CHAPTER TWENTY
“Here you are, Mira. The first place award. And, may I just say, I have literally fucking never seen one goth girl stomp everyone else so utterly, thoroughly, and hard. Congrats on that. Seriously.”
“Thank you,” Chloe almost growled in returned. “I hate to dine and dash, but I really have to get home. I have something extremely important I need to do, and I need to do it as fast as possible. Isn’t that right, Gabe?” she asked, squeezing his wrist.
“Yep, babe. You got it.”
“Thanks everyone! Bye!”
Then she was off, quite literally dragging him towards the exit.
“You are so fucked,” she growled. “So fucking fucked. I mean man are you fucking screwed, Gabe!”
“Am I now? What exactly are you gonna do about it?” he replied.
“Fucker!” she cried once they were outside. “You arrogant fuck! I am going to fucking break you!”
“Come on, Chloe. We both know what this is.”
“And what, exactly, is this, Gabe?” she growled dangerously.
They got into the car and he began driving them home.
“This is the logical extreme of the brat curve. This is you actually, genuinely pushing yourself past the point of anger, rage, or even fury, because I finally gave you a big enough reason to. I finally publicly humiliated you. Which, you should actually thank me for.”
“Oh, should I?” she asked in a flat, dead monotone so convincing that he actually began to worry he might have gone too far.
“Yes, you should,” he continued, praying his apprehension wasn’t bleeding through.
“Because you have told me, to my face!, I should add!, that you want to be publicly humiliated. But you’re too nervous to actually do it, and you lamented that we couldn’t figure out some way of doing it but not really, you know?
And I knew that would be the best gift I could give you.
Although I do still have a totally fucking kickass gift waiting for you back at home. ”
She didn’t say anything. He had to keep his eyes on the road and so subsequently couldn’t quite read her. Her body language seemed hostile and he thought she was looking out the window beside her with her arms crossed.
He sat on the urge to say something, to beg her, to prompt her, to do anything at all. She was processing, and this was about both of them, not just him.
“Okay, I’ll tell you the truth, Gabe: I genuinely cannot tell if I’m pissed or not. Because I’m so fucking horny. I will admit that. I’m insanely horny. So, obviously you played your cards right up to that point.”
“All right, awesome. Um...Chloe? I’m sorry if I pissed you off. But it did, and still does, seem genuinely worth it for the results it will yield.”
“I can already tell you’re right, so I forgive you. I’m not pissed now, I can tell you that much. I’m fucking horny as shit, though, Gabe. So you’d better fuck the shit outta me.”
“All right, but we’ve got to get all that fucking semen out of you.”
“You put it in the there, fucker! And then wouldn’t let me clean it up-ooh! I fucking hate you, you nasty fucking pervert! You motherfucking fucking fuckboy!”
He laughed. “Chloe, you worship me. Come on, now.”
She let out a string of incoherent, inarticulate syllables that ultimately came out as a short but loud and powerful shriek. “Just drive!”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a chuckle that he knew drove her even more insane.
…
“Holy shit,” Chloe gasp, falling back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling blankly, panting heavily. “That was amazing sex.”
“Uh-huh,” Gabe murmured, in much the same state.
He’d fucked Chloe up against the wall in the shower after she’d cleaned herself up, and then, after she’d cleaned up again, they’d ended up getting into a fake argument that Chloe pushed hard with the bratting.
So hard, in fact, that he ended up shoving her onto the bed before they could get dressed and fucking her again.
“I have to take another shower,” she moaned.
“Yeah, you do. You’re so fucking gross,” Gabe replied.
“Ugh, shut up, you fucking loser!”
He laughed, then rolled over so that he was partially on her, an arm and a leg draped over her slick, smooth body. “You are too perfect of a brat.”
“Apparently. I didn’t realize I was so good at it until we met. I always had to sit on it. But you just…” She fell silent and he waited. “You trust me,” she said finally. “That’s it, it’s just that you fucking trust me. You trust that I’m not actually insulting you.” Another pause. “...Gabe?”
“Yeah?”
“So, I’m realizing that I do want to talk about it. If that isn’t...annoying.”
“Babe, I’ll listen to whatever it is you want to talk about.”
“All right...thanks,” she murmured awkwardly.
“Here,” he said, getting off of her and laying on his back, then beckoning her closer. Now it was her who lay draped half across him. She paused, then she shifted so that she could get one arm and one leg actually around him to squeeze him a little.
“Thanks,” she murmured once more. “It was...messy,” she said after another long pause.
She sighed and shook her head. “I was...angry. About everything in my life just...not working out. When we met. I was deep into what you might call my nihilistic phase. I was pissed and I didn’t want to care about anything because I was really, truly getting an idea of just how fucked up the world was, and how unlikely it was that I was actually going to be able to build a life for myself.
He was a stoner and was dealing weed on the side, worked whatever jobs he could get.
Some part of me knew I was being really stupid dating a goddamned drug dealer, but it was just weed... in the beginning.”
Chloe waited. Gabe remained silent.
She pressed on. “We were both prone to anger...sorry, this has to feel disjointed, but honestly, that’s how it felt.
I guess that’s how it was. We argued, we fought, both of us stormed out on the other at least once a week.
I had no…” She hesitated. “Well, that isn’t right.
I was going to say ‘I had no emotional control’, but I did...
before we started dating. But then I got worse, and even worse.
I got angrier, more sarcastic, cynical. It was like falling down a hole. ”
She paused again, made an unhappy sound.
“I threw myself down it, really. I was so pissed. Nothing seemed to be working, nothing seemed to be true. He caught some kind of lucky break, met some bigger dealer. This was like two months before the end. When I was arguing with my parents the day you first met them, I lied about how it was only weed he stashed in my apartment. There was other stuff. Oxy, other painkillers, heavy duty ones. Prescription shit. Stolen, obviously.”
“Jeez,” he muttered, alarmed.
“Yeah. And I wasn’t even the one who had found it.
At the end, we were fighting more and more.
He was lying to me, manipulating me, gaslighting me.
Only he was bad at it, which ended up being my biggest problem.
I thought it was funny when he tried to bullshit me, because he was so bad at it.
I’d just call him on it and he’d give up.
I got comfortable, thought I could spot his BS a mile away.
No idea why I put up with it. I’m so fucking stupid for staying with a guy I knew was lying to me. ”
She fell silent and enough time went by that Gabe realized she was waiting for him to pass some kind of judgment, to say something.
“Relationships, and emotions, are deeply complicated things,” he said finally.
She sighed softly. “Yeah. Fucking tell me about it. I didn’t realize that he figured out a trick to bypass my filters.
” She snorted. “Trick. It was so fucking stupid an idiot could’ve figured it out, which he did.
He just adjusted how he told me lies. Before, he thought you needed to have these intricate details.
But then, he just straight up lied. Why was he late?
Stopped to get gas, got caught up in conversation with someone from high school.
Why is he leaving early? Extra hours. By then, I thought he was too dumb to actually lie, so I didn’t catch any of it. ”
“Lying’s easier than most people think,” Gabe murmured. “Just play it cool and put as much truth as possible in. Every good lie is ninety percent truth.”
“Oh, God,” Chloe muttered.
“What?”
“I’m just realizing...you would be an unstoppable monster if you ever decided to use your powers for evil.”
“Uh...I guess so,” he admitted, chuckling awkwardly. “Although, I mean, it would take a while to get there, even if I started tomorrow. Thankfully, this is a purely hypothetical situation that will never actually pan out.”
“Thankfully,” she muttered. “Okay, so, my story. It all came crashing down when I got a call from his mom. He’d been arrested on a drug bust. Some cops came around, asked me questions.
I, thankfully, was a better liar. While I didn’t actually help him with any of his drug dealing, I had been clear he could do it as long as he was being smart, ha, I know, but that I wouldn’t tolerate him putting me at risk. ”
She sighed heavily and groaned. “If only I’d fucking known.
About three days after the cops showed up, his main contact, some guy name Bud, showed up unannounced at my apartment.
I at least knew who he was, but basically he said he knew about a stash of pills and shit in my place.
Lee told him about it at some point. He wanted it, naturally, and I fucking wanted it gone, naturally.
He took it, asked me if I wanted to help him deal, I said no, and he left.
After that, I searched my whole place over top to bottom.
All I found was a little joint stashed somewhere.
And then, surprise surprise, it didn’t fucking matter anymore because weed got legalized like four months later.
Hilarious. Anyway, just...I mean, that’s the gist of. ”
“I’m sorry, Chloe,” he replied.
“Would you have hit him? Like for real?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes.”