Past and Present

Us and It

Days passed and I honestly couldn't deal with being in this house for one more minute.

For one, I had lost my best friend. Carl refused to talk to me. He would pass me by in the hall and move as close as possible to the wall to avoid touching me. At one point, I had begged him to talk to me, but the only response he gave me was a flip of his middle finger.

Another thing that annoyed me about being in the house was that everybody had heard the argument between me and Carl, so they all knew about he cutting and they never me out of someone's sight.

"Jocelyn," my mother called from downstairs.

I sighed and walked down the two flights of stairs to the kitchen where I found my mother with Lori, Rick, and Carl.

"We want to talk to the two of you." Rick said.

I nodded and sat down in the empty chair next to Lori.

"We all know about the argument that happened between the two of you a couple of days ago," Rick started, "And we know why it happened."

I nodded and looked at Carl, whose head was down. I looked closer at him and noticed a couple of things that I hadn't put together before.

He was wearing dark clothes... everywhere. His pants were black and his shirt was a really dark gray. He also added a black beanie to his outfit.

"Last night," Lori said, "I couldn't sleep knowing that you had been cutting and nobody knew. So, I checked Carl's arm and I saw he had marks too."

I looked down and pulled my sleeve down as I suddenly became more self conscious.

"You both hid something that shouldn't have been hidden, "Rick said.

"So what?" Carl said.

We all jerked our heads in his direction.

This was not Carl.

He had always had a hot head and he always disagreed with his father, but this was something else.

"What did you say?" Rick asked.

Carl stood up, "I want to know what the whole point of this meeting is. You think that me and Jocelyn went and formed a club where we sat and cut our wrists. I'll have you know that the only reason that I cut mine was because she broke up with me for no reason."

"No-" he continued with a laugh, "She told me that she didn't love me, which was obviously a lie, but I was too naïve to think about it. She had her reasons. I had mine. It's over now."

As he walked out of the kitchen, we all sat with our mouths agape.

I heard the front door slam and I jumped from my seat to follow.

I followed Carl until he turned and I couldn't see him anymore. I searched the racks of my brain to figure out where Carl would go if he was mad or angry. Suddenly, I had an idea.

As I approached the prison, I stopped to catch my breath and looked at it.

The prison was in the same state that it was when we were forced to leave. Broken and overrun.

I laughed. It seemed funny that something that was just a mistake by the government could become so real and actually pick up where it ended.

I stood up straight again and continued to walk around the gates to the spot that had held a special memory for me and, hopefully, Carl.

I came around to the big clearing that was behind the prison. It was the place that Carl, Daryl, me, and Glenn met up after splitting.

Just like I thought he would, Carl was sitting in the middle of the clearing. I took in a deep breath of air and walked over and sat beside him.

We sat in silence for a good while before he finally spoke, "I remember. I remember the happiness that I had when I saw you and Glenn walked through that clearing. I remember how you had told me that you hoped that it was real and I told you that I was here."

I nodded. I remembered it too. I loved Carl so much that I had dreamed about him every night that he was away. I had even had a nightmare that he was dying and I woke up shaking and crying. I did. I remembered it clearly.

"Carl..."

He turned to me and pulled my lips to his. It felt nice to be touching him like this.

We separated and I stared into his beautiful blue eyes.

"I love you," he said.

"And I love you." I said and truly meant it.

I never stopped loving him and I knew that he had never stopped loving me

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I woke up with a start and looked at where I was.

This wasn't my room.

This wasn't my bed.

Where the hell was I?

I looked down at myself...

nothing.

Where the hell were my clothes?

The bed that I was in moved.

What the hell?

I moved the blanket and saw the gentle face of Carl Grimes.

I smiled and grazed the side of his face with the back of my hand.

He jumped up and looked around the room. He looked confused.

Then his eyes landed on me.

"What the hell are you doing in my room and why the hell are you in my bed?"

I scrunched up my eyebrows and looked around me again. I couldn't focus on anything. There was a pounding in my head and it didn't allow me to look at anything clearly.

"I don't know. All I know is that we were at the prison and then nothing."

He looked at me confused, "We didn't even go to the prison."

"Yes we did. And then you kissed me."

He shook his head, "No I didn't. I told you that I was done."

I looked around and saw a bottle sitting on his dresser.

"What is that?" I asked.

He shrugged and got up. And that was when I saw that he didn't have clothes on either.

"Carl!" I shrieked and shielded my eyes.

"What the hell?" he said in horror.

I peeped out of the corner of my eyes and saw that he had put on boxers and was reading the bottle on his dresser.

"This is vodka."

I swallowed hard and figured that that was why my head was hurting. And then... everything clicked.

"Carl, I think-" I stammered, "I think that we did it."

He turned to looked at me, "Did what?"

"It."