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she says something mumbling from where she’s sitting on the bedside, staring out the window. “not right now, babe,” says jd, tongue-in-cheek both literally and in tone as he stands at the mirror of the old antique vanity they found on the street the other day. “i’m doing my skincare routine.”
veronica doesn’t move from where she’s sitting on the edge of the bed. she glares out the darkened window, hotly. “you buy into capitalism at every turn.”
“do i now,” says jd to the mirror, airily pulling another swipe of lotion over the arch of his forehead. he has a decent job writing editorial for the local paper now. susan said he’s come a long way in therapy last week. he figured out that moisturizing isn’t the end of the world after all. strange to take care of himself.
veronica’s reflection is watery in the low light of the windowpane. jason preens quietly in his mirror, jumping slightly and then breathing out a curse when a car alarm goes off outside the new apartment. blaring in the distance, lights nobody can see. veronica sighs and buckles a bit into herself.
mom and dad keep asking her when she’s planning on applying to law school. law school doesn’t take you if you didn’t do any internships. there’s no way to explain you were too busy because spent all your free time in college making sure your boyfriend wasn’t putting himself back in the hospital. there’s no way to excuse how you spent the three years after that underachieving, reaching for someone who can finally do his own thing now but doesn’t know at all how to be there for you, because now you don’t have anyone else. there’s no way to understand what’s going on when your brain keeps forcing the whole thing of it away like two positive magnets, blurring it all, shutting everything down until everything is paralyzing static that you can’t think your way out of anymore. alone for so long, nobody noticing because you supposedly have everything under control, and it’s too much effort to care about someone who’s so clearly a burden, who must have done this to themselves on purpose, because they’re bad, because they were doing so well before. having your own quiet muffled breakdowns, night after night. next to someone you fought so hard for, cold, lonely, and all by yourself.
“you sound like how i did in college when you talk now,” she says, darkly, because she can’t help herself. she watches herself turning heather’s ancient red scrunchie over and over again in her hands. “and you sound like how i did when we met each other in high school, when you talk about your life.“
jd stiffens and scoffs. turns to her lazily. “are you kidding? an hour ago i told you that if anyone perceives me for the rest of time i was gonna go kill myself. and you kept talking about how much you like percieving me just to piss me off. now you’re gonna bitch at me cause i’m putting lotion on to make myself feel better?” he shakes his head, turning back. “ree-ee-eal funny how fast you forget the context.”
veronica keeps picking at the scrunchie like an oozing wound. limp and cut. she wanted him to sit by her while he did his lotion. she shouldn’t have tried to help. “are you saying that my lack of respect for boundaries is what caused that dynamic,” she says, dully.
“what dynamic, ron?” jason is thumbing over his chin in the mirror again. “i’m not saying anything.”
“so what’s funny then.” the scrunchie is so old. unwearable these days.
“that you're trying to use it as a gotcha?”
“am i doing that.” she’s quiet. when did she get so quiet? the scrunchie is a dead thing in her hands.
another swipe over the chin, jason raising his eyebrows, evaluating himself, evaluating veronica’s small form in the reflection-room’s back. evaluating the tenseness — he’s real good at it now, after it all, thanks to bud. “sure reads that way.” he says, blithely, and veronica snaps.
“maybe i’m just fucking sad and i miss something i used to have, you fucking asshole,” veronica says, turning to face him, baring her teeth. desperation or grief or rage or catharsis — doesn’t matter which — then, smaller, more curled-into herself, nursing the wound that she knows she reopened herself. “god.“
“what's your damage?” jason says, rounding on her at the betrayal and throwing the stupid tube of lotion down. “you miss me being sad?”
“i miss me, i miss me, not being sad,” veronica says to herself hopelessly, and then to jason with vitriol, since she may as well be a bitch at this point and the old her isn’t fully dead yet: “but i’m glad you could make it about you though.“
“you made it about me, dude!” jd is drawling despite getting louder, and his eyes flash at her as he leans back on the vanity counter. he opens his palms, because he can’t believe she’s pulling this shit again, and she can’t ever just let him be happy. “you literally opened this conversation by saying, ‘ohh, you sound like how I did in college, you sound like how i did in high school when you talk about your life.’" he shakes his head, tilts his chin back as he looks helplessly up to the sky. grinning unhappily, ghoulishly now, searching for the rebuttal. “accusatory,“ he lights upon, lifting his pointer in the air like a prosecuter presenting a point. ”your honor, if i may present to the court: the conversation is about jason dean and how he's a dickhead for not hating himself anymore. not about miss sawyer and how she feels.“ he settles back again, quirking corner of his mouth in contented, bitchy irritation.
“sure,” says veronica, dully, and yields the floor.
“all right,” says jason dean after a moment, and turns back to the mirror for a moment, awkwardly, and then follows her down the hall.
the car alarm is still going, a bit more audible in here. he catches up to her as she’s grabbing a few clothes off the back of the couch where she didn’t have the energy to pick up after herself anymore, stuffing them in a plastic bag as she moves in a slow circle around the room, towards the door. “glad we could steer the conversation in a direction that makes you feel justified in not having to care about me, jason,” she seethes. “really happy for you.” t-shirt. t-shirt. socks. “i’m glad that we could take this time to celebrate the fact that you no longer want to kill yourself, because that is a lot more of a pressing matter than the fact that i currently do, but y’know! everything you do is special, and anything i do is disappointing, i guess!” jeans. dirty old underwear. socks, because it’s so cold and rainy out, like how it was when she was shivering for human touch last night.
“yes, because I didn't stay up last night to talk to you or listen to you this morning or tell you that I would help you in achieving the goals that you want to achieve,” jd says, looming a few feet away. they sat right there on the couch, never touching, because he hates touching, after everything. he offered her one of her sweaters. he thought he did a good job with that.
veronica stuffs a final shirt in the bag, the roughness of the motion catching the old scrunchie on something in there, snapping the elastic meanly against her wrist. she shrugs, shaking her head. “i don’t have goals anymore,” she says. like she means it, which she does, which she hates that she does. she starts moving to the door.
her reflection crosses the pane of the window. it’s really coming down outside. that car alarm is still going off. there are sirens with it now. and jason dean is following her across the room. “I'm trying to help you,” he says, and he doesn’t know if it’s more or less desperate than he wants to show. “but when you refuse to be helped and are actively hostile when all i’m doing is trying to be alive, i—” he’s using words from therapy. she’s in the window. she’s at the door. she’s waving goodbye. he runs a hand helplessly through his own hair. he’s gesticulating, one left middle finger short. guns and windows and flashing lights. “what am I supposed to do?”
“i don’t know. maybe you should ask me from when we were 17 for the answer.” she finally gets the door open, and turns to face him in the port. “but that person would tell you to stick around, and keep caring for people who need help no matter what.” she reaches out and grabs the closest coat from the rack they have next to the door, pulling it on. the scrunchie is so limp that it falls from her wrist in the process. the coat’s singed fabric is shrugged over the shoulders and immediately falls down to the ankles. lights from the police car are at the end of street, flashing intermittently, red-blue-red-blue-red against the old familiar black. “and that obviously didn’t end well for me, did it?”
“that's what I'm doing, veronica,” jason dean says, desperately, achingly, tenderly, to veronica, soaked in front of him and leaving to the night. he picks up the scrunchie from the ground, clasping it in his nine fingers like a prayer. “i'm still here. i'm still trying to help you.“
“you can’t do anything really,” the person in front of him says blankly, who is wearing jason’s old trench coat, static too thick in the head to see jason’s flinch. because nobody can do anything, really, no one can, not even the person who did it to themselves. no emotion to it and no blame, no one can bring back the dead. no one can bring back what’s gone, ever, ever again. why try?
and it reaches out. and it takes back the scrunchie. and between them, the door closes shut.