i love you from here

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Of all the days, it had to be this one.

Charlie glowers at the man in her apartment. Jake is back. It's been months now; six or seven, probably, since he last stopped by. The day he shows up is the day before one of her huge exams for medical school. So much for getting good sleep tonight. Charlie is very ticked off, to put it lightly. Riley is picking up on Charlie's anger- the dog is statue-still and baring her teeth.

Make one wrong move, buddy, I dare you, Charlie thinks, seething. She is not in the mood for this today.

Jake keeps his mouth shut, lucky for him, and just goes ahead and gets settled. 'Settled' meaning that he unloads all of his weapons onto the kitchen countertop and starts cleaning them.

Charlie locks herself in her bedroom. The lock slides shut smoothly and with a satisfying click. It's not satisfying right now, though. She's pissed. If she has a bad day tomorrow and Jake is still here, she may just lose it. What she'll actually do, she's not sure. Probably just bury her face in a pillow and have a full-fledged mental breakdown. It's been a while since she's had one of those. Her constant mental state is like a bottle of vinegar, with the lid on, mixed with baking soda. Shaken. Fizzing and just waiting to explode.

Life is a party. And Charlie is the pinata.

She is the skeet and life is the shotgun.

If Charlie is a firework, life is a pyromaniac.

Life really just loves beating her up. It's ridiculous, really. Charlie doesn't usually feel like this, but life recently has been extraordinarily tough lately. College is getting really tough. Charlie's grades have gone from straight A's down to narrow A's and frequent B's. The splint she got made for her jaw didn't help much, so her TMJ is still getting worse. The dentist made her something called a 'front bite plate' in hope that it would stop Charlie's habit of clenching her teeth, but Charlie just started clenching her jaw instead. It's involuntary, of course, and a habit that Charlie's trying so hard to break.

A few years back, the dentist told her that the chances of her ever needing surgery for her TMJ were extremely low, since surgery is usually a last-resort thing. The chances of surgery are rising now, and that's the last thing that Charlie wants. But if it makes the hurting stop, she'll take it. She's sick and tired of her jaw cracking and aching 24/7. Of course, surgery would hurt way worse for a while, but that would heal.

Charlie lays on top of her covers on her bed and stares at the ceiling. She's ready for the exam tomorrow. There's nothing to do now except marinate in her own existential dread.

Riley jumps up on the bed next to Charlie and snuggles into the crook of Charlie's shoulder.

A dog does help with existential dread.

Is this what a midlife (quarterlife?) crisis feels like? Is that what she's having?

Charlie gets bored after half an hour of gazing at the ceiling. Her dread fades as she relaxes. She comes to the conclusion that no, she is not having a quarterlife crisis and that she will be fine.

She's hungry now. When she got home earlier, she had plans to fix herself some lunch. Considering the fact that she's currently hiding in her room, sprawled across her lavender-plant specked bedspread, it's pretty evident that she never got that lunch. It'll be okay. She's gone much longer without eating than just breakfast to lunch before. Other people go longer every day. Some on purpose, some involuntary.

That's why Charlie does her best to volunteer when she can. She rarely volunteers with the local soup kitchen anymore, though- after one of the other, regular volunteers started hitting on her, she backed out. It was getting weird. She repeatedly- and respectfully- told the guy that she wasn't interested multiple times. Then he tried following her home.