Figurative Scenario 1

Just something that I figuratively wrote with a fantasy tick to it so that I didn't go completely crazy, over-emotional about the whole thing. I was thinking of adding this to my zombie book...

Names have been changed to keep the people involved anonymous.

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Allie and I went driving after I got my car.  It wasn’t the expected excited drive that my parents saw us fake, the first casual drive in my new car, special and mine, us just going for a drive and me taking her out to be nice because that’s what couples do…no.  We’re not normal, and so our fight led us to have this awkward experience in the car, with nothing familiar to comfort us but ourselves.  I’d done this on purpose in hopes that it would subliminally drive her to crawl into my arms at a red light, or at least to take my open palm that sat by the cup-holders strangely, yet casually, as I drove with my other hand.  It was a trick I’d learned from the book I wanted to talk about rather than this stupid argument, a trick I knew wouldn’t work until she’d read the book, but that I hoped worked anyway.

It was silent for a moment, stiff enough to make us both want to start the conversation just as much as we wanted the other to, and eventually she gave in and asked, “Why do you hate Mark?”  Before I could speak where I thought it was my turn she specified, “I mean you said that under other circumstances you could have been friends, so why can’t you play nice now?”

I sighed.  I felt like it was so obvious I should be the only one who didn’t see it... Almost instantly after that I wanted to take that sigh back as I thought that perhaps she just wanted to hear it out loud, for me to confirm it, to admit it.  “Jealousy.” I said simply.  “If there’s one thing Vern and I have in common, it’s the deep sense of protective ‘mine-ness’ that we feel towards our mate.”

She scoffed out a half-hearted chuckle.  “Mate… That makes you sound like her.”

I flinched lightly.  “Sorry.”

She shook her head, silently waving it off like it meant nothing when really it was just another thing that was making her feel so depressed lately.  “Honestly though, I don’t get what there is to be jealous of.  I told you, we’re just friends, I just care a lot about my friends.  I love him, sure, but it’s not the same.”

Why can’t you just say, ‘but not like I love you?’ I tried to just focus on driving for a moment, to avoid bringing up that trivial thing and acting like Vern again by reminding her that wording matters.  I didn’t want to hurt her by letting her know she hurt me.  It would have been counterproductive.

“Cartel, whether you want me to or not I’m still going to be his friend.”  She crossed her arms and leaned back, feeling half confident in her ability to defend herself, half doubtful and worried that I’d yell again.  Like I told Vern to tell her, though, I wasn’t going to yell.  That much I promised.

I was still stern, however.  “It’s not like that, Allie.  You’re reading me wrong.”

She didn’t seem to know how to reply to that, so without giving her time to think about it I switched lanes and kept talking.

“I’m not asking you not to be friends with him.  You can be as friendly as you like " hell if I care.” I swallowed my anger back in a bitter choke, then continued, significantly lowering the tone.  “I’m just sick of you seeing him so much that I feel like I have to compete with him for your attention, and I’m awful tired of hearing him call you ‘babe’ and not being able to say anything, but also not hearing you correct him either-”

She cut me off.  “I’ve talked to him about it many times.  He knows we aren’t together.”  I knew that if I was just sitting with her on the couch at my house, it would be much easier on me to read her features, but I had to focus on the road, and I couldn’t tell if her eyes were narrowed and her words were meant defensively, or if she was just re-confiding the knowledge into me again.  Her tone of voice said nothing for me either except that she was tired, that she really didn’t want to have this conversation, and that she would have probably left in a huff if she wasn’t in a moving vehicle.

I wanted to say that I either wanted to be in a public relationship, or to just be friends.  I wanted to freak out on her about how the fact that I'm jealous at all should show that I care, and the fact that I'm willing to be honest about it should show that I care just as much for her distaste for lying as well.  Rather than go on some tangent about us, though, I decided to avoid that topic and thus avoid another fight where my temper would flare up, and yelling would be all we'd do.  So...

“Actions speak louder than words,” I said simply, probably sounding cockier than I originally intended, so I covered that up with more explanation, “and currently you’re treating him like you are dating, what with seeing him in court and babying him all the time.”

She was definitely defensive now.  “Cartel, me and Mark aren’t together.  He’s not confused about that either, what with the countless conversations we’ve had about it.  I’m starting to think it might be your paranoia that’s got him calling me babe!”

She grumbled lightly, and I know that if I hadn’t promised not to yell at her, she would have yelled that at me rather than just been stern.  She wasn’t about to be unfair, however, and held back the extreme frustration.  This was something I wanted to tell her was unhealthy to do, but then we’d just have gone in a circle about how that's what I'm doing and started right back up, ending at my promise not to yell again.

I shook my head lightly, trying to keep a good grip on my temper.  “Allie.” My voice was hard as rock, so I tried to be softer when I continued...but I’m not sure how well it worked.  “When I asked him how long you’d been dating, he didn’t even hesitate or feel the need to think it through before he immediately came back with ‘since January.’  I over analyzed the s**t out of the memory of him saying that to me, and even asked Saide to clarify for me " he wasn’t lying.  If he was lying, he would have had some sort of nervous twitch before, during, or after he said so, and the worst he did was turn to look at you when you got into the car with a look that screamed, ‘I think I just messed up.’”

It had taken me until that was out of my mind and spoken out loud to realize the way I just contradicted myself.  Vern would have just said, “Oh.” But I had to explain myself, to make it look like I was smarter than I really am.

Before she could say it I continued.  “I know what you’re thinking. ‘He’s a compulsive liar.’  I don’t care, Allie.  Even compulsive liars have nervous ticks.  But to me, it looked like he just silently told me that he’d just revealed a secret or something.  It wasn’t just a ‘I’m guilty of lying’ face he had on, it was a ‘I’m guilty of telling the truth’ face.”

Allie practically growled.  “Are you trying to say that you think him and I are dating behind your back?”  I could feel the demon in her screaming…or maybe that was just her human female scorn.

I sighed a shaky sigh.  “Yes and no.”

I could envision the raised eyebrow, the crossed arms, the foot tapping impatiently just like Vern when I messed with the order of the books on her shelf, imploring me to either explain myself or fix it.

“I’m paranoid as f**k Allie.  After…” I debated bringing it up, but I realized that I couldn’t just leave the unfinished sentence lingering and went on, “After Em and I-”

“Em?” I didn’t know if she was angry at me for using a familiar nickname, or if she just didn’t remember who I was talking about.  Assuming she could piece together that Em was short for Emiel, I decided not to mentally offend her again with the latter.

“After Emiel and I ended the way we did, and I’ve gone from pointless one night stand to pathetic lust-filled relationship, I worried that love was dead for me, I doubted my existence, and I eventually found myself with you.  I’m not gonna just give you up over something as stupid as a human wanting some action, but I’m also not about to become some dependent, sorry-a*s shell of a man just so that I can keep you happy and nearby.”  The light turned red so I stopped and took the moment to turn to her for emphasis.  “I’ve gone to hell and back, and then again all over just so that I could have this one shot of proving to myself I’m worthy of love, your love, and I don’t give two s***s about how irrelevant the back-story was just to get to this point, but I want you to hear me out anyway.”  The light turned green some time in between and a honk woke me up from my story-telling mode.  I swung left and pulled into the parking lot of some random fast food restaurant so I didn’t send us to our graves early via my failure to hold an important conversation and drive at the same time.  When I clicked the car into the park, I turned to her once more.

That moment of being drawn back into reality had made those short moments to the parking lot feel long, however, and the air was so in between, stuck between stiff and awkward.  I broke the silence as fast as I could, not interested in keeping that feeling.  “Allie, I love you.  I love you more than any human man ever could.  I appreciate you for who you are, and I’m willing to put everything on the line for you.  My very existence rests in your hands.” I realized how dependent that sounded, so I finished up quickly and oddly, “Still, though, I’m not dependent.  I’m my own f*****g man, and with or without you I’ll keep on truckin’, be that here and now or later if we end…but I’ll be damned if I don’t let us end without one helluva fight.”

Allie seemed like she was a little stunned, trying to process all the heavy words I’d just said and make sure that whatever it was that she wanted to say to me before I’d gone off on her was still relevant anymore.  She couldn’t look at me when she thought though, and simply looked down into her hands as she played with her lighter.  Not being the driver made her seem so meek and confused, like she was very lost about what to do with her hands if she wasn’t behind the wheel.

I wanted to touch her, to just hold her, but I felt like she’d put a wall up between us, that I didn’t have permission to climb it unless she got her say in, and that breaking it down wasn’t an option unless she started crying for some reason.

“I’m sorry I scared you so much.  I didn’t think you were that worried over this.”

I was a bit frustrated, but relief over took that and my reply wasn’t sarcastic.  “Well I was.  Every day that went by without a call back made me worry you didn’t love me anymore.”  The sadness, the dark melancholy, was embedded deep into that sentence, and it certainly wasn’t too subtle for her to pick up on.  She looked up at me with an equal sadness, a guilty one that said she was sorry all over again.  I looked away this time and stared at the steering wheel as I assured her she was forgiven.

It was silent for a long time after that.  There was still so much that both of us wanted to say, but my long-winded words still hung in the air too heavy for either of us to want to add to the weight.  She was probably worried that continuing to explain things would make me feel even more like she hated me, and I was worried that bringing up the things on my mind would just send her back into a deep depression and we’d be back to square one again.  We needed to close off this conversation somehow, however, and I hadn’t the slightest idea how, so I stayed quiet.  Eventually she spoke up softly.  “I’m sorry about offending you.”

“It’s ok.” I said, getting comfortable and lying back in my seat, letting my hands lay in my lap.  “I mean, it’s not, and it better not f*****g happen again, but I won’t hold it against you if you understand why it was wrong.”

If she was a weak girl like Vern when she’s Vern, not Vex, she would have probably asked what she did and apologized again, even if she knew.  But Allie just sat there, and moved on the rest of the pressing matters " something I was more thankful for than she probably understood.

“I understand, and it won’t happen again... But now I think I deserve an apology.”

I raised an eyebrow and felt like I was edging closer and closer to defensive the more she spoke.

“There’s a thing called personal boundaries, and you sure as hell pressed as hard as you could against them when you demanded me to call you.” Her voice was a bit edgy, like the fight would start up all over again if I didn’t say the right thing right then.

I kept my half-defensive stance.  “I didn’t demand you to call me.  I wanted you to just pick up the phone once between the two f*****g days I called and texted.  I was freaking out, and your last text wasn’t exactly something I could just ignore.”

She got a bit more edgy.  Wrong thing.  “Cartel, you called me at least 50 times between the time I sent my last text, clearly saying it was the last thing I was gonna say.  You left voice mails telling me to 'pick the f**k up,' as if you had some sort of underlying threat you’d use on me if I didn’t.  I clearly didn’t want to talk - what the hell did you think you would accomplish by calling over and over again?”

I wanted to yell at her that I was worried as f**k underneath all my rage, that I just wanted to talk about it and get it over with before I exploded later.  I wanted to tell her that looking back on it now I felt like it was a competition, and I didn’t want to lose.  I wanted to scream at her, “You’re just like Joseph - always having to get the last word in!” just to get under her skin, even though it wasn’t true.  I wanted to tell her that Vern told me once that the more time I have to think over things, the harder it is for me to swallow my pride and admit I was wrong, that it’s yet to have been proven false since I’ve been informed.  I wanted to just let loose and get pissed at her over it for no f*****g reason because I needed to blow off the steam, but because I loved her I bit my tongue.  I closed my eyes for a moment and pushed all my angry thoughts away until my mind was void of all but one thing:

I’m worried that Allie wants to kill herself.

Maybe I was dependent of her in some way, but whether or not I was didn’t seem to matter anymore.  All I knew at this point that if God Forbid, the life we envisioned after death wasn’t real…I wasn’t real…I didn’t want to lose her over a bunch of missed phone calls.

“I’m sorry.” I muttered, then without thinking I kissed her.  …I never did have good timing with this romance stuff.  The kiss was awkward  and unexpected, and I had to sit there for a moment as she turned her face back to mine to kiss me back, but it was nice to know that she was just as ready to kiss and make up as I was.

Despite the steam that we both had undoubtedly not blown off nearly as much as we wanted to, and the possibly unsaid things her and I would both undoubtedly go over in our minds later and debate bringing up again, I tried to be light and as I opened the door I casually said, “Chow time.  My treat.”  And showed her my wallet, finally full of money I could start paying her back with.  With a light smile that I wasn’t sure was genuine yet, she got out of the car with me and we walked up to the Village Inn I’d parked by without thinking.  Almost immediately once we’d sat down at the booth, we were joking and laughing together as if nothing had happened on the way there.

Whoever said that shoving two straws up your nose and pretending to be a walrus was immature was damn right…but I certainly couldn’t have cared less.

Author's Note

PICTURE NOT MINE