Jawbreaker

I sat in study hall, trying my best to finish up some last minute Stats homework that I had failed to do the night before, when a hand landed on my desk.

Without even bothering to look up, I said in an annoyed tone, “What do you want?”

The hand slid it’s away across the desk, rejoining itself to the owner as they slid in the desk next to mine.

“Hello, Lucy. How goes it?” asked Noah Folds in a sing-song voice that made me want to slit my wrists.

I ignored him, typing an equation in my calculator and jotting down the answer I had received. He watched me intently, looking over my markings on my paper.

“Ya did that wrong,” he said.

I ignored him.

I heard him huff and say, “Lucy, I’m telling you, that answer is wrong. You typed it in--”

I threw my eraser at him, a desperate attempt at making him shutup. I begged for it to work, I couldn’t tolerate his consistent need to aggravate me.

But, without fail, Noah was persistent.

He took the eraser I had thrown at him and actually began erasing away the previous problem I had accomplished. I shouted at him, “What the hell are you doing?” as he quickly grabbed my pencil and began scribbling down something.

“Stop it!” I continued. “I actually need to finish this in like five minutes so I can start on my English paper…”

“There,” he said, turning the worksheet over to me, “now it’s correct.”

I stared down at what he had written. I looked over the problem that I was doing and realized that he had actually been right. I wrote down the wrong calculations when I was doing the equation and had messed up the whole problem.

Before I could even thank him, I already saw the grin form on his maniacal face. Because of my pride, and the fact that I really could not stand him, I refrained and cleared my throat, saying, “Miscalculation. I’m only human.”

I heard a chuckle from him and looked to see that he had stood up.

“Ya know, you really should get some more sleep. Those dark circles you’ve been sporting really don’t suit your bone structure. If you know what I mean,” said Folds, as he walked out of the classroom. He sent me a wink before he disappeared into the hallway.

It was then that I realized he wasn’t even in my study hall. And as he left, I didn’t even see a hallpass in his hands.

He just did as he pleased.

I suddenly touched my face, realizing what he had said. No one else said anything about the dark circles. Even as hard as I tried to cover it up with concealer, someone like Noah Folds could see past the fact that I had been stressed out lately.

It was funny, actually.

It seems as if I couldn’t fool a complete stranger.

Even though I could with those closest to me.



My heart felt like it was pounding hard into my chest as I stared down at my call log. It was after school and I was debating whether or not I should call Justin and just end it now. We hadn’t seen each in school, both of us trying our best to avoid the other. I had given it a couple of days, and decided after cooling off, that this just wasn’t going to work.

I had to end it now.

I pressed the call button and shoved it close to my ear.

He answered after the first two rings in a cheery voice. “Hey Luce! What’s up?”

I sat there, my mouth hanging open.

Was he for real?

When I didn’t say anything right away, he continued. “What’s up? You okay?”

“What the fuck!” I yelled into the phone. “Are you kidding me? After all of that, you’re gonna ask me, ‘what’s up’? Are you fucking mental?”

He sighed into the phone. “I gave it some time and realized that I had overreacted. Look, I’ll come over now. Let’s have a talk, alright?”

“Do you even realize what you put me through?” I asked him, the tears had quickly sprung to my eyes and I did everything I could to blink them back. But I was so frustrated and annoyed. Not to mention, confused. “You ruined my entire weekend. I didn’t even get to go out with my friend. And you, you got to enjoy your ‘effing weekend while I was miserably crying--”

“What did I say, Luce? You make yourself cry.”

Fuck him.

I started crying into the phone, wiping my tears away with the back of my hand. I didn’t understand why I was being so emotional. Usually, I didn’t care much of what Justin did. But recently, I had been crying an awful lot over insignificant things, such as a stupid bonfire…

I heard him sigh. “I’ll be there in three minutes. Bye.”

The phone clicked, signaling the end of the call.

I was so irritated. It was over between him and I. I was going to do this in person, the moment he got here, I was going to dump his egotistical, misogynistic, inconsiderate ass.

This was too much. There had to be some sort of plausible reason for why I had been so emotional lately. When was the last time I got my period? Was I PMSing? Could that be the cause of my ridiculous breakdowns? This wasn’t normal.

I heard banging on the front door and I scrambled out of my bed, to the stairs. When I answered the door, Justin stood there, smiling at me.

He leaned over to give me a kiss, but I turned away from, surprised that he even dared. He gave me a slight frown and said, “Really?”

I glared at him, walking up the stairs, beckoning for him to follow.

He did so.

We got up to my room and he plopped onto my bed. I carefully sat on the edge, watching him as he sat up, supporting himself with his arms and stared at me. He looked me over, noticing that I had changed into skimpier clothes after school. I suddenly became self-conscious of my tank top and shorts and covered my arms over my chest.

He smirked and reached a hand to pull my arms from his view. “You look real cute,” he commented.

I slapped his hand away, incredibly frustrated with his flirtations.

He let out a deep breath, sitting up forward and grabbing my hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said. And he said it like it was the only thing he had to say to fix all of this.

I slapped him for being so conceited.

He didn’t even flinch when I did. It was as if he had expected the slap. As if he knew what was going through my mind. It infuriated me even more, to think that he knew how much of an asshole he was being, and yet continued to do it anyways. I wanted to beat the boy!

He grabbed my hand, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the top of it as he said, “I’m sorry for overreacting. You’re right. You have every right to hang out with your friends without feeling obligated to devote time to me. Just, look at it from my perspective, alright? I wanted to spend time with you, alone time. And then you tell me that I can’t because you would rather spend it with some other person. I felt second rate. It hurts to know that you chose someone over me, when I would never choose anyone over you.”

Had I been a teen girl going through puberty, I would have swooned at this. In fact, if this was at the beginning of our relationship, back when I was fifteen years old, I definitely would have forgiven him before he even ended that whole speech.

But I wasn’t fifteen anymore.

“That’s a fucking lie, and you know it,” I spat at him, yanking my hand out of his grasp.

This time, he looked caught off guard. He hadn’t expected this. He thought with a couple of sweet talking words, he could sweep me off my feet, and sweep the rest of this under the rug.

I glared at him. “You must have forgotten, but I’m immune to bullshit. Let’s try this again, how about a better apology?”

“It’s not bullshit,” he said, his voice rising. “I have never chosen anyone over you. Name one time that I have--”

“Any of your bros. Anytime that I’ve asked you to do something for me, to go somewhere for me, you choose one of your bros over me. You choose what you would rather to do than over what I want to do. You never compromise with me. You never want to do any of the stuff I want to do, it’s always you, you, you.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he yelled at me. “How about the dates I’ve taken you on? The tons of dinners I’ve paid for, the movies I’ve paid for, the gifts I’ve paid for you-- you think none of that was for you? You think that was all out of my own enjoyment, because I love doing all of those things for me? You have got to be joking.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, screw off. As if I asked for any of those things. You’re always the one that asks me out on dates. You’re the one that always refuses when I try to pay for my half--”

“Because I’m a gentleman!”

“--and never, have I ever asked for any of the gifts you’ve given me. You should know by now that I’m not that kind of girl.”

He scoffed. “I’m not sure what kind of girl you are, anymore. To be honest, you’re not like any of the other girls I know.”

I stared at him.

“Then why don’t you take a shot at the other girls you know?”

He took his fingers and pinched the bridge between his eyes. “I’m not having this conversation with you, Lucy. This is absolutely ridiculous.”

I shifted onto my knees and looked at him.

“No, I’m dead serious. Why don’t you just end this and go after all those other girls you obviously know. If you’re not happy here, then just say so. It’s easy if you want to--”

He silenced me by covering his hand over my mouth.

It was such a prick thing to do and I wanted to smack him but he looked at me with eyes that were frighteningly grim. Those dark azure eyes were glaring at me as he said, “Don’t you ever fucking say that again.”

And then his expression suddenly melted into a warm one as he said, “I don’t want to be with any of those other girls. I chose you. Don’t ever forget that, Luce. I chose you.”

Maybe it was because I was stupid. Or maybe it was because I couldn’t imagine being alone again, and the thought of being alone sent me in a whirlpool of emotions I tried my best to keep under a lid, tightly sealed. But as I looked at Justin’s stupid face, thinking how stupid he was, thinking how stupid what he had said sounded, and thinking how stupid I would be if I still stayed with him, I couldn’t help but ignore all of it.

I was scared to be alone, again.

So I silently let him kiss me and put my arms around him, pretending everything was going to be alright.

Even if they weren’t true.