home ⌁ hayes [ON HOLD]

1: unaffordable

« autumn »

my head hung low, i trudge into the empty apartment that my best friend and i have been renting for just under a year now. the place is kind of bare, solely because we can't really afford much. there was a time when this apartment was thriving with life. plants, couches, tables, consoles and blankets once filled the whole vicinity of the living room.

we lived off of our savings for a little bit and everything was swell, until we ran out of saved up money. everything from there on out went downhill, we both had to start working an extra part-time job on top of our steady incomes just to support ourselves. even with the extra money, we can't afford furniture so we had to sell everything except for the basic necessities.

we are the only two people who know about our financial struggles, because if i'm being completely honest, it's embarrassing and it's not like anyone could do anything about it. when our friends come over and see no furniture, they just assume we're extremely frugal and we enforce that by acting cheap all the time (though, it's not an act, we have to be cheap).

my best friend in command, hayes, is rich by uploading pictures online. even if that wasn't his (well-paying) job, he would still be well off because he's mentioned to me many times that his family is very wealthy and he was practically a trust-fund baby. see how embarrassing it would be to admit i have no money to one of my rich friends?

plus, i don't want their stares of pity. i don't want to suddenly become a charity case to all of my friends just because i'm broke. i just want to be treated like everyone else, and hiding my debt is the only way to do that, it seems.

my eyes wander around the room, finding emma curled up on the torn up, hand-me-down couch that was cheaper than some of hayes' socks. tears are streaming down her pale cheeks, falling onto her shoulder. she doesn't seem phased when i approach her, her gaze not coming off of the wall in front of us, where our television used to sit.

i don't need to ask why she's crying, i already know. it could be a variety of reasons, or all of them combined. 1) this is the first time i've seen her in days, thanks to our busy schedules, 2) we're almost poor, 3) we're disappointments to everyone that ever believed in us.

i sit at the end of the couch, being careful not to crush her feet. "hey, em" i greet, softly. she sniffles in response, not giving me a real greeting. "listen, i know you're overworked, and tired and—" she cuts me off, throwing a couch cushion in my general direction. it wasn't playful, either. it had a lot of force put into it.

"you don't get it! i can't spend the rest of my life like this! i'm exhausted, sad, sore and mentally drained.. you know we need to go back.." she trails off. i've been pondering about going back to our hometown in canada but every time i think of it, i shut down the thought immediately because there were so many people who didn't believe in us and my only goal in life is/was to prove them wrong.

and sure we got here... but there's no telling how long we'll actually stay. or how long we can stay.

"em.. you know we can't go—" i begin to reason with her, hoping she'll understand my point of view and my need to prove all of the bitches at home wrong.

"we can! you're just stuck in this mindset of 'i need to prove all the haters wrong!' when we have no haters! we're literally just two teenage girls who make minimum wage and are trying to pay for la's ridiculous rent prices." she takes a breath at the end of her statement, relaxing herself instead of going off on me more.

i genuinely thought that she understood and was on the same page as me. "well maybe if you didn't have such a negative attitude, we could be millionaires by now!" she rolls her eyes.

"this isn't the newest episode of: keeping up with the grier's. not everyone is naturally born into wealth and you know that because you were born into poverty!" my best friend exclaims, becoming defensive over my simple comeback.

"whatever. start packing, i guess," i tell her, standing up from the leather 'couch' and making my way to my bedroom. i'm really pissed about having to move back to canada.

i can just imagine all the 'i told you so's that are going to be thrown at me as soon as i exit that damn plane. to be honest, i'm not sure that i'm ready for that kind of tearing down, i'm already disappointed in myself to begin with, i don't need anymore hatred piled on top of it.

but at this point, what other options do we have? move into a shack? rent probably isn't even that much cheaper then it is for a penthouse. i could ask my dad for money, but if my mother finds out she'll throw a fit and demand that i come home immediately because i am 'not responsible enough' to be living on my own and she 'knew it all along'.

bottom line is, i am not ready to leave 'the land of opportunities' behind. but i don't really have a choice anymore, it's been too long that we've been working two jobs and resting in an unhappy state.

so, canada, here we come. again.