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Before: I Can't Do This


Ashley

"He obviously got it right there at the airport," I was shouting, waving the stupid beach sand bulb necklace in Chris' face, a little battlion of empty Molson bottles at my elbow. "I spent months, Chris, looking for that fucking Ninja Turtle and he gives me a piece of cheapass tourist shit and --"

Chris sipped his drink. He was on his second vodka whatever the hell he was drinking.

"-- and I'm sick of being an afterthought, you know?" I put the necklace back on, tucking it back against my chest, where it'd been since Nick had given it to me. "It's not fair that I put him first everyday of my life - everyday, Chris, everyday - and he just keeps shoving me on the back burner because he like thinks he can take me for granted or something."

"I don't know how he could," Chris said.

I twirled my bottle on the table in front of me. "It's not fair, Chris."

He shook his head, "It's not, you're right."

"You get me," I whined.

"It's just how Nick is, Ash," he said. He leaned back, took another sip of his drink. "Nick grew up famous, right? He literally grew up with people falling all over him and treating him like he shits rainbows and gold."

"I have never treated him like he shits rainbows or gold," I said.

Chris laughed, "Nick drops a fierce duece."

"Can't use the bathroom for hours after him without a surgical mask," I laughed, too.

"But my point is, he's used to taking people for granted because most people are falling over each other to let him take them for granted. You know that. You're the one that told me that, girl."

I pouted. "I just -- I thought I was different. I thought -- I've always thought --"

"What? That Nick and you were like some fucked up fairy tale where he was one day gonna wake up and be in love with you?" Chris snorted. "Christ, Ashley, get with the picture. Nick's a player. He thrives on it. He's never gonna settle down. It'd take some colossal, unforseeable calamity to ever tame him. He's a beast."

I rested my chin on my beer bottle. I was feeling light headed. "All I want in the whole world is for Nick to open his eyes and see me and feel the same way I do," I said. My voice was staring to slur, the edges of words blurring together. My passionate anger from moments before, when I'd been mid-tirade, was burning off. I looked at Chris, "All I want is for him to love me."

Chris drew a deep breath, "I'm sorry."

"It was easier when you two did nothing but get high all the time," I said, "It was easier to ignore it when he ignored me. There was a reason for it. Now it's like he doesn't even see me. He sees every woman. Chris, he was joking about wanting to have sex with a girl with an eyepatch and a bald spot the other day, but the second someone says something about me and him being a thing he goes all weird and gets grossed out."

Chris slid out of the booth. He held his hand out to me. "C'mon, Ashley, let's get you home."

"Home sounds nice," I agreed. Chris pulled me to my feet and wrapped his arm around my back.

Outside, it was cold and I pressed myself against Chris. Revellers were lining the streets, shouting to each other and blowing noise makers. It was drizzling a little and puddles were forming along the sides of the streets. Hookers called out their enticements and a Jamaican guy with dreadlocks was hitting a beat on a steel drum outside of a liquor store. Chris walked me past the sketchy neon signs to the brick apartment building I lived in, several blocks away, where the noise and music from downtown only just barely reached. He stopped outside and I grabbed onto the wrought iron fence post that enclosed the teeny tiny excuse for yard. I stared at him as I swung myself gently on the posts.

"Christopher," I said, "Am I really that ugly? As ugly as he makes me feel?"

"You aren't ugly," Chris answered. He stepped closer.

"He makes me feel like the ugliest girl in the world," I said. I hummed the Miss America Beauty Pagent theme song for a moment to myself, and I laughed. "Why does he do that?"

"I don't know," Chris said. He came even closer.

"It's infuriating," I mumbled.

"I know," he said.

I stopped swinging myself and stood in front of him. "Do you still have pot, Christopher?" I asked.

"Why are you calling me Christopher?" he laughed. "Nobody calls me that."

"Remember that one time I got high with you guys up in Canada and we got ice cream at the pier and Nick jumped into the ocean in his briefs?" I mused.

Chris smiled, "You jumped in, too."

"Yeah."

"You had on that red bra," Chris said. He leaned closer. Our chests were touching. Somewhere far off across the city, I could hear the countdown. Was it really almost midnight? Was it really almost 2013 already? Another year of waiting and hoping, of wishing for Nick to see me really almost over?

I stared up at Chris.

His eyes closed.

And I realized he was about to kiss me.

My mind raced. A million questions went through it. Was this what I wanted? Was Chris someone I wanted to kiss at midnight? I thought about Nick's theory, about Nick himself, and about the pot that we smoked that time in Canada. Chris' breath kind of smelled like that pot. He was coming closer. I closed my eyes, too, because that's what you do and I felt Chris' breath as he got close enough and his lips grazed mine and I was just about to push up with my toes to meet his mouth as the strains of Auld Lang Syne drifted over the city when my phone vibrated.

I pulled away from Chris, our lips never quite connecting, and pulled the phone out of my pocket and looked down at the text message I'd just received.

Happy New Year Dogface... 2013, wow...anything's possible huh?.

I looked up at Chris. "I can't do this, I'm sorry." I turned and rushed up the steps of my apartment building, leaving him out on the sidewalk.




Nick

Happy new year was all Dogface wrote me back. She'd probably been almost asleep when I texted, and I felt bad 'cos I probably woke her up. I pictured her sitting on her couch, pictured the Chinese food container, and her stupid fuzzy socks she wore instead of slippers. And this AJ thought I'd bang? Please.

I hopped an early morning flight and watched the sun come up out of the porthole window headed back to Los Angeles. I fell asleep for most of the flight, I hadn't slept thanks to the Fan in the Blue Dress, whose name I never even bothered to ask. AJ sat beside me, again fiddling with his iPod, looking sleepy, too. At the airport, AJ and I stood waiting for our luggage with a couple trollys.

"Okay so I know we talked about this," he said, "And I know what you said, but - now hear me out, okay? What if you and Ashley are perfect for each other?"

I shook my head, "Dude, seriously. That'd be like you hooking up with your step sister. It's sick. Just drop it."

"I'm just saying, it'd be a hella shame to let something perfect go because you can't see past your own fucked up little tweedle brain there, man," AJ said, waving his fingers at my head. "You don't see it, but I'm telling you every single other person in the fucking universe does."

I rolled my eyes, "You and, who? Brian? Brian doesn't give a shit who I end up with, only that I end up with someone. You know him and his wholesome goodygoody morals and all that."

"I'm talking Howie and Kevin and everyone, even Jenn and Eddie and Q and everyone."

"You're all nuts," I answered. I yanked my suitcase off the spinner. "Even if reality was suspended and I did even remotely find Dogface attractive that way, there's still the bit where I don't want to get married or have kids or any of that classic white picket fence American dream apple pie shit. I don't want it, and that's what Dogface was like built for."

AJ shrugged, "I never thought I wanted it either but I'm telling you man nothing smells sweeter than my daughter's dirty diapers."

"That's really sick, Jay."

AJ grinned. "Speaking of..."

I turned around and spotted Rochelle a few feet away, carrying Ava in a sling on her chest. AJ rushed over and wrapped his arms around Rochelle and Ava in one fell sweep and he pressed his nose to the baby's face and made googley noises.

I sighed, "I'll see ya'll around," I said.

"See ya," AJ called, barely acknowledging me.

I walked out to my car and hoisted my suitcase in.

When I pulled up to my house about an hour later, I found Chris sitting on the front step, his suit undone at the collar, his neck tie wrapped around his fist. He had a bottle of Jack beside him on the stoop, mostly gone, and he was leaning against my door. I parked and got out and walked over to him, kicked his foot. "Hey, Chris," I said, "Wake up, man."

Chris blinked blurrily up at me. "Oh hey douche tool," he slurred.

"Hey." I reached down and pulled him up to his feet, "What're you doing here?"

"I came to - to give you - a - a piece of my mind," Chris answered. He wobbled.

"A piece of your mind, huh?" I sniffed him, "Shit man you smell like the inside of a bottle."

"You take'er for granted," he hiccuped.

I pulled Chris up the steps and into the door. "C'mon, man," I said. I deposited him on the couch.

"Take her and take her and you just don't have a shit's clue," he muttered.

"Not a shit's clue what you're talking about," I agreed. I left Chris in the living room and went back out front to collect his empty Jack bottle, and my suitcase from my car. When I got back inside, I could hear Chris snoring, so I threw the bottle away and hauled the suitcase up the stairs to get some sleep of my own.