the mop, not talking to it or anything. His would-be casual pose crumbled almost immediately as the mop flopped under his weight and unbalanced him. After some arm flapping, Justin righted himself and faced Alex. His dignity was well and truly shattered.
"Uh, nothing."
"I know you don't have many friends, Justin, but don't add the mop to your clique. It's quality not quantity of friends," quipped Alex, arching an eyebrow.
"Haha, very funny," said Justin.
He turned the mop head back to the floor and re-absorbed himself in mopping. He hadn't even started before getting distracted. There wasn't even water in the bucket. Alex didn't know that though. Justin was banking on her getting bored and wandering off before he looked even more stupid cleaning the floor with a dry mop after he broke up with it.
Justin couldn't believe Alex caught him in a compromising position with the mop. Again. He wasn't even trying to kiss Miranda now, just break up with her, but the preparation events were playing out the same. Could he actually change anything or was he doomed to repeating every glory, disappointment and embarrassment?
Justin vigorously scrubbed a stubborn spot near the door, as though erasing that little spot might erase this little scene. Alex walked away first time with a look of contempt. Unfortunately that particular aspect wasn't replaying itself.
"You can tell me now or ten minutes from now. You must be tired from all that mopping, you might as well take the easy way," said Alex matter-of-fact and hopped up onto the counter that he just finished wiping.
"Okay, how about I tell you while you deal with the tomato sauce and salt shakers," Justin suggested with a vague flapping gesture towards the counter where he had gathered all the containers that needed to be filled.
"Did you honestly think that would get rid of me? I play with these things without getting paid," said Alex. She flashed him a friendly shark-like smile. "Spill."
Justin frowned. Darn. He should have suggested washing dishes or something. Strangely enough, Alex liked to pour things, preferably out of containers and making a mess, but she could make do with being productive. At least he would be finished up in the Sub Station quicker and Alex was known to have good advice now and then
So far she was strangely quiet about the time travel situation, claiming she was still processing. Alex, as a rule, didn't process; she acted and then reacted. Her inactivity scared Justin. It meant she didn't have any ideas, which meant he was stuck here. Since Justin didn't want to admit that yet, he pushed it out of his mind and focused on brushing up on calculus or sorting out the Miranda problem and tried not to let his mind wander from the task at hand.
Currently that was mopping the floor (or rather getting water to mop the floor). Using magic carelessly and lazily went against ever fiber of his being, but Justin couldn't bring himself to care at the moment. He would mop the floor standing on his head if it would make this any less awkward.
Justin slipped his wand out of his pocket, checked to make sure Alex was distracted with the salt shakers and muttered: "Fill this bucket with water, do not make me falter."
Water appeared in the bucket, filling from an invisible tap right up to the brim. Sneezing would probably cause it to overflow, let alone sticking a mop it, but hey, the point of mopping was to get the floor wet so no harm. Justin sloshed the mop in it and started mopping the floor for real, except you know, with cold water so it would hardly be an effective or hygienic cleaning, but whatever.
"Alright. I'm practising breaking up with Miranda," he admitted.
"You guys were actually going out? All you did was hold hands and stuff," replied Alex.
As promised, she was topping up the tomato sauce bottles from a giant one. Biting her lip, she looked utterly focused on the task (had she finished the salt already? Was that magic or was she just that good at it?). Not so focused that she couldn't give him a hard time.
"Kinda going out. So I have to kinda break up with her," said Justin. "I just need to figure out how.
"And when…and where…and why and who. How is only one of your many difficulties," Alex remarked. "You need to think big picture not details."
It was so much easier letting her breaking up with him, but he couldn't string out this relationship until the school dance (presuming he couldn't get back to the future in the meantime). It wasn't fair on either of them. He needed to man up and end it now.
"First time around you set her up with Matt to prove a point to me that I needed to kiss her and soon. Maybe you could do that again," Justin commented.
"That does sound like something I would do," Alex agreed. She shook her head. "It's not reproducible though. I can't plan these things."
"So when I do like her you undermine me and when I don't you undermine me. Can't you be consistent or do you just enjoy torturing me?" Justin grumbled.
"So what's the game plan? Squeeze as many clichés into a sentence as possible and hope for the best?"
Justin made a face. "Basically yeah. Unless you have a better idea?"
"Do what you've been doing all along she'll get fed up eventually."
"That's plan B."
"Take her to the haunted house on your way to school tomorrow."
"What? How can that be the answer to me kissing her and breaking up with her?"
Clearly all Alex's talk about knowing relationships was waffle. That just didn't make sense at all. Unfortunately Justin's advice options were very limited. Zeke, Max, Mom, Dad. Alex was the best of a bad bunch. Maybe he could ask on the Internet. People on the Internet knew stuff about stuff, didn't they?
"Simple. You'll get scared. She'll realise how high maintenance and whiny you are and then ditch you. Problem is you might get murdered by ghost. But that's love for you."
"I'm not whiny and high maintenance," protested Justin.
"I'm not whiny and high maintenance," Alex mimicked, putting on whiny, grating tone. "You still take baths, which last like an hour, and complain about current events all the time. You absolutely are."
"Your plan won't work. One, we didn't go to the house first time. She wanted to go to dark alley and she will want to that again this time and I have no intention of being mugged or knifed. Two, I'm not scared of that house. On my first date with my current girlfriend, who is a vampire by the way, we walked through a graveyard at night."
"A vampire? Really? You won't go into a dark alley for two minutes where you might get attacked but you enjoy going out with a blood-sucking fiend of the night who will drink your blood and kill you. And I'm the inconsistent, one?
"Has anyone ever told you that you're kinda judgmental and mean?"
"In art today, I made Lisa cry when we had to give feedback on each other's paintings and I said it looked like one she did in kindergarten, so not in those exact words, but yes they have."
Justin blinked. "And somehow you make that sound like a compliment."
"It is what it is," said Alex with shrug.
She placed the last of the tomato sauce bottled on the table with a flourish. "And done. Even did the sugar too! Are you still mopping? Put some back into it. Remember you want to break up with the mop not dance with it."
"Don't you have trouble to cause somewhere that's not here?"
"Oh yeah I filled my quota. Miranda texted you earlier. The beeping was annoying me so I had to open the message, and I just happened to see what she said and may have accidentally replied and then cast a spell to make me sound like you and rang her to arrange a data tomorrow evening. You're welcome!" With that word vomit, Alex made a hasty move toward the exit.
"What!" Justin exploded, grabbing her arm. Woah, she couldn't just say that and vanish. Not cool.
"It's one of those artistic deep movies you like. You guys have so much in common. Why are you guys breaking up really? Think about it. You don't need to be lonely for the next two years."
"I've already seen it. I'm from the future!" Justin stressed.
It was a good movie though. He saw it several times since and wouldn't mind seeing it in the cinema again. Regardless, he did not appreciate Alex's interference (or the connotation that he would be here for the two years!).
"How could I forget? You never shut up about it!"
"You know what Alex? You always claim you know so much about relationships but you don't. If you did you would understand why I can't just string Miranda along for a few months. Stop interfering with my life!"
Justin shoved the mop back into the storage closest and stormed upstairs away from Alex before he strangled her. She was such a know-it-all, sticking her nose in everywhere. Wrecking everything. The one thing he asked her to fix, she turned her nose up at. It was so infuriating.
Justin couldn't cancel the date with Miranda. Not after spacing on their morning walk. He basically had to go to the cinema now and he couldn't break up with her after unless he wanted to send completely mixed messages. Could he break up with her at the movie? It was a possibility.
Justin wasn't ready though. He needed more time to prepare himself. He had to plan, research, visualise and practise. Maybe make up some cue cards too. He couldn't rush into something like this. Not unless he wanted to suffer a heart attack in the middle of it. Justin didn't have that luxury though. He only had 16 hours. 16 days seemed a bit soon if he were to be honest
Time.
Man, that was such a screwed up concept in his life. He was in 2007, facing his first break up instead of his first kiss, and he just needed more time. Justin had far too much time on his hands really, two years too much, but somehow a day didn't seem like sufficient time.
Time sucked.
