"I'm out again…" I slowly inch my glass back across the table to April so she can, in moderation, pour more wine into my glass. The only thing that's in my memory from anything that happened more than an hour ago is me, downing an entire four glasses of wine and convincing April that I'm fine and she should drink with me. I'm not drunk or anything, and neither is April. It just took a lot of convincing for her to finally give in to letting me drink with her. Apparently, she feels like I'm her little sister and she was uncomfortable with getting her little sister drunk. I guess it worked out in her favor, because I'm not even feeling the wine and I don't think she is either. I've never had more than a sip of beer before, by the way. I know I keep reiterating that, but I find it necessary to say that. I used to be allowed to take little sips of fancy, expensive tasting wines and beers at family reunions and church functions with my grandmother. I've never actually guzzled glass after glass after glass of cheap wine.
"That's totally enough for you, Jo. This is like… your sixth one." A nervous giggle passes through April's lips and she turns the heavy, misty, glass bottle up and tops off my wine glass. She hastily puts the bottle back on the coffee table and crosses her legs. "I just…." She starts talking, but her sentence trails off a bit. "I just can't…sit around waiting for… for Jackson to get his act together, you know?" She flops her head back against the couch cushion and giggles, which, in turn, makes me giggle as well. "The way I see it, when you get together with somebody, you're either going to marry them or break up with them. And I'm not… I'm not wrong for wanting him to want to marry me, am I?"
"No…" I shake my head and bust out in unwarranted laughter. "That's scary as fuck to think about though…. If what you say is true, I mean." I take a hefty sip of wine and put my glass back down on the table. I feel a belch brewing in the pits of my stomach. "Guess me and Alex are gonna break up sooner or later." I look up at the finished ceiling of her basement. "Can't say I didn't see it coming though…"
"Why do you think you're gonna break up? Don't count yourself out, Joey. High school sweethearts sometimes get married and have kids together. And Alex is faithful. I thought I told you to have faith in your relationship."
I pick my head up and look straightforward at the television screen. One of the Friday the Thirteenth movies is playing on the TV but I haven't paid enough attention to know exactly which one it is. "I don't want to get married to anybody. And I don't want to have children." I pick up my wine glass and down the last chug of it. "I wish people would just be okay with that, you know? Like, why does that have to be a goal for every relationship? If a relationship works, why do you have to get married and put a title on it? If it works… and you're happy… why do you have to get married? Because the MINUTE…no, the SECOND you put a title on it, everything just gets so screwed up…"
"But Alex wants to get married someday… he told us that. In our senior seminar class, we had to write a paper about where we see ourselves in ten years. He wants to get married and have a baby someday." Nonchalantly, she leans forward and refills my glass. The bottle of wine should be damn near empty by now.
"Too bad." I use my tongue to slowly lap up a little bit of wine from my freshly refilled glass. "I don't really mean that. I mean, I mean it… but I don't…mean it, mean it. Get it?" I look over at her face, and it makes me again, bust out in laughter at something that's probably not even as funny as I just made it out to be. "Put it this way…" Again, I look up at the ceiling. "I'm not opposed to spending the rest of my life with Alex. But I'm sixteen, so it's a lot to think about. I love him in that…" My mind is just racing, running fast with thoughts that I can say but I don't know how to describe them. "I never get tired of him." For the first time in about an hour, the tone of my voice isn't at all playful. It's serious and serene and I'm feeling the same way. "I never get tired of him. I always want to talk to him. He's always on my mind, too." I look at April and she's listening to me intently. "Like… he's the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. And I can't sleep, either. I sit up all night wondering what he's thinking about before he falls asleep. And I worry about him. I worry about if he's sleeping at night. I worry about if he's hurting or whatever. And then someone says his name…and I smile…and blush…and immediately get those little butterflies in my tummy. And I always, always, always want to be around him. I always want him. And I miss him. Even when I'm with him, I miss him. And it makes me want to throw up…or choke myself…or both. I'm in love with him…but I'm too scared to tell him that I am, because…" I move my hair out of my face. "What if he leaves, Ape? Then I got my head all mixed up in this boy, my heart's wide open, my world revolves around him and then… boom. He leaves, I'm crushed, I miss him and I don't even know how I'd ever be able to love somebody as much as I love him. So it… it comes off as, I don't like him that much, I don't want to be bothered with him…but in reality, he's all I've ever wanted. He's the only thing good in my life right now, you know?"
"…Yeah, I know." Just like my voice, April's is serious and stern. She scoots over so she's closer to me on the couch and forces me to lie my head on her shoulder. "But think about it, Jo… think about how terrible this world would be if everyone was afraid to love somebody. You can't sit around scared, because you don't know if somebody loves you the way you love them. The truth is…" She puts her arm around my shoulder and puts her forehead against the top of my head. "Nobody will ever love you back…in the exact same way you love them. And we have to open ourselves up to that kind of thing, because we just have to accept the fact that our feelings will always be stronger for that one person. But the person that you're stuck around, hopelessly in love with? That's the person worth opening up for. Whether you're pretty, ugly… successful, a bum. A bitch, a nice person… that person? Well… they'll still think that the sun rises and shines out of your ass. But you have to have a clear mind when you're thinking about these things at the same time. Your mind's not clear right now… you're still thinking about Shane."
"Look, sad as I am to say it…" I grab a lock of her fiery red hair and twist it around my finger to avoid making eye contact with her. "Shane's not even a factor." I shrug my shoulders as I finally come to grips with that within myself. "He doesn't cross my mind. I mean, he does…obviously. But not in the way that Alex crosses my mind. It's like… Alex crosses my mind and I get all giggly and happy. But then Shane crosses my mind and it's more like a… "oh yeah, I gotta deal with you too" kind of thing." That makes April laugh, and out of pure obligation, I laugh too. "No, but seriously. I feel SO bad that he feels one way about me but I feel another. And he says it doesn't bother him anymore, but Shane's a liar and I can see right through him. I'm killing him…and I can't be responsible for that. He's my best friend. He's been there with me through a lot of bullshit, you know? But I'm killing him, and knowing that I'm killing him is killing me."
"So you think that…sleeping with him will solve all of that?" She slides her face over a little and kisses my temple. "Honey… you're sadly mistaken if you think that sleeping with Shane will solve any of your problems. It'll make you feel so much worse, Jojo…"
"…Yeah, but what other options do I have? April, I'm drowning here. It's like… I'm drowning. Then Alex is my lifeline and he brings me back to shore and I'm cool for a while. But then I go back home and see Shane all mopey and depressed and I'm drowning again." I rub my eyes. "I just DON'T KNOW what to do. I thought, okay… I'm just gonna ignore it. I'm going to ignore the fact that he told me he loves me. I'm gonna forget the fact that he said all those things to me, but we're still gonna be besties. That doesn't work. All that does is make him madder at me for acting like he never admitted it. He literally gets pissed at me. So then, I just ignore HIM. I ignore him and then he gets all sad… and he doesn't come to my hearing and he only texts me when he needs me to do something for him. What other choice do I have?"
"I don't know, Jo. But I do know that sleeping with that boy isn't going to do anything but make you feel lousy and make him go crazy. You'll mess SO many things up. And what about Alex? You're not even thinking about him…"
"I CAN'T THINK ABOUT HIM, APRIL." I roughly push her away from me and stand up from the couch. "See, this is why I can't ever fucking…" My hands, violently start shaking and trembling. "Nobody ever fucking understands…I just want somebody to get it…and nobody does." I bawl my hands up in fists to try to get them to stop shaking so much and take a deep breath. When I look back over at the couch, I see April's face a mixture of confused and hurt, but what really gets me is how I see that she's rubbing a spot on her arm. You freaking idiot. You hurt her! "…I should…I should go." I can see it on her face…she's afraid of me. Oh man…you just lost another one.
"No…c…come on." She stands up from the couch and walks over to me with confidence… like she's not afraid. "I don't want you to leave. We can talk, Jo… It's alright. You scared me for a second there, but it's cool. You don't have to leave." She grabs my hands, which makes them stop shaking. "I…I get it. I'm getting it. I'm listening and I'm getting it. Come on, we can talk. Where'd you leave off? Shane, right? You think that sleeping with Shane is the answer…" She talks me down off the ledge that I was just on. I reluctantly sit back down on the couch and let her go back to holding me. Shane's the only person that's ever been able to do this to me. "You think sleeping with Shane is the answer, and you can't think about Alex? Why can't you think about Alex?"
"…I'm just… juggling. I can't think about Shane when I'm with Alex and I can't think about Alex when I'm with Shane." I lean up and grab her arm so I can look at the mark I put on it. It's just a little red mark, but I can tell that it's going to bruise. I'm so sorry… "If I think about Alex, I'll screw something up. I mean… of COURSE I don't want to…cheat on Alex. I don't want to hurt him… I love him. Why would I hurt someone that I love? Which is the ONLY reason I'm hesitant to actually do it. Alex is the reason I'm so hesitant to sleep with Shane…he's the ONLY reason. I hurt him bad when I kissed Jason so it's like… I would never just sleep with Shane maliciously. It would just be… to settle things. I don't know…"
"I still don't think that's the right idea." Once again, she twists the cork off the wine bottle and fills up both our glasses for the last time. The wine bottle is empty now. "I don't actually have any other advice to offer you, but I don't think that you're really thinking. Say… say you broke up with Alex, okay? Say you broke up with him…and then you slept with Shane. So you wouldn't have cheated on him with Shane, that's settled. But then, you're not being fair to Shane. You shouldn't sleep with somebody just because you don't have anything else to do. Trust me… it doesn't work that way."
"How would you know?" I turn my wine glass up to my lips and sip. "Jackson's the only person you ever slept with, isn't he? So it's not like you would even consider something like this."
"I just know what it's like to have to work towards something…give it all %110 and have it all snatched away because of one minor lapse of judgment." She puts her head back against a couch cushion and sighs. "It's like… you wait and you wait and you wait…and one moment can just…defeat the entire purpose, you know? Ever since I was little, I just knew that I wanted to wait for marriage. Wait for the right guy to sleep with. It was supposed to be special for me. And that's how it should be. You should want to give yourself to your husband…shouldn't you?"
"…Well gee, I don't know Ape. I'm not exactly a saint…" I guzzle the last little bit of wine in my glass and burp loud and obnoxiously, not even bothering to excuse myself. "I lost my virginity when I was fourteen years old and it wasn't exactly special, know what I mean?"
She shrugs her one shoulder like she's agreeing with me. "Right, and you obviously have regrets for that." I wrinkle my eyebrow at that statement and my nostrils involuntarily flare up. "Not what I meant." She puts her hand up to silence anything I was about to say. "I'm not judging you for that, Jo. It's whatever. Kids have sex, it's not that big of a deal. I'm just saying that you're decent and you know that losing your virginity wasn't special. I mean… I totally relate to that. Not saying that the first time I had sex with Jackson wasn't special, because it was… it just felt… unsatisfying. But not because he didn't know what he was doing, but because… he wasn't a virgin and I was… and I really wanted him to be one. I wish we were each other's firsts…"
"I get that." From the corner of my eye, I see the wall start moving. Quickly, I snap my head over to look at it. It's not moving when I look at it from a frontal view. I blink twice and clear my throat. "I lost my virginity for all the wrong reasons." I look down at my empty wine glass and stare at the tiny bit of clear liquid that remains at the bottom of it. "I wanted to do it, I guess. But it was kind of a mix of me wanting to do it and see what it was like, and then I wanted to do it to get it over with. Shane lost his, so he was always talking about it and then he… did something, and I was curious after that, and then it happened like…a week later or something."
"What'd he do?"
I don't know why, but I immediately start laughing. "Nothing. It was stupid, really…" April tilts her head and looks at me through hooded eyes, like I had better tell her or else. She can't keep a straight face with me, and neither can I for that matter. We both bust out in hysterical, boisterous laughter. "We were talking about it. For the first time since it happened, we were finally really talking about it. Him losing his virginity, I mean. We were talking about it and I asked him what it felt like. Ad he couldn't explain it to me…so he showed me. That's all."
"I thought you said you never slept with him!"
"I didn't! With his fingers, Ape…fingers." I close my eyes and another round of hard laughter comes out of my mouth. "Poor kid's been reeling off that for the longest time. He'd be so mad if he knew that I actually do remember those things." I purse my lips together to stop myself from laughing. "No, but seriously… I should sit him down and tell him that I do remember everything one day."
"That might actually make your friendship better… if you stop lying to him, I mean." She rubs her eyes and picks her cell phone up. "…We've got one hour until the boys get here." She stands up off the couch and stumbles backwards before catching herself and regaining her balance using the arm of the couch. "Crap… I'm tipsier than I thought." She giggles quite loudly and starts cleaning up the empty wine bottle and the empty glasses.
"Lightweight. I'm not even feeling anything." I stick my tongue out at her and stand up to help her. All of a sudden, my legs turn a little weak and I stumble too. I'm not drunk, it's just been a while since I've put my weight on my legs. The floor is moving a little bit, so I rub my eyes to clear my vision.
"…Oh Jo… you're so drunk." She brings one of her arms up to her face, since her hands are full, and laughs into the crook of it. "You're drunk off your ass… and Alex is gonna kill me."
"I'm not drunk…" I pick up two empty paper plates that we ate pizza off of. "I feel fine." The two plates slip right through my fingers, crash down onto the floor and make a little mess of crust and pizza sauce and pepperoni that I picked off mine. "Shit." I look down at my mess and just laugh. "How the hell am I…" I swallow a wad of spit in my mouth and cough. "April. How am I supposed to clean this up?"
"Just leave it. I'll grab it. You need to lie down… you're so drunk." She sweeps her hair out of her face and chuckles. "Lie down for a minute… you can't handle your liquor and I don't want you puking all over the place."
"I'm…not drunk. I'm just…tired." I close my eyes for a really long time and find myself wobbling. "Do you have a mop? And paper…um… paperrrrrr….towels. I'm gonna clean this up…" I look down at the mess on the floor again and my hair falls in front of my face. I push it out of my way and hold it back. "I've been thinking about shavin' my head… what do you think?"
"I think you need to lie your little behind down and sober up before your boyfriend gets over here and cuts my head off for getting you drunk." She kneels down on her knees and starts cleaning up the mess I made. I kneel down next to her and help. I'm seriously okay. I'm not drunk. I would know if I was drunk. "If you get this messed up on Arbor Mist, I could never take you out to drink the hardcore stuff…"
"April, look at me." I tuck both parts of my hair behind my ears and look at her with a straight face. A smile is begging to crack through, but I won't let it. April looks at me, though. Her eyes are just slightly red-rimmed but her usual, deep green eyes look pleasant like they always do. She's smiling at me though, which is making it hard for me to keep a straight face. "Stop looking at me like that… Stoooooppp…" I look away from her and laugh. "I'm not drunk…. I feel fine. I feel normal."
"I'm making a mental note to never give you vodka or whiskey or tequila. Cheap wine does it for you." She finishes cleaning up my mess and stands up. "And you're only gonna get worse once this alcohol really settles in…" She dumps the paper plates and the rest of our garbage into a wastebasket in the corner next to the TV and takes my hand. "Come on… we're gonna go upstairs and lie down." I just nod my head at her, hardly listening to anything she's saying. "Firstly, because I'm too tipsy to baby you myself and secondly, I really don't need Alex to rage at me for this."
"But I'm okay…." I hold onto the railing and start climbing the steps to get back onto her first floor. My eyes start shaking again, so I stop walking for a moment and put my head down. Just like I've been doing for the last hour, I bust out in laughter. "How do you…. how do you…." My tongue feels like it's too big for my mouth, if that even makes sense. "How. Do you. … Nevermind." I scrape my teeth along my tongue. "My tongue feels weird…"
"You're unbelievably messed up." April laughs and shakes her head at me. "Just come on…"
Sun, Nov 15, 2013
12:01 a.m.
iMessage
Me: hey areu gusy still comng?
12:02 a.m.
Alex: ?
Me: 2aprils areudjgust coming?
Me: u & gjackson imean
12:05 a.m.
Alex: who is this?
Me: Jo?
Alex: jo doent txt abbreviatons n capitol lettrs. Who is this?
12:06 a.m.
Me: alex ist me. r u n jaxlson still coming ovr aprs?
Me: i don't fell good
12:07 a.m.
Alex: we'll b over give me a min.
Me: ok hury I miss u
Alex: not now j I g2g
Me: watevr.
"You can't get mad at me for having other obligations. I was coming to see you anyway, so it's not a crime that I was with other people. You diss me for your friends all the freaking time." He's standing in front of the door with that stupid, innocent look on his face that always gets him in my good graces, even when I'm completely pissed at him like I am right now. "I don't see why you're pissed in the first place. It's not like I completely blew you off… I was with my friends."
"You DID blow me off though, Alex. You DID." I have the worst headache of my life, and yelling at him is not making it any better. I feel so sick. Ever since I drank all that wine, I've been feeling so crummy and disgusting and the fact that I can't stand him right now is just making everything magnified by about ten. "And you know that I don't care if you're with your friends. I don't care what you do when you're not around me. What pisses me off is how you just blatantly tell me that you don't have time for me. If you're with your friends, why can't you just tell me that? How hard is it to send me a text that says, 'Hey babe, I'm busy with my friends right now but I'll text you back when I'm done.' How hard is that?!"
"You'd be pissed at me either way, Jo. I can't make you happy! You're really gonna sit here and look me in the eye and tell me that you wouldn't have a problem with that if I told you that I couldn't text you because I was with my friends? You'd have a problem with that, and you know you would. Jesus Christ. I don't even know why I do anything for you anymore. It's pointless… no matter what I do, I always do something wrong in your eyes. Are you ever freaking happy?" He glances back behind me at Jackson and April, which pisses me OFF.
"WE'RE ARGUING, ALEXANDER. WE'RE ARGUING AND YOU'RE NOT EVEN PAYING ATTENTION TO ME. LOOK AT ME, YOUR GIRLFRIEND!" I put my hand on his jaw and force him to look at me. "You act like Jackson and April have never seen you get cussed out before. LOOK AT ME." Speaking of Jackson and April, they're busy arguing amongst themselves. Something about how April should just forgive Jackson, but I'm not really listening. "You're pissing me off so bad right now. We're ARGUING and you don't even have the decency to look at me!"
"See?! You find a problem with everything, Jo!"
"It just shows that you don't pay attention to me! I'm yelling in your freaking FACE and you're not even paying attention! I don't know why I even expect for you to pay attention to me over texts. I clearly don't come first to you…" I take a step away from him and try to get my hands to stop shaking. Something about this argument feels…different. I don't know if it feels different because we both have alcohol in our systems, but for some reason…it feels different.
"Now you're putting words in my mouth. How does any of that translate into you not coming first to me?" He looks me in my eyes, just like I asked him to. "It's mighty screwed up how you can just pick and choose when I come first to you, but the second I do it… I get bitched at. You—"
"PICK AND CHOOSE?! WHEN DO I PICK AND CHOOSE, ALEX?!"
"All the freaking time! I NEVER come first to you, and I never have! You're always first in my book… you just came second TONIGHT. TONIGHT, THAT'S IT. I'm never first to you. And I'm supposed to just deal with that? But when I put you second, it's a big problem? It's always Leah, Heather, Stephanie, April, SHANE. Always. It's never ME. But it's always YOU. You're so selfish and I'm so tired of giving everything when you give me NOTHING. It's supposed to be 50/50 in a relationship… not 80/20."
"So you think I'm only giving 20? Alex, what the FUCK do you want from me?" I hold my shaking hands out and take another step back. "Do you want me to paint myself red and set off dynamite? How many times do I have to SAY it? I LOVE YOU… what else do you want from me?"
"I want you to mean it, Jo." I step back away from him some more and run my hands through my hair. I take a deep breath. I'm gonna blow up on him… I'm going to snap, I can feel it. And it's not gonna be good. It's best if he just shuts up… but of course, he opens his mouth. "When you say it, I want you to mean it. I don't want somebody that doesn't want me. I want you to tell me what in the HELL I'm doing with you, because at this point, I really don't know. You drive me fucking crazy… You give me a little, but you expect me to give you EVERYTHING. I was BUSY with my FRIENDS so you came second to me tonight… I'm SORRY but what the hell else can I do?"
"I NEEDED YOU!" I put my hands on his chest and push him, hard into the wall. "I WANTED TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT THE HEARING, THEY REACHED A VERDICT AND I CAN'T TALK TO MY BEST FRIEND ABOUT THIS SHIT, SO I WANTED TO TALK TO YOU…" I keep my hands on his chest so he can't move. "You picked a shitty time to put me second…"
"It's not like I wasn't coming! WHY can't you talk to me about all of this right now?! It's not like I was never going to come see you! Instead of bitching at me for no reason, you could be talking to me about everything you wanted to talk to me about right now. But no… you're flipping out and bitching and acting like a fucking idiot."
"I'm SO tired of fighting!" I clutch the fabric of his shirt in my hands and squeeze it. "All I do is fight! I go to school and fight with your jealous exes, I fight with you…I come home and I fight with Shane ABOUT you… I'm so SICK of fighting. Just…" I let his shirt go and grunt, to deal with the anger that's welling up inside of me. "I could kill you…"
"Well, we're never gonna get anywhere if you don't take Ross out of this whole equation." He rolls his eyes at me.
"He's my best fucking friend! And I LOST him over you! And I thought…. I thought, for the longest time, I thought that YOU would be worth it. I thought losing Shane over YOU would be worth it…but now I'm not even sure if it is."
"Oh, big WHOOP! The guy has a crush on you and you feed into his sick little fantasy!"
"IT'S MORE THAN THAT! I DON'T… I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH IT, ALEX! I'M CONTEMPLATING ON SLEEPING WITH HIM JUST TO SHUT BOTH OF YOU THE FUCK UP ONCE AND FOR ALL."
"…How would that shut me up?" He steps back so he can look at me from head to toe. "how in the blue hell would you…fucking another guy...shut me up?"
"Look, when you have to choose between someone your heart loves and someone you're your MIND is telling you to love, then you can judge me. Until then… you leave me the fuck alone."
"…You're a maniac." He shakes his head at me. "Everyone told me that you're crazy… but I can handle crazy. But… you're a different kind of crazy. You're nuts. And I'm sick of crazy chicks…"
I put my hand on my head and sigh. "…Alex." I take another deep breath. "Look, I'm…. I'm drunk right now, you're drunk right now… we just need to talk about this when we're sober. We both need a minute…"
"No." He shakes his head. "Drunk words…are sober words. Everything you're saying to me right now is what you've been DYING to say to me from day one." I can tell by the tone of his voice where this is going and I really, really, really don't want it to go there. Please don't let this go where I think it's gonna go. Please. "You're in love with him, Jo…. you are. I can see it in your eyes. You love him, and—"
I shake my head fast. "No, Alex… I don't. I don't…. it isn't like that. I swear I don't… I—"
"Yes you do." The look on his face says it all… he's crushed. "And that's… that's fine." He shrugs his shoulders, but I can tell that it's NOT fine. His eyes are so red-rimmed and I can tell that it's NOT from the beer in his system. It's from the fact that he wants to cry. "You need to figure out what you want. You need to take the time to figure out what you want. And I'm not gonna hinder you from doing that."
"Alex…don't do…don't. You're not thinking right now…"
"I'll um…" He scratches his head. "I'll see you around, I guess. I'm gonna go home and sleep this off. We can still be friends and stuff, but…"
"No. You're NOT breaking up with me. I'm not letting you… I'm not letting you. I want you. I want you…" I grab his hand and hold it. "Please… just give me another chance. I'll…. Do better. I'll… we…" He slides his hand out of mine and I frantically take it back. "Come on. We don't have to cuddle… you don't have to play with my hair, you don't have to hold me… we can have sex and I won't freak out. I promise… I promise. I don't want to lose you… I'm… I'm not sure about a lot of things, but I'm sure that I don't want to lose you…"
He gently snatches his hand away from me. "I'll see you around, Wilson."
