Skinny Dipping -H.S

Skinny Dipping.

    "She is, you go away." Sierra points to the stairs.

    "Well why do I have to leave?" He asks.

    "Because I told you to?" Sierra shakes her head in confusion.

    "Is it my fault? Did I make you cry?" He asks, looking at me.

    "No you didn't. She made herself cry, now go away so I can talk to her. Work upstairs, I know you have more calls to make. Go away." Sierra gets up, actually turning him around, and pushing him towards the stairs now. He sighs, and moves himself up the stairs, ignoring the fact that he just got kicked out of his own living room. The door shuts, and Sierra turns to me.

    "He didn't have to leave. I'm fine." I blink away tears, and turn back around to my work.

    "Why are you upset?" She asks me, and I shake my head.

    "I'm not upset." I lie.

    "I have cancer you can't lie to someone with cancer that's literally the quickest way to go to hell." She tells me.

    "I would have to believe in hell for that to matter to me." I tell her.

    "Okay well... Fuck, just tell me what's wrong Scarlett." She sits next to me, leaning over the counter into my personal space.

    "Sierra I feel like this shouldn't be happening.." I admit.

    "What?" She asks, and I motion in front of me.

    "This. All of this. This." I motion around me to the apartment. "None of this should be happening because I didn't do anything to get all of this. I got lucky, and that shouldn't happen. That's not fair, that's not right. It's not... There's a catch.. Or I don't know. This feels so wrong to me. I don't feel like I deserve this, like I should have this.." I tell her, feeling dumb as I explain it.

    "Why do you feel like that?" She asks me.

    "Like this is wrong? I don't know it's just a feeling. It's just sitting at the front of my brain, and resting on my chest, and it's heavy and annoying." I tell her.

    "You're saying you don't deserve something that you have worked incredibly hard for.. You went to college for it. You went into severe debt for it. Hell you got assaulted by your old boss for this. I remember your senior year of college you would be working so hard on sketches that you would blister your hands from holding your pencils too tight.. I remember I would go to bed, and you would be awake in the same spot still working when I woke up." She tells me.

    "But that's-"

    "I'm not done.. I remember when no one else was there for me, you believed me when I said something was wrong. I remember that you would go to every appointment with me. You would stay at the hospital, and work even harder to make up for the work you missed. You were a full time student working a job when I couldn't, and you picked up every area I slacked in while also being a good sister, and doing everything you could, and through that you also had your heart broken by not only him." She points up the stairs. "But our parents too." She tells me.

    "Yeah I get that but that's not what I'm talking about." I tell her.

    "I know what you're talking about. You're talking about money. You're talking about the fact that you think this is a handout because our stupid fucking parents programmed it in our heads that we never take things from people, that we work our ass off for whatever we want, and need in life which is ironic considering how much money they took from you. Because it's incredibly hard for you to unlearn what they programmed in your mind." She tells me, and I'm silent now, her words sinking in, and clicking in my head.