Hilariously Ever After

by Box Set

  I was just the asshole.

  Chapter 16

  Unlike the last time I’d cursed giving Ava a key, this time I was very happy, because it meant I didn’t have to leave bed to let the girls in.

  “Is she… alive?” Scarlet whispered.

  “Yeah, I think she just looks dead,” Ava answered.

  “How long do you suppose it’s been since she washed her hair?” Lizzie asked.

  “Surely not the month that it looks like,” Scarlet answered.

  “If Charlotte ever pulls this kind of crap, I swear to god…” Lizzie trailed off.

  “Does anyone know what actually happened, anyway?” Ava asked.

  “Does anyone know that I can hear you?” I rolled over and glared up at them. It had only been two days since I’d washed my hair; there had just been a lot of product in it. It wasn’t so bad. I thought. I scratched it experimentally. Okay, maybe it was bad, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

  “It’s alive!” Lizzie cheered. “Get up and spill. We brought booze.”

  I considered this for a moment. I did want a drink and a friendly ear. Or six of them, as the case may be.

  “It’s not wine, is it?” I asked. That was one drink I’d be forced to swear off forever. Only beer would wash my freedom fries down now and forever.

  “No, we made the mistake of checking out the vodka.” Ava held up a clanking bag.

  “What have you done?” I was astonished at the number of bottles residing in there.

  “Look, there are a lot of interesting flavors. We just thought it wouldn’t be right if we bought salted watermelon and you were in more of a salted caramel mood.” Scarlet had a point, although I noted the bag contained Birthday Cake, Cucumber, and Orange Dreamsicle as well.

  “Can we drink in the living room, though? Your room smells like despair and unwashed hair, my friend.” Ava was always honest. And in this case, correct.

  “No. I can never face Marc again.”

  “Oh, didn’t he tell you? He’s staying with his mom until he goes to France. Have you been hiding in here this whole time?” The girls exchanged concerned looks.

  “Well, obviously! Gosh, he’s really with his mom? He must truly hate me to go stay with her.” I tossed back the covers and stood up.

  “Why would you say that? Do they not get along?” Lizzie asked.

  “They do, she just prefers his brother and makes no secret of it. He’s bitter.” I jammed my feet into my favorite Hulk foot slippers and put the offending hair into a messy bun.

  “Hah! That old song and dance?” Ava looked surprised. “Aunt Dee Dee is like, obsessed with Marc. She just feels sorry for Paul because he’s such a derp. She hoped if she gave him extra attention he wouldn’t grow up with an inferiority complex and become a criminal.”

  We looked at each other.

  “That didn’t work out so well, did it?” I asked.

  “You know what they say about the road to hell,” Ava replied. “Sheesh, I really thought if anyone could talk some sense into him about his mother, it’d be you. It’s so obvious from the outside.” It was not obvious from the outside. But then again, I wasn’t exactly the poster child for intuition these days.

  We proceeded to the kitchen, where I mixed myself a reasonably weak cucumber vodka Bloody Mary.

  “I’m not sitting on that couch,” I said.

  Scarlet sprang off it like it was hot. “Sweet Jesus!” she yelped.

  “We didn’t bang on it!” I said. “It just reminds me too much of him.”

  “I think it’s time to explain yourself,” said Lizzie, carrying my drink to the kitchen table. I considered protesting, because we’d once shared a lovely candlelit dinner here, but they were going to draw the line somewhere and honestly that left us about nowhere else to go but his bedroom, and that for sure wasn’t happening. I sat down heavily.

  “Well, firstly, I have a confession to make. One that I should have made a long time ago. And I’m sorry in advance for not letting you in on this earlier, I was just scared and weird, and you guys know me, and—”

  “Spit it out already,” Lizzie ordered.

  “I started the sitcomic. And I called it Screwmates, just like we talked about that day. And, well, it kind of took off.” I hung my head and waited for more punishment to fall upon me.

  “Oh, we knew that.” Ava sounded disappointed.

  “I thought this was going to be juicy, too. Refill?” Lizzie asked Scarlet, who shook her head. She must have been on another sobriety kick. Scarlet had issues. Drinks weren’t actually one of them. But that wasn’t the revelation here. They knew? They’d known all along?

  “How did—? Why didn’t anyone say anything?” I was so confused.

  “We figured if you weren’t ready to discuss it, no big deal.” Lizzie shrugged. “You couldn’t keep it in forever. Although you did get close.”

  “Now that we’re allowed to talk about it, can we cheers? You are kicking ass and taking names, my friend. How many people are following that thing? Like six thousand?” Ava asked.

  “Ten,” I muttered. I didn’t care anymore. And I was not cheersing, either. I couldn’t celebrate the reason I’d driven Marc off.

  “Holy crap! I bet you get an agent out of this,” Scarlet said. “Maybe I will have another, after all. Lizzie?”

  “I’m not your mom.” But she got up anyways.

  “I did get an offer from one,” I admitted. The shrieks were deafening.

  “You have an agent! You have an agent!”

  “Will you remember us when you’re rich and famous?”

  “Wanna be roomies again in your mansion?”

  “Guys. I’m not accepting.” That shut them up, but only for a second.

  “But… why?” Because I’d exploited Marc enough already was why. Because the very thought of Screwmates made me sick to my stomach right about now. Because I didn’t even know if I could draw at all anymore. Maybe I was just broken.

  “Because I never told Marc about the comic, okay? He found it on his own. And now he’s staying with his mom before banging his way across a foreign country and he hates me and I hate myself and I can’t exactly accept an agent’s offer of representing the series I’ll be deleting as soon as you people leave.” Which hopefully wouldn’t be until I’d had a few more drinks, because as much as I wanted Screwmates gone, it would really, really hurt to say goodbye.

  Once the comic was gone, so was the only evidence of my torrid roommate affair.

  Lizzie excused herself to go to the bathroom, and I told her to bring me back some tissues.

  “Oh my gosh, let it out,” Scarlet said.

  “I’m not crying!” I was definitely crying. And the more I tried to hold it back, the harder I cried. The girls were exchanging looks again and I didn’t want concern, I wanted shots. However, it was a bit difficult to understand me through the tears and the snot, so I just got up and collected glasses and the salted caramel flavor. Because it really did look delicious.

  “Oh, we’re onto this, then? Let me text my sitter.” Lizzie had emerged, with the tissues, and just in time. I knocked one back and immediately refilled.

  “You guys did not tell me how much this sucks. I blame you entirely.”

  “Because Little Madison finally fell in love? I’m not taking the blame on this one, sister.” Lizzie took her shot.

  “Plus are you serious about not knowing how much heartbreak sucks? That’s literally the only thing songs and books and shit are about.” Ava perched on the edge of the table and made a face at her shot glass. “I wanted Birthday Cake.”

  “Drink that and pour what you want,” Lizzie said. “I’ll take a Cake too, actually.”

  “You’re closer,” Ava said.

  “Oh my God, I’m not your mom either.” But she got up.

  “Back to me, please,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah. Well, you’ll go through all the steps of grieving and then emerge on the other end a stronger woman,” Scarlet told m
e. “Wanna play Truth or Dare?”

  “I’m not done being coddled, I think.” Although Drunk Scarlet was a blast, because she would do any dare. Which, come to think of it, could explain her reluctance to drink very often. We’d probably never let her live down the time she streaked our high school principal’s yard. But then that reminded me of the time Maddy and Markus got naked in the neighbor’s yard and I teared up again.

  I would miss those little cartoon perverts almost as much as I would miss my own screwmate.

  “I’m just going to go back to bed now, I think. Feel free to get tanked in the living room without me,” I said, standing up.

  “Sit down,” Lizzie growled.

  “Shut up,” said Ava.

  “Have another!” said Scarlet, uncapping the Orange Dreamsicle flavor next.

  “What are you going to do, Madison?” Lizzie asked. She liked plans. And lists.

  “Well, I was planning to go back to bed, but you guys stopped me, so.” I thought it was obvious.

  “No. What are you going to do? Are you going to accept this? Or are you going to fight?”

  “What is there to fight?” I asked. “I screwed up. Royally. Unless someone’s hiding a TARDIS?” Unfortunately, I was the likeliest subject in the room to have a time-traveling police box, so I was forced to check that option off the list.

  “So you screwed up. It happens. He’ll calm down, and then you need to be prepared.” Ava was raiding the refrigerator. A good decision, considering the rate at which we were knocking back the vodka. I hoped Marc hadn’t taken the good snacks with him.

  “Prepared for what? It isn’t like I can just casually cruise by his mom’s every day until he’s receptive. Plus, even when he’s calm, I doubt he’ll want to talk to me.” No, there was nothing to it. It was over. He was done with me, and I was just done. It was back to lonely nights at SplatScreen and lonelier days trolling Craigslist for a new roommate.

  The bag of chips Ava found wasn’t going to be nearly big enough for me to eat the feelings I was experiencing.

  Everyone was quiet, chewing for a minute. I knew it should be comforting that they’d come over, but I just couldn’t even work up any gratitude. The vodka part was nice, but them leaving so I could shower before returning to my endless Lord of the Rings-on-repeat marathon sounded even nicer.

  How had I never noticed how much Ava looked like Marc before? Those deep, dark eyes, the big curls…

  “Why do you look like you’re in love with me now?” she asked.

  “Pass the chips,” I said. I didn’t feel like explaining myself. I kept sneaking looks at Ava and wishing she was Marc. I was definitely, definitely broken. And the girls did not look like they were going anywhere in a hurry.

  In fact, they were not going anywhere at all. A couple more drinks and a couple hours later, Lizzie’s mother was taking Charlotte for the night (“Rich is working late constantly these days,” she told us) and Scarlet was napping (“But I’m gonna rally when I wake up,” she told us) and Ava was looking up recipes for dealing with the salted watermelon vodka (“I looked at the word salted too many times and now it isn’t real anymore,” she told us).

  Drinking with my friends wasn’t even fun anymore. I was the brokenest creature on earth.

  I remembered when drinking was fun. I missed drinking with Marc. I even missed Brandon the sommelier. He didn’t deserve the way I treated him. I made a note to name a character Brandon soon, and then not kill him off. It was the highest compliment I knew how to pay. If only I had come clean when Marc was nice and wasted. I could have done it that night.

  I should have shared the crostini.

  There were a million things I could have done differently.

  On the couch, Scarlet farted in her sleep and it didn’t even make me laugh. No one had ever been as broken as I. I set the bar for brokenness.

  “Maybe we should order a pizza,” Lizzie said. “Kick this party up a notch.”

  I turned on the TV and ignored everyone. Eventually they would leave and I could crawl back into my hole. For another day, anyway, then it was back to work and begging for overtime so I could try and bulk up my bank account before finding a new place to live.

  I really liked this house, too. Just my luck, I’d end up in someone’s basement next. Although at least in a basement I could do some printing.

  Printing. I had wanted to hang prints in here. My vision got blurry as I stared at the empty walls, as barren as my heart, but I drifted off before I had a chance to start sniffling again.

  The Dream was back, but this time, the ink splotches on my arms were whispering to me as I walked down the halls of my alma mater nude.

  “You weren’t good enough for him.”

  “Your boobs are too small.”

  “Your comic sucks.”

  I looked down at my final project, and it had turned into an oil painting of his face on a giant penis. Even in my dream, I was pissed.

  A penis? Really? I had worked long and hard (ha ha) on that project. And my boobs were a perfectly acceptable mouthful. And my comic was actually awesome. I’d earned those followers, I’d only screwed up my reactions to everything.

  I woke up with a start, and ran for my computer. It wasn’t on my desk where I was certain I’d left it. It wasn’t anywhere in my room. I started to hyperventilate a little. Had I been robbed? Did we all get too drunk and robbers just tiptoed in and grabbed the computer? But no, the television was still there, and so were the assorted vodkas.

  “Looking for something?” Lizzie stopped me in the hall, laptop under her arm.

  “Give me that.” I wasn’t in the mood for games.

  “I’m not giving you shit,” she hissed. Turned out she wasn’t in the games mood either. “I am not going to let you throw away the career you’ve always dreamed of over a man. You aren’t getting this back until you are ready to behave like a grownup, Madison.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “What?” I think she was expecting a fight. But it turned out broken just wasn’t really compatible with my natural optimism, and nervous or not—I’d already done the scariest things I could think of when I put my art online for strangers and told my sex thing I loved him.

  “I said okay. I’m ready to be a grownup. And I need to accept that agent’s offer before she gets bored of waiting for me.” I hoped she wasn’t already. I had no idea how agents worked, but I bet they didn’t expect to be ignored.

  “I, uh. Well, I went ahead and accepted that one for you.” She started to hand over the computer, but I stopped her and grabbed my notebook first. “What now?”

  I couldn’t even be mad she’d pretended to be me. She was probably a way better accepter than I would have been. Where I would have used all caps, I bet she used complete sentences and punctuation that wasn’t just strings of exclamation points. Lizzie was a good egg.

  “Now, I draw an awesome version of events. And tell the world what I’ve done. And then we get Ava to text Marc and tell him to look online. And then if he still hates me, at least I know I’ve done everything I could. And we drink another gallon of vodka and I sleep on your couch and become your unpaid nanny.”

  Lizzie looked suspiciously interested in that last part, but she let me retreat to my room with all my tools anyways.

  I worked through the entire night, writing down everything that had happened since I stood on the threshold of this house, rubbing my glasses and gawking at Hot Marc’s Colin Farrell face. Then I drew until I had to put my wrist brace on.

  And then—I waited.

  Chapter 17

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Those were not exactly the words I expected to hear when my roommate finally came home. Was he my roommate anymore? I stood in the living room, twisting my lips around nervously, waiting to hear if his next step was going to be throwing me out.

  “Um… no?” I guessed. I had no idea what the right answer was.

  “You are out of your mind.” This was a
statement. A true one, at that, so I merely inclined my head.

  “I should throw you out, and never speak to you again. Or that rat Ava, who clearly took your side in this one, proving she has zero loyalty to me or our family.” I tried not to quake visibly, but I was absolutely shaking in my Doc Martens.

  “I know. You should.” My voice quavered, even as I clenched my hands to keep them from betraying me. Stupid voice.

  “No one has ever made me feel as crummy as you did. Do you know that?” His arms were folded, and I still ogled the bunching of his muscles in that position, even though it was super inappropriate. I couldn’t help it. He was even hot when he was mad. And if my heart was about to get ripped out and stomped on, at least I could have a final piece of eye-candy.

  “I do. I do know that.”

  “Fictionalizing our sex thing wasn’t enough for you. You went and told—was it fifteen thousand?”

  “Twenty-five,” I said. Even the quaver couldn’t hide the little hint of pride.

  “Twenty-five thousand goddamned people about the story behind the story. With illustrations.” He took a step into the house. I didn’t know if I should back up or stand my ground, but the magnets in our hearts meant that I stepped towards him instead of either option.

  “I think I gave myself carpal tunnel, if that helps?” Another step.

  “It doesn’t help.” He stared at me, disbelief etched all over his face as I took another step his way. It felt like we’d done this dance a lot in our short time together.

  “So…” I twisted my lips.

  “No. You’ve spent enough time talking. It’s my turn now.” He closed the rest of the gap between us and I closed my eyes at the familiar scent of sandalwood and—was the new scent apple cinnamon? I’d tell Ava to tell her aunt it was a resounding success. Maybe she could even hook me up with a bottle to remember Marc by.

  The promised talking-to wasn’t happening, so I opened my eyes. He was standing over me, staring at me. I swallowed hard.