[JIL] Dichotomy [Completed]

How the hell did this happen?

The redheaded woman held her breath, closing her eyes and releasing it slowly through her nose. Truth be told, the more accurate question was How, (or rather, why) the hell was this happening? It was not over; it was not a one time happenstance. It was, on the other hand, a rhetorical question: She knew full well how this was happening. They both knew.

Risa rolled her head over on the pillow, gazing over at the man who was currently embodying every cliched female complaint about how men always fell asleep right after sex, leaving no time for any of the lovey-dovey pillow talk and cuddling her half of the species seemed to love so much.

She hated him, she decided.

She hated him, not because he was asleep and he wouldn't cuddle with her post frenzied, alcohol-and-lust-fueled sex, but because she never wanted this to happen in the first place. She wasn't really drunk; they both knew that, but she had played it up anyway... and now here they were, laying on her mattress, sweaty and naked, in the dark. This was never supposed to be a habit, this was supposed to be a one-time thing that happened when they were both actually inebriated and not just faking it to shake off the guilt that came with hooking up sober. But she was sober now.

And, in a moment of clear sobriety, with what little alcohol she had in her system being burnt off in the throws of passion that had just ended moments ago, she remembered a revelation that had came to her on another night just like this one. The body next to her had been different, but the scene was the same.

It had come to her then: she burned too brightly.

She was a product of her generation, young adults who demanded and expected instant gratification. She knew within thirty minutes of sustained contact when she liked someone, when she disliked someone, when she loved someone, when she wanted to fuck someone. And while she had met people like her before in this sense – people with whom she shared that common instant judgment and initial intense passion – she had never met anyone that she wouldn't get tired of almost just as quickly. Friendships worked, because even in close friendships people were allowed their space; they didn't see each other twenty-four-seven, they had their own boyfriends and girlfriends and matters to attend to. But when Risa dated someone, she found that she could never keep interest in them for long enough – or sometimes they lost interest in her. It wasn't an intentional thing; they would just burn out on each other, seeing each other every second of every minute of every day, meeting each other when they got off work and making out and having sex on the couch or the bed or the sock-covered floor. Nothing she ever had would last more than a few months at best before someone got bored, tired of the other person, and called it off.

Once, someone had told her that true love was 'finding the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with'. Honestly, Risa didn't believe this existed. Not for most people, and definitely not for herself.

Instead, she opted to live in the moment, meeting that initial burst of carnal lust head on and rolling with it at full speed: two trains on the same track going for the head on collision like in that stupid math problem that always got assigned in middle school. Instead of causing a trainwreck though, or at least an emotional one with hurt feelings and one-sided, no longer reciprocated love and that whole mess, it kept things surprisingly simple, almost as though there was a rail switch just before the locomotives met. That rail switch was casual, meaningless one night stands with men she met in bars and never had to speak to again.

But that was not what was going on now. Somewhere along the line, the conductor had forgot to call for the rail switch, and she could already tell that she was going full throttle into some messy catastrophe yet again. She didn't want this to happen, to be happening.

She laid in her bed and stared at the ceiling, counting the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to it lazily, in the same pattern she did every night when she couldn't sleep: left to right starting in the corner closest to her, then right to left when she reached the far wall, rinse, repeat. When she moved out she would have to pry and pull them all down, but that hadn't even occurred to her at the time she had moved in and put them up. Planning for the future wasn't something Risa did well, another part of the problematic equation. Life was what happened in the present, after all; planning for the future was useless if one day someone wasn't paying enough attention when they walked into the street and got hit by a bus.

No, she couldn't handle this. Waking up, rolling over, and exchanging cutesy pet names with the same person day after day went against everything she believed... and getting attached was too.

She hated him, she considered as she glanced over at him again before sitting up and pulling her prized pink blanket up around her shoulders, because she didn't. At all.

Trying as best she could not to disturb Jack, she slid her legs from under the covers and off the side of the bed, searching the floor for some semblance of clothes. She had no idea when Taylor would be home but she didn't want to run into him naked if it could be at all avoided. She was in enough awkward situations as it was without adding fuel to the impending disaster fire. She slid forward, feet touching the floor as she pushed herself off the side of the mattress with her hands.

“Where you goin'?” a groggy voice murmured, a hand wrapping around one of her wrists before she could pull it away. One brown eye cracked open to peer up at her.

Risa tilted her head slightly, looking back at him and resisting the urge to bite her lip that she knew was the tell that she was conflicted about something. Jack was not nearly as dumb as she often claimed, though whether he was awake enough to register the gesture was another story. Even so, it was better safe than sorry, she supposed.

“I'm going to get get some water,” she lied, gently pulling his fingers from around her wrist and sliding out of his grasp. Her first instinct had been to kick him out of her room at the very least, if not the apartment. But, as bitchy as he claimed and complained that she was, she couldn't do that to him. So, she'd let him have the bed, and go sleep on the sofa for the rest of the night. Or, at the very least, try to figure something to do about... this, while she wasn't laying next to the other half of the equation. The best way to solve problems, after all, was to take them apart and deal with them piece by piece.

He grunted in what was probably approval before rolling back over, pulling the blankets with him. She shook her head slightly, immediately nursing her lip as soon as he could no longer see her, and tossed the pink blanket over him – taking it with her would be too obvious that she wasn't planning to come back in. There was a throw folded over the back of the sofa anyway.

“Go back to sleep,” she whispered quietly, kneeling back down on the mattress and running a hand through his auburn hair.

“Bossy bitch.” He leaned up, almost catlike, against her fingers even as he grumbled his faint quip. She couldn't help but chuckle, shaking her head as she got up and returned to her quest for a shirt and some underwear at the very least. No, she didn't hate him at all, and that made everything so much more difficult.

She grabbed the Hello Kitty panties that had been tossed onto her mess of a bookshelf in their haste to get naked; she was almost surprised that she hadn't gotten more shit from him over the design except he had more than likely been too busy focusing on other things to notice or register before they had been flung away. She turned them right-side in and pulled them up her bare legs, once again nursing her lip as she glanced around for a second article of clothing to put on. Her eyes fell upon a shirt, probably the one Jack had been wearing earlier, and at any rate much too big to be one of her own. Shrugging, to her self, she picked it up off the floor and pulled it over her head; it didn't really matter whose it was as long as it covered her up. It wasn't as though this was the first time she had used one of his shirts in lieu of her own pajamas anyway.

...And that was part of the problem as well, she realized as she pulled the door open as quietly as she could and made her way into the kitchen. She was too comfortable, too complacent with what was going on. She liked this too much; she liked him too much.

Sighing, Risa pulled a glass from the cupboard; while it hadn't crossed her mind until she had mentioned it, she hadn't drank anything since her last cocktail and she was starting to feel dehydrated. She pressed the lip of the glass against the water tab built into the fridge door, considering her options as she waited for the glass to fill.

This isn't working, she practiced mentally. We can be friends, or we can be fuck-buddies, but not both. If only it were so easy to say to his face. She pulled the glass away from the spout just in time to keep it from overflowing, taking a sip before she tried to walk into the living-room with it. He didn't fit into any of her normal plans, her normal order of things. When she had first had the dubious pleasure of meeting him in high school years and years ago, she had wanted to strangle him every agonizingly long minute she was forced to be in his company. And, really, she still felt that way sometimes. But, on the other hand...

She grabbed the remote off the coffee table, pointing it at the TV they had left on and turning the volume down to the lowest setting and changing the channel. This way, she had an alibi; she saw something on TV and got distracted from coming back in. She set the remote back on the table and her glass next to it, before pulling the blanket down from the back of the couch and tossing it over her legs, laying flat along the length of the sofa. Truth be told, she never slept well on couches, but at least it got her away from Jack for a little while. Jack, who had royally destroyed all her course high scores on Mario Kart; Jack, who always ate all her goddamn olives whenever she bought a jar at the store; Jack, who knew just how tightly to hold her and just how hard to bite her earlobe to drive her crazy –

No. This wasn't going to work; she had to pick one or the other. They could be friends and play video games and go to bars and hang out, or they could have sex. Otherwise, those two trains would collide and the whole thing would fall apart.

One or the other, she told herself again firmly, closing her eyes. Not both.

~~~

WIP using characters from Millennials (Jerks In Lub). Finished.