Untitled part five

Days went by, turned into weeks the way they do. Tensions were thick in the apartment. Roommate and her troll were living exclusively in her bedroom, but there was talk of all of us renting a house. Slowly that talk changed to the unmistakable truth, they wanted me out. The Troll had taken to bossing me around, telling me who could call the apartment and when, etc. He was easy enough to shut down, was intimidated by my ability to string sentences together. There wasn't any way to get rid of him and the other even if he wasn't now the Roommates boyfriend. They were tenants now. Roommate and I were no longer speaking as she remains to this day master of the passive aggressive silent treatment I loath so fiercely. My time was spent going to work, not sleeping, going back to work, not having enough money to pay the bills, rinse and repeat.

Meanwhile my kid sister was pregnant at seventeen, my little brother was missing,  and my parents were splitting up. There wasn't anywhere to turn, no where to go to get out of this situation, not enough money to move and no extra money to save for it. I started skipping out on work. First for genuine reasons, then… I just didn't care anymore.. Found myself wandering in the store and then realizing I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing and didn't care.

He and I had established a sort of  understanding. Without actually saying anything specific about the vibe between us he had put me slightly more at ease around him with a talk. He said, "You know, Dew(ed), I know you think I'm a dorky old guy with the hots for you but we can be friends." and we sort of had no choice, since he was living in my living room.

It wasn't all bad times. A bright spot in the dim was The 3rd Amigo. The Roommate and I had been friends since high school, (the years before I moved away) and we had been a threesome. Now the 3rd Amigo was married, had a sweet little family and they started hanging out with me, at the apartment a lot. Her son, was around two and absolutely adorable. We stopped smoking in the apartment he was over so often. It was really her husband, Crispy who inserted a steal strand of normalcy though.

When they invited us all to drive to the beach to stay in her families beach house for the weekend, we all got excited. A truce was called, bags were packed and we piled into vehicles eagerly. It soon became clear we were on two separate trips. The Roomie and The Troll were on a free romantic get-away and the rest of us were on a friendly adventure. It didn't matter though, things went a long great the first night, lots of laughing and story-telling and general amusements.

Then the Roommate asked to look at The Trolls driver's license. You know, when everyone's hanging out and for some reason start comparing DMV pictures, wallet contents, etc? He refused, did everything he could to prevent it. Finally he handed it over. He wasn't 25. He was 30, making Mr. Wecanbefriends 31. Roomie was pissed. So pissed she suspended her silent treatment on me and took one up on him.

I was out on the beach when she found me, sitting watching the ocean roll with sand in my fingers and toes. "Did you hear?" she asked me quietly. I didn't look at her.

"Yeah."

"What do you think?"

"I don't think anything."

"So it's going to be like that?"

"It is what it is."  She sat there awhile, not really moving and finally I realized she was crying. "Do you care that he's thirty or that he's a liar?"

"The lying. It's so stupid. When was he going to tell me?"

"As soon as you found out."

"He says he didn't think he had a chance with me if he told me his real age. What do I do?"

"He's been telling the entire store that he's twenty-five for six months." I pointed out flatly.

"I need to think about it"

"yeah. I imagine you do." I said and stood up to brush the sand off my ass, walking down to the water to visit with 3rd Amigo and Crispy.  We all expressed our amusement and curiosity over the strange lie, the fact that Mr. Wecanbefriends went along with it. Crispy pointed out how every story Mr. had told had time frames that he had to have improvised on the spot in order for them to make sense. When he told us about when his son was born, when he talked about his divorce, all of it carefully slightly altered so that it would fit his faked age. It was amazing, insane and entirely hypnotic.