sweet creature [tayvis]

chapter one

September 31st, 2011

"Joe," I groan. My attention pauses as his shadow peers closer to my spot on the couch, an angry manner tampering with his expression. What the hell did he have to be so bitter about? Always yelling, always pissed off. Always some new reason to just 'tolerate' me. He wanders behind me, shuffling around in the closet for his winter coat. He must be leaving. Again. "Are you leaving again?"

The man sighs, "Yes. What's it to you?"

"To me, it's the fact that you're going out again even though you promised me we'd go out tonight," I fess, tears welling up in my eyes.

"Something came up," he lies.

I lower my laptop screen to an angle as I turn to face him, watching as he fiddles with an object I can not see. His back is to me, one foot is in the closet and the other is out. Just like I am in the 'home' of our relationship - one foot in, the other out and ready to bolt. "Something always comes up," I croak, rising to my feet. "Every single time."

"It's my job," he mumbles. "Meeting."

The lying. I can not do the lying. His pants are on fire right now. They have been for months. I bite my lip, swallowing the lump in my throat. "Is it your job, Joe?" I question, a tint of resentment wavering in my tone. "Or are you fucking minors again?"

It's true. He takes young girls - oh, excuse me, his co-workers - out for what he claims to be dinner. Must be an awful long dinner if he's returning at five in the morning. Joe avoids the subject most of the time, knowing good and well that it causes me a great deal of pain. I swear he's trying to torture me. And if he dares to admit to it all, he remains bland. Blames it on me, tells me that I'm crazy. It's my career, it stresses him out too much. "She's not a minor!" He defends. "She's almost eighteen!"

"She's a minor you dumb fuck!"

Joe scoffs, side-eying me. "It's for my job."

I cackle, now hurrying to his side. "What job?" I ask, gritting through my teeth. "You haven't had a job in four years."

"Filming."

"You sound so stupid right now, do you know that?" I sarcass. "Your college major isn't your fucking job, Joe. The last time you 'worked'-" I pause, bending my fingers like bunny ears as if they were air quotes, "-was when you were sixteen. A yogurt shop."

Joe swerves away from me, clearly frustrated with the situation I put him in. This isn't my fault - he dug this hole himself. Surely he wouldn't cheat on me and think I wouldn't find out? I follow him as he shuffles to the kitchen, gathering his car keys and shoving them into the back pocket of his black jeans. "You're fucking crazy," he grumbles, shooting his ocean blue eyes over to me. "Absolutely insane. You don't know what you're talking about."

I slide my bottom over top a bar stool. "You're right," I snort, scorning. "I've just been with you since I was sixteen. I was just there for it all. I watched you graduate high school, somehow ease your way into a production major, move in with me. But yeah, me? I don't know anything. Your text messages lie. I get it."

"You went through my phone?" He practically screams, snapping his neck to meet my eyes, triggering my body to jerk back into a flinch. "That's none of your fucking business."