#vcdifferentage

The teenage girl unlocked the front door, pushing the screeching screen in. She tossed her backpack on the table. The square house was small, only containing 1 floor and 3 rooms, not including the bathroom. The kitchen and the living room shared one space. Lila’s room, that she use to share with her sister, was to the right. Her mother’s room sat on the left. A stack of mail, mostly bills, piled up on the kitchen table along with some dirty dishes. Lila thought her mother would have been at work, but the TV hummed lowly in the corner of the room. Her dark eyes traced to the other side of the room. All she could see from this angle was her mother’s hand hanging off the side of the couch next to a half empty bottle of Whiskey.

“Hey, mom.” Lila croaked out almost positive her mother was passed out. Silence echoed back to her. She untied her toes, kicking them to the side before making her way towards the couch. The light from the TV highlighted her moms face. Lila often wondered what the woman looked like prior to all of the drinking. Now her mother often looked ill, like she had the flu. Lila sat on the ground next to the couch, picking up the bottle of alcohol. She checked over her shoulder one more time to make sure her mother was sleeping before taking a swig for herself. Lila hated Whiskey. It tasted like a dead old man, in her opinion. She was starting to realize the more she drank it, the less it tasted like garbage.

Lila placed it back down on the ground. In some ways, times like these were when she felt closest to her mom. When she was younger, after her sister passed, she found she had no one to speak to anymore. The young girl would talk to her mother, asleep on the couch, because it seemed when she was awake she wanted nothing to do with Lila.

She hadn’t done it in a while, finding comfort in others now. “Some guy at school said he wanted to have sex with me. He said it like it was a compliment, but I’m not sure. I might do it. Have sex with him, I mean. He’s cute. I think he’s popular. Maybe he’d invite me to parties if I did.” Her stream of conscience started flowing from her lips. Her eyes traced the characters fighting on TV, even though she had no idea what was happening. “I think I want to have sex with someone else and maybe it will be helpful to know what I’m doing beforehand.”

Lila turned back to look at her mother, noticing now for the first time she looked different than normal. She fought the instinct to call an ambulance, recalling the other time she did that her mother was furious. The teen didn’t know they costed money. The lanky brunette stood from her spot quickly, running over to rummage through the cabinets for a metal bowl. She’d done this before. She placed the metal bowl right next to the couch as she rolled her mother over, so her head was hanging just slightly. Lila pried the woman’s mouth open, delicately sticking her fingers down her throat. She hoped she hadn’t gotten home too late. Her fingers poked at the back of the fleshy tube until her mother’s limp body started to retract. She couldn’t move her hand in time, catching some of the bile on her skin. With her other hand, she held the older woman’s hair as she began to vomit into the metal bowl.

Lila sat there petting her mother’s hair for around a half an hour, before the woman peeled herself from the surface of the couch. Not a word was exchanged between the two. She tried to tell herself her mother was simply embarrassed, but it was hard not to let darker thoughts seep into her mind.  Did her mother not love her? Did her mother wish she’d been the one that drowned in the pond instead of her sister? Lila felt the cycle of thoughts begin as she watched her mom walk to the bathroom and shut the door.

She carried the dirtied bowl to the kitchen, rinsing it out over and over until the stench seemed almost gone. Maybe she should call Mari and see if she could sleep over, or see if Josh was still awake. Lila shuffled down the carpeted hall to her room, closing the door slowly behind her. She peeled off her clothes tossing them in the pile by her dresser. Tears began to stream down her face as she climbed into bed.

In the silence of the house, she heard the shower turn off. Her mother closed the bedroom door behind herself, only to leave the house entirely a few minutes later. Lila wondered where she went. She wondered what made her mother so sad. All she wanted to do was fix it.

Lila climbed out of bed, now with the house to herself. She grabbed the Whiskey bottle from beside the couch, bringing it back to her room. It felt like the only thing she knew about her mother. She wanted to understand, and she was beginning to. The teenage girl laid back in bed, taking swigs of the amber liquid as the rush of intoxication began to consume her. It felt better than the pain of wondering. It certainly did.

“And?“ he says coolly. “I didn’t realize you were monitoring my sexual activity, Deej. I could’ve made it easier and started a Google sheet for you.”

“God, you’re so fucking —” He breaks off, hand coming away from his hair to ball into a fist briefly and go limp again. Jas can see his jaw muscles working, too. His own posture hardens, but worst of all, he can feel his throat swelling up like it does when his emotions take him off guard and there’s suddenly a horrible possibility of tears. Normally, this wouldn’t bother him — he hasn’t given a shit in years what anybody thinks about him sleeping around, but DJ is different. Because he likes DJ. Kind of a lot, actually, only he’s still been trying to figure out how to deal with that.

“I’m so fucking what?”

“Selfish,” says DJ. “You’re so fucking selfish, Jasper.”

Jasper laughs incredulously. “For fucking Ian? Are you serious?”

“Are you serious?” asks DJ. “You’re gonna fuck one of my friends —?”

“Your friends?” Jasper echoes, twisting in his seat and raising his voice. “I’m sorry, what the fuck am I, a leech?”

“Oh my god —”

“No, I’m glad you’re being honest,” Jas cuts him off. “I’m so, so glad you’re being honest, DJ, because I wouldn’t wanna go around thinking your pretentious asshole friends actually like me when they’re really just tolerating me like they would any of your hookups —”

“We’re just hookups, huh?”

“What does that even mean?” Jasper demands. His heart is pumping so hard he can feel it in his fingertips, and far off in the distance there’s a low, threatening roll of thunder. “What the fuck does that even mean, what else are we supposed to be? Boyfriends?”

DJ stares at him a few seconds, frowning, like he’s trying to read beneath the words, then says in a low voice, “I thought we were…” He shakes his head. “Something.”

“We literally fuck other people all the time,” says Jas.

“Yeah,” DJ agrees, “strangers. One night stands. Not my fucking friends.”

“I’m sorry, is this for real?” Jasper laughs. The tears are finally stinging behind his eyes. “So we were, like, unspokenly ‘something,’ whatever the fuck that means, while also openly having casual sex with other people every weekend and you being literally incapable of showing any emotion towards me that isn’t horny or angry or both?”

“We talked about my fucking dead cousin a couple weeks ago, Jasper!” DJ shouts just as a deafening crack of thunder rattles the sky. To Jasper’s utter horror, he realizes he isn’t the only one on the verge of tears. “Last week you were telling me about that dude who bullied you in high school!”

“Yeah, and then you blew me off to fuck some girl from your Poli Sci class the next day.”

“I didn’t fucking blow you off!” DJ says. “We didn’t have plans —!”

“Oh, we didn’t have plans!” says Jas, approaching hysterics. “Cool cool cool, so let me just get this straight. We’re something when I feel like fucking somebody so you can act all betrayed and shit but when you’re telling me you’re too busy to hang out because you’re fucking someone, that’s, like, totally fine and normal.”

“You fucked Ian!” DJ says again. The side of his fist comes down on the wheel. “How do you not see the difference there?”

“Why didn’t you just tell me you fucking liked me then!” Jas yells, and wipes furiously at his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie. “You could’ve just said it!”

“You’re impossible to talk to, Jasper.” His voice is cold and Jasper realizes suddenly that something has broken between them. Just like that, with no warning or gentle easing into it. “I never know what the fuck you want from me, don’t act like I could’ve just come out and been like, ‘hey, by the way, it’d be cool if we could go on a date or something,’ when you know you’d have sprinted in the other direction after laughing at me.”

“Incredible, that’s your assumption, is it —?”

“I’m not finished,” DJ says over him, and Jasper’s jaw clicks shut. “I can’t keep up with you anymore. One day you’re talking about how it’s hot when we ‘hate fuck,’ whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean, and I never said anything ‘cause, like, yeah, it was fun at first when you were this really interesting and super hot little fucking freak obviously starting fights with me on purpose, whatever, we both got off on it. But then lately you have these moments sometimes where you’re, like…” He pauses, clenches his jaw, swallows, and Jasper wipes at his cheeks again but stays silent. “You’re, like, kinda soft or whatever? And it seems like maybe you’d want more. But then the other night I asked you to stay over and you got all freaked out and left. And then you fucked. Ian.” He sighs. “And that’s it for me, Jas. I’m not doing this anymore with you, it’s emotionally exhausting.”

Jasper licks his lips and turns away to stare out the windshield, where the wipers are working fruitlessly against the downpour.

“Okay,” he says. 

Next to him, DJ shakes his head again and utters a short, humorless laugh. “Okay,” he echoes.

“So we’re not going to Opus, then.”

“Nothing to say, huh?”

“What do you want me say? You just told me you’re not doing this anymore.”

“And that’s cool with you?” says DJ. “You’re fine just calling it quits, just like that?”

“What should I do, DJ?” says Jasper sarcastically. “Beg you to give me a chance to explain myself? Yeah, I’m kind of a fuckwit and bad at relationships, I know that and I’ve never pretended otherwise, but don’t act like you’re some patron saint of communication, alright? Don’t act like I’m the evil sex demon luring you into an emotional trap, you could’ve told me how you were feeling straight up, and I’m not talking about asking me to have a sleepover after we fuck —”

“You would’ve done what you always do!” DJ says desperately. “You would’ve changed the subject or turned it into sex or suddenly had somewhere to go and you know it!”

“I’m allowed to be freaked out!” Jasper shouts. “I’m sorry, okay! This shit isn’t fucking easy for me, it’s not like I don’t have feelings for you, you fucking know I do!”

“Then why did you fuck Ian?” DJ says, and Jasper buries his face in his hands, palms pressing into his eyes until he sees stars. Ian, Ian, Ian. 

“Because you blew me off,” he admits finally, dropping his hands and turning back to DJ. “Because you could’ve canceled on that fucking rando when I asked if you wanted to hang out the other night but you went out of your way to tell me you had plans to get your dick wet, DJ. I’m not the only one culpable here, okay? You fucking do it too. You play games. You wanted me to know you were fucking someone.”

For a long minute there’s only the sound of the rain. Then DJ says, “I wanted you to tell me not to.”

“Well that’s fucking manipulative and weird,” says Jasper. 

“Yeah, it is,” says DJ. “The way we act with each other is fucked up.”

“Great. Good thing we’re done then.” He picks at his chipping blue nail polish. “You freak out at Ian too or is it just my fault?”

“He just told me two minutes before you came out here.”

Jas whips his head around, pausing in his anxious picking. “Ian told you?”

“Yeah, he texted me.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause he feels bad, Jasper,” DJ says wearily. “‘Cause he and everyone else knew we were a thing even if we hadn’t put a label on it. And yeah, obviously I’m pissed at him too, it was a huge fucking betrayal. If you didn’t think it was a big deal, why didn’t you tell me?”

Instead of answering — because the answer is that Jasper did know it would hurt him, and maybe he’d been pulling the exact same thing DJ had pulled with that girl the other night — he picks up his backpack from where he’d set it between his feet.

“Are we going to Opus or not?” he asks. “‘Cause I need art supplies.”

“No,” says DJ, “we’re not going to fucking Opus. Are you gonna answer the question?”

“What’s the point?” Jasper asks. He feels distinctly like he’s going to throw up. 

“‘Cause I wanna hear you say it. That you did it on purpose.”

“Fine,” Jasper says tonelessly. “I did it on purpose. Happy?”

“Not even a little.”

“You, hard to please?” says Jasper, fingers on the door handle. “That’s new.”

“You know, we may have both done fucked up shit to each other, Jas,” he says, “but you put the last nail in the coffin when you fucked one of my best friends. This could’ve been something. Now it can’t.”

“Great,” says Jasper. The tightness of his chest and stinging in his eyes tells him the next time he opens his mouth, he’s going to start crying for real. And he desperately wants to be in his dorm when that happens. “Is that it then?”

“Guess so.”