PEPPER’S POV
Remember how you used to be? The kind of girl who didn’t take shit from no one. You know: someone with pride and self-respect. Someone who knew your own worth. Your value! The kind of girl who didn’t wait around for no man. Who didn’t sit by the phone waiting for the occasional booty call. Who didn’t stalk someone’s instagram account from the latest photos taken from who knows what far flung alternate universe just to get a glimmer of his life! Who didn’t cry herself to sleep every night over a no-good loser who never gave a FUCK about you!
In fact, you used to be the one called upon by gal pals to shake some sense into them, smacking them with the usual epitaphs for the occasion:
Honey, if he wanted to be with you: HE’D BE WITH YOU!
Why are you making him a priority when he is making you just an option?!
If he liked it, he shoulda put a ring on it!
Remember that??
Remember WHO YOU ARE!
You are Pepper!! You are the original baws ass bitch! Bitch bitch!
You are the girl who stands up to society’s conventions of beauty, spits in its eye and owns it! You are the goddess of curves and the wicked tongue! You stomp the streets with your glorious thunderous thighs defying the world not to be drawn in by your swag! You turn heads and hearts and minds!
You are desirable and smart as a whip and deserving of love. Love from someone who values you. For who you are. Not what they can get from you. Not because you are useful or helpful, thrust into a fucking messed-up co-dependent caretaker role! One where you give and give and give of yourself and they just take and take and take: not because they love you! NO! But to have their ego stroked. They liked to be liked. Loved to be loved. But not willing to give of themselves in return.
You are just the shoulder he used to cry on.
To cry on your shoulder over the girl he really loves, and doesn't love him back.
Who is not you.
As wonderful as you are.
I stare at the mirror and don’t recognize who I see anymore. My shoulders are slumped. My eyes are haggard. My soul withered, dehydrated like a flaking snake’s scale skin. The lights have gone out of my emerald green eyes and they look muddy now. My skin is ashen. The bathroom is blaring in it's stark white light exposing every flaw and plugged pore. A static hum rests on my shoulders.
Even my raven locks look dull, stringy.
I look down at my phone and ignore the latest call from Atticus. He’s been hounding me for weeks to meet him to talk about Dav----FUCK FACE PERSON WHO HAS NO NAME.
I put the phone on vibrate, set my tooth brush down on the sink, spit and rinse. Even these basic hygienic chores take effort. But I refuse to give into the numb slumber that threatens to drag me under. Every morning, I force myself to get dressed, brush my teeth, comb my hair, get ready for the day. To move on in spite of my treacherous heart.
I sit on the closed seat of the toilet, and just slump there, holding the phone in my hand. Ignoring it. Just feeling the continual shaking in my cold clammy hands. I lean my face against the cold white bathroom tiles of the wall next to me.
I feel hounded. Atticus keeps hounding me. To fix things. To save him.
And I know he will not give up.
I close my eyes, and try to remind myself:
He doesn’t love you, he doesn’t love you, he doesn’t love you, he doesn’t love you.
Even in the worlds he might say that he does. Even if you know one of them out there might: the FUCK FACE PERSON WHO HAS NO NAME of this world does not. Not even a small part.
He didn’t choose you.
He chose her.
He loves her.
He wants to be with her.
He will always choose her.
And her and her and her and her and her and her and her.
Never once you.
And you let him.
That’s nonsense. You can’t force someone to love you. You gave him every opportunity to love you. You practically threw yourself at his feet. You kept going back to LA, even after you began to feel your heart liquefy every time he looked at you like he was looking through you. As if you were made of glass, and he could see through the other side to other worlds: worlds in which she resides. Worlds he wanted to pursue without you.
And you were pathetic, weren’t you. Throwing yourself at him continually. When it was so obvious and clear how little he care for you. How he diminished you. Made you feel small. And insignificant.
Asshole!
The phone begins to vibrate in my hands again. I close my eyes. I know I don’t have to look down. I know it is Atticus. I know what he wants of me.
But what if you are just patient? What if you just wait it out? Eventually he is going to have to learn he has no future with Emma…in any of the worlds. Surely, he’ll smarten up some day. How much rejection can a guy possibly take before reality sets in. She doesn’t love him. How can he not see that! The way she treats him! She doesn’t deserve him! He’s just infatuated. Obsessed. Myopic. Someday…someday he might come to you. He deserves you. You who love him. You who only wants the best for him. He promised you that once didn’t he? To love you some day: just not now…?
My hand begins to rub along the frame of the phone. I can feel my resolve weakening.
If you do not meet Atticus, he will always hound you. Just meet him the once. Find out what he wants. Get it over with. Then change your phone number.
What if...he needs you....
My thumb poises over the answer icon.
Every time you choose FUCK FACE PERSON WHO HAS NO NAME, you devalue yourself. Every time you choose him, you sacrifice another piece of your heart and soul. Choose yourself, Pepper! Love yourself! Not the person who rejects you continually. Not the person who acts as if your presence is so marginal in his life. Choose you, Pepper! Choose you!
My brain knows all of this, but my heart is control of my body now. It presses the icon and answers.
“Hello?” I hear a weak voice say.
A voice too pathetic to be mine that I no longer recognize it.
He’ll be the end of you. I hear my voice in my head say. My real voice. The voice that is strong and wise and bitchy as hell. The voice that has become pinned down in a sleepy hold by my wretched heart, trapped as a lump in my throat.
//
A/N
Yay! One down, four chapter to write this week. If I can stick to it each day, I will upload a chapter on Thursday. If not, look for the chapter next week.
Short author's note today due to yesterday's long update and also: I'm kinda not feeling this chapter. I was able to say a lot of things that were on Pepper's mind, but it cuts me up to see her soooooo.....not herself. And also...I kinda feel the chapter isn't raw enough. Like she's protecting herself from opening up to be too vulnerable before us. And....that she's kinda not taking responsibility and owning up to the fact she keeps pursuing this bad relationship with FUCK FACE WHO HAS NO NAME. What are your thoughts? Have you been in similar situations?
A little note: we had always planned to have instagram photos from an account by David as he travelled to different realities but never got around to it. :)
Couldn't think of a song: suggestions?
C