Comfortable Silence |Virgato|

Chapter 20

Cleaning and organizing aren't really activities Joel enjoys or prioritizes - his general approach is to do the bare minimum, just enough so that if someone pops by his apartment unexpectedly, he's not embarrassed to invite them in. The system works well.

Or at least it works well until the week before Thanksgiving, when he decides to get out his holiday decorations and is faced with the storage closet of nightmares.

The whole sitcom cliche where people just toss things haphazardly in a pile in the closet when they need to clean up in a rush? That's quite literally how Joel organizes. When he opens the hall closet, he's immediately assaulted by several rolls of wrapping paper falling on his head and a large comforter attempting to suffocate him.

As he fights his way out of the booby trap of his own making, his heart sinks, because he knows. The Christmas decorations are in the back. There's a year's worth of random shit between him and his Christmas lights. Hands on his hips, Joel stares down the cluttered closet, lip caught between his teeth in determined concentration, trying to figure out where to even start. It's a Jenga tower, and if he pulls one box out, the whole thing could come crashing down on him.

Dust coats his fingertips when he grabs the highest box on the pile, a nondescript paper box with a lid that's seen better days. He's on a mission and has no intention of looking through any of the clutter, but when the ripped lid slides off the corner of the box as he sets it on the floor in the hall, curiosity gets the best of him, and he pushes the lid off completely.

A picture of The Ex stares back at him. It's a scrapbook. One Joel made for The Ex's birthday, about nine months into their relationship. He was a poor college student at the time, and he's kind of a sentimental bitch as much as he tries not to be, so his solution to not having any money to get The Ex an elaborate birthday gift was to make a scrapbook of their relationship.

It's mostly full of pages from Joel's journal. Pages and pages from the early stages of their relationship, when Joel's entire mind was just consumed with thoughts of The Ex, and he wasn't ashamed to pour his heart out on paper. And, apparently, share it with The Ex, which actually feels insane to him now. Just seeing the scrapbook makes Joel want to shrivel up into a ball of shame and disappear from existence. Not even because the relationship didn't last. He just can't believe he ever put himself out there like that.

There's no way he can stand looking through the scrapbook in any detail, but he does flip through and skim a few pages. The ink is a bit smudged, but it's all there - Joel's giddy excitement over every little moment, his hopes and fears about the relationship, his ridiculous musings about all the things he loved about The Ex.

And he did. He really loved him.

All the energy is sucked out of him in the space of a few pages, until he's sitting on the hallway floor, slumped against the wall, head in his hands, scrapbook open next to him. His chest aches, and he's shaking suddenly, his entire body trembling like it's racked with feverish chills.

The Ex was never the problem.

Joel didn't make it easy for The Ex to love him. The Ex didn't change, didn't become anything different than Joel always knew him to be. But Joel's reaction to him did.

Over time, when The Ex said Joel's name, it started to feel like an expectation, a reminder he wasn't the same Joel he was when The Ex fell in love with him. Which wouldn't be so bad, if the Joel he had become also loved The Ex the same way he used to. The same way he did when he glued the pages of his heart into a scrapbook and handed it over to The Ex for safekeeping.

The pain in his chest recedes. The shaking stops. He sinks down onto the floor completely, lying on his side, staring numbly at the pattern of ridges in the faux wood laminate flooring. His mind spins, a hurricane of relationship debris spitting random things out for a few seconds, just long enough to catch Joel painfully in the chest, before pulling them back in and throwing something else at him.

Everything in their relationship became transactional. Joel knew he wasn't holding up his end of things, but that was only because The Ex's priorities were so different from his. The world wasn't going to end if they went a weekend without vacuuming the rug. Rent would still get paid even if Joel splurged on a fancy coffee drink a few times a week.

There was no way for them to keep an even score when they weren't playing the same game.

The Ex would spring things on Joel - at the last minute. Will you do this? Can you help with this?, and if Joel said no, he'd be the bad guy, the unreasonable one. Stupid stuff, silly stuff that didn't matter, and wasn't even difficult for Joel to do, but it was the way it felt like every time, The Ex was testing him. But was that actually what The Ex was doing, or was it just Joel's twisted interpretation?

And God forbid Joel mention any of these things to The Ex. If he indicated that a particular behavior made him uncomfortable or upset or suggested that maybe he could use some time on his own, it all became ammunition for subtle jabs.

Like every time The Ex left Joel alone for an evening or a weekend to do something on his own, it never went without a passive aggressive comment. I'll leave you alone so you can relax without me. Bet you're looking forward to not having me around to annoy you.

They were bringing out the worst in each other. Joel knows the relationship falling apart was more his fault than The Ex's. His own insecurities, his own need for space and quiet, his own selfishness and stubbornness.

In the end, The Ex wasn't the problem. Joel was the problem. Joel was the one who changed.

It's cold on the floor. He wishes he had his jacket, and Chris's warm hand to hold inside the pocket.

He keeps waiting for his sabotaging mind to turn on Chris, too, but he knows there's no way to know if or when that will happen.

It's hard to imagine ever becoming cold or distant toward Chris, ever not wanting his touch, ever not wanting him to say Joel's name. But he used the think the same thing about The Ex.

There's no guarantee. And that's really fucking terrifying.

Can Joel fix himself? Is there a way for him to just be better? To just stop being so fucking selfish and unreasonable?

He would really like to, for Chris. Because he thinks he might be in love with Chris, and he doesn't want to fuck this up. Chris deserves better than that.

The Ex deserved better than that.

You deserved better than that, too, his brain whispers, and Joel pushes it aside as a delusion of self-preservation, another way he's trying to convince himself that he was never the problem.

Slowly, he pushes himself up off the floor. Dusts off his hands. Closes the scrapbook and puts it back in its box. Puts the lid on the box. Slides it onto the top shelf of the closet, tucked in the corner, where he won't have to touch it again next year to get to his Christmas decorations.

Then he stares at the mess in his closet again, just as determined as before. He's got a new plan. He's going to start pulling things out from the bottom of the pile until it all crashes down around him in one big bang. Implode the Jenga tower so he can get to the other side through the rubble. Then he'll have a reason to force himself to clean it up properly.