writing sux

characters

[foliques]

Evan Peters for Los Angeles Magazine (x)

[evanpeterssource]

I can’t fucking do this anymore!

[m1kasux]

familiarity

Dustin was on his fifth consecutive cigarette when the door opened behind him. He didn’t have to turn around to see that it was her, Blue Baudelaire, his girlfriend - he would have to remember to put ‘ex’ in front of that term now - of the past 9 months. 

She made her exit from the building doors loudly, dragging her over-packed suitcase on it’s side even though it had wheels, and was huffing as if she had just participated in the Boston Marathon. 

There was silence behind him as he sat, the only sound in the cold night air being her heavy breathing. Dustin took another drag of his cigarette, elbows on the step above the one he sat on, and glanced up at the stars through the bare-boned tree branches lining the stoop of his place.

No doubt there was something he should say to her. Anything, really. He just didn’t know where to begin. How had the fight even began? How had it progressed to the point of her packing up her stuff? 

Blue began her loud decent from the top again, bumping and scraping the hard shell of her suitcase across the dirty, cement stairs he sat on. She made it half way down the stairs before gravity finally seemed to realize how much the case weighed and sent to crashing into the boxes stacked where she had left them. 

She paused on the stairs beside her, her gaze cutting into him as if he had pushed the case down the stairs himself. 

“Do you have anything to say? Did I really mean that little to you, Dustin?” 

Again, Dustin was at a loss for words, his fingers warm from where the cigarette had burned down close to where he held it. A part of him wished that she would just call her cab and leave - so that he could erase any sign that she had even been in his life at all. Another part of him, one that he desperately had been trying to ignore, wanted to tell her every little thought he had. Every single fear and emotion and panicked, dependent need.

He tried his hardest to work past the lump in his throat but it wouldn’t budge. There was a sting growing behind his eyes, one that he had plenty of experience ignoring in the past and could only hope that he had enough experience to push past it this time. 

Even though it was only a few seconds, the hesitation was too much for Blue, and she continued down the stairs, reaching the bottom and immediately hailing over a cab that passed by. 

In a matter of moments, Blue had loaded her few boxes into the back of the cab. She gave him one last look, a look that was equal parts hateful but also held a sadness that felt all too familiar, before she slammed the cab door shut between them and mouthed directions to the driver. 

Dustin sat there for a while, absorbing the silence and trying to come to terms with the fact that usually he wished for silence but now he would give anything for her to come back and yell at him again. 

The streets grew quieter - less busy as the night dragged on - and soon Dustin ran out of cigarettes to smoke. He fumbled his phone out of his pocket, wondering how much time had past since he had first come out to sit. 

The date caught his eye and tickled a small part of his brain awake from the numbness he felt. Wasn’t the concert last night? How had he forgotten? Without giving it too much thought, Dustin found himself sending a short series of texts to Kira. 

Hey. 

U still in town? 

sry i misd ur show last night. 

rly wanna see u tho.

[sararpsthings]

just friends

Most days John hated living in Los Angeles, it was hot, sticky, and crowded. Today was no different – a high of 84 wasn’t so bad, but that shitty humidity made going outside like walking through a wet blanket. His air conditioner was broken, which meant his apartment was also like living in a rainforest, and he’d sold his car to pay his rent, so his only respite was taking a cold shower or heading to LAX early (how he was paying an Uber for an hour and a half in traffic, he hadn’t yet figured out). 

It had been a few months since Ashlynn had been on the west coast, always busy with photoshoots and runway shows. Still, whenever she came to visit she found a way to put John on the agenda. Sometimes she came by the bar, spent a few hours with him while he was working, other times they’d just relax in his apartment on his old, oversized plaid couch (thank you Craigslist). It was hard to believe that he’d been free of Lakeview for 6 years already, because when he was with Ashlynn it was as if no time had passed at all.

John followed her career (though he’d never admit to it) – watched her Instagram go from a few thousand to a few million, watched her pop up more and more in advertisements and even television. But he never got used to seeing her on billboards and magazine covers, more accustomed to their run-ins outside the principal’s office or on a park bench at the edge of Crystal Lake. For the first year John lived in LA, it was surreal to see his ex-girlfriend’s photos plastered around town, and he found himself too frequently scrolling through photos of her he’d saved on his camera roll. Maybe that was part of why he and Fiona hadn’t worked out, John was more wrapped up in his memories of Ash than he was in the present with his new girlfriend. That had always been the case when it came to Ashlynn, he was in love with her, but always at the wrong time. 

Lighting his third cigarette of the morning, John checked his phone for her flight information. 1:20, shit, almost time to leave. He pushed open the window in his kitchen, and was immediately hit with a wave of sour air. He grumbled, but blew his cigarette smoke out into the city air before wandering over to his refrigerator. There was nothing in it, but ketchup, hot sauce, and three dried out pizza slices. Pizza in LA sucked, but it was cheap, and that meant more cash for his drug habit. Closing the door, he turned on the tap and poured himself a glass of water into a glass that was near the sink. He had no idea when the glass was last washed, but it held liquid and didn’t have mold growing in it, so it was clean enough. 

He sipped the water while he finished his cigarette, then used the bottom of the glass to crush a blue from his pocket. With the back of his knuckle pressed to the side of his nose, he snorted the drug off the tabletop and took a long, deep breath. It’d be another ten minutes before the high really kicked in, but there was something relaxing that set in immediately after the oxy entered his system. If he called an Uber now, the peak would hit just as he arrived at the airport. But John knew his options were to show up high, or not show up at all, because the nod would make it impossible for him to schedule a car later. And he wasn’t willing to risk being the first person to see Ashlynn as she got off the plane. 

[m1kasux]

There was just something about LA that Ashlynn loved wholeheartedly. Even after 5 years of calling it home, the shimmer still hadn’t worn off for her. Sure, it was hot - sometimes unbearably so - but there was a magic to the city, the birthplace of Hollywood, that she couldn’t find herself getting used to. And she wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to. To lose that magic would be a tragedy. 

She glanced out the plane window to her right, watching the flaps on the plane wings pull up and down as the plane banked left, then right, then left again as it circled the airport and waited for the clearance to land. 

As she looked at the twinkle of light bouncing off the windows below and the brake-lights that formed a visible living red chain down the 405 freeway, she wondered if he was already waiting for her. If he remembered that she was flying in today. If he was going to be high. 

Last time she flew in, she waited for him. Even after grabbing her bags from the baggage claim, after grabbing a bite to eat at the Chick-fil-a in terminal 4, even after walking around the entire loop. John still hadn’t shown. When she met up with him later, he claimed that he had just gotten his dates mixed up but - Ashlynn knew. John was still the same John Moskovitz that she had fallen in love with in high school. Still angry at the world, still tender in their private moments, still more in love with being high than with Fiona, or his family, or her. Probably even combined. 

Almost as if by coincidence, once the plane wheels touched down on the tarmac and Ashlynn was able to pull her phone out of airplane mode, an email from her manager was waiting for her. 

“Let me know when to call you a car. In case he doesn’t show this time.” 

Ashlynn swiped the email away, sending it into the archived folder instead of answering. He would be there this time, she told herself as she grabbed her small bag from under the seat and stepped into the aisle of the plane. 

He would definitely be there this time. 

Wouldn’t he? 

[evanpeterssource]

[ssoundofwater-deactivated201901]

Dave Franco.