Work Text:
"Call me. It's urgent."
Marissa hadn't spoken to me in over a month. We'd broken up a month and a half ago, and despite promises to "ttyl", we never did. It wasn't a conscious choice at first, I'd just forgotten to say goodnight, and then it felt like I was making A Statement by withholding it.
I don't think she even noticed.
I push the red stop button on the bus, figuring I'll just walk the rest of the way and deal with whatever emergency has come up in the time it takes to walk to work.
That has always been my job in relationships: caretaker. Not just with my past partners, but friendships too. Family, mostly. I was the eldest sibling, the parent friend, and the carer in every relationship. It was just what came naturally to me, I suppose.
I cared too much , I had repeated to myself over and over again in the week after we broke up, I cared too much and that’s why.
She picks up immediately.
"Hey," I say into my phone, slightly taken aback to see her photo come up on the screen for the first time in a while. It’s an old photo, from when we were still just talking and not yet dating. It’s a selfie while she lays in bed, her obnoxiously large cat glaring at the camera from where he sat on her chest. I wonder how Stuart - the cat - is doing now. I wonder if he still has that pathetically uncharacteristic meow of his. I wonder if he still shouts to be fed an hour after he has already been fed.
"Where are you right now, Alex?" she asks, fake-calm dripping from her voice. Oh dear, this is serious, serious.
"On my way to work," I reply, glancing at my watch. I have twenty-three minutes until the start of my shift and fifteen minutes worth of walking to get there.
"Can you meet me by the bench?"
For a moment, I contemplate hanging up. To tell her that she left my life when she broke up with me and that it's not my job to take care of her anymore. To refuse by saying something bluntly about being late to work.
I know, however, that I had already made up my mind when I chose to call her; I tell her I'd see her in five minutes and start making my way to the bench.
"The bench" isn't anything special to the outside world. It's this beat-up old thing, tucked halfway into a bush, with two generations worth of graffiti etched into its weathered sides. If you didn't know it was there, you wouldn't have seen it at all. It wouldn't have meant anything to me, either, just a bench by the side of the road, if that hadn't been where I first met her.
She was still sixteen, back then, as was I. I had been doodling on the bench to pass time when she commented on it, joking that it looked like one of our mutual friends. She would tell me a few months later that she had been working up the courage to talk to me for weeks since I apparently looked “queer enough to be her friend”. I was already out and proud by then, but she wasn’t - not that that mattered, since I could tell. As most queer people will be able to tell you, sometimes spotting a fellow queer person can as be easy as pie - even if they themselves don’t know it yet.
Now, three years later, neither of us look like we did back then. We weren’t entirely new people, per se, we had just started to let our actual selves seep into our outward appearance. The last time I had seen her, her hair was bleached blonde, but it was now a kaleidoscope of blue, yellow, and green. It kinda looks like Awsten's - of Waterparks fame - hair, if that makes sense? It suits her.
She doesn’t seem to notice me approaching; she’s too busy staring down at a box in her hands, her right leg jumping up and down rapidly in time to unheard music. She’s wearing one of my hoodies, a zip-up one I bought years ago that’s now more lint than a hoodie. I was wondering where that one had gone...
"Hey," I say again as I approach the bench. She glances upwards, sees me walking towards her, and hurriedly shoves the box into the plastic bag next to her. "What's up, bub?"
“Bub" has always been my nickname for her. Originally, it had been "Beef", short for “boyfriend”, but she didn't like that one too much, so I had changed it. It feels odd to call her "bub" now that we're not dating anymore, though, maybe I should switch to something more neutral like "buddy".
"Are you busy today?" she asks, her glassy eyes worryingly serious. There's no sign of joy or amusement, just the look of someone who's already made up her mind about what she’s going to do, she’s just asking if I wanted to come along for the ride. "I could really use a friend right now."
She hadn’t listened when I said I was going to work, had she?
Hm.
Typical.
"Wouldn't Summer be better for that?" I ask, plopping myself on the bench next to her, "She’s your best friend."
"Mm, yeah, but I pick you," she fiddles absentmindedly with her right snake bite piercing. I have to look away: even though we’ve been separated for nearly two months, the temptation to kiss her is still there, under the anger and hurt. “You’re the only one I trust not to judge me right now.”
"Okay," I don’t fully believe her, but now might not be the right time to question her, so I sigh instead, "What are we doing, then?"
Her head snaps up, a small smile appearing at the corner of her lips, "Really?"
"Really," I pat her knee, "Now, c'mon, tell me: what's up?"
"It's a long story," she starts, standing up. She stuffs her plastic bag into her pocket, "But I'll have plenty of time to tell you on the way there."
"Where's "there"?" I ask, following her lead.
"Phoenix."
"Right then."
"That's a lot of money," I point out unhelpfully, "Have you got enough?"
We're at Central Station, looking at the exorbitant prices for the trains to Phoenix on those machines by the front entrance. Families, busy commuters, and loitering teenagers mill about around us, a never-stopping current of new faces and unreadable expressions.
She glances down at her wallet, opening it to reveal the few meagre notes inside, "My account's been frozen, too."
"What the fuck happened to you?" I accidentally blurt out a bit too loudly, causing disapproving parents around me to glare. "Sorry!"
"In due course," she replies with a shrug. With a bit more of a mischievous smile, she turns to me, "Sooo…"
I know what that look means. I’ve seen it before enough times to recognise it. She had it on her face when we got stuck in LA after a concert we went to continued later into the night than we’d anticipated; she had it on her face when she had recently broken up with Ryan and needed a ride home; she had it on her face when she had ended up in the principal’s office for the fifth time because she had made a thirst trap of Mr Bradley and posted it on TikTok without his consent: she wanted me to fix everything.
"You want me to find a way for us to get to Phoenix, don't you," I say deadpan, already knowing the answer.
"Please?"
"Fine," I sighed again, pulling out my phone to get to work, "How much do you have on you?"
"We need to get this bus,-" I tell her, pointing to the map on the bus stop,- "to here, and then we'll get the-"
Covering her ears, she interrupts me, "No spoilers!"
"... What."
"Don’t spoil the surprise!" she repeats with a grin, "I don't want to know what's going on, you can manage all of the logistics of getting there."
"Why are you like this?" I ask, not really looking for an answer, just somewhat bemused by the situation. As time ticked on, I am starting to be reminded of all the reasons I fell for her in the first place. It’s painful at first, like glass being shoved into my chest, but the more and more often it happens, the edges of the glass are being worn down into sea glass. Something pretty to look at, and nothing more.
"I just am," she shrugged, popping a lollipop in her mouth, "You love that about me."
"Used to," I correct with a weary smile. It’s not entirely true, but maybe if I say it enough times, it will be. "We should get food to eat on the coach, it's going to be a long journey."
"I don't have much money," she reminds me, "I'll manage for a few hours without food."
"It's a ten-hour journey," I tell her, pulling her towards the corner shop by the bus stop by her sleeve, "It'll be my treat."
"Okay," she let me pull her along for a bit too long. Maybe she's enjoying the physical touch as much as I am, I don't know. "Thank you."
"No problem."
Two meal deals and a bottle of vodka later, we're $22.20 poorer and sitting idly by the bus stop, waiting for the notoriously late no. 57 bus.
"Do I get to know what happened to you yet?" I ask her.
"Sure," she takes the lollipop out of her mouth, using it to accentuate her gestures as she speaks, "You're not going to like it though, a lot of it is just me being an idiot."
"I wouldn't expect anything less from you," I reply, earning me a light-hearted slap on the arm.
"Okay, so," she claps her hands together. I mimic her for old times sake. "Do you remember how we broke up about a month ago?"
"Forty-five days ago to be exact, yep," I reply matter-of-factly. More sarcastically, I add, "How could I forget."
"Right, well I got super, super … not sad , exactly, more numb?”
“That makes sense,” I nod, “You were the one who suggested we break up in the first place.”
“Well, first of all, I am allowed to be sad about that. A relationship ending - anything ending, really - is sad for everyone involved, you aren’t the only one who gets to be sad about that," she snaps back. She takes a quick second to compose herself before continuing with a sigh, "But yeah, I wasn’t sad, just numb. And what do I do when I’m numb?”
"Drink."
"Exactly," she thoughtfully chews on her empty lollipop stick, mulling over the words carefully before continuing, "It's even more depressing to drink alone, though, so I got dressed up and hit the town."
"Of course you did," I roll my eyes disapprovingly, "Let me guess, it ended poorly?"
"Mm, you'll see," her gaze shifts from me to something just past my shoulder, "Is that our bus?"
It is indeed.
"Okay, where were we?" she asks, tapping her chin.
We had chosen seats in the back of the bus; those ones that are like a little booth. She sat in the one facing the back of the bus by the window, so I sat opposite her. The bus itself was relatively empty, thankfully, so I take the opportunity to text my manager at work to tell them I’m feeling too ill to come in. They’re not going to be pleased about the short notice, but I’ll just deal with that later.
"You were getting pissed in town," I remind her, knocking her knee with my own as I type out the text, "I think?"
"Ah! Yes, hitting the “clewb”," she says, mimicking the accent one of my friends, Lexie, sometimes uses.
Marissa has never met Lexie, so I must have mimicked her at some point in front of her. It's weird how people can affect people they’ve never met simply due to the virtue of how bizarre some of their actions are that they get mimicked and copied for the sake of comedy.
"Yeah, so I was going on a lovely little pub crawl, making friends along the way, getting increasingly drunker and drunker," she explains, poking her knees subconsciously, "Which is where I met lovely Oliver, who turned out to not be that lovely as he tried to spike my drink."
"Oof," I grimace, my mental image of "lovely but not so lovely Oliver" warping in my brain as she speaks, “Not cool.”
"Understatement of the fucking century," she nod, continuing to tell me about how “not so lovely Oliver” tried to get her to leave the club with her. “-but thankfully the bouncer Olivia and another random guy called Oliver noticed and got me the hell away from not-so-lovely-Oliver.”
“Why is everyone in this story called Oliver or some variation of it?”
“Because I don’t know any of their actual names so I’m just making her up as I go along,” she shrugs.
“So you picked “Oliver”?” I ask her, raising my eyebrows and grinning at her, “Of all the names?”
“Shut up,” she mumbles, hiding a small smile behind her hand.
“Y’know, Oliver, the actually nice one, and I actually hit it off really well,-” she take a bite of her sandwich, chewing on it thoughtfully before continuing after swallowing her mouthful, - “We talked for a bit at the bar and - this might be the alcohol talking - but we had quite a lot in common.”
“Did you now?” I ask sarcastically.
After taking the bus to the local coach station, we got the first available coach to San Bernardino. About an hour into the journey, our stomachs had started growling, so we broke into our lunches, eating her off those shitty, flimsy fold-down tables like the cretins we are.
“Mm-hm,” she takes a drink, “We had fun. The adult kind, in the bathroom.”
“TMI,” I groan, putting down my sandwich. She keeps going anyway.
“It was kinda hot,” she says, adjusting herself on the seat with a little smirk, knowing exactly what I’m thinking. In a voice slightly above a whisper, her voice sultry, she elaborates, “He hoisted me onto the counter by the waist, which is where we-,”
“Stop!” I interject, trying to chase away the mental imagery of her being fucked on the counter of a nightclub bathroom. Trying to add a light-hearted spin to it, I joke, “Right in front of my salad?”
“That’s a sandwich,” she corrects, missing the joke entirely, “It was … different with Oliver.”
“Is Oliver a cis guy?”
As much as I tell myself that I’m just checking that she was being safe - I already know she wasn't -, I know that’s not true. I don’t fully know why I’m asking. It hurts to even think about how on the same night Marissa broke up with me, she was already fucking some random dude in a nightclub bathroom. She moved on so quickly while I spent the better half of a week trying not to think about how much I wanted to die. It feels … unfair .
“What’s wrong with me fucking a cis guy? I’m bi, so it’s not like I’m “betraying” my queer side, am I?” she asks, her tone suggesting that she had taken offence. A little part of me feels like she deserves it.
“Nothing’s wrong with a cis guy,” I say out loud. In my head, I add, “ It just makes me feel like shit. ”
“Don’t criticise me, okay?” she slams her sandwich down with a bit too much force, smooshing the bread into the packaging, “God, you do this all of the time! You’re so judgemental, it’s annoying.”
“Maybe if you didn’t act so recklessly all of the time, I’d have nothing to judge you for,” I snap back, regretting the words immediately, “Sorry, I-... that’s not what I meant.”
“No, no, you’ve said it now, you can’t take it back,” she crosses her arms over her chest, “I get it, I’m stupid and you need to come in and clean my life up all the time because you always know better than me, right? You’re just like my mother.”
“Isn’t that what you want?” I ask hesitantly, “Isn’t that why I’m here?”
“No, I just need you to listen !”
“I am listening!” I retort, not entirely truthfully, but vowing to do so from then on out. “Carry on, … please?”
She gives me a look of such intensity and genuineness that I can’t bear to meet her gaze. I glance away and instead focus on the bit of fluff sticking out of the chair in front of us. The pause stretches into eternity.
“Okay,” she says eventually, preparing herself to continue talking by puffing out her cheeks with a heavy sigh, “So. Oliver.”
I take a bite of my sandwich to resist the urge to repeat her.
“After we … had fun in the bathroom, I drank even more,” she continue, not looking at me as she spoke, “Eventually, I was so drunk that Oliver had to put me in a taxi and send me home, or at least that’s what I assumed happened since I blacked out and woke up on the living room floor to my Mum yelling at me.”
“Hm, I bet she was delighted to find you unconscious again,” I say dryly.
“She wasn’t, no,” Marissa sighs, “She kicked me out.”
“Oh.”
“Yep,” she took another bite of her sandwich, not-so-subtly stealing one of my crisps as she did so, “Being bi was bad enough, apparently, but the binge drinking after the last family group session where I promised to stop, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“Oi!” I snatch the bag out of her reach, “Those are mine.”
“But I’m hungry~!” she whines jokingly, “Please?”
“Just one more,” I relinquish my bag to her, knowing perfectly well that I’ll only get it back when it’s empty.
“Thanks!”
The second coach is a bit nicer than the first one. We have tables on this one, for a start, so we sit on opposite ends of each other, watching the country whiz by as we make our way to Phoenix. We’ve been on the road for a good few hours at this point, but the destination is within reaching distance now.
“So what did you do?” I ask, “You got kicked out, then what?”
“Well, I couldn’t exactly ask to stay with you, and I didn’t really wanna ask any of my friends in case you heard about it,” she says nonchalantly. She isn't entirely focused on the conversation as she’s busy building a tower out of milk packets that had been left out on the drinks trolley. “And I couldn’t afford a hotel, so I went to stay in a hostel instead.”
She steals my sugar packets and starts making little pyramids out of her around her tower of milk packets, “I got all my shit stolen, so I ended up with even less than I started with.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
The coach drives over a speed bump, causing her tower to collapse.
“My period was late,” she says simply, providing no further elaboration aside from her statement of fact.
“Yeah?” I prompt.
“I took a pregnancy test,” she continues, staring down at her hands, fiddling with the zip on my stolen hoodie. I have a sinking feeling that I know where this is going. “It, erm…”
“You don’t… I know what you’re trying to say,” I reassure her tentatively, “You don’t have to say the actual words if that would help.”
“Thanks,” she breathes a sigh of relief, “I-... yeah.”
“Okay, cool,” I rest my elbows on the table between us as I lean forward, “What’s the plan now?”
“Find Oliver,” she starts with a bout of much-needed confidence, “Tell him he might be becoming a dad, and then decide what to do.”
“Good start,” I smile at her, trying to be encouraging, “How are you planning on doing that? Did he leave an address or something?”
“He said he lives in Phoenix,” she says, correcting herself a moment later, “Well, works in Phoenix.”
I wait, expecting some further elaboration, before realising that that was everything she are going to say.
“...that's it?”
“Yep.”
What. The. Actual. Fuck??
Two hours and an argument later, we’re sitting opposite each other in a cafe in Phoenix.
“Look,” I start for probably the third time, “I’m sorry for yelling at you, but how on earth did you think this was going to work? Phoenix is a huge city with loads of people, and all you know about “Oliver” is that he works here. He might not even live here!”
“I don’t know,” she sighs, leaning back in her chair, “I was just-...”
Her voice trails off as her gaze shifts to something just past my shoulder. She bolts upright, her eyes filling quickly with reinvigorated life.
“OH MY GOD IT’S HIM,” she half-yells, pointing vaguely in the direction of the park.
“Wait, really??”
“Yes!” she exclaims, rushing to her feet as she continues pointing frantically, “Look! That’s him there, with the red hat! He’s got a little kid with him, he must be looking after his cousin or something, look, in the brown coat-”
No matter how much Marissa describes the dude, I could not for the life of me spot him until-
“-look, look, there’s a woman with him - the blonde one - that he’s … that he’s…kissing.”
As quickly as life had returned to her face, it was now quickly fading. She slowly sank back into her seat again, the look of realisation frozen on her face. Unsure of how to comfort her, I fall back into my usual of simply asking my usual, “Are you alright?”
She nods, staring down at her lap.
“Okay, well, we both know that’s not true.”
She doesn’t reply. It’s like talking to a statue. For once, I’m at a loss for how to fix things. “Is there anything you want to do? Key his car? Leave a passive-aggressive letter? Tell the woman he cheated on her?”
“Can we just go home?”
“Of course.”
“What are you going to do with it?” I ask after we had settled into our seats. She lets her head fall against the window, vibrating with the coach as the engine shudders into life.
She shrugs, my stolen hoodie smooshing into the glass, “I don’t know if I’m responsible enough to take care of a child at the minute.”
“That’s fair.”
“I’d be a shit parent, and I can barely keep myself alive, let alone a newborn?” she sighs. With a heave, she hoists herself off of the window and instead stares intently at the table, her elbows lined up with the edge of it as if she's trying to take up as little space as possible. “I don’t even know what I’m going to do tonight. I guess I could try talking to my mom again, she’ll be delighted to know I'm pregnant out of wedlock, haha. I’m following in her footsteps after all.”
“If you need somewhere to crash for the night, my sofa’s free," I offer, surprising both her and myself.
“Are you sure that’s okay?” she asks, finally meeting my gaze.
“Yes," I reply, realising that for the first time in a while, I actually meant it, "I'd love to have you over."
“Okay,” she smiles. It's not a real smile, just a polite, pursed lips kind of deal, but it's progress. “Thank you.”
It’s late by the time we get the second coach back. There are no more buildings or trees to watch as the coach drives along, just occasional lights in the shroud of darkness. Marissa falls asleep on my shoulder easily.
She has always been quite trusting and able to fall asleep anywhere. Me, though? Not so much. As I sat, fully awake, with my ex asleep on my shoulder, I reminisce about old times. I remember when we first became friends, Marissa would regularly skip school to hang out with me, often taking naps in my apartment during lunch hour because she wasn't sleeping enough at home.
If she weren't sleeping, she was working. She was always like that in the past: she never really took a break and was always on the verge of a breakdown. Between being the social chair, her not-so-great relationship with her mother and alcohol, and whatever was going on between her and Ryan, she didn’t have a lot of spare time. It got better, eventually, but sometimes I wonder if she just replaced one bad habit for another.
As I glance down at her sleeping form, I come to a startling realisation: I’m over her.
I’m fully, one hundred per cent, over her.
I still care about her, obviously, but only as a friend. Looking at her sleeping now doesn’t fill me with the same instinctive protectiveness or warmth that it used to. Now it’s just… fine.
A single tear rolls down my cheek as I have this epiphany. I’m not sad, far from it. I’m more relieved. This intense nightmare is coming to an end. The outro music is starting to play, and the finale is coming soon.
I can’t wait .
“I’m home!” I call out to no one in particular. Ever since I’ve moved out of my parents and started living on my own, there’s no real reason to announce my arrival home, yet I keep doing it automatically. It feels weird if I don’t.
Closing the door behind her, I show her where to leave her shoes and coat as if she hadn't been to my place a thousand times before in the time we were dating, and a thousand more before then.
I offer her food, a drink, and a towel to shower, which she all refuses. The sofa isn’t a fold-out sofa, but it is big enough - and comfortable enough - to sleep on with ease. Still, I offer - again - to sleep on the sofa so that she can take my bed, which she also refuses. Eventually, we settle on watching a movie that neither of us is particularly paying attention to.
Halfway through the movie, I turn around to realise that she’s fallen asleep, the blanket I’d given her slipping from around her shoulders.
I pause the movie, fix her blanket, and reflexively give her a little forehead kiss.
As I lay in bed in the next room, I think about what comes next. I know for a fact that when I go check up on her in the morning, she’ll be gone. That’s just how she is. I wonder how long it’ll be until I see her next. Will I see her in a year with a baby on her hip? Will I see her on the news in three weeks because her body has been pulled out of a crashed car? In four months when she's finally got her shit together?
All I can think about is that Mikko Harvey quote: "The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it." I hope she does. I desperately pray for it.
Maybe in another life, when we’re capable adults who can weather out the storm, we would’ve been together. Maybe in another life, we’re soulmates destined to be together. Maybe in another life, we’re happy.
This isn’t that life.
When I wake up at three am to the sound of her leaving my life once again, I think about how in another life, I would go chasing after her, promising to help raise the child together. In another life, she would be waiting for me, with a metaphorical scarf in her hands. In another life, I would be bounding out of bed, begging her to stay. Instead, I roll over in bed and let the thoughts of another life fuel my dreams for the next few hours.
Maybe in another life…