𝐋𝐢𝐚𝐫, 𝐋𝐢𝐚𝐫 | 𝐉𝐉 𝐌𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐤

28. Bacon Bits.

T W EN T Y - E I G H T
Bacon Bits

I hate everything and everyone and life is meaningless and humans have never done anything good. All we've done is fuck up the Earth that gave us everything. We deserve to go extinct.

Is that strong? No. Fuck no.

My mother ended up finding out about the picture, as did my brother. Those were rough conversations, my brother shouting about legalities, my mother beating herself up about the fact she let Rafe into her home. I just sat there, talking to Amalie like she understood a singular word I said. "Auntie Frankie had a tit pic sent out without her consent!" I'd said to her with a grin, she just clapped her hands together, amused that I was merely speaking. There is nothing I could do, or can do. Everyone and their Aunt in Mozambique has seen me knocked out and nearly naked—a good band name, now I think of it. Probably rock.

Tapping my pen on the worn, wooden desk, all I can think of is the fight, then the drinking, and now the rumours. The way he shouted at me hit a chord I don't think, or can't recall, anyone else hitting. I don't know if it was how personal the things he brought up were, or how many insecurities he threw at me, or—terrifyingly—I value his opinion more than I have ever valued my father's of Rafe's, the only other men who have shouted at me with intimate knowledge of my psyche. I could brush their shouting off, they were angry people, angry people shout things you shouldn't take seriously; but JJ, JJ doesn't shout at me, not like that, anyway. Perhaps it hit a cord because it was unexpected, or maybe because I should've just stayed in the bed and stared at the mouldy ceiling. Maybe then there wouldn't be a rumour that I fucked Terry in the bathroom of Amanda's party.

Actually, definitely then.

Apparently, throwing vodka at him wasn't taken kindly so he decided to get one back at me. Honesty, the jokes on him he's just thrown on the pile of many of my alleged escapades.

"I'm sure you've fucked Barry. You've always liked older men. Is that why I'm not good enough? I'm not old enough to satisfy your daddy issues?"

The insult is burned into my mind. It brings up things I want to forget—people who have destroyed me. From my first kiss at fourteen with a man a few weeks shy of his twentieth birthday, to Corey, who not only did what he did, he was also a handful of years older than me. Yet another time someone older, supposedly wiser, preyed on the girl who so desperately needed validation.

All I could muster up in response to a low blow like that? I just asked him to repeat himself with a "fuck" in there, just to show him how mad I was. Not one of my better come-backs. Usually, those happen in the shower, hours later, after I replayed the conversation over again and again, trying to find what went wrong and how to divert next time it seems to be going in that direction again.

I still don't know what I should've said. I would only loathe myself more if I brought up some of the dirt I have on him. That wouldn't feel satisfying, I realised. A snarky come-back is supposed to satisfy your soul, not make you want to cut your tongue out. So I said the equivalent to nothing, then, and only then, did I just summarise what he said.

Age gaps. It's an epidemic, something seen as normal, old celebrities ditching their appropriately aged wives for a new, younger woman.

Do I want to fuck Logan from Succession? Yes, very much so. Is it in the slightest bit appropriate? Sadly for me, it's not.

But you see it constantly. Leonardo Decaprio would rather cut his dick off than stick it in a girl with a fully-formed frontal cortex.

Women's value is not judged like a man's, we don't get to have wrinkles and people call us "silver foxes", older women are accused of "letting themselves go" if they stop dying their hair, the second we hit forty our supposed value goes down, replaced by the next gorgeous teenager—and so the cycle continues. What's wrong with wanting to look your age? So many people don't get to have wrinkles because they simply die before they appear.