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You are well aware you are not a good person.
You are not a good person, you are more like a thunderstorm in the evening; to cold and loud and brash and dark and uncontrollable. You are well aware of the whispers that follow you, the stares that latch to your back, when you walk anywhere close to the university. The way they look at you as if you a freak, an enigma, nothing but a piece of gum at the bottom of their shoe just because you are not some sort of studious obsessed creature like they are.
You are not a good person, you find comfort in the way you are able to intimidate and frighten people away from you with nothing but a glare. You wear your make up and your clothes as a body armour, the piercings in you’re a skin as a weapon. You delude yourself into thinking that black around your eyes, studs along your ears and leather across your arms will protect you from everything the world will throw at you.
You are not a good person, you are aware and relish in the fact that all you need to do is play your music to loud and make your voice to hard and people will fall for the cold and clinically detached act. That all you need to do is flip the bird or throw a curse at the person who cat calls you at the bar, so that every hand that was reaching for your backside beforehand will withdrawal like you carry the plague.
You are not a good person, you are not a nice person, you are not a polite person.
And you’re completely okay with that.
---
Your first meeting with Lila Stangard is an unusual one
Stangard is beautiful and flawless and everything about her body language radiates confidence, she giggles to loud and flips her hair to often and her eyes prowl around the room as if she is looking for her next pray. When you first notice her when she enters the bar of compass during one of your shifts, you think she might as well have a neon sign flashing over her head to say that she’s a sorority girl, you’d be blind not to notice if you were looking.
And you won’t deny that you’re looking, because while you don’t scream out from the rooftops your complete disregard for gender preference, you are well aware of you interest in both men and woman. And you are well aware of the fact that if Lila Stangard wasn’t some stuck up, preppy, university students; you would defiantly be buying her a drink the second she stepped through the door.
So when you hit the end of your shift at 1am and go to leave the bar, to see Stangard throwing her coat on and glancing at you in a manner that is completely and utterly obvious, you can’t help but be surprised. And when she follows you down the street, heels clacking on the tarmac behind you, and yells out your name followed by the words “your that chick that sells drugs, right?” you can’t help but fall slightly speechless.
“What the fuck?”
Those are the first word you ever speech to Lila Stangard, because first of all you had no idea you’d built up a reputation as some sort of drug dealer (and you’re not, okay? Sometimes you have drugs, and sometimes people just happen to buy it of you, it’s not the same) and secondly, what kind of idiot yells about drugs in the middle of the street no matter how late at night it is.
You vocalise the latter, and when Stangard smiles at you like she’s just won the lottery, you release you’ve started something you may regret.
---
Not long after that time it becomes a thing, spending time with Lila.
You don’t really feel like you can call it a friendship, you spend your time drinking and smoking and taking drugs and refusing to call Lila by her first name and listen to her whine about boys and school while you roll your eyes at how pathetic it all sounds.
While you don’t really know if you can call it a friendship, it’s the closest thing you’ve had to it since you moved into your crappy apartment so you guess you’ll take it. And while you’ve tiptoed around friendships, avoided them as if they were an allergy, something about Stangard keeps you around. You think it might be how unpredictable she is, might be that no matter how many hours you spend lying on a fraternity rooftop with smoke filled lungs and empty bottles by your side; you’re still unable to work the girl lying next to you out.
It’s like you’re playing a two-man game of pass the parcel, every time you unwrap one layer of Lila and think you’ve found out who she really is, you end up being with the parcel back in your lap again and you suddenly release all really reach is another layer that you have to pick and prod apart again. It’s a mixture of confusing and intriguing and annoying and stressful and you just can’t seem to get enough of it.
You’ve seen enough smokers and sold enough drugs to drug addicts and watch enough alcoholics to understand addiction, but addiction to a person? You’ve never understood until now.
You wonder if this is what it really feels like.
---
Speaking about your life prior to the one you have within the four walls of your apartment building is something you very rarely do. It’s like a scab you’d rather not scratch or reopen, because if you ignore it and pretend it’s not there soon it will turn into a scar and soon it’ll fade into nothing.
Why you tell Stangard, you’ll never know.
Maybe it’s because it’s Christmas and the only thing you have to show for it is a bottle of wine and a stack of eyeliner and piercings to show for it, the shiny red and gold wrapping paper Lila wrapped it with scrunched up on the ground next to it. Maybe it’s because it’s Christmas and it’s the second year you’re spending it alone with nothing but an empty bottle pressed to your lips. Maybe it’s because it’s Christmas and even though Lila is at home spending it with her parents, she has still spared the time to call and see how you are.
(Maybe it’s because Lila fucking Stangard has turned you soft.)
Either way, you remember spilling your guts to her about some of your most tragic childhood Christmas memories, which in all honesty is a very long list.
You tell her about the time you were 5 and you spent Christmas in the ER because you ended up knocking a pan of food that had cooked your dinner off the oven and shrieking as your skin turned blistered and red. You remember concern in your parent’s eyes, the drive to hospital being frantic and fast, because at that point your parents were still stable and real and still cared about your existence.
You tell her about the time you were 10 and you spent your first Christmas locked in your room listening to your parents curse and yell and scream and throw things across the room towards each other. You remember the way every crash had caused you to flinch and every yell had cause you to throw your hands over your ears because at that point you were still too young and innocent to understand how the world worked.
You tell her about the time you were 13 and you spent your next Christmas alone because your father was probably passed out drunk on the street and your mother had gone AWOL long before, fed up of your dad and the fighting and yelling (and probably you.) You remember the house being cold and empty, neither you nor your father had bothered to decorate it this year because honestly, what was the point?
You tell her about the time you were 16 and you spent your last Christmas in your home town at some girl you barely knew’s house popping pills and drinking alcohol and laughed as if your life with your family at home hadn’t crumbled apart at your feet. You remember the amount of boys and girls you kissed and touched and grinded against, but you don’t remember the names of a single one of them.
You tell her about last year and how you spent it almost the same as this one, alone and drunk locked up in a dingy apartment with not even a Christmas tree to keep you company. You remember how hollowed out you’d felt, like even though you had finally left the dump you’d called home for so long you’d lost your soul somewhere along the journey.
You told her how this year was the same.
“Except that you care, this year.”
The words had spilled out over the phone line, the voice slurred and your vision wavering and your body slumped against the wall. And while Lila said nothing, the sound of her breathe the only thing filling the phone line, you know she’d heard you.
You’d blacked out soon after that.
(Lila never asked about the words, you never offered answers, but in your head you blamed it on the alcohol in your guts and the sadness in your soul.
Or maybe it was because Lila fucking Stangard had turned you soft
You preferred the first option.)
---
The first night you spend with Lila doing something other than sleeping is surreal.
While Lila never speaks of her sexuality, she has only ever talked about boys and virginity packs and Griffin O’Reilly and that mysterious married man “Mr. Darcy.” While Lila has never shown any signs against being into the idea of doing anything with a girl, she has never shown any signs of being sexual attracted to them.
So when she leans over a presses her lips against yours you’re not sure how to feel.
You cling to the taste of smoke and win and vodka with a tint of cherry lip gloss that coat Lila’s lips as they press against yours. You know your lips are nothing but smoke and alcohol with nothing to drown out the taste, but as her Lila’s tongue presses against yours you release she obviously doesn’t care.
Everything that follows feels like a dream.
It’s all lip’s pressed against necks and hands pressed against hips and bruises being pushed and sucked into pale skin. It’s the taste of alcohol and smoke and everything that should taste so toxic and poisonous never tasting so wonderful. It’s the sound of gasps and moans and tiny hitches of breathes escaping from her throat, from Lila’s throat, from who knows whose throat. Its skin against skin and breath against break and the idea of distance between them feeling like nothing but a memory. Its sweat and spit and it’s messy and fast and blurred by the drunken daze both of them are feeling, but the feeling of euphoria has never felt so strong.
It’s everything and nothing all at once, and as you fall asleep with your naked body spread next to Lila’s with your legs tangled together and the sheet wrapped across your body you have never felt more confused.
(Or more scared
Not liked you’d ever admit it.)
---
The next morning, you expect a hangover.
The next morning you expect the fall from the high.
What you don’t expect is to wake up to Lila throwing her things together.
What you don’t expect is the harsh glare she directs at you and the cruel words she spits from her lips as she throw on her shoes.
You expect her to be confused, to be lost and anxious at what happened the night before, what you didn’t expected was the way she can’t seem to meet your gaze and the way her lips curl and her body tenses when you even hint towards it.
It’s like she’s ashamed.
(Of herself, of liking girls, of you, who knows?)
What you don’t expect is her blaming you for everything, for spitting words towards you that burn like venom on your skin. You don’t expect the rage that pools in your gut and launches out in the form of screams telling Lila to fucking leave and to fucking go and to never fucking call you again.
You expected a drop from the high you were feeling last night.
What you didn’t expect was for you to feel like your soul, the soul that seemed to slowly return to your body the moment Lila Stangard walked into your life, to feel like it’s been sucked out of your body for the second time. What you didn’t expect was to feel like you were fallingfallingfalling and drowning and gasping for breath because the one good thing you finally had has just walked out of your life for good. What you didn’t expect was to throw things and break things and scream and curse Lila fucking Stangard at the top of your fucking lungs for breaking your fucking heart into two that lying to faced bitch.
What you didn’t expect was to spend the morning feeling empty and dried out and crying into the pillow that still smells lightly of the strawberry shampoo from the girl who lay there the other night.
(Not that you’d admit that to anyone, ever.)
---
You are well aware you’re not a good person.
You are well aware that in the past 24 hours you have slept with your best friend and destroyed your apartment and have drunk and smoked and took more drugs than you ever have. You are well aware that you in the past 24 hours you have been so consumed by anger and betrayal and rage that you attempted to seduce Griffin so that Lila would come and see what a scum he was.
(Or that’s what you say it was, really it wasn’t.)
In the past 24 hours you have done too much and felt so much and have felt more drained then you ever have done.
(Really, all you wanted to do was make her feel how you did when she left that room that morning. Really you wanted her to understand how small and pathetic and worthless and empty and heartbroken you felt when she fucking left you alone again.)
You are well aware that you’re not a good person that you never have been and never will be.
But this, this is too much for anyone.
Because finding your best friend body (body, it still doesn’t make sense to you) cold and still and lifeless in a water tank (a water tank you used to smoke and drunk and laugh near just days before) is too much for even karma, surely.
Because even the world couldn’t be cruel enough to leave you grasping at your dead best friends body, at the girl who was something to you even if you don’t know what it was body and beg her to be alive and beg her to not be dead and to beg her Stangard don’t you fucking be dead you can’t be fucking dead.
Because even the world couldn’t be cruel enough to leave you to hide in a water tank with your dead best friend, girlfriend, the girl you loved, the only person that ever cared something remembering that the last thing you ever said to her was cruel words and sharp glares.
But it’s like you have forgotten whose life you’re talking about her.
Because, of course the world could be that cruel to you.
---
When you drug Rudy and call the cops and tell them my neighbour is having some sort of psychotic breakdown please hurry you know you should feel guilty, but you don’t.
Instead you just feel hollowed and emptied out.
You feel like some part of you has been ripped out of you and left in that water tank alongside Lila.
You feel like you’ve just done a full 360 back to your life before Lila Stangard walked into it.
You are well aware you are not a good person, but for a minute you let Lila stumble into your life and you almost believed you weren't as bad as you thought you were. You let her into your heart and into your mind and you let her into your world and you let her slowly begin to make you believe as if you were something more than some trashy drug dealing bar worker.
You let her make you believe in yourself, let her build you up into something to be proud.
But now she is gone and you’re alone again (and you are slowly falling apart at the seams) and you welcome the storm back in your stomach with ease.
In some ways, it feels almost welcoming.