Page 60 of Angels Fall

“Yeah, he told me.”

“Did he? Well, yeah, I did. And he’s kinda awesome and he basically just said that if I really gave a shit about you that I’d think about what you need and, like, give you a gift and stuff. And I do really give a shit. I give several shits. I know you don’t believe me, but…” I pause to give her a chance to tell me that she does, in fact, believe me. But she doesn’t say anything, So I continue…

“So, yeah. So, I tried to think what I could give you. Give YOU. That would be something you would like and could…use, or… Fuck. I dunno. Whatever. Evan told me you came by the station and you said it’d been a couple years since you’d seen your folks, and Thanksgiving was coming up, and shit, I figured it was the right thing to do. If you won’t let me into your world, you should have somebody here. You don’t have to do fucking everything alone. That’s all.”

She doesn’t say anything. Fine. I’m not done anyway.

“So, second… You can think I’m a selfish prick or whatever you want to think, but I gave you a gift because I wanted to and because it seemed like the right thing to do. That’s it. So, no. I didn’t expect anything from it. I certainly didn’t do it so that you’d fuck me. Hey, fucking you is a nice treat, but it’s not what I was looking for, and besides, I haven’t needed to do anything to get you to fuck me before now, so why would I start?”

She gets a steely look in her eye and kind of chews at the inside of her cheek and simmers a little while she assesses whether or not I’m full of shit.

“Believe me or don’t. Up to you. I did what I did from a sincere place. You made the choice to let me fuck you. So that’s on you. If you didn’t want to you didn’t have to. ‘Thank you’ would’ve been just fine. So as far as me getting your parents here goes, y’know… you’re welcome.”

Funny how easy it is not to give a fuck whether or not somebody believes you when you’re telling the truth.

She breathes in and out of her nose while still chewing the inside of her mouth, her tits rising and falling with the breath, causing me to imagine my cock sliding back and forth between them. Which is, in my opinion, an unfair advantage in an argument.

After a moment she says, “Do you think it makes me hot when you get pissed?”

That is so totally not anything I was expecting her to say.

“I—Uh. I don’t… Um. Why? Does it?” There’s probably a little hope in the question.

She smirks. “A little.”

Holy shit! This day is getting dysfunctionally better by the second!

“Fuck,” she says, hanging her head. “What the fuck are we doing?”

I stand and approach her. Carefully. “We are figuring it out. I guess.”

“Figuring what out?”

I reach her and lift her chin with my finger. Her eyes are wide and seeking. “It. All of it. This shit. Why it’s happening. What it all means.”

She laughs a tiny, mirthless sniffle.

“What?” I ask.

“I have this shrink, who’s fucking terrible, by the way.”

“Oh, you should see mine,” I tell her. “She’s the balls.”

She ignores me, and keeps talking. “—and this shitty shrink told me something that has kind of stuck with me.”

“Which is?”

“Basically, that things have no meaning. Good things. Bad things. They just… happen. And if that’s true, I don’t know what the point is in trying.”

“Wow, somebody said something like that to me too,” I say.

“Yeah? Who?”

“Um… James Franco.” (Oh, boy. Here we go.)

“You know James Franco?”

“Uh, a little,” I say. “Not the point. Point is that maybe… Maybe, yeah, things just happen. Maybe that’s true. And maybe they don’t objectively mean anything. But we can give them meaning. If we want. It’s up to us to decide what something means.”