Lockjaw (Joshler)

19. Orange

***Trigger warnings for mentions of abuse, mentions of attempted rape, and homophobia.***

Start the song. It's No Crying in Baseball by Mothers.

Tyler felt a little bit guilty checking his PO Box when his future wife knew nothing about it, but he wanted to know if Josh had written back. He wanted to know if he'd crossed Josh's boundaries or made him uncomfortable. Still, he felt guilty about how his heart leapt in his chest when he opened his PO Box to find a letter from the Franklin County Correctional Center.

He stuffed it into his coat, closed the box, locked it, and practically ran out to his car to lessen the chances of the snow falling from the sky soaking through to damage his letter. He needed to be at work in fifteen minutes, yet he couldn't help himself from tearing the envelope open as soon as he was sitting behind the wheel. There was only one page of notebook paper tucked inside, and it was folded up into three sections.

Tyler snorted when he unfolded the paper, finding a carefully drawn border of dicks of every size, shape, and colour decorating the page. Abbie clearly wasn't the only artist in the family. He read the words written out in black ink like he'd been starving for them, laughing every time he came across an "i" that had been dotted with another cartoon phallus.

TJ,

My day has not been exciting or noteworthy enough to write about (rarely is) and my favorite color is blue??? maybe??? I don't fucking know. I'm good with any color but orange. Everyone around here wears orange, and you'd be surprised how much you learn to hate a color you've worn every day for eight years. I hope this information is helpful for you in your future diagnoses of my mental health. (So rude of you to write me about my Tragic Backstory without telling me about yours by the way. The fucking nerve.)

If I had to diagnose you based on your letter, I'd say you're either a benevolent narcissist or someone with good intentions and for some reason my mailing address. I don't know how shit works on the outside, but if you were in here, you'd probably need to learn to be more of a dick if you wanted to survive. I guess you can borrow some of mine. Sounds like you're too nice for your own good.

You can't be sending letters to prisoners you don't know dude. What if I was a psychopath who showed up at your house and ate your dog or something? You're lucky you wrote to me instead of someone crazy. I'm not gonna do anything creepy. I just want to know what your favorite color is and to find out if your day was more eventful than mine. You don't have to tell me about your Tragic Backstory if you don't want to. I'll just make one up for you to give myself something to do so my day will be more noteworthy next time.

Go fuck yourself. - Josh

Tyler could not stop grinning. This was definitely a letter from a twenty-year-old, especially one who didn't get a chance to joke around much or do anything normal young adults did. Josh was also clearly not as cruel or ill-intentioned as his brother led Tyler to believe. In fact, the way he spoke in his letter seemed incredibly similar to the way Abbie did.

In a way, the letter almost sounded a bit like a teenager had written it, making Tyler wonder if being in solitary for so long had complicated Josh's ability to communicate with people his own age. It would make sense, given that his access to social interaction had stopped during his teenage years. Tyler justified to himself that the only way to know for sure if Josh's social skills had plateaued when he was eighteen would be to write to him again and answer Josh's questions.

Tyler tucked the letter back into its envelope before shoving it into the breast pocket of his jacket. He now had ten minutes to get to work. With a sigh, he started his car and headed out of the post office parking lot. He would just have to come back after work to send a response to Josh.