#perfectxenemy

Movie/music/culture enlightenment night had always been at Joseph’s. That’s the way it was, it was easier to get to than Nikki’s apartment. Nikki had hoped it would stay that way at least until she was able to sleep on a bed and eventually get one in her room. 

“Hey, Nik?”

“Yes?”

“Fancy doing movie night at your place tonight?”

There were alarm bells going off in Nikki’s head in the second she hesitated before answering Joseph’s question. “Sure, why not?” Nikki could only hope that Joseph didn’t see the uneasiness in her smile. She wasn’t sure how well she hid it. 

Joseph apparated them both to Nikki’s door, while Nikki pulled her keys from her jacket pocket. She tried to make her motions in unlocking the door and walking inside fluid rather than hesitant. Although she doubted that she was portraying any sort of normalcy. “Come on in.” That sentence never sounded so awkward to her. She stepped over the threshold, mentally cursing herself for letting this happen without at least trying to make an excuse and escape it. 

Her apartment was quite empty, with her room right at the back looking as if it was the only room that Nikki inhabited. Which it was. The living room was filled with a couple of boxes annoyingly in the centre, marked very clearly with ‘clothes’ in a somewhat decorative cursive script. The kitchen was bare, there were no dirty dishes, no cups in the sink or on the countertop to be washed, no calendar on the wall or notes on the door. It was like it hadn’t been used. Which it hadn’t. Nikki kept her wine and her blood at work. She was hardly home. 

Nikki walked straight to her room, and stepped out of her heels before walking over to one of the four shoe closets in the corner of her room. She hadn’t turned around to look at Joseph since she stepped inside and now she wasn’t sure she wanted to. 

Nikki’s room was very simple. It was in the shape of a box with the bottom right hand corner pushed out a little further than was necessary, but it gave Nikki a sort of hole to sleep in. In four of the corners were Nikki’s shoe closets. Against the wall opposite the door was a huge closet, which held pretty much everything including clothes, a couple of wigs and makeup sets. Except any personal effects. Against the shoe closet in the top right hand corner was the painting that Joseph had given to her for Christmas. Opposite that was a folded up blanket and a small stack of three books. There was this huge empty, carpeted space in the middle of the room. 

When Joseph walked into Nikki’s apartment, he was a little surprised at how she lived. Given her interests, he expected her apartment to be more decorative or even lavish. At least a little more lived in. It was rather small, and cosy. Her entire apartment just looked empty as if it served as nothing more than a storage unit. 

Then he stepped into her room, immediately noticing the shoe closets as well as his painting. Then came the slow revelation that from the lack of a bed and the folded blanket in the corner that Nikki, if at all, slept on the floor. He wasn’t sure what to think. He didn’t want to make assumptions either. So he kept quiet until Nikki piped up:

“You can go, y’know. You don’t have to stay.” Now she just sounded pathetic and she knew it. This entire situation was pathetic. 

“Why would I leave?” Joseph asked. Nikki’s mind was interesting sometimes, it had so much locked inside it, that what made sense to Nikki was lost on everyone else, and now was no difference. 

Nikki sighed, she wasn’t looking at him, she couldn’t bare to look at him and let him see the shame in her eyes. She wasn’t ashamed of living like this - this was what she wanted, this was just going to be the first time someone actually knew about it. “Because. You might think I’m weird, and not like me anymore.” Nikki’s life was based on reputation and appearance. How people saw her, mattered and breaking that persona was difficult. “Or you might, I dunno, think that I’m crazy.” She made a noise in dismissal and in frustration at herself. She should have never let this happen. 

“Nikki, you’re not weird, and whether or not I like you is not going to be based on whether you sleep on the floor or on a bed.” His tone said ‘don’t be ridiculous’. “You’re not crazy. I’m sure there’s a reason for this.” Joseph took a couple of steps forward, gently pulling on her arm to turn her around to face him. “You don’t have to explain that reason to me. But I’m certainly not gonna leave because I gotta lay my ass on the floor. I want to spend time with you, the specifics don’t really matter.”

“I hate myself for doing this. If I’d have known, I would’ve done something.” Nikki gestured uselessly to where a bed would’ve gone in her room once she worked her way up for it. 

“For doing what? Talking about this? C’mon Nik, you can’t keep everything to yourself and blaming yourself when things don’t go according to plan. That’s not fair. C’mon, we can talk about this another time, under better circumstances. Let’s just watch a movie on my laptop, okay? That’s it, nothing else. No deep conversations about psyches or the supernatural or any of that. Just a movie. You still want to do that?” He didn’t want to force her into staying uncomfortable or distressed. 

Send me a 🐾 & when I reach ten of them, I’ll post a picture of my pet.

9/10

Running your hands under warm or semi-hot water often works might not be permanent but it helps and it relaxing.

🐋- share a Weird/funny story?

HMMMM. 

Well, last week my fiance got drunk and forgot how to play the game Yahtzee. It was a disaster trying to explain the game to him. Me and two others trying to help him. Hilarious. Grown ass man trying to figure out Yahtzee. LOL