xi. sweet in your memory

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real life!

"I'm in a crisis" are the first words I say to West as he lets himself into my apartment.

        Watching the little rat as he weasels his way to my kitchen and inspects the fridge as if he hasn't seen it a million times already and isn't about to take the expired cranberry juice waiting patiently at the back, I already know the next words out of his mouth. West Monroe is about to tell me he's not the right one to listen to my problems and send me off with a nice pat on my back to Angie.

"I love your energy," he starts, pointing at me. "But I can't hear anything about a crisis right now. That's more Angie's thing."

        And there it is. Trust West to be predictable.

Frowning, I ask, "Do you see Angie here?"

        "No, which is why you just need to hold on to that crisis a bit longer." He clenches his fist and does that face you make when you're going for glory on your toilet, but I suppose he means for it to be a face of You got this! You can hold it all in until Angie comes over! I'm only here for juice! Ugh. "Just reel it in, baby."

        In this moment, I've discovered West Monroe's accent is the only British accent that makes me want to crawl in a hole and never come out, but that may just be my reaction to all the audacity this man possesses for someone who barges into my house every Saturday morning to drink my cranberry juice straight from the jug, so I glare at him with all my might. "If you're going to drink my cranberry juice, you could at least listen to the problems of the person who pays for it," I chide.

"First of all, the cranberry juice is expired—"

"That's the way you like it."

"Second of all"—he burps—"me and you don't talk. I'm all like, 'Kavi, I hate you,' then you laugh in my face, then Mar slaps me over the head, then Angie yells at us to 'be nice to each other.' Whatever that means." He shrugs. "That's us."

Times like these I wish I'd become an actress. I could've whipped out the tears and just watch Wes crawl on his knees to hear everything that's going wrong in my pathetic excuse of a life.

"If Mar was here she'd threatened to throw that knife at you," I say, motioning to the butter knife on the counter.

        It's a thinly-veiled threat for two reasons—it's a butter knife that can't actually do anything to this fragile man, and Mar would probably threaten him with the carving knife instead—but it seems to land enough that the poor boy actually shudders, spilling a couple drops of juice on his Nirvana t-shirt.

        "Fine," he moans, shaking his head as he takes another sip. "Just know Mar only threatens me because she's in love with me, plus I'm not good at being nice to you."

        "You're nice to Angie."

        "Angie's an angel," he says like it's obvious. "She literally has angel in her name."

"I'm the angel. Who else is keeping expired cranberry juice in their fridge for you?"

"Angie would if I asked," he points out. "Because she's the angel."

PASSERBY, harry stylesWhere stories live. Discover now