Forget Me Not

chapter nine: the broken hearts gallery

"Heartbreak is the loneliest, most isolating feeling in the world. And the truth is, it happens to us all. It is the great equalizer." - The Broken Hearts Gallery

"You are such a fucking idiot."

"Huh?" Oliver startled out of his sleep, blinking wearily up at Brock who loomed above him.

"Oh, I'm sorry, was that mean?" Brock mockingly asked himself "Forgive me. You are the biggest asshole to ever grace this land."

If Oliver wasn't still half asleep, he would have commented on how Brock had just managed to create one of the longest, most eloquent sentences that he had ever heard from him. But instead he simply dragged his hand roughly over his face before sitting up.

The sun was streaming through the parted curtains in the living room, left by the previous tenants, and Oliver was stretched out on the couch where he had surreptitiously landed last night after dropping off Izzy and then waiting a believable amount of time, to mimic his drive home from his parents house, in the McDonalds parking lot before driving home.

Brock shook his head, turning away from Oliver and into the kitchen where he loudly shook his protein shake, the plastic ball inside of his bottle clanging around noisily.

Oliver blinked wearily, hauling himself up into a sitting position. His neck was cramped from resting on the hard arm of the couch last night and he had a splintering headache.

"Aren't you going to ask why I think you're an asshole?" Brock continued on as he jammed a few cans of tuna into his backpack. It was utterly disgusting but Brock's muscle gain meal plans consisted of components such as canned tuna, raw eggs and protein powder straight from the jar.

"No," Oliver mumbled underneath his breath, his fingers working to ease his bedhead from Einstein level untamable to something more manageable "But I bet you are going to tell me."

"You left my fucking ashtray on the counter. In plain sight. Where Katie very clearly saw it." Brock said, clearly disgruntled. It was all slowly making sense to Oliver now as he took in the distinguishable bags underneath Brock's eyes.

"It could have been mine." Oliver offered as a poor defense.

Brock snorted "Katie knows you don't smoke."

"So she made you dump all of your cigarettes down the toilet?" Oliver guessed, correctly might he add.

This sort of event happened at least once every few months. Brock was a devout cigarette smoker and Katie was just as devoutly against it. So, Brock smoked in secret until eventually he slipped up and Katie found out. Which meant she subsequently made him get rid of his entire stash of cigarettes. Which then meant Brock had to go out and spend all of his pizza job money on a new stash. This regular chain of events then led Oliver to his final conclusion on why the bad mood laid with him that day.

"And you had the car to go see your fucking parents so I haven't had a fucking cigarette in almost twenty-four hours." Brock seethed, jamming an entire sleeve of water crackers into his backpack "She made me go to Trader Joe's with her and buy Kombucha because she said it would give my body 'the same high'. It tasted like the asshole of a piece of seaweed."

"Car's all yours." Oliver raised his eyebrows, determined to stay out of his path for the rest of the day until he had at least six cigarettes in his system. He neglected to inform Brock that seaweed is not an organism and therefore does not have an asshole.

He shook his head, his nostrils flared "Uh uh man. I got work later so you gotta drive me to school."

Oliver knew it was unavoidable so he peeled himself off the couch, his sore muscles screaming in protest. His head immediately pounded as he stood and it felt as though it weighed five hundred pounds atop his shoulders.