"You're all moved in." Mack held out a beer. "Let's celebrate."
As Mack sat down, we clacked the bottles lightly before taking what was a rather large swig. A few weeks ago, I had started looking seriously for an apartment. The easy part had been finding it, but the hard part was finding someone who would let a pair of teenagers live in their building without adults. After paying a somewhat large "deposit", she had finally agreed to it, under the condition that parties were not held. Maybe she was looking for more money, or maybe she had just been looking out for a pair of teens on their own.
I hadn't been sure, nor had I cared.
After I had given Mack a call, he more than agreed to help me buy and move all the shit in. If I was left to do it myself, I would have, but that wasn't the case. Mack had always been that dependable friend that everyone had. He was always there to help when I needed him, or so it seemed. In a number of ways, I hadn't ever been able to repay him. It hadn't been for lack of trying, but him always rejecting it. He never took anything I gave.
"You seem better, lately. I mean, you're moving in with her and even taking on the task of helping with her sister." Mack stated. "I wasn't really sure what to think when you brought her into Stickies. I thought she was just another girl you were looking to fuck and that was it. I'm glad I was wrong."
"Better? I don't know about that. I think it's just the people around me making me look better, as usual. it's probably because of people like you and Maggie that I didn't go off the deep end." I took another swig of the beer. "Yeah, maybe Ashlynn has helped me overcome myself a bit, but I still haven't gotten better. I'm still fighting with myself more than I'm not."
"Bullshit. Would you look around you? You're able to afford this place, and you have another girl that really, really does care about you. You're lying to yourself if you haven't noticed that. You feel like you have to be unhappy about something because you've been that way for so long, but now things are starting to roll your way again. Put it into perspective and enjoy the pleasures you're getting, man."
I had realized it, that everything had slowly been becoming brighter. Why hadn't I wanted to accept that? Had I grown accustomed to the darker parts of my life, and was now scared to leave them behind? Had I been scared of what the bright lights held for me? Ashlynn, and her feelings. The near total lack of drama that we had, the commonality, and even the way we had interrupted each other was odd. It hadn't been so much special as it had been natural.
Everything felt so normal, so easygoing - for the most part. It seemed as though we had rarely, if ever, disagreed on anything. Mack, again, was quite right. Had everything been better for me? Of course not. I was still scarred, scared even. I was still scared that I could just as easily lose everything close to me again and I would have just continued down that same path. Had I been better? Sure, but I had also been pretty far from what and where I wanted to be.
"It seemed like you and Ava always had something in the way of each other. I don't mean to disrespect her, but it only ever seemed like you two were fighting about something." Mack spoke honestly, which was always something I appreciated about him. "You guys seemed to always step on each others feet. It wasn't you two that didn't love each other, it was your demons that hated each other.
With Ashlynn, it's a bit different. You two feel like more of...how I put it? I guess, you two seem like more of a natural fit - for lack of better word. It seems like what you say she actually takes in, and vice versa." Mack continued as he traveled to the fridge and grabbed another two beers from it.
"I don't know." I leaned back, closing my eyes as my nose point to the roof. "I really fell for Ava for some reason. I couldn't quite ever tell what it was about her, though. I really did love her, and I saw a future with her - for once in my life. Then she just dumped me like I meant nothing to her."
The day Ava dumped me was like a sword through my throat. Painful and left me speechless. So many things went wrong, so many things had fallen apart. Everything about it was so wrong, from her posture to the emptiness in her eyes. Yet, she'd never given me a reason why. Much like myself in the past, she had ran away from the both of us, herself and I. I hadn't wanted to get back together, or see her again. I just wanted to know why she felt that way.
"What actually happened? I heard that her and Ashlynn were there, and people gossiped about a fight over you or something. By the looks of it, that isn't true." Mack questioned me, which had been something I was surprised he hadn't done earlier.
"When Ashlynn first came here, I opted to make sure that she got to a hotel safely instead of taking Ava home first. She ignored me for like a week or something and I finally ended up catching her at her school." I lit a cigarette. "She told me to fuck off in so many words, and looked pretty messed up while doing it. As for Ashlynn, I think it was something about my phone? I don't really remember all too well."
"Maybe she thought you were cheating on her, and she thought seeing Ashlynn confirmed that idea?" Mack suggested.
While he could've been right, it looked like she hadn't slept in days. Even as horrible as cheating was, I doubt it would have kept someone up for days. She looked like she was seeing a nightmare on repeat for a week, and looked far from her normal, relatively bright self. In what had been a full week, she'd become the complete opposite of what I had known, everything I had known of her was different.
Her smile had vanished, her eyes had become dull, and even the glow in her skin had disappeared. She had, for lack of better word, been a shell. Where had the real Ava gone? Where had the woman I had loved ran off to? It had been the typical fashion of my life, losing and more losing. Falling apart and death had become the norm in my life, followed closely by disappearance. It had been like a grotesque, butchered remake of Romeo and Juliet.
"Nah. Whatever it was, it was much worse." I shook my head, sighing as I began to take a drink of the beer. "Probably."
"Something wrong?" he chuckled.
Had something been wrong? No. It had been more along the lines of bugging me. The last time I had moved in with someone was Maggie, and clearly that hadn't turned out too well. How would Ashlynn feel seeing me daily, unlike before? Would things go from good to bad like everything else in my life had, or would they continue to get better, just like Mack had mentioned?
All I had ever known was doubt, and that doubt always had cause because everything I had ever done had given me backlash for it. My parents? A criminal and a zombie. Kylie? Death. Maggie? Dumped and hated. Ava? Dumped and hated. Whether it had been selling drugs or setting up a meet, something had always gone wrong for me. Something had always been in the way, something always went sideways, and nothing could ever stay the same.
Had I expected everything in my life to stay the same? Had I expected to stay a teenager forever? Of course not. I had known that I needed to grow up, and I had in some ways, but not in others. Where I had been an adult in some areas, I had been a toddler in others. Had that been because of the way I chose to live my life following Kylie, had I not been able to grow without closure? Had I been stuck in time, so to speak?
"I just feel like something is going to turn into a disaster." I answered. "Just a gut feeling."
"Then don't let it be anything more than that." Mack bumped his fist into my arm. "If you're talking about when you moved up to Dakota Springs, then this isn't anything like that."
Isn't it, though? Maggie and I had already practically been living together when we finally moved from this shithole to Dakota Springs - just like I had pretty much been over at Ashynn's room most of the time. For a few weeks, Maggie and I had been fine, if not closer than we had been before, but a distance kind of just came between us. I couldn't say what it was, but it had been something driving us apart - and then she had done something pretty messed up.
Again, it had been the status quo of my life. I was just the worlds punching bag. I had always been playing a never-ending game of tag with myself, going in circles and chasing my tail. That was, until I just gave up and crashed my landing. I distanced myself away from everything again, and turned into the feral version of myself. The one who had only looked to get laid, and get high whenever he wanted. I had been no better than an animal - an animal I would never want to become again.
"Maybe you're right." I cleared my throat and picked up the phone. "Fuckin' starving. I'm gonna order a pizza. Everything but pepperoni good with you?"
"Yeah. Sounds good."
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