Page 106 of Enemies with Benefits
"Don't you fuckingdareact like you know me," he snarled, shoving out of the chair so hard the back legs snapped and it collapsed behind him.
"Why not? You're so good at acting like you know people," I told him coolly, unfazed by his display. Ignoring that the cheap ass chairs could break any moment, we had dealt with one another long enough that I knew the damage he could do when he was pissed. Plus, this wasn't to piss him off, I was making a point, his reaction be damned. "Especially me. You always like to pretend like you know me so damn well, why shouldn't I give it a whirl?"
"Maybe it's easy for you. You've got your whole ass family, a great life, everything people like me have always wanted, but guess what? Not everyone gets to be as lucky as you. Maybe that's something you forgot while you jerk yourself off about how great you are at pretending to be good at life."
"Really?" I asked, sarcasm lacing my words, and I could already see how quickly things were once again spiraling out of control. Except, no, this was different, wasn't it? It wasn't claws and fangs aimed at sore spots; it was more personal than ever. Not two people who’d learned each other's weak points through constant sparring, but two people who had come to know each other as more than bitter rivals, as something more. Maybe not quite lovers, but close enough that any wounds we dealt would be deep and bleed for a long time. "You're going to be bitter because I didn't have the shittiest childhood, really? Now you’re just being a jealous bitch."
"I am not fucking jealous," he snapped, bringing a fist down on the balcony railing and making it vibrate, the slight twang of the metal making me glance at it and wonder briefly if he might actually break it if he did it again.
"Really? Because it sure as shit sounds like it. And sorry but, c'mon, you can't tell me you didn't go through life beingjealous of people who had it easier or better than you, especially other kids," I shot back at him because really, who would blame someone in a position like he had been in? I sure as shit wouldn't have blamed him, not even now...if he just admitted it.
That was the thing: he wasn't going to own up to it, and probably never would, not to me. It didn't matter that I was probably the one person in his life who had gotten close to him in a way no one else had. Oh, I had no doubt he’d got close to whoever he'd dated, but he was the sort to get too caught up in his fear of fucking things up to ease his grip on himself, whereas with me, he had never had to hold back, nor wanted to. There was Kayden, who definitely knew about Jace and his shortcomings and successes, but I would bet that, as close as they were, Kayden wasn't allowed to see many of Jace's vulnerabilities and weak points. Only someone who had gone toe to toe with Jace, who had been put in a position to always watch out for his weaknesses, would truly be on the lookout for those things, spotting them even when Jace worked his ass off to hide them.
His mouth opened, and before he could drum up the retort that was bound to burn in his throat, a laugh bubbled out of me. I wasn't surprised to see his mouth slam shut, eyes blazing as his tender, overly sensitive nerves told him I was mocking him. Yet even he could hear the surprise in my laughter, and his brow stitched together, lips parting just a little to show his confusion.
How fucked up was that? The person with the highest chance of understanding him was the last person on the planet he considered capable of it. The same person he had despised for years, the person he would have sooner cut off his own hand than touch kindly, was exactly the person who could peer in and find the soft, vulnerable, and vital parts of him? Not his girlfriends, not his friends...me.
He advanced on me, but I held out a hand, shaking my head. "I'm sorry, I just...how fucking fucked is your life? How fucked ismylife?"
"What thefuckis so funny?” he demanded, but stayed right where he was, staring at me in anger, but...the confusion stayed as well. He probably thought I was still trying to mock him, but there was still the fact that my laughter made no sense to him.
"Can't you see?"
"No, and you're not making any sense."
"Pfft, none of this makes any fucking sense," I said, feeling my eyes sting with tears as the laughter kept rolling out of me with no sign of easing up, let alone stopping. "That's what makes it so goddamn funny."
"Nothing about this is funny."
"It is."
"How the fuck is this funny?"
"Do you remember those old optical illusions?" I asked, the image popping into my head, my laughter dying to chuckles to let me explain. "The ones that looked like static. Just a bunch of visual noise that didn't mean shit to you, but people always claimed there was something there?"
He continued to look confused and angry, but I couldn't tell if the confusion was defusing the anger or if he was just pissed off that I had him confused. "I...yeah, what does...huh?"
"I used to think people were making it up when they said they could see whatever we were 'supposed' to see. I mean, c'mon, how the hell were you supposed to make sense of anything that amounted to a bunch of dots on a page?"
His silence stretched on longer, and I treated it like a noise from the now-fled Nightshade and continued. "Got on my nerves at the time. I mean, I was all for a good joke, even when I was young, especially if you could get more than one person in on the joke. But there's a point where the joke just stops being funny,and you have to ease up on the gas and stop trying to fuck with people. And before you say it, I do know how to do that, I just didn't want to do it with you for the most part."
He stared at me, mouth still open, eyes narrowed, and I suspected he thought I’d lost my mind. Not an unfair assumption on his part, and he wouldn't have been the first person to wonder that, but that wasn't relevant to the point I was ambling my way toward.
"The art teacher, Miss Hamren, started it all. Always had one hanging up near the chalkboard. She'd wait until someone actually 'saw' whatever was in those stupid things before she'd take it down, and a new one would go up. That shit drove me crazy because I'd swear she was doing it to screw with me, and the other kids who couldn't see it. And then she put one up, and although kids tried to guess what it was, they never got it."
"What the fuck is happening?" Jace said aloud in a tone that said he was speaking to himself rather than demanding an answer out of me.
"Well, I decided I was going to get that shit because, damn it, the stupid joke of hers had been going on for months. I took every chance I got to look at it. I stared it down, squinting in different ways, tilting my head, having one eye closed and the other squinted, doing all those things at the same time in different ways. Still, not a damned thing happened. I knew Miss Hamren was watching, and she'd smile, and I hated her for it. God, I thought I couldn't hate someone like I hated her...well, then a few years later I met you in middle school and I learned that wow, the human heart really has space for all sorts of new feelings and depths."
"What thefuckis happening?” he now demanded, and it sounded like he was almost panicking, like he was afraid it was him losing his mind.
"I stayed over a few times when class was done, trying to see if maybe not having people around would make it better. Finally, I lost my temper, I ripped the thing off the wall and slammed it down. I just stood there, glaring at the spot where the thing had been next to the chalkboard. Nine years old and filled with rage at an inanimate object that made me feel stupid and childish. I've known adults who get just as mad at inanimate objects, but that would have been small comfort to nine-year-old me."
"And then," I said, holding his dumbfounded stare, and I turned so he was barely visible in the corner of my eye. "I glanced over at it, just a little bit. Couldn't be helped, I suppose. I didn't want to look at the stupid thing. And there it was. Not a three-legged dog, not a man with a briefcase, not a fucking snake, it was a goddamn squirrel. A fuckingsquirrel. I could see its bushy tail, the little ears, the way it held an acorn like it was going to speak the answers to life's riddles. There I was, madder than hell, and I saw that sucker from the corner of my goddamn eyes, and I realized right then...I had been looking at it all wrong; nobody had told me or even hinted that you could be tricked by your own eyes like that, so I didn't think to trick it back. But the second thing? Well, I'd been tryingthathard, forthatlong, and beenthatmad...over a squirrel."
The thought sent laughter rumbling through me again, but I wasn't nine years old, I had better control over myself. Even if my adult mind comprehended how stupid and absurd the world could be, it also came with better control. "In a way, I guess she was trying to get us to look at things differently. It's not a bad lesson for kids and their elastic brains, and it's expected from an art teacher. But I wonder if she realized she'd not only taught me that, but also how stupid shit could be, and how stupid people were for getting all riled up about it, and that I was just as stupid!
"I didn't tell anyone, and she put the thing back up after I left, and for the rest of the year, no one got it. I was finally in onthe joke because I could tell when people were guessing, trying to get praise from Miss Hamren, and those who were so close to seeing it but just couldn't make it out. At the end of the school year, in the last few minutes of class, I announced that it was a squirrel with an acorn. The whole class stared at me, and she did too. Maybe it was on my face, or maybe she had a hunch, but she asked me if I'd known all along, and I shrugged and told her yes. She smiled and asked why I kept it to myself then. You know what I said?"
