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All through grade school, adults love telling you how, if you get good grades, you're going to have such a successful life. You'll go places. But that is the biggest lie, revealing the greatest truth: life is a sack of shit. No matter how smart you are, how driven you, there will always be those times when life laughs and tosses you overboard.
“Armin, you're the smartest guy I know.”
“You're probably going to be a millionaire in five years, I'm not even kidding.”
“You're literally the best. Like, you can do everything, Armin.”
When the truth of the matter is this:
“You had so much potential, Arlert. Now look where you're at.”
“I took a risk with you, and it didn't pay off.”
“You're not good enough.”
That last one, that one kept running through Armin's head over and over like a bad song. All in the car, where the radio wasn't playing, and he was stuck listening to the rattle of his twenty year old car. All through the parking lot to the steps leading up to his third floor apartment. His dumpy apartment. It wasn't worth the money he was throwing into it. A shit hole. For a worthless piece of shit.
It wouldn't have been as bad if they hadn't built him up so much. If he hadn't believed them when they said he was good enough. The sting would have been normal, like a wasp. People lose jobs all the time. But it was like all those compliments, all those lies created this allergy in his body and now he was slowly falling into this dank pit from that wasp sting, getting paler by the minute, ready to curl up and die.
He had been so excited. The day he got the job, him and all his friends went out and celebrated. He even went on a weekend trip to Disneyland with Annie. They'd been saving for that for years. Now it was just all a big waste because he'd lost his job like the worthless loser he was and now they wouldn't be able to pay the rent. Annie's job was just enough to chip in while also paying for her two college classes a semester. This spring her textbooks had been more expensive than tuition for the class.
The words stayed in his head even as he walked in the apartment, dropped his stuff on the couch, and he just stood there in the room, looking at everything. His ex-boss didn't have to be so cruel about it. But he didn't care. He'd probably done it so many times. But it felt so personal, like the guy hated Armin. Armin who couldn't do goddamn thing, who'd never been able to. He'd been so useless from day one.
Annie would know something was wrong, seeing him home before her. He didn't want to face her.
Finally his legs moved and he kind of floated over to the kitchen, to the cupboard above the fridge. That was too easy, wasn't it? Taking one of those bottles down. They weren't his, they were Annie's. He only had some when she did, you know some kind of romantic drinking and curling on the couch and watching a movie. It was too easy. He shut the cupboard.
In an hour she would be here. In an hour she'd find out how he'd lost his job, how she was engaged to Nothing, how they'd have to move because rent was due at the end of the week and they'd only be able to pay a little, how their already dim future looked so utterly dark.
It wasn't until he went into the bathroom he realized he was crying. He clutched the edge of the sink angrily. There. That was the one thing he'd been able to do his whole life. Fucking sob like the child he was.
He wandered back to the main room, eyes glancing at the cupboards. But he sat down on the couch and leaned his head back. There was the bills to think about too. They weren't included in rent. Internet, heating, water, cell phone, power.
The first week of work had been difficult. But he figured it was the whole first job thing. But it just got worse and worse and now it had only been nine weeks. Weeks from hell, especially the last one. Where he'd screwed up the numbers and lost the company millions of dollars. When everybody had given him that look where you just knew how much they reviled him, how they knew he was too young, too stupid to be in this job after all. How condescending and rude they'd sounded when they said anything to him.
And he didn't have parents or even grandparents to fall back on. Could he go crawling to his friends, to Eren or Mikasa? The way he'd done from day one. He was so excited to finally be on his own, to be doing his own thing without the protection of those two. But he couldn't function by himself. Sure, he had a great mind, but one he couldn't do a fucking thing with. He was still a weak-ass kid.
Armin got up and went to the kitchen. So he was weak. He'd do the easy thing, then. He grabbed a bottle of white rum. At the counter he poured some into a glass, braced himself, then took a huge swig. He bent over, forehead touching the cold counter top, his hand curling into a tight fist. “Dammit,” he cursed under his breath when he felt the tears start to flow again.
He finished the glass and poured another one. One sip and then suddenly he was throwing the bottle on the ground, watching the glass shatter all the way over to the dining table, and even touching the carpet of the living room. The liquid swirled in fancy patterns, glittering in the light of the flickering fluorescent kitchen light. He turned the light off and wandered off to the bedroom, collapsing face first onto the covers.
Thirty minutes later the creak of the front door sounded, followed by soft footsteps over the carpet, the light switch flicked, and then it got real quiet. Annie was probably just seeing the glass. She knew he was here, because his car was down in the lot.
He focused on his breathing, how the air filled up the spaces in his back, and how the carbon dioxide flowed out of his nostrils into the comforter. It was easier to think about how tired he was than how Annie was going to react—how she'd finally realize what a loser he was, how she'd probably regret accepting his marriage proposal. How she'd stay because she couldn't leave him when he was so pitiful.
The bedroom door opened, followed by a quiet, “Armin?”
Her voice compelled him to twist around and sit up. She was standing in the doorway, her hair up in its signature messy bun, jacket hanging loosely around her body. Annie wasn't one to show much emotion in her face, but right now, she looked confused.
“Sorry. I'll clean it up. The glass . . .” Armin got to his feet and kind of swayed.
Annie came over and nudged him back onto the bed. He fell back easily. Easily. Everything's so easy when you have no will because you just don't care how it turns out, you just let it go, just let anything happen.
“Don't worry about the glass,” she breathed, sitting next to him. “Armin?” Her hand came up and touched his cheek.
“I lost my job,” he said. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.” He started crying again, and shaking angrily because of it. His face fell forward into Annie's shoulder. “I can't do anything. I can't do anything. I'm just a goddamned piece of shit. I'm sorry,” he ended in a whisper.
She was quiet for a moment, but then cradled his face in her hands and looked down at him. “If you're a piece of shit, then so am I. Two wonderful pieces of shit.” She leaned down and her lips touched his. They gently took his bottom lip and pulled on it, before coming in again more passionately. While she kissed him, her thumbs massaged his tear stained skin. She came out for a long breath, exhaling softly over his mouth, and it was that Annie smell he loved so much.
“Annie--”
She cut him off with another kiss, this one more urgent than the last. It wandered away to the corner of his mouth, and then up to the tip of his nose, and the bridge of his nose, and right on his hairline. “Just be quiet for a second. Okay? Armin.” When she said his name, it was like no one else could say it. Or if they tried they'd just be saying it wrong. Because only Annie knew how to say it, like she actually knew who it was underneath that name.
Her legs shifted up around his body, straddling him. Together they fell back softly into the bed, Armin's hair spreading out over the comforter. Annie brushed some hair out of his face and smiled down at him—that faint Annie smile that meant so much more than the average smile because she never did it much. The world couldn't be so bad if Annie was smiling—Armin couldn't be so bad if she was smiling, right? Right?
Armin reached up his hands to undo her bun, letting her blonde hair fall freely in waves. His fingers curled into it. She kissed him on the lips again, just a short thing. Then her lips wandered to right under his chin—he angled his head back—gently kissing his throat. He swallowed as her tongue lightly ran over the length of his throat and came back up to his lips.
Kisses from Annie were like the ocean. Floating in the depth, faint sunlight reaching your body. And you can feel the power of the water swirling around you, the pressure against your fragile body, and all the sound is muted, calming, but everything feels so good like you're in Elysium. That feeling in your lungs, running out of air, makes your mind tingle, and your head spin, but you like it. You want more. More Annie, less air.
The water pressed on him now. Her tongue parted his lips almost shyly. His hand sneaked their way under her jacket, under her shirt, resting on her bare cool skin.
But this was wrong. Because she shouldn't have to do this for him.
“Annie,” he said again, hands dropping.
Annie grabbed one of his hands and placed it on her waist again.
He kept it there, but still protested weakly. “Annie. You don't have to.”
“You're right. I want to,” she said in a low voice—a hint of anger. Good. That's what she was supposed to feel. Angry at how disgraceful a human he was.
“What? A last gift before you go?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” she said. “I'm not going anywhere.”
Armin closed his eyes. “But why would you want to stay. I mean . . .”
“You're not the first person to lose their job, Armin,” she growled.
“But I failed.”
“And you'll fail again. A hundred times. That's what people do.” She moved to lie beside him, curled up against his body, her face against his cheek. “The first time's the hardest, isn't it? When they just tear you down. No, I've been there Armin. I've been here. And I had no one. But I am going to make sure that you aren't alone. You can break all the bottles you want. You can upturn all the fucking furniture. I don't care. You'll get over it. And I am going to be there the entire time. The entire time. Okay?”
Armin took a shaky breath.
“You're not useless, Armin.” She pecked his cheek.
“God, why are you so good to me?” he said, eyes growing hot.
She laughed once and nuzzled his face. “You meet people in your life and you just know right off the bat how important they are. And you want to try and be a good person to them. When I first met you, I wanted to be a good person to you, Armin. Because you are important. So important.” She breathed in and whispered, “I love you.”
Armin turned on his side. “You're important too. The most important. Ah, I don't deserve you. I shouldn't be allowed to kiss you or lie next to you or hold you.”
“Can we stop with the self-hating? Armin,” she said in a hard voice, “nobody would be where they are today without you. And you've been through so much shit . . . shit that would make weaker men fall. So stop it. Okay?”
They were silent for a long time. Listening to each other's hearts beat.
“Okay. I'm sorry about the mess in the kitchen. That was your favorite one.”
“Wanna go break the other ones?”
“Maybe later.” He wrapped an arm around her body and and kissed her. “If that's okay with you.”
Annie smiled. “Of course. I never leave anything unfinished. Armin.”