Archive of Our Own

'There's nothing like the lure of the city for a modern teenager.'

That's what Bradley from my Crypto discord had told me when I filled him in on Fezco's fucked up idea.

Bradley was a banker from New York and a total coke-head who bragged about cheating on his wife and complained about having to babysit his own kids but he had been the only one to pick up my throwaway comment about how I was going to be offline for the weekend and why.

'Don't sweat it, kid. Some of us millennials have a different concept of fun pursuits. Not me though,' he said, as though I was even going to waste my time imagining that Brad from Manhattan was gonna trade in strippers and blow for shitting in the woods and hiding from fucking bears.

'My bro is nineteen,” I responded

'Oh,” Bradley had said and left it there.

It was Lexi's fault because Fezco had never even brought up the idea before she showed up; never even mentioned the possibility of it. We had been perfectly content with our little house and little store and expensive wardrobes before she came along. Now Fezco had been annoying the fuck out of me for almost a month straight, trying to pick my brain about which ugly ass hiking boots seemed sturdier against all elements.

And just because I'd caught Lexi cringing when Fez mentioned maybe taking along a portable toilet because there weren't going to be any real toilets for miles didn't mean it wasn't her dumb idea in the first place.

Fezco was still talking about it when I left my room to grab something to eat. He hadn't stopped fucking talking about it since he told me about it and it was getting to the point where I had to curb the urge to bash my head against the wall whenever he brought it up.

Lexi was gonna pay for this.

“Think it will be good practice,” Fez was telling her as I entered the kitchen. “For like, farm life and shit.”

He was talking to her like she was kinda dumb but he didn't want to draw attention to the fact and hurt her feelings--and it only took me a second to realise why.

“Uh, so that's a no on the WIFI then?” Lexi said.

Fez shrugged and distracted himself with the coffee creamer. 'Yeah, probably. Think it's just gonna be you, me, Ash and like, nature and stuff.”

This had to be some sort of wild and unrestrained grief. Fez had been rocked pretty hard when his Grandma had passed away a few months back and I honestly only cared about it because I cared about him but this whole idea was just too much. He had seemed to be getting better but maybe I should have seriously considered getting his ass some online therapy before this level of damage was already done.

Lexi managed to cover her disappointment over the WIFI as quickly as it appeared on her face but not before I caught it. I was beginning to seriously consider that Fezco might have come up with this nonsense on his own and it was killing me that I might be under some sort of agreement with Lexi Fucking Howard over this bullshit idea.

“I don't even know why we gotta go in the first place,” I said. “For real, are you trying to blow all our street cred? What if anyone finds out? We'll be fuckin' done for.”

Fezco rolled his eyes at me and fixed me with a stare. He wasn't hiding his face behind the coffee creamer for me. He obviously didn't give a shit what I thought.

“Because I want us all to go together, Ash. So stop bein' a fuckin' brat about it. It's three fuckin' days. You can live without your computer for that long.”

There was a look of mortification that came across his face as he realised his criticism to me could double up as criticism towards Lexi since I wasn't the only one complaining about the lack of internet facilities, was I?

But Fez was still in the simp stages of love where Lexi Howard was a delicate princess who could do no wrong or say no wrong so when he spoke to her, it was in a completely different manner than the way he spoke to me about it.

“I promise we'll have fun, baby. I can catch us some fish and you can get inspiration for your stories or somethin' like that.”

Now, I knew for a FACT that Fez had never caught a fish in his life. He'd probably never even seen a fish that wasn't wrapped in grocery store paper...so I damn well knew that he'd never even so much as looked at a fishing rod. If he even knew how to hold one, never mind set one up, then I was probably going to die of shock.

Any 'fishing experience' he possessed had begun last month when he suddenly lost his fucking mind and decided that the three of us absolutely needed to go camping. Since then, he had been watching the wilderness channel, or whatever the fuck it was called, and a bunch of other survival shit in preparation but the truth was that neither of us had ever so much as set foot in the woods---and judging by the fact that Lexi was even asking about the WIFI in the first place, I was guessing she hadn't either.

We were all in the same inexperienced and unprepared boat but at least I was willing to admit that our chances of getting eaten by a bear were in the high hundreds.

“We're gonna fuckin' die,” I said only to be ignored because Lexi was as much a simp as Fez and had gone all girly over the idea of him feeding her uncooked fish while she lounged in the dirt and wrote stories---

on paper...

...with a fucking pen.

It was like a voluntary trip back to the stone ages for these two and I didn't fucking get it.

“What the fuck you takin' that for?” Fez asked me as I packed my hammer.

“Because you wouldn't let me pack the Benelli.”

Fez sighed and gritted his teeth at me. We'd already had a massive argument over the fact that he was literally setting us all up to die and wouldn't even entertain the idea of strapping up to protect ourselves.

“I already told you—none of our shit is registered and I don't want the risk of gettin' caught with them in the car.”

I tried to jam my camping bag shut, bitching as I had to take out four of my favourite hoodies. I was already down to five pairs of sneakers and would be walking around naked if this piece of shit bag carried on refusing to co-operate with me.

“They don't have to be registered if we lock them in the trunk,” I said, not like it would make a difference since he had already brushed me off when I had tried to recite Cali's gun laws to him.

Maybe I should have asked Lexi to tell his ass since he loved to hear her drone on so much. I wondered if tonight was enough time to get her turned onto the semi-automatics? Shooting cans in the middle of nowhere, without a single Cali cop in sight, might be the only way to save this weekend.

“You really wanna risk that kind of attention anyway?”

I kept my mouth shut. That's how he got me last time we argued about this because I knew he kinda had a point but I kinda had a point too when I asked him what the fuck we were gonna do if a bear squared up to us.

“We'll bang some pots and pans or some shit.”

I stared at him. “I'm takin' the hammer.”

He laughed at me and threw a pair of my own boxers at my head. “That hammer ain't gonna do shit against a bear anyway. Didn't you watch The Revenance with me just a couple months ago---you ain't see how that bear fucked up Tom Hardy?”

I didn't even correct him on the movie's title or what the fuck actually happened in it because I was becoming more and more depressed with the realisation that he was actually going to make me go through with this shit.

“For the record, this is the dumbest idea you've ever had and that includes that time you let Faye stay with us. How much you think Lexi's gonna love you if she loses a leg to a hungry bear?”

He bit his lip for a moment, dwelling over that shit. “Fine,” he said, after a minute. “We can take the Glock but that's it and if we get pulled, imma pretend I found you on the road.”

At least Lexi Howard was useful for something.

The only thing worse than going camping and most likely dying together was the three hour car ride it was gonna take us to get there.

Fez, in an attempt to either get into the spirit or to prove to Lexi that we weren't a pair of teenage slobs, had taken it upon himself to hang a forest pine air freshener off the rear view mirror, right next to the St. Christopher medallion that was supposed to guide us safely on our trip.

If St. Christopher really cared about our safety that much, though, we wouldn't be going in the first place.

The air freshener was such an offensive shade of green that it wouldn't stop catching my eye for the first hour on the road. The thing seemed determined to send me into a fucking meditation; like one of those therapists dangling a pocket watch and counting backwards from five.

I really didn't know how Fez could focus on driving with that shit in his face but Lexi had complimented it as soon as she got in the car so I knew that girly air fresheners were probably going to be mainstay in the caddy from now on.

Lexi had pretty much taken over my spot in the front seat because of 'manners towards ladies'--even though Rue and Faye were technically 'ladies' too and Fez had never dumped my ass in the backseat for either of them.

The fact that Fez and Lexi were like two parasites who couldn't keep their hands off each other without wilting away was something I never brought up because I really hadn't given a fuck about the seating arrangements until now that I was sitting behind Fez's seat with a SAW III death trap set up beside me.

For someone who wanted to 'live off nature' for the weekend, Fez had gone out and brought a years worth of camping shit to pack the caddy with and, considering he wasn't the most gentle driver, I was seriously at risk of being crushed by all the shit that wouldn't fit in the trunk.

I distracted myself from the terror of being decapitated by a tent pole by scrolling through my cellphone and listening to music until something more interesting caught my attention.

At some point while I had been trying to blot out literally everything around me with my eyes down and airpods in, Fezco had handed Lexi the map and it hadn't turned out well.

“It says to go straight, Fezco,” she was saying, shortly. “I mean, I still don't understand what you have against GPS.”

Fezco sighed and even from that alone, I could tell he was treading new levels of impatience with her. “Lexi, if I go straight then imma end up drivin' right through that Denny's Diner sign comin' up, you understand what I'm sayin' right now?”

Her arms were folded and she was looking out of the window, map tossed onto her lap like it had personally offended her. “Yes, but I don't know what you want me to do about it, Fezco. I didn't write the damn map, did I?”

He stared at her hard for a minute before clicking his tongue against his teeth and grabbing the map, tossing it into the backseat.

“Ash, read that shit,” he said, throwing Lexi another pointed side eye glare. "Tell me where to turn."

I scanned over it quickly before meeting his eye in the mirror.

“It says to go straight.”

His ass started glaring at me then like I had written the fucking map instead and I could see Lexi smirking to herself as she stared out of her window but what the fuck was I supposed to do about it when the map was telling his ass to plough right through the diner sign?

He jerked the car into a hard stop at the side of the road, beating his fist against the wheel once before restraining himself with a sigh. “Piece of shit map,” he muttered.

Lexi spun on him, her mouth a hard line, but she softened a little when she saw his ass pouting. She shrugged and gave him a little laugh and he smiled softly at her and held out his hand.

If they thought I was going to sit through them crying apologies to each other and talking about their feelings right in front of my face, they were dead wrong.

“You want me to get the GPS up on my cell, Bear Grylls?”

“Yeah, that's a good idea,” he said to Lexi because I might as well not have fucking existed in that moment.

Honestly, being eaten alive by a bear was looking like a god send at this point.

The best part of the car ride was stopping for something to eat and I'm not kidding when I say that we ended up at the best diner I had ever been to in my life.

It was called Peggy's; a family run diner, as they proudly stated on the sign and the décor wasn't the only thing they copped from the 50s because the food was real old school, ignore all health warnings kinda stuff. One of their dishes was even named Heart Attack on a Plate and that suited me just fine. If Fez wanted to camp out here for the weekend, I wouldn't have complained.

Fez and Lexi had gotten past their little spat over the map and were making eyes at other over a basket of fries, giggling like fucking pre-teens when they accidentally dipped a fry in ketchup at the same time while I spent most of the meal praying for the heart attack to hurry up and take me to the grave already.

That wasn't the most mortifying thing to happen though because when the waitress came over to try and tempt us into buying some milkshakes, she stared at me and Lexi before asking; “Is this your little brother? The two of you got the same big chocolate button eyes. Isn't it sweet of you guys to bring your little brother along on your date?”

I glared at her while Lexi blushed and Fez smiled like a fucking idiot.

“See,” he said, hunching over and whispering after the blind ass waitress took off. “Even she thinks we're one big family already and she don't even know us. It's like fate.”

“Oh, Fez,” Lexi said, matching his goofy smile with one of her own and reaching out until these two love nerds were holding hands across the table. I could feel my burger resurrect in my stomach and start walking its way back up my throat just to get away from this crap.

I'd been pretty fair about this bullshit relationship so far, despite the fact that it went against every principle I had in letting people close to us, but this level of...romance, was just pushing it.

It was abnormal. Fezco had never been down with this romantic shit before. Granted, he had never been a piece of shit to girls either but I had seen a fair share of them come over and go within the space of a few hours and I honestly couldn't remember seeing any of their faces more than twice.

So to watch my big brother go from being cool as fuck to acting all soppy and stupid was something I was still struggling to understand—and not understanding was driving me crazy because I needed to make sure this didn't happen again once Lexi's ass was gone.

I balled up a napkin and threw it right into the space where their noses were touching.

“Can y'all just restrain yourselves for one minute? You're embarrassing the fuck outta me?”

They pulled back for the slightest second before I could see their faces inching slowly back towards each other. They were doing this shit on a subconscious level now. It was too much.

Forget the bear. I would take the cow my burger used to be coming back and kicking me upside the head right now. Anything to put me under so I wouldn't be subjected to any more of this shit.

“Peggy,” I yelled, gesturing Sandra, the waitress, over. “We're gonna need the check.”

It wasn't like getting back to the car made things any better. We'd only been back on the road for twenty minutes and Fezco was already fucking singing to her.

“This is our song,” he said, as though that made it okay. He glanced over the seat rest at me before wailing another lyric and Lexi must have been sitting on some sort of deep resentment of me because I swear, she looked at me directly before she started joining in on the chorus. Her voice was better than his but they both sounded fucking stupid.

I alternated glaring at the back of both of their heads until she eventually caught my eye in the mirror.

“Oh my god,” she said, rolling her eyes and grinning. “Lighten up. What do you have against true love?”

Now, I wasn't really used to Lexi speaking to me that way since she'd been pretty low key and was proving hard to beat with her refusal to rise to the bait as I tried to get rid of her ass but clearly Peggy must have spiked her soda or something because this was pretty bold of her.

Fezco laughed and raised his eyebrows while shooting me a warning look through the rear view mirror. I rolled my eyes back at his sad little ass. I'd already threatened to kick Lexi down a ravine like, twenty times, by this point so I don't know why he was shooting daggers at me now.

“Y'all are corny as hell,” I muttered, reconfiguring my plan so I could throw both their asses over a cliff edge.

She reached over and turned up the music, singing even louder with her head lolling against the half cracked window and the wind whipping her hair into a mess....and Fezco, who was technically supposed to be driving at this point, just watched her with the dopiest fucking smile on his face, not even blinking until I kicked the back of his seat and reminded him that he was literally in charge of all our lives right now.

This whole trip sucked and we weren't even there yet. My phone battery was draining by the minute, along with my will to live, and I honestly wasn't sure I was going to survive third wheeling Thelma and Louise for a whole weekend.

“Why don't you get some sleep?” Fez said, over his shoulder. “Store up some energy. We gotta unpack and set up when we get there and that might take us a lil while.”

Clearly, Lexi wasn't the only one tripping on spiked soda because there was no way in hell I was letting my guard down enough to fall asleep with a damn near stranger in the car. Being alert, being ready—that was my shit and I wasn't gonna slide on that just because Fezco was sharing a bed with this chick. Making exceptions for Lexi would be pretty much starting a downward spiral and undoing all the hard work I had done to make sure I was always guard up against anybody outside of my family.

Nope, wasn't going to do it. If shit didn't get set up in time then that was just tough luck.

Fezco had wanted the real outdoorsman experience so he could sleep out in the dirt for it. I'd take the backseat of the caddy (or at least fucking half of it) until dawn. Lexi could do whatever.

“You've been dippin' into the supply cupboard if you think imma fall asleep right now,” I said, throwing a nod towards Lexi to make sure he knew why and resting my chin in the palm of my hand. Staring at a whole load of nothing outside of the window was dull as fuck but at least it allowed me to imagine that I was anywhere else but here.

The first thing I saw when I woke up was Fezco smirking at me through the rear view. I wiped a pool of drool from the corner of my mouth and was about to curse myself when Fez shushed me and nodded towards the passenger seat.

Lexi looked pretty much dead with her head propped against the window and her hair hanging over her face. Must have tired herself out or bored herself silly with lame ass singing and mouthing off because she was out for the count. Fez gently brushed her hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear.

She didn't look so smart while she was asleep. She looked like a pouty baby; with a little frown across her forehead and her lips pursed together making her cheeks look puffy. It was kinda cute, to be honest, but not enough that it justified the goofy way that Fez was smiling at her.

“You have a good sleep?” he asked me and it was me pouting then. I couldn't even remember dropping off. The last thing I remembered was my complete determination that I wasn't going to fall asleep.

“I don't know,” I said and Fez looked at me like I was a moron.

“How long did she last?” I asked, nodding over at Lexi.

Fez smirked again, drawing out his response to play my ass. “Long enough to say you looked adorable.”

I banged my head against the backseat and groaned. I was never going to live that shit down, I knew it. I sighed, putting all of my energy and annoyance into it so Fezco would know that I blamed him for everything. “At least tell me we're nearly there so I can run away from y'all.”

“About forty minutes out,” Fez said, his voice low so he didn't wake the baby.

And she didn't wake up until we got there so it was kinda funny to watch her jerk awake and stumble out of the car like a newborn deer who didn't know what walking was. I laughed my ass off at her because I had earned the right to do so at this point. She had put me through enough and I was damned if I wasn't going to enjoy catching her unawares for a moment.

“Stand By Me? Looks like you need to learn to stand by your fuckin' self, goofy ass,” I said, pointing at her and laughing after she had almost tripped over her own foot.

“Enjoy your nap?” she said, smugly because nobody did high and mighty like this bitch.

“I was dozing,” I muttered, darkly, stalking off towards a different patch of absolutely nothing.

Besides the barrier parking spaces and a tiny hut bathroom, there was literally nothing around but dirt and trees and knowing that we were already in the most modernised part of this place was making me feel fucking sick.

Imagining how much worse it was going to get was leaving me kinda dizzy.

“How are we gonna get all our shit to the campsite if we're parking the caddy here?” I asked, not knowing the answer but knowing already that it was going to be a stupid one.

“We're gonna carry it,” Fez replied, like Iwas the idiot.

“Carry it with what?” I said, slowly.

Fezco looked at me for a moment and I knew that look. It was the same look he used to give me when I was six and asking to go the park at like 3AM.

“With our backs.”

Lexi was still shaking the sleep out of her head and I saw her wince as she eyed all of the crap that Fez had packed.

“How far do we gotta carry it?” I asked, again talking deliberately slow because I got the feeling that Fezco just wasn't understanding the matter at hand here.

He bit his lip thoughtfully and glanced up at the sky like the answer was up there. “Well, as far as we need to. That's kinda how this works, Ash...we walk, we camp, we walk some more, we camp then walk a bit more...and that should lead us in a circle back here.”

“Hold the fuck up. Nobody told me there was gonna be walking involved in this shit and carrying stuff?--Nah, I'm going home.”

I could not believe it. I felt swindled. Conned.

Fezco rolled his eyes and sighed impatiently. “What the fuck did you think I was gettin' on your ass about hiking boots for? --and don't be so fuckin lazy. It'll do you good to get away from that computer and get some exercise—get some real air in your lungs. Now stop cryin' about it and pick up a bag.”

Who the fuck was this old ass man? “Bro, just because you want slide on backwards to when fuckin' dinosaurs walked the earth doesn't mean you have the right to drag me with you.”

Lexi had been keeping her mouth shut through our back and forth but I felt vindicated by the fact that her face was looking a little pale since Fez had told us his little 'walking' plan.

She was always going to take his side though even if it meant lying through her teeth.

“It'll be fun...refreshing,” she said, clearly trying to convince everyone including herself.

She moved to pick up a bag, which wasn't even one of the biggest bags there, but Fezco all but grew wings to fly over to her and snatch it from her hand, insisting that he wasn't going to have her straining her poor little lady back by carrying anything heavier than her own little lady self.

They argued back and forth over it for a minute before Lexi stomped her feet and refused to go any further. Seeing my opportunity to get the fuck out of here, I threw my full support behind her and even tossed in a few remarks about feminism and toxic masculinity to really get her fired up but Fezco finally folded and gave into her demands to let her break her own back as she saw fit.

“You can carry my share too, Lexi,” I said, being a modern feminist myself and all, but Fezco threatened to beat my ass and throw my computer in the trash when we got back if I didn't stop complaining.

“It's just three days and two nights,” I muttered to myself, repeating my new mantra after 'I'm not fucking going' and please, lord, strike me down had failed to work.

“Are we gonna stop anytime soon?” I said.

Walking was a pain in my ass and I meant that literally because my left butt cheek had been cramping like hell for the past hour.

Fezco once again looked up at the sky and I followed his gaze as though I could figure out what the fuck he was looking at but all I saw was trees and clouds.

“Not quite. We need to make sure we camp next to a water source,” he said and I knew he was trying to impress Lexi because he turned to her as he finished saying it. She smiled at him and went all girly like he was Einstein telling her why an apple fell on his head.

As the only sane person here, I decided to state the fucking obvious. “We literally have water in our bags. Half of the shit we're killing ourselves carrying is water.”

“Yeah,” Fez said, with a side eyed glance to Lexi and a snide smile crooking the corner of his mouth. “--but we might run out or it might get contaminated or some shit. Safety first,” he finished, smugly even though it would have been far safer if we stayed at home.

Lexi, after protesting and accusing Fez of not trusting her, had been left in charge of the map since she was carrying the lightest load out of all of us and she was handling that bare minimum of responsibility pretty well.

“Actually, I don't think we're that far; probably about another fifteen minutes if we keep the same pace.”

We carried on walking, all too weighed down to hold much of a conversation so it was even more shocking when something screeched loudly over the top of our heads and whatever it was flapped into the tree directly over me sending a shower of twigs and bird shit right down over my head.

I fucking hated nature and it knew it; that's why it was picking on me directly and why Fez and Lexi got to stand there enjoying the damn view—which was the exact same trees we'd been looking at since we got here except they were rustling and shit now.

“Look, it's a bird,” Fez said at the same time that Lexi said “Looks like a Chestnut Backed Chickadee.”

Fezco apparently thought that was just the smartest thing anyone in the world had ever said because he elbowed her lightly and said “You know about birds now?”

Lexi blushed and fluttered her eyelashes, saying “A little.”

--which was something she always said right before she launched into a lecture so deep and intricate that it was a sure fire way to trigger a migraine. I really missed my cellphone, I missed my music, I missed my airpods. I missed my bedroom door that I could close to get away from their bullshit.

Bird talk seemed to be something of a weird fucking turn on for Fez because he grabbed Lexi around the waist and kissed her, holding her awkwardly because of the bags strapped to them both.

“I love the way you talk,” he said, his voice low but since we were in the middle of nowhere, he might as well have broadcast it through a boom-box and I wasn't going to pick over what the timbre of his voice meant because that was fucking disgusting.

This whole scene was so pathetic that I genuinely considered climbing a tree just to get away from them both and it was only catching sight of the most beautiful thing in this whole place that stopped me.

A body of fucking water.

“Finally, we can rest,” I groaned.

“Yeah, we can,” Fez said, voice sounding a little breathy as he took in the view or recovered from smacking lips with Lexi. “Right after we've set the tents up.”

It didn't seem that complicated to me, especially not when there were written instructions that literally told a person what went where so I got my tent up pretty quickly and was already tossing in my sleeping bag while Fez and Lexi were still trying to decide if they were holding the instructions the right way up.

If reading a map while driving had been a hit of enlightenment that Fez and Lexi didn't always spend every second gazing into each others eyes like fools, then pitching a tent together was a complete revelation because they hadn't even gotten one side nailed down before she was threatening to stab his ass with a tent peg.

It was kind of hilarious watching Fez try to keep his patience with her and failing. Everyone seemed to think he was zoned out and laid back, 24/7, but I knew, personally, how snappy he could get when he was in a mood.

Lexi, however, was showing a level of stroppiness and a potential towards violence that I hadn't seen before.

But even I cringed when Fez told her to “Calm down and just read the damn instructions to me as they're written. Stop puttin' your own spin on it. ”

Even when her mouth dropped in shock and her expression settled into a glare, I still didn't take this argument seriously because I knew they were just going to end up crying over the moon together later on---but their bickering started to annoy me so much that I ended up sending them both to go sit on opposite tree stumps while I finished the damn tent myself.

“Wanna live on a farm but can't even put up a damn tent, bro?” I grumbled, assuming that was going to hit his pride in front of Lexi.

But he shrugged and cracked a beer, tossing me one as I worked. “Wouldn't even be using a tent if it were up to me,” he said. “We'd be sleepin' under the stars.”

And I saw the exact moment that Lexi folded on her petty mood. It was a flicker in her eye and the goofiest smile starting to play on her mouth; literally running the script of 'ooh, Fezco, how romantic' right through her little head.

I also saw the exact moment when she remembered the existence of bugs and her smile became a quick grimace. Looked like there were some exceptions to true love and romance.

“There you go, “ I said, exhaling a heavy breath. “There's your fuckin' tent.”

I paused for a moment to look at my amazing work while those two ungrateful motherfuckers said 'thanks' and left it at that.

Then I looked around. Tent, dirt, tent, more dirt, dirt, dirt---oh look, a fucking patch of grass, what a marvel!--- and then more dirt. My phone was dead, my spirit was in the gutter...

“So what the fuck do we do now?”

Lexi looked towards Fez for answers and Fez just blinked at me.

Turns out that I was kind of a genius and a prophet because all those times when I complained about there being fuck all to do in the middle of nowhere turned out to be completely right.

We all stared at each other awkwardly as we mentally ran down the list of what we would usually be doing at home. I'd be either handling business or at my computer-- taking a break to grab a snack or watch a movie.

Whatever Fez and Lexi were thinking about, I didn't want to know but what I did know was that the second I overheard any kind of fucking going on, I was packing my bags and leaving.

Even if I had to scrape together a jet pack from branches and bug shit, I was leaving.

It seemed to hit Fez just how quiet this place was and just how close my tent was to theirs because I saw the disappointment flood his eyes. I didn't feel sorry for him; not one bit because I had made it perfectly clear that this was not only a stupid idea but that he could have left my ass at home if he was determined to go.

Then Lexi decided to say the most 'girl' thing ever. “We could talk, I guess.”

“What, like, to each other?”

“No, to the trees, dumbass,” Fez said, gesturing to the trunk behind him like he was proving a point but he really wasn't because I would rather have talked to every tree in this place than listen to them mop the floor with their 'feelings.'

Absolutely not. Just because I had to suffer through nature with them didn't mean I was going to let them cross my boundaries and involve me in their soppy bullshit.

“Y'all talk if you want to. I'm goin' for a piss,” I said, stalking off before turning back and rooting out the Glock. I wasn't going to be caught out mid flow by a bear.

I took my sweet ass time before I headed back to Fez and Lexi; mainly to get away from them but also because I found this crazy looking beetle or something that was skinny up front but looked like it had a tank strapped to its back---and I must have been losing my mind already because it was actually pretty cool to watch it running through the leaves, going back and forth like it was trapped at the mall or something.

Even though time had no meaning in this shit hole, I think I probably lost about half an hour watching that bug do its thing because by the time I got back, Fez and Lexi were wrapped around each other on a blanket, talking about their love or some other unnecessary shit.

“This is real peaceful,” Fez said, sounding so content that it actually tripped something in my stomach a little. Maybe it was the fresh air getting to me but it was nice to see that expression on his face; just...unconcerned about anything.

As much as I bitched about my brother, and enjoyed it too, there was nobody else in the world that I loved more or wanted more for and while I didn't feel guilty about being dumped on his doorstep-- because its not like I had any say in the matter-- that didn't mean that I was unaware of how much he had done for me and how much he had sacrificed for me.

He was my big brother---even more than that since he had pretty much raised me--- and if running around the woods being goofy as fuck with Lexi Howard put that look on his face then I would at least try my best not to openly show how much of a dumb motherfucker I thought he was for it.

“Maybe we should come back alone next time,” Fez said softly, after Lexi had murmured her agreement. “We could sleep out here like this, wake up with the birds, fuck under the stars--”

Oh my fucking---gross.

That woke Lexi's ass up though and she almost tipped Fez over onto his side as she sat up straight. “I really don't want to swallow any bugs though,” she said, eyes glancing around her as she seemed to realise that the only thing separating her from the dirt, and whatever was crawling around in it, was a thin blanket.

Fezco laughed and sat up beside her, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “I'll keep all those lil bug asses away from you, promise” he said, making her laugh and cuddle into him.

She was looking at him like he just took his glasses off and confessed to being Superman. If I wanted to be really mean, I could tell her about the time that Fezco had broken his wrist and two fingers trying to stop a fly from dive bombing his face while he was sleeping in on a Sunday morning. The fly had survived and carried on taunting his ass for three whole mornings before it finally flew off to go be a bitch to someone else.

So as it stood, he was already one point down versus those 'lil bug asses' but because he had been a good brother to me, I wasn't going to step on his game until it was absolutely beneficial to me.

I'd had enough of this soppy bullshit though so I purposely cracked a twig to announce my arrival and to let their asses know that they needed to pause the fucking romance and give me some peace for once.

“Was about to send out the search party for you, bro,” Fez said, really nailing the 'dad' humor by laughing at his own joke.

“Was bein' nice,” I said. “Givin' you lame asses time to fill up on stupid love confessions so I don't have to listen to it all night. Can't be dealin' with that shit.”

Fez grinned and smirked at me. “Well, I hope you got your headphones and some battery left on your phone then or you gonna be hearin' worse than that.”

Lexi shot him a look of horror and pushed him away by the arm as Fezco laughed to himself like a naughty brat.

“Do not listen to him,” she said. “There's going to be nice, wholesome cuddling tonight. That's it.”

Except she turned out to be a fucking liar because just as I was settling down in my own tent for bed, what did I hear but rustling and giggling from their horny asses.

I unzipped my tent quicker than I had ever moved in my entire life. “Stop it!,” I yelled. “Whatever the fuck y'all are doin' I can hear you. This is illegal to involve me in this bullshit.”

It was quiet for a moment before I heard a scornful laugh in response. “Man, settle your ass down,” Fezco yelled back. “We ain't doin' shit you need to be worryin' about.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, sarcastically. “I heard y'all talkin' about fuckin' under the stars and shit before.”

There was a long pause, long enough that I thought I got his ass before he yelled back.

“Well, we ain't under the stars, are we? We're in a fuckin' tent. So plug ya ears and shut your ass up.”

The rustling stopped though and I knew Fez's horny ass wasn't responsible for that. He was probably going to be walking round like a bear, himself, tomorrow---one with a sore fucking paw--- but at least I could live out the rest of my life without wanting to drill holes through my eardrums.

Waking up in the woods was a weird experience but one that I surprisingly didn't hate. It felt kinda fresh to wake all toasty and warm from the sleeping bag with just enough of a chill on my face to keep that warmth from feeling sickening.

It was the birds who woke me, lulling me awake slowly and it was a nice change from being hollered up and dragged out of bed by my alarm. The tent around me made me feel like I was underwater or something and I decided to laze around and enjoy it for a bit because it wasn't like I had anything else to get up for.

That was until I heard the sizzle of bacon and within a second, I could smell it too.

With only the lure of breakfast motivating me, I unzipped myself from my sleeping bag, threw on the only hoody I'd been able to fit in my bag and dragged my ass out of my tent.

“What time is it?” I croaked because Fez and Lexi were already up and dressed. He was grabbing sodas from the mini cooler while Lexi was hovering over the camping stove, frying eggs and flipping bacon with a fork.

“Mornin',” Fez said.

“Yeah, mornin'. What time is it?” I said again, throat a little clearer now.

Fezco looked at me like I was an idiot. “Morning,” he said slowly.

I bit back a snappy response about how the fuck was I suppose to know that and how it wouldn't have killed him to bring a watch---and I only held my tongue because I still needed these people to feed me.

“It's just a little after nine,” Lexi said, gesturing towards the paper plates as a silent order for Fezco to pass them over to her; one he complied with as quickly as possible. She handed me a plate.

“Help yourself,” she said, with an eyebrow raised. She was putting me in a tough fucking spot here and she knew it. If I asked Fez to cook my breakfast, he would punish me for offending his precious Lexi by refusing and even though I could take care of myself well enough to survive at home, whatever they were using to cook breakfast on here looked like some deadly Wish contraption so it wasn't even worth the risk trying to do it myself.

“Nah, don't tell him that or there'll be none left for us,” Fez said, shooting me a smile. There was a hopefulness in his eyes; like as soon as I took a plate, I was suddenly going to back down and roll over for Lexi Howard just because his punk ass did.

Lexi grinned at him slightly and shook her head before she leaned in closer to me and whispered, “Ignore him. Help yourself.”

It wasn't the first time Lexi had offered me food and we both knew I had always refused just to spite her and remind her that I neither wanted or needed shit from her but it wasn't like I could grab a sandwich or a bag of chips out here and I needed the energy because God only knew what dumb ass shit Fez might have me doing later. It wasn't giving in, it was just self-preservation.

Even a lion wouldn't turn down a zebra steak just because a hyena dropped it at his feet.

I smirked at Fezco as I grabbed a helping plus an extra slice and he called me a baby under his breath. I knew him well enough to tell that he was probably stirring up a bad mood and I was dead certain it had to do with him not getting it in last night but that served his ass right.

Wasn't my fault that he insisted on ruining my weekend with this fucked up crack adventure.

He managed to get his revenge on me though because just as I was kicking back, enjoying the feeling of a full belly of eggs and bacon and actually enjoying the sounds of nature and shit, he decided that now would be the perfect time to remind me that there was no such thing as peace on earth.

“Gonna have to pack up soon; get ready to move on.”

And wasn't that a lesson to remember that just when you thought your trip through hell was over, there was more fucking walking.

Lexi sighed, the feminism evaporating out of her as she eyed the tents and camping supplies.

“At least there'll be less water and food to carry now,” I said because that breakfast had been pretty good and because, besides myself, she was seeming the most sane person here right now.

Fez was a tougher dude than most people realised and he had me beat on upper body strength. I was probably going to need her help if I was gonna roll his grumpy ass down a mountain.

The second walk sucked even worse and the only reason I got through it was by pretending I was a badass soldier on a training exercise or some shit. Adversity only made a person stronger, right? --- and I had learned that I was pretty adverse to hiking dirt trails in my Jordans.

My feet were burning and I found myself looking at both Fez and Lexi's dumb little hiking boots and wondering which ones were closer to my size.

They were lucky we eventually arrived because I was willing to fight either one of them for those boots by that point.

“I told you,” Fez said, as he smoothed ointment over my foot. He had been bitching about how he warned me that I was going to need proper footwear but the second I had sat my ass down and pulled off my sneakers, hissing as I peeled away my socks, he was on me like a doting granny.

Lexi was watching us, alternating between sympathetic looks towards me and horny ass looks towards Fez. She was halfway loving this shit but it was embarrassing as fuck having my brother not only proved right in front of everyone, but pampering my ass like I was a little kid again.

“Yeah, well---you should have made the walkin' part more explicit,” I muttered.

I was racking up a good selection of blisters on my feet now and despite Lexi's best effort at protesting against it, Fez and I had already decided that it would be better to burst them with the tip of a hunting knife.

She made a good effort trying to scare us with something called 'sepsis' or some shit but Fez told her that he had always popped blisters before and nothing bad had ever happened so that was that. It was a good lesson for her to learn that real life experience sometimes beat out 'book reading.'

“Oh my god, at least run it through fire or boiling water or something first,” she said when she finally realised she was wrong.

And to keep her sweet and let her feel like she was actually contributing, we both agreed to let her sear the knife with a lighter. It was probably a good idea to never tell her about that time I had to stitch Fez up with a sewing needle and some dental floss or her little head might spin right off.

“Maybe you should rest up,” Fez had said to me and I stood up and tested my feet, wincing pitifully.

But even with two compromised feet, I still managed to set up both tents because there was no way I was subjecting myself to another round of bitching and death threats between those two—and if Lexi followed through then I wasn't in any fit state, right now, to carry Fez to safety.

I knew Fezco was feeling pretty sorry for me though because he wouldn't stop fussing over me. I think he was feeling kinda guilty too because at one point, I overheard Lexi comforting him by telling him that I was kind of a dumbass for not listening to his advice about the hiking boots.

I'd get her ass later for that one but I was just too tired, sore, pissed off and bored to really give a fuck about it at this point.

--and honestly between the way she'd been carrying that camping shit and threatening Fezco's life---and with me not having a single good foot to stand on---I wasn't a hundred percent sure that I was in any sort of condition to hold my own against her in a fight right now.

“I'm gonna take a nap,” I said, miserably as soon as the tents were set up.

“Yeah, think imma go do a spot of fishing, catch us somethin' to put on the fire,” Fez said and Lexi let him know what she thought about his chances with that because she smiled at me softly and said; “I'm making tomato and rice soup for dinner—you want me to wake you up when it's ready?”

Like I was going to say no. The bacon and eggs had been the bomb and while I had pretty much refused to eat anything she had made before then, I was mature enough now to admit that Lexi was a pretty good cook considering how much of a nuisance she was in everything else.

“Thanks, “ I said, nodding and hopping off to my tent and I must have crashed out almost immediately because the next thing I remembered after that was being gently nudged awake for dinner.

“It's all homemade so it's nice and healthy for you and there's some bread buttered in that Tupperware box,” she said as Fez loudly clattered pots and pans around like there was a fucking bear on top of us.

“Catch any fish?” I asked and the look he gave me was enough to tell me that his fishing days were already over.

“Must be the wrong time of year,” Lexi said, with a smile aimed his way and she got a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the ass for it when he thought I wasn't looking.

Dinner must have been running late because there was already a dark cast over the sky by the time we sat down to eat, round a fire that Fezco kept stoking between bites. Bugs hovered and buzzed around us but the steam off the bowls kept them away from the food.

The soup was amazing, made even better by the evening chill coming in on the air. I could feel it warming my belly from the inside out; the creaminess of the rice going down so well against the tanginess of the tomato and there was something else in it...maybe garlic, that was just holding it all together. I enjoyed it so much that I got ready to fight Fezco for the leftovers but Lexi had made extra anyway so we both got to enjoy a second bowl.

I mean, not to discount Fez because he had fed me when I couldn't feed myself and he had done pretty well in mastering the art of grilled cheese and cold cut sandwiches but this was some next level, Gordon Ramsey shit.

It almost made me kick myself when I thought of all the meals I had turned down in order to make a point that I wouldn't be entertaining her presence in my home. I mean, I still hadn't decided yet if I was going to let Lexi stick around—even though she had already caught my ass sleeping and I didn't want to go through that again with another chick Fez picked up--- but if I did, then she was going to have to keep this shit coming because her being able to cook real food was the only real advantage she had to offer in my life.

Honestly though, she must have spiked that soup because I wasn't even mad when we ended up sitting around the fire together on our lame little foldable chairs and talking over some real irrelevant shit.

“Rabbits really can get pregnant twice, Fez. They have two uteruses. I'm not lying.”

“Dunno, Lexi,” Fez said, lighting another blunt off the firepit. The two of them had squashed their chairs so close together that I really couldn't figure out how one of them wasn't sitting with a chair arm rammed up their ass.

“Sounds like some Sci-Fi shit to me.”

He leaned back, arm around her shoulders and with a smirk, offered her a hit off his blunt. She rolled her eyes. He always did it and she always said no but he liked to tease her with the possibility. It was her own fault for telling him about the one and only time she had tried weed and how it knocked her out first and then kept her ass up to the point where she started to believe there were people living in her bedroom walls and pointing at her. By the time her sister Cassie had woken up and found her in the kitchen, Lexi had used up every single bit of baking stuff to make shit that she said she wasn't sure even existed because she was convinced it would otherwise go stale.

Fezco had apparently been there for the first part and loved to grumble over missing the 'best' part so he'd been tempting her ass with it ever since.

“Carry on and I'm going to throw it in the fire,” she said, playfully. “Maybe throw you in after it.”

Her smile was passive aggressive as fuck but Fez laughed and shifted underneath the blanket they were sharing. “Doesn't do you much good trying to throw me round any other time so I don't know why you actin' tough now?”

“Fez,” she said, tilting her head my way. It was too dark to see the blush on her cheeks but I knew it was there. She got all coy at even the implication of sex and I appreciated that because I didn't want to hear about it from him either.

“Oh, come on, Lex. He don't even know what we're talkin' bout until you get all shy over it. Coulda been talkin bout wrestling or karate—some shit like that.”

I rolled my eyes and settled down under my own blanket. Night had fallen by now so the temperature had dropped enough to have me wrapping my ass up like a burrito. Fez and Lexi weren't that far away from me the but the darkness had left them in shadow, flickers of campfire lighting them both up at random intervals.

“Yeah right," I snorted. “Y'all are really practicin' WWE moves on each other. What am I—five years old?”

Fez shrugged, grinning over at me. It wasn't like I was a moron who didn't know how this shit worked—I mean, we had the internet-- but Lexi seemed determined to shield me from the fact that her and Fez were obviously fucking...even though I didn't give a shit about it as long as I didn't have to overhear it.

Hell, if they were only fucking then I would have been happier about it. It was the stupid romance and relationship bullshit that I couldn't stand.

“I dunno,” Fez said. “Some of those moves---.”

“Okay, that's enough, ha ha,” Lexi quickly cut in leading to a round of laughter between me and Fez. Her expression was just daring him to say another word. She really was too fucking funny over this shit and it was the one thing guaranteed to have her clutching her Peter Pan collars and playing the dumb virgin.

“Let's move onto literally any other topic,” she said as our laughter died down. I liked these moments the most; with me and Fezco laughing at her ass and working her up into a self-righteous fluster.

But none of us really had anything to say that wouldn't automatically put a downer on the mood. We could talk about our drug dealing or her drug addict best friend, her drug addict father, her alcoholic mother, her fallout with her sister. If we really wanted to sour the evening then we could talk about how Fez's father used to knock him around and how he still had a ridiculous amount of loyalty to the woman who saved him from that shit only to use him in her own way... or I could bring up my junkie mother who dumped me with a drug dealer for coke and let fate decide if I was gonna be okay or not.

I knew I wasn't the only one thinking it because it was kinda funny how Fez and Lexi's expressions seemed to drop at the same time.

Fezco, of course, saw a blinding opportunity ---amongst avoiding the collective mess that all our lives made together---to start talking about farms and shit. Like, if I had known he was so obsessed with farms then I would have forced his ass to get out the house more a long time ago.

This whole farm shit had blind-sided me so much that I'd been convinced the idea came from Lexi and when I realised that it was a dream that Fezco had been sitting on all these years, it actually kinda hurt to know that there was a part of him that he didn't feel comfortable sharing with me.

Like, of course I didn't want to go broke and live on a farm because I wasn't a dumbass like that, but he was my brother—the only person I really had-- and he had to know that staying together was more important to me than anything else.

That didn't mean I wasn't going to give it my best effort to convince him that staying together in a beach house in Hawaii wasn't an overall better idea, though.

“I definitely want some goats,” Lexi said, firelight dancing through her hair and casting it in red. Her color wasn't far off from my own so I wondered if my hair looked the same to them. “I watched some videos on Youtube and now I'm in love with them. I didn't realise they were so protective.”

I took a drag off my own blunt. “A goat ain't gonna do shit though,” I said. “We need some dogs to run the perimeter; like proper guard dogs...a couple of Tibetan Mastiffs or some shit like that.”

I was well aware that I was playing into this bullshit farm dream but I figured it was no big deal since we were so far away from home and none of the shit said while high around a campfire counted anyway. The reality of life would take care of Fez and Lexi for me and even if it didn't, at least I could score myself a couple of badass dogs out of the whole deal.

Fez had gone quiet, head tipped back and he was watching me with a sleepy smile on his face; like I was the final piece of the puzzle-- and I wasn't an idiot so I knew exactly what that shit meant. He thought his ass had won something and because he had been such a good brother to me, I was going to let him think that-- but just for tonight.

He heaved a deep sigh and nestled down into his seat a little, inadvertently moving Lexi down with him as he did. “Y'all can have whatever you want; goats, dogs—anything. Imma be gettin' me a horse though.”

I snorted. “Thought you wanted to be a farmer—now you wanna be a cowboy; riding around on a fucking Mustang or some shit?”

Which was the wrong thing to say because Lexi's eyes lit up like she'd just plucked them out, dipped them right into the fire and shoved them straight back into her head.

“Here we fucking go,” I muttered to myself.

She gazed up at Fezco and gave him a look that made me want to throw my own fucking eyeballs into the fire and leave them there.

I swear to god if I heard any kind of 'yee-hawing' tonight neither of them would be making it home tomorrow. I'd already picked out three good cliff edges fit for shoving their asses off.

Apparently, I wasn't the only prophet in the family.

Fezco had been talking on about wanting to sleep under the stars all weekend and his wish was finally granted because when we all woke up the next morning, it was exactly where we had fallen asleep.

“I can't fucking move,” he said as he groaned and grumbled like an old man trying to pull himself up.

My own body was cramping like a motherfucker and my feet were still stinging and sore. Fezco stood up, rolling his back out and cracking his joints as Lexi stretched and held her neck, wincing painfully whenever she moved it to the right.

Fez's little 'I hate tents' agenda coming to pass had fucked us all up. If I was hurting after a chair all to myself then I knew these two fools were hurting even worse the way they had been squished all over each other.

Lexi blinked slowly and turned her head my way, trying to work out the crick in her neck. Her and Fez had been waking up before me so they were always washed and dressed by the time I left my tent each morning but she was rocking mad bird nest hair and panda eyes right now.

She licked her lips, exhaled and then and winced and I knew why because I hadn't brushed my teeth either last night and had brewed up some stale fucking morning breath myself but her and Fez still insisted on greeting each other with a quick mouth to mouth kiss so maybe falling in love had dulled their senses as well as their brain activity.

“I'll start on the tents. You wanna do the camping stove?” he asked her, surprising me because I thought he would want to linger more before setting off home.

---and while I was glad to hear we weren't going to be wasting time before heading home, my feet were still messed up so I was dreading the hour and a half long walk back to the parking lot.

Part of me even wanted to curl up into a ball and refuse to move until my blisters had healed over and it was only the thought of my computer, waiting for me at home, that was stopping me from throwing that tantrum.

I just had to grit my teeth and push through the pain and within the next five hours, give or take, I would be back at home and back online after my ass had enjoyed a long, hot shower.

“My back is fucked,” I overheard Fezco saying, prompting Lexi to start rubbing circles over it while he huffed and groaned.

“I'll drive us back,” she said, cutting off all avenues of protest with a kiss. I knew his ass would still fight her over it, though, especially when she pulled back and said, “You can read the map.”

I wasn't a mind reader but it was clear to me that we all seemed to be on the same page right now in wanting to get the fuck out of here and get home. The trip had been okay—still a complete disaster, of course, and I wasn't ever doing this shit again—but we had all survived, ate some good food and didn't even see a bear never mind get fucked up by one.

But I was ready to get home and start the recovery process in putting this trauma behind me and that recovery process required a complete gaming set up and a solid internet connection.

Before she packed away the camping stove, Lexi threw a quick look our way. “Does anyone want breakfast or do you want to stop for something on the way home?”

We had all eaten pretty late last night so breakfast wasn't a pressing concern to anyone right now. I told Lexi I was okay to wait but that her ass owed me dinner later.

“I am technically a child, you know,” I said when she raised her eyebrow at me. “You wanna shack up with my brother then it's your responsibility to feed me too.”

It was supposed to be an off hand funny comment but instead of laughing like a normal person, she smiled at me, softly and blinked like some sort of fluffy animal.

If she tried to hug me, I was gonna bite her...and I didn't give a fuck what Fezco had to say about it.

“Are we nearly there yet?”

The last walk was so fucking agonising for me that I had to threaten to fight Fezco at one point to stop him from picking me up and carrying me on his back.

Even without Lexi there, that was too much of a blow to my pride. I was fourteen, not four and, unless I was literally dying, Fezco's days of carrying me around like a baby were something I was happy to leave in the past.

“My soles are on fire,” I said because 'My feet hurt' didn't seem to be sending the same message. It wasn't like I was begging for sympathy, I was just stating simple facts.

Fez had finally stopped saying 'I told you so' but I could see it written all over his face and I knew he was pissed that the hour and a half walk took almost two and a half hours because I had to keep stopping for rest breaks.

But I didn't give a fuck because this wasn't my dumb idea in the first place.

He could go on his own next time and leave me and Lexi at home to enjoy our quality-cooked meals in a sane environment because I could tell by how quickly she walked that I wasn't the only one desperate to get back to some civilised society.

Come to think of it, for someone who was so adamant about making the most of this crack adventure, Fez was being a hypocrite in doing a whole lot of whining about how getting back was taking forever.

“Why you in such a fuckin' hurry anyway?” I said, dropping my ass onto a log and rolling my calf muscles between my fingers. “I thought you liked this shit---what's the matter—you all wound up cause you didn't have the chance to 'rustle the covers' for the whole weekend?”

He stared at me for a moment before his lips twisted into a smirk. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Lexi turn her head but not before I caught the blush lighting up her cheeks.

“Did more than rustle some covers, Ash—rustled a couple of trees, couple of bushes...” Fezco said, laughing his ass off even more as Lexi glared at him harder. When her pouting didn't let up, he rambled over to her—a little stiffer and slower than usual-- and curled her up into a gentle headlock.

“Told you I could be quiet,” he said, pinching at her cheek, chuckling to himself as she swatted his hand away and tried to push his ass over.

I groaned because I hadn't noticed a single thing but even the thought of it was fucking disgusting.

“Y'all are fuckin' gross.”

After a Peggy's breakfast, that I told Lexi she needed to remember the taste of because I was counting on her to recreate it, and a much quicker drive home, we finally reached the doorstep of the real world again.

The real world was kinda loud and smelled kinda shitty but it had my computer in it and at least four walls to put between me and and all the fucking that was apparently being snuck in right under my nose so I was glad to be home. I was glad to be able to sit on my own sofa and complain about how much my fucking feet hurt without anyone bitching at me about how we needed to hurry up because it looked like it might rain.

“Don't get too comfortable,” Fezco said, kicking at my shin while I lounged on the couch. “We gotta unload the car.”

I noticed how he'd waited until Lexi had hauled ass to the shower before we absolutely had to unload the car.

Dinner wasn't enough for this shit, I wanted dessert too.

As I was soaking in the bathtub on a belly of Chilli Chicken, I took stock of the weekend. It had sucked but not as much as I thought it was going to and some of the reasons why it sucked had kind of been my own fault. This was my own personal assessment of course because as far as Fezco was concerned, he had ruined three whole days of my life and I was never going to forgive him for it.

I wasn't trying to be a bitch about it but I had to put my foot down because I didn't want him trying to pull that shit again.

My whole body was killing and Lexi was still holding her neck a little to the left but Fez's back seemed right as rain since the two of them had disappeared into Fezco's room with the rolling pin and a bottle of extra virgin olive oil; both of which we used to fucking cook with but when I brought up the fact that they weren't designed for beating Fez's back into shape again, Fez told me to shut up unless I was going to learn how to actually use them since I'd never cooked a day in my life before.

And since I wasn't planning on starting now, I just said, “Whatever, you better keep the fuckin' noise down. You've already traumatised me enough.”

But when they did eventually come up for breath, he seemed a lot more relaxed and flexible in his joints...and he seemed happier.

And if Fezco was happier then I suppose I was happier too.

And if Lexi kept turning out those meals, then I suppose I could be happy enough with that.


The End