Sweet Little Sister

I didn’t know how many days had passed, my mind had blacked out for what felt like days. I knew I should open my eyes but I didn’t feel like it, as if the simple movement of opening my eyes would suck all the remaining energy out of me.
I daydreamed about nonsense; about getting a dog or going for a walk somewhere far away, trying to not think about the drama and all the fucked-up shit that always happened to me.

A part of me wanted to go back to Jersey, stay there with my grandma and take care of cats forever. Of course, the saner part of me wanted to stay in Los Angeles, the center of the world these days.

I woke up, it was morning… and I felt like a piece of shit.

I wanted to brush my teeth, just running my tongue along them made me cringe. I was on a bed, a nice comfortable bed; the mattress was not too soft and not too hard, the way I liked it. I had been sleeping in my signature sleeping pose of course, on my stomach, my right arm under the pillow and the other stretched out across the bed.
I always liked sleeping on my stomach. I mentally giggled, remembering how Rachel used to sleep when he was oh-so-young. He must have been around five, but somehow, I remembered, despite being younger.
He would fall asleep with his knees tucked under his stomach, in an uncomfortable-to-most kneeling position. One of his hands would always be tucked in the back of his underwear, almost cupping his ass-cheek and the other hand… well, that was even funnier. He had two of his fingers in his mouth, like a baby. Funny thing was that the two fingers he used to suck on are the fingers we always keep tucked in and down when we do the metal sign, the horns up. He probably knew he’d be using them, even back then.

Shaking my head in order to stop the flow of childhood memories, I returned once again on planet Earth, my home.
The bedroom was quiet, the door was half-open and I couldn’t really hear any noise. I realized I was very hungry.

I tip-toed into the living room, finding Joe there, reading a newspaper. I was almost surprised to see him; I had forgotten that this was his place…

“Hey,” he said quietly. A person had to be stupid not to notice the bitterness in his voice.

“Hi,” I whispered back, wondering what the fuck I could say to break the ice in here. Maybe the usual moronic stuff I say like ‘do you know that pee is the only sterile thing that comes out of our body’ line. Classy.

His eyes darted around, not resting anywhere. Tension. Restlessness. Anxiety. Hunger. Well, I was feeling kinda hungry, I had to admit.

“Can we be honest?” he asked, setting the newspaper down, after folding it carefully.

“Yes. Let’s be.”

“You had sex with Sebastian?”

I closed my eyes. It was so simple, it was indeed. Just sex, just lust and nothing more… if only I could believe that myself. “Yeah, I did…”

“Do you love him?”

Another question I couldn’t answer. It was too hard to put in a sentence, the way I felt.

“I would be able to… if he loved me back….”

A pair of hands sneaked into mine while I had closed my eyes, letting out an exasperated sigh.

“Let me love you and I will give you everything, anything.”

I laughed. “What is there to love about me? Look at me, I’m a clown! I act like a 15 year-old boy, I’m weird and certainly not one of those bombshells with legs 6-feet long.”

“I know that,” he said with a smile. “You’re this odd chick in boys clothes that will probably never grow up. And I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re innocent yet conniving in an attractive way, you sometimes talk like a truck driver and you fucking punch girls…”

Jesus, thanks for the compliment.

“But I love you… and I will wait until you love me back. I’m going to be here and will not let any wise-ass step all over you.”

Had he practiced all this? I wondered if he had scribbled all this down, but nope, it was all him, no help from anywhere.

“You’re a bastard you know that?” I told him very seriously until that stupid fucking smile I always have hidden started creeping out. He had a 360degrees smile, making me melt like an ice-cream on a very hot summer day.
I pushed him onto his back and bit his lip. He half-yelped but stopped complaining, he now knew this was how I rolled.

Maybe people like me deserved a clean slate, a chance to happiness no matter what. Okay, life wasn’t so shitty but I didn’t know much about life yet. All I was thinking right now was how to unbutton his pants, damn those fucking new-n-hip Levi’s with 2000 buttons and zippers and god knows what else.