❝Don't think you've made it under my skin
Could never get in
Forget about it
Don't talk so much❞

Playing hostage was a roleplay I'd often fantasized about, more than I'd like to admit if I'm being honest.

Had it ever come to fruition? My tragic track record would say no. But I was being given a first-hand account of that famous adage, 'Be careful what you wish for,' in my current state.

Eyes big, palms sweaty, knees weak—Eminem would be proud. Last night's spaghetti however was growing stale on the kitchen counter. Almost as stale as my quickly failing relationship. Calling it a failure was an understatement. Calling it a relationship, even moreso.

I'd been held ransom by COVID in more ways than one, trapped into living together with a girl I'd never seen a future with in the first place. Shit had hit the fan long before the unceasing lockdowns had rolled around, and stayed there even after they'd been lifted.

I don't know what had driven me to complacency of sticking around, to the lazy surrender of waking up in the mornings in the room across hers after nights spent having mediocre sex. To sharing awkward dinners on the couch, seated far away from each other, watching reality TV shows I abhorred but she consumed like it was crack.

The relationship had been a product of circumstance, so I shouldn't have been surprised when it had morphed from an ill-fated one night stand (or technically several) to her sympathetic 'you're broke? Come stay with me!'to what it was now. If I could, I'd change my Facebook relationship status to 'Aiden Mitchell's love life is animal feces.'

Instead, I was just having to deal with one. An animal, that is.

I channeled my inner Chris Pratt and stood still in front of Megan, my sweaty palms rising slowly in the air as if I were attempting to tame a wild velociraptor. The target I needed to lock into safety? Ironically, not me but the hard drive she held in her hand that carried my lifetime's work.

"Easy now," I said in a quiet but firm tone. "You don't want to do that."

"Don't I?"

Had her voice always been so...screechy? Or was it the sight of walking in on her cumming loudly with her Brazilian wax specialist balls-deep inside her a couple hours ago that had permanently disfigured the way my brain processed her voice? She'd certainly never screamed like that in bed with me. If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought her body was a medium for the spirits of dead dinosaurs from the Triassic era.

But that wasn't what had transformed her from human to predator in my eyes. It was the fact that she was playing with the manifestation of my life's passion and pursuits, goading me with it because her poor ego could not handle my breaking up with her.

Megan held my 1 TB hard drive up in the air, dangling it precariously by the edge of the USB cord, seemingly seconds away from crashing to the ground and breaking into a thousand smithereens. I knew it was more robust than that but I didn't want to give the benefit of the doubt to Megan to spare me any form of kindness. Going by that crazed glint in her eyes, she'd stomp my career to bits with that six inch heel the second she had the chance.

"Meggie," I whispered, hoping the pet name would be endearing enough to get on her good side again as I slowly moved toward her with my palms still raised. "Stand. Down."

The sordid smile on her lips dropped, a thin line replacing it.

"Are you for real pulling a Jurassic Park on me right now?"

She did not look pleased but could she blame me? Half an hour ago she'd ransacked my room like a SWAT team searching for cocaine, only to seize my hard drive and run all around the apartment with it, threatening destruction. I didn't know what else to do but equate her to one of those wild raptors in the movie.

"Technically," I corrected her, "it was Jurassic World."

Megan scowled and I blinked, taking her in—the stereotypical picture of a psychotic redhead out to destroy more than my dick.

She'd looked stunning the night I'd first met her at the comedy club, seated on a stool near the bar with the lighting hitting her in just the right way to bring out her red hair and blue eyes. I remembered thinking she looked like Ariel. I also remembered thinking I'd never gone home with a mermaid before.

Okay yeah, sue me for wanting to fulfill a teenage fantasy. Fulfilling it on-and-off for a little over two years, however, had never been the plan.

And yet here I stood, in nothing but my boxers at 2:45 a.m in the middle of my supposed long term girlfriend's apartment, begging her not to punish me for her cheating.

Note to self: never act on a pre-pubescent fantasy ever again.

"Megan, please. Be reasonable."

"Reasonable?"

Megan threw her head back and laughed like the Wicked Witch of the West. She threw the hard drive up in the air too, nearly giving me a heart attack before catching it just in time and soaking in the panic on my face.

"I've been more than reasonable, Aiden. I put up with your ass out of pity for this long, thinking your whole tortured-broke-artist-in-misery shtick would actually amount to something. And you know what I got?"

It took me a whole minute of silence to realize she was actually expecting me to respond.

"Uh..."I scrambled. "Inspired?"

Wrong answer.

Her mouth turned down into the deepest frown I'd ever seen on a human being. It was almost unsettling.

"No, Aiden. No. Disappointed."

That word was a trigger. That word had followed me around all my life and hung over my head like a stubborn storm cloud that would never dissipate. Hearing it from her was like a kick in the balls.

"You're disappointed?"

I dropped my hands to my side and stood straight, glaring at her. I knew it was a misstep but I couldn't care less at that moment, red hot anger blinding me from my primary motive to protect the hard drive.

"The girl who shamelessly screwed her wax specialist in a room four feet away from her boyfriend's is disappointed?"

Megan's nostrils flared.

"Don't flatter yourself, sweetheart. Let's be honest. Boyfriend is a stretch."

"Whatever the case," I continued, irritated. "I don't think you get to be disappointed."

"I'm the victim here!"

I jumped back, alarmed by her siren-like screech. It snapped me out of my anger and back to the moment. Right. The hard drive.

"You—" Megan brought her hand down in a flurry, pointing the hard drive at me like she was wielding a weapon. "—drove me to do this! It's your fault I went this far!"

"Yeah, I totally recall spreading your legs open so your man could get all up in there for that Brazilian wax appointment a couple hours ago."

"Don't you dare try and assassinate my character here."

She'd been watching one too many reality TV episodes. Red flag number 1 had been her love for Too Hot to Handle and all those other garbage shows she binged. Red flag number 2 had been her subjecting me to watching every painful episode with her, remarking not so subtly at every rule break with a 'Ugh, I wish that was me right now.'

In hindsight, perhaps she had a point.

"Alright," I said, forcing myself to calm down. This wasn't worth my anger or my time. I had to get that hard drive back and evacuate this hellhole. The latter was going to be the tough part but one step at a time, Aiden.

"Alright?" Megan repeated, her lipstick-stained mouth falling open for a second at my quick surrender. "That's all you have to say?"

"What do you want me to say, Megan?" I asked, the tiredness seeping in. "I'm sorry? Is that what you want to hear? Alright. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I hit on you at that comedy club. I'm sorry you came home with me. I'm sorry for moving in with you after losing my job and then subjecting you to living with my oh-so-terrible ways throughout the pandemic while all my artwork and gallery shows tanked. I'm especially sorry for waking up to the sound of you riding another man like a velociraptor and having the absolutely justified reaction of breaking up with you. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

My eyes dropped to her right hand. Her grip had loosened now. It was shaking.

"You think I sounded like a velociraptor?" she asked, voice trembling. Her eyes filled with a cartoonish amount of tears.

"That's what you got from all that?"

"Did you always think I sounded like a dinosaur when we had sex? Is that why you stopped fucking me?"

Megan choked back a sob while I tried not to gag in silent disbelief. I did not understand women but no, Megan wasn't a woman. She was an undiscovered species possessing a mind that deserved to be studied by the world's brightest psychologists.

"Mega—"

"He's taller than you."

"...huh?"

She sniffed her nose in like a vacuum, sucking all the snot back into her body where it rightly deserved to stay. Megan crossed her arms over her chest, gripping that hard drive harder still in her talons, then assumed a power stance.

"Javier," she said proudly, jutting her chin and chest out in her skimpy-ass bra. "He's taller than you. I mean, it's hard not to be. You're not particularly gifted in that area, are you?"

She was attacking my height? That was some low-hanging fruit right there.

I looked past her to the full-length wall mirror in the living room, glancing at my reflection out of fleeting self-consciousness. Hell, I knew I was no Jacob Elordi. At a modest 5'7", I'm what this generation termed a 'short king.' But what I lacked vertically, I more than made up through my other talents.

"And you know what they say about tall guys."

Okay, maybe she didn't think that. But wow, what a way to put me in my place. Unlucky for her, I couldn't care less for her attacks on my appearance. Of course, I wasn't going to tell her that.

"I'm sorry," I sighed dramatically, dropping my shoulders. "I'm sorry I'm not tall enough for you."

"I—wait, what?"

"I'm sorry I've been such a terrible boyfriend. I really do mean it."

I took a step forward, moving closer to her by the second as she watched me like an appraising hawk.

"You're right, this is my fault. I should have been more attentive, inside the bedroom and otherwise. A woman like you...a woman with such tall demands—"

She raised an eyebrow at that but I couldn't help myself.

"—deserves someone who can fulfil them. And I apologize that I couldn't be that guy for you."

Close enough to her now, I hesitantly reached for her hand, wrapping my fingers around the ones that held my hard drive. The same fingers that had been wrapped around another man's hard drive. I did my best to stomach my revulsion and feign sincerity with my eyes.

"I'm sorry Meg," I reiterated, staring imploringly into her eyes as I leaned in, my bare chest brushing hers. She was breathing loudly and her grip on the drive loosened. Good.

"It's not you," I whispered. "It's me."

And with those words...I'd signed myself a death wish.

Something in Megan's eyes switched. Like memories from a past life flooding into her membranes and firing up her neurons, and with it, her anger.

It was then I realized how much of a grave misstep those words had been. She'd been on the receiving end of those words before, from another man she'd probably wronged. Or maybe he'd wronged her. I couldn't be the judge of that.

But she knew. She knew it was a play.

Before I could pry the hard drive out of her fingers, she locked it back into her vulture-grip, stealing my every last hope.

"Fuck you Aiden," she literally spat into my face then shoved me back with a surprising amount of strength.

I stumbled backward, tripped on the carpet and landed on my ass hard. Just in time to see her throw the hard drive on the ground. It was like watching it happen in IMAX and 4DX in one, the frames of my life slowing and zooming in on every pixel on screen as the hard drive fell to the sound of Zimmer's symphony encapsulating the tragedy of it all.

My cry went unheard as the hard drive clattered to the ground, saved by the cushion of the carpet. For a second, I felt false relief. Then, I saw her pointed heel rise up in the air.

"Megan, don't—"

It came crashing down on the hard drive with a climatic stomp, the pointed spike piercing the metal and incinerating the trillions of data points inside it. Every single digitised brush stroke, every pixel of my artistic inspiration, all the drafts and renderings I'd spent years creating: gone.

"I want you out, Mitchell."

I barely registered her words, an unreal buzzing echoing in my ears as I stared mortified at the remnants of the drive. To get my attention, she brought her heel back down on it a second time, harder.

I shut my eyes, unable to stomach the massacre.

"You have two days. Pack your shit up and leave."

The crunch of the hard drive echoed as she stepped back, followed by the sounds of her heels clicking away on the floor. Her door slammed shut.

And then, silence.

I finally opened my eyes, forcing myself to face the end of it all. Crawling forward on the floor, I picked up the pieces, feeling my eyes blur.

"FuckfuckfuckFUCK."

My mind raced with all the possible solutions to this. There had to be one, there had to be some silver lining amidst this mess that I could cling to. But no. I had to face the facts.

I was a broke artist who hadn't made a single sale in two and a half years, pathetically living off his ex with the added bonus of now being officially homeless.

"Could we be more white trash?"

My head snapped up in the direction of the voice before I heard the familiar sound of a laugh track. It came from Megan's room. Of all the ways to mock me, using my favorite character from FRIENDS to do so was the lowest of the low.

Ignoring the loud TV episode blasting from her room, I picked up whatever I could of my hard drive and got to my feet, rubbing away at my eyes.

Two days to get my shit together. It was going to be a Herculean task. Staring at the hard drive in my hand, I gnashed my teeth together in begrudging disappointment.

"Fuck me," I groaned, trudging back to my room.

I knew I should have gotten that summer deal on Dropbox. 

_____

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Song: Hush by The Marias

P.S. If you didn't get the Jurassic World reference, this is the scene to know (skip to 0:30). You'll get a pretty visual representation of what Aiden was pulling here (and why Megan got as pissed as she did.) 

https://youtu.be/mUMFQ-B0Ysk

P.P.S. Here's the scene of FRIENDS that Megan played to mock him. 

https://youtu.be/r_3LAdbUv7Y