This is about where she walks in. The girl he called a slut. The girl we argued over.
And then he says, "Hey."
And then he says, "Can I talk to you?"
You are the one that wanted me gone, I said.
You wanted me out of here.
"I have some things to say," he says. "I'd rather do it on the phone."
"What, that I'm stupid and worthless?" comes my less than sincere response. "You can tell me that here."
I pause.
"Well cut me some slack ok, this ain't gonna be easy."
"So call already. I'll listen."
I wait a few moments and the phone rings. I stand up to go get it and my friend says, "Gee, I wonder who that is."
I stand for a bit. Ring. Ring.
"Fuck it," I say. "I'm comfortable. I'm going to let my parents get it." Mom walks in and hands me the phone, and gives me sort of a chuckle. I told her earlier we were fighting, he and I.
"Way to answer the phone, there."
I sit down.
"I was comfortable. I'm not gonna move for you."
He laughs a little, and I laugh a little, and we pause, and we both begin to say "anyways" at the exact same moment, but don't finish the word because we start laughing again.
"I'm sorry and I was wrong," he says.
"Wait. Say that again."
"I'm sorry and I was wrong."
"Yeah. That's right."
And all I can really think is, Fuck, Why am I doing this, I said I wasn't going to talk to you, You weren't supposed to apologize, You fucking never apologize, And you never call, And you never call for the purpose of apologizing, And what the hell are you getting out of this?
"So did you tell her about what I said?"
"About what?"
"Last night."
"Oh. Yeah."
We laugh.
"I hate it when you do that."
"What, you mean the thing where I play dumb and then admit to it anyway?"
"Yeah. That. Except I like to call it lying."
"It's not lying," I quip, "It's acting. You just don't appreciate art."
And we laugh some more.
It takes me ten minutes to get off the phone with him, and I feel guilty when I do it. I tell him I'm painting, but my friend is over, and I feel like an asshole talking to a boy while she is sitting on my bed with nothing to do.
My friend tells me later, after watching me, that I'm in love with him. That I get all giggly and happy, and lay on the floor and twirl my hair when I'm talking to him.
That I don't do that with anybody else.
And it's just so fucked up. He doesn't love me. He could never love me. Everyone close to him knows that he just fucking plays with me.
It's like classical conditioning. Skinner performed experiments with pigeons, specifically using random intervals. The pigeon would have to hit a button to get food. If the food was distributed at random intervals, if the pigeon could not consistantly tell when food would next drop down, then the pigeon would peck up to over a thousand times before giving up.
It's me, it's fucking me reduced to a science project. I don't know when it's coming, so I just keep going, hoping that the next reward is just around the corner.
I'm so fucked up.