Figurative Scenario 1.5

If I were to add this to the zombie book, I'd need to make sense of it. Use the same fight from real life, or make up something? That's a good question...

Names have been changed to keep the people involved anonymous.

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He invited me to go for a drive with him practically the instant he got his new car.  His parents didn't know about our fight, it seemed, so I got in the car with a smile and waved goodbye for their sakes.  If it wouldn't have made matters worse, I'd have lit a cigarette, just to give my hands something to do since I wasn't the driver as I usually was.  I didn't know if that was ok yet, though, nor were we on friendly enough terms for me to feel ok asking either.  Instead of lighting one, I decided to just settle for playing with my lighter instead.

It was silent for what seemed forever, and I was too pissed off to realize how weird it was for him to invite me to the conversation and not even start it, so I just started it myself, “Why do you hate Mark?”  I got myself more comfortable in the new interior before continuing, “I mean you said that under other circumstances you could have been friends, so why can’t you play nice now?”

He sighed as he looked behind him, getting over to the right side of the road and as he turned, he admitted just what I wanted to hear.  “Jealousy.  If there’s one thing Vern and I have in common, it’s the deep sense of protective ‘mine-ness’ that we feel towards our mate.”

I chuckled sarcastically, feeling a little pissed off that the person I felt abandoned me was who he'd brought up and acted like so often.  “Mate… That makes you sound like her.”

He flinched, as if the words hurt him.  Was he trying not to sound like her?  “Sorry,” He quietly apologized.  I guess he didn't mean to.

I shook my head and brought my hand up as if to shoo a fly, silently letting him know it didn't matter.  It wasn't the issue at hand, and I didn't want to linger on it anyway.  “Honestly though, I don’t get what there is to be jealous of.  I told you, we’re just friends, I just care a lot about my friends.  I love him, sure, but it’s not the same.”  He was quiet all of a sudden, like I'd stumped him.  I could just hear the voice in his head begging to say "I don't care if your friends or more - I don't want you hanging out with him anymore."  I wasn't gonna let him control me.  Absolutely not.  “Cartel, whether you want me to or not I’m still going to be his friend.”  I crossed my arms and leaned back, trying to get in one of those comfortable half-lying down positions.  I was exhausted, and to be honest I just wanted to curl up in a ball and fall asleep.

He seemed to get a little upset by my last comment, and I didn't think he would break his stupid promise not to yell, but I knew he was slowly getting to a point where it would get harder to hold it in.  “It’s not like that, Allie," He said sternly in the same tone of voice you scold a child with, "You’re reading me wrong."

He switched lanes to get left this time, and continued talking as he waited in the center lane for a good opportunity to get even more left.  It was really weird not doing this myself.  I should have at least asked where we were going, because not knowing was making me a bit uneasy.

His reply was a bit angry, as if he wanted to yell but had his promise in the back of his mind, stopping him.  I was right about that much; he was like any other guy in the sense that yelling seemed to come naturally. “I’m not asking you not to be friends with him.  You can be as friendly as you like - hell if I care.” He swallowed loudly and with what seemed to be a bit of difficulty, then continued in a significantly lowered tone of voice.  “I’m just sick of you seeing him so much that I feel like I have to compete with him for your attention, and I’m awful tired of hearing him call you ‘babe’ and not being able to say anything, but also not hearing you correct him either-”

Now I was a little pissed.  This was only the jealousy talking, and I didn't wanna hear it.  So I repeated myself, yet again informing him about how, “I’ve talked to him about it many times.  He knows we aren’t together.”  I was so tired that this didn't come out as angrily as I liked.  All in all I didn't care, I just wanted to go home or something so that I could forget about this and deal with it later.

He replied near instantly, “Actions speak louder than words, and currently you’re treating him like you are dating, what with seeing him in court and babying him all the time.”

I glared at him despite knowing he would pay more attention to the road than me.  I just said this.  “Cartel, me and Mark aren’t together.  He’s not confused about that either, what with the countless conversations we’ve had about it." I thought for a moment about how to get it through his thick skull.  With crossed arms and a grumble, I added,  "I’m starting to think it might be your paranoia that’s got him calling me babe!”

At this point, I kinda wanted to yell at him, but I was both too tired to as well as not planning on it.  If he promised not to yell, then it was clearly somehow important and relevant for me not to yell either.  So I bit my tongue and stayed at the loudest of a stern tone of voice.  I'm pretty sure only Cartel would have not viewed that as yelling, since Mark had once told me to stop yelling when I used it [which contused me], and that was fine by me.  It was loud enough for me to get my point across, and quiet enough to prevent me from seeming just as frustrated as I really was.

“Allie.”  He started more stern than he'd been yet.  His temper was definitely flaring, so good, he got my point...hopefully.  “When I asked him how long you’d been dating, he didn’t even hesitate or feel the need to think it through before he immediately came back with ‘since January.’  I over analyzed the s**t out of the memory of him saying that to me, and even asked Saide to clarify for me - he wasn’t lying.  If he was lying, he would have had some sort of nervous twitch before, during, or after he said so, and the worst he did was turn to look at you when you got into the car with a look that screamed, ‘I think I just messed up.’”

Moron.  You just contradicted yourself.

“I know what you’re thinking. ‘He’s a compulsive liar.’  I don’t care, Allie." That's not what I was thinking, but sure.  I decided to humor him, and bit my tongue about that. "Even compulsive liars have nervous ticks.  But to me, it looked like he just silently told me that he’d just revealed a secret or something.  It wasn’t just a ‘I’m guilty of lying’ face he had on, it was a ‘I’m guilty of telling the truth’ face.”

Now I wanted to just scream.  “Are you trying to say that you think him and I are dating behind your back?”  How dare he accuse me of cheating after all the bullshit Joseph had put me through.  Three years of that crap and he thought that suddenly I'd turn around and do it too!?  What an a*****e!  If Cartel wasn't driving, I'd have pulled over and told him to get the f**k out of my car.  This wasn't my car, however, and I was forced to decide between jumping out of a moving vehicle and staying in to hear him try to justify himself in the stupidest way possible.  I chose the latter, despite my huge desire to just jump out and walk home.  I was so done with this.

He sighed with a wavering voice, one that admitted to me how nervous he was about this too.  That brought a small smile to my face, because with it usually came an apology and the words "You were right."

“Yes and no.”

Yup.  Smile gone.  I crossed my arms and glared harder, knowing that he'd at least feel my eyes staring into his very soul.

“I’m paranoid as f**k Allie.  After…” He stopped for a moment, “After Em and I-”

“Em?”  Was he talking about her?  God, I wasn't about to pity him and apologize first if that was what he was trying to do by bringing her up.

“After Emiel and I ended the way we did," Yes he was bringing her up again... "and I’ve gone from pointless one night stand to pathetic lust-filled relationship, I worried that love was dead for me, I doubted my existence, and I eventually found myself with you.  I’m not gonna just give you up over something as stupid as a human wanting some action, but I’m also not about to become some dependent, sorry-a*s shell of a man just so that I can keep you happy and nearby.”  The light turned red so he stopped talking and he seized that moment to look at me, something that softened my glare when I saw how hard he was trying to hold back tears.  His voice wasn't cold or hard or angry at all...it was sad.  He honestly meant what he next told me.  “I’ve gone to hell and back, and then again all over just so that I could have this one shot of proving to myself I’m worthy of love, your love, and I don’t give two s***s about how irrelevant the back-story was just to get to this point, but I want you to hear me out anyway.”

HOOOOOOOOONK.

F*****g annoying other drivers.  I saw it out of the corner of my eye.  The light literally just turned green you dick, I thought.  I'd have flipped him off had I been driving, considered doing it anyway, but Cartel was too focused on our conversation which brought me right back to the moment.  Cartel seemed to mentally swear as he practically floored it, sick of driving it seemed, then swung left and pulled into the Village Inn parking lot.  The moment the car was in park, he turned back to me, making sure I was actually listening.

“Allie, I love you.  I love you more than any human man ever could.  I appreciate you for who you are, and I’m willing to put everything on the line for you.  My very existence rests in your hands.” I was worried now.  Had he considered something as crazy as killing himself over this?  Suddenly all the times he'd informed me of his past lives, how almost all of them ended in suicide, it felt more real to me. “Still, though, I’m not dependent.  I’m my own f*****g man, and with or without you I’ll keep on truckin’, be that here and now or later if we end…but I’ll be damned if I don’t let us end without one helluva fight.”  I know that was said only to calm me down, to try and push the thoughts of him dying over me out of my head, and because of that I wasn't sure how honest they really were.

I was too tired to process all of that at once, so I looked down at my lighter and played with it a little.  I thought about what to say.  Everything I'd thought of before he started talking, about how he couldn't compare me to Joseph like that without me taking offense, about how I didn't appreciate him bringing up Emiel, and other angry things like that - they all just vanished.  It took me a long time to swallow my pride and realize that if I didn't say it first, he'd never give me the apology I deserved either.

“I’m sorry I scared you so much.  I didn’t think you were that worried over this.”

He smiled without realizing he was smiling, I'm sure, and looked at me with soft eyes.  “Well I was.  Every day that went by without a call back made me worry you didn’t love me anymore.”  He was smiling, but that made that deep depression all the more evident to me.  I looked up at him feeling slightly guilty, and then he turned away.  He whispered, "It's ok.  No big deal, as long as you don't hate me."

It was silent for a long time after that.  There was still so much that both of us wanted to say, but his long-winded words still hung in the air too heavy for either of us to want to add to the weight.  I was worried that continuing to explain things would make him feel even more like I hated him, and he was probably worried that bringing up the things on his mind would just send me back into a deep, angry depression once more and then we’d be back to the drawing board.  We needed to close off this conversation somehow, however, and since he sure as hell wasn't going to, I spoke up softly.  “I’m sorry about offending you.”  Hopefully now he'd apologize to me.

“It’s ok.” He said, lying back in his seat, and moving his hands from the steering wheel and cup-holders - why was his hand there? - to his lap.  “I mean, it’s not, and it better not f*****g happen again, but I won’t hold it against you if you understand why it was wrong.”  His words themselves seemed angry, but his tone of voice told me that he was simply clarifying.  There wasn't any intended emotion in them at all.

“I understand, and it won’t happen again..." I waited a few moments for some sign that he'd turn to me, apologize back, something.  He didn't though, so I brought it up with a tinge of upset frustration. "But now I think I deserve an apology.”  He raised in eyebrow in confusion.  He seriously forgot what he did to me?  God, that was enough to make me willing to fight all over again.  “There’s a thing called personal boundaries, and you sure as hell pressed as hard as you could against them when you demanded me to call you.”

He was suddenly on the defensive.  “I didn’t demand you to call me.  I wanted you to just pick up the phone once between the two f*****g days I called and texted.  I was freaking out, and your last text wasn’t exactly something I could just ignore.”

Wrong thing to say, Cartel, wrong thing to say...  I was so stern I nearly yelled, “Cartel, you called me at least 50 times between the time I sent my last text, clearly saying it was the last thing I was gonna say.  You left voice mails telling me to 'pick the f**k up,' as if you had some sort of underlying threat you’d use on me if I didn’t.  I clearly didn’t want to talk - what the hell did you think you would accomplish by calling over and over again?”

A million thoughts and emotions went through his mind, and I could tell because his eyes shot all over the place as if he was looking at a billion different things as they went flying over a TV screen...but nothing was there.  He was just staring off into space, thinking about something important.  His emotions seemed to go from angry, to tense, to sad in a matter of minutes.  Was he looking over his memories?  Was this what it looked like when he did that?  Finally it all stopped and he just closed his eyes for a brief moment before apologizing.

Then, without thinking, he kissed me.  It caught me off guard but I kissed him back and realized that he literally just wanted to kiss and make up, that that was why he kissed me...that and he loved me, of course.

He tried as hard as he could to push all of those tense emotions away as he opened the door and casually said, “Chow time.  My treat.”  He showed me his wallet as if to prove that he actually had money this time, and this alone made me smile a little.  Then we walked silently up to Village Inn.  It took this long to realize that I was just as hungry as I was exhausted, and I was suddenly grateful that he'd brought us somewhere to eat.  Almost immediately once we’d sat down at the booth, we were joking and laughing together as if nothing had happened on the way there.

"Dork, take those straws out of your nose.  You're supposed to put them in your mouth, like the tusks of a walrus."

Author's Note

PICTURE NOT MINE.