The Fuck Up

iv.

Harley woke up after me, and he saw something he wasn’t supposed to fucking see.

“Fuck,” I muttered as I shuffled through the pill bottles in my bathroom cabinet. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Sometimes when you experience shock and tragedy and pain as strong as I had, as my shrink had once put it, it hits you in sporadic bursts when you’re least expecting it, even when you thought you were over it.

And fuck, it hit me goddamn hard when I woke up.

And there I was, bawling my fucking eyes out even though I was mentally yelling at myself to stop being a weak pussy, looking for the antidepressant that I always took at these moments even though they didn’t really do shit.

“Fuck!” I yelled as I slammed the cabinet door back into place, my voice breaking with a sob.

“Reed?” Harley called from outside the bathroom and fuck he was awake.

“Come in here and I swear to fucking God I’ll burn your dick!” I wanted to sound menacing but threats usually sound weaker when you’re basically bleeding tears.

The motherfucker came in anyway.

I was rummaging in the cabinet under the sink by then, letting out swears and sobs when I still couldn’t find the shits.

“Fuck!”

“Reed? Reed, hey, calm down, what’s wrong?”

My head snapped toward him so fast that I thought I heard a crick. I could barely see him through my blurred vision, but he had that fucking worried expression on and his hands were held out towards me as if he wanted to reach for me.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” I nearly screeched, my lips pulling back in a sneer. “My life’s fucking wrong! I’m a fuck up and I can’t even find fucking antidepressants when I fucking need them!”

I was shaking by that point, with rage, with need, with the force of my chest heaving.

Harley apparently decided to use those held out arms of his and grab my shoulders, pulling me into him. And when I slumped against him, my head falling onto his chest, I didn’t fight him. Why? Why? Why was this guy making me do so many uncharacteristic things?

“I hate you,” I sobbed into his shoulder, clutching onto his shirt. I felt weak. “I hate you.”

“I know,” he soothed, rubbing the palm of his hand over my back. His chin was atop my head as I shook and I hated him for making me feel so goddamn warm.

When I came to my fucking senses, I pushed away from him and stood up. I sniffled and wiped my face, refusing to look at him. Somehow, the fact that I was in the arms of some man had been enough to snap me back from my breakdown.

“You better fucking forget you ever saw this,” I muttered, not having it in me to put more into the threat.

“Do you really think I’m going to do that?” He was still sitting on the floor, looking up at me. Damn, those fucking eyes.

“No, but one can fucking hope,” I grumbled, dragging myself past him and out of the bathroom. “Whatever, just get out.”

He came out of the bathroom after me, raising an eyebrow. He stopped in the doorframe, leaning against it as I turned back to look at him with annoyed eyes. “Not even gonna offer me breakfast?”

“One, I don’t eat breakfast. Two, there hasn’t been food in my kitchen, let alone my apartment, in six months.”

He furrowed his eyebrows. “So when and what do you eat?”

I shrugged, rolling my eyes. “I eat when I’m hungry and I eat fuckwads that don’t understand when a person wants to be left alone.”

“Can you even say a sentence without the word ‘fuck’?”

“Those are the sentences that don’t fucking matter in life.”

He didn’t say anything, just studied me, and I felt restless under his stare so I went to my room to use the bathroom in there to shower.

“If you’re not gone by the time I’m out of this shower I will really set you on fire once and for all,” I glared, but he just smiled at me, making my heart do this weird misstep thing.

I would say I actually expected him to have left by the time I came back into my living room, but I wasn’t really surprised when I found him sitting on the couch, watching my television like he belonged there.

And when he grinned after I glowered at him, in the back of my head I wondered if I really even minded.