I lay on the floor of my sister's bedroom looking at the ceiling. She's laying next to me, head beside mine but feet pointed in the opposite direction. We pass a joint between us.
We don't say anything. These are our Sundays now. She's not speaking to me, but I bring her weed and we sit quietly. In the beginning it was harder because she would just cry.
I spent Valentine's Day with Vivi. I brought her flowers and chocolates and weed and let her scream, cry, and beat my ass. The bruise the size of her fist on my right bicep is now a glorious shade of green and yellow. That's nothing. She whooped my ass proper in January, I was black and blue all over and Asa was horrified.
I gave her permission to do it. And honestly that was nothing compared to the way we would brawl as kids. She broke my nose once. I chipped her tooth. Dad was still home then, though. Things are different now. Calmer.
During the summer she loosened up a lot, though she was still not talking to me.
Now that November has rolled around again, I think about our relationship for the past year. She's always here when I come over, and I'm here the same time every week. She could avoid me, but she doesn't. So, that's something.
She passes me the joint. "I hate you," she mutters.
FUCK YES. I grin wildly because she just said words at me. I don't want to fuck it up though so I don't say shit.
"You're stupid and ugly and smelly," she grumbles. I laugh, she's in a better mood than I thought.
I turn and look at her. She looks at me. I give her a half smile. She gives me one back. I open my mouth.
"You'd better not open your mouth and say you're sorry. If I hear that word again I'm punching you in the dick," she warns.
"I was actually going to say that yelling at me is funnier right now because you're upside down and now your chin is your nose and I can't unsee it," I grin. She knows exactly what I'm talking about because she busts up laughing.
I start laughing, too, because as I said, her mouth looks like it's inverted, so it's like she's laughing and frowning at the same time with really tiny top teeth.
She is now looking at my chin grinning. I begin to contort my mouth to make it weirder looking. She responds by intentionally frowning deeply so that I see a fucked up smile from my vantage point. I lose it.
We are fuckin' blitted. We are blitted and I'm laughing hard enough that tears are coming out of my eyes, wetting my earlobes, and she's fallen into a terrible snort/laugh cycle.
When we catch our breaths and absolve not to look at each other while talking, we watch the glow in the dark stars and planets that have been on her ceiling since she was six slowly brighten as the sun sets.
"I like that you kept them," I remark.
"You know I actually took them down when we redid my room but it looked so weird I put them back up," she passes me the joint.
"When are you gonna get your own place? You could do it, you could move in with Janessa or Mia or what's her name," I snap my fingers trying to bring her name to mind. "Box blonde, loves alligator print, maybe Italian?"
"Giuliana Russo?" she cracks up. "She moved to, like, Staten Island or some shit I think senior year? What the hell made you think of her?"
"I thought you guys hung out, didn't she come to Gina's baby shower?" Gina's our cousin. One of many.
"No, you're thinking of Kara, the blonde coworker from when I worked at the bank," she coughs and waves the smoke out of her face. Mom is going to kill us.
"Oh shit, yeah, didn't it get weird with you two?" I look at Veronica and her chin-nose. Veronica turns an uncharacteristic shade of pink.
"It got super weird, yes," she presses her lips together trying to keep whatever she's feeling inside but she loses the battle and busts up laughing anyway. "You could put it that way."
"Um, excuse me, that's fucking interesting, what does
that
mean?" Her upside down eyes look like alien eyes and when she laughs it looks so ridiculous. I can't handle it, my stomach still hurts from laughing but before I can look away Vivi glances up at me and she is beet red to her hairline and her face screwed up like she's trying to prevent an expression.
"Ohhhhhhhh, you fucked her didn't you!" I gasp and sit up.
"Fo, Jonny! No!" She covers her face and the riotous stoner giggles start again.
"Fo? 'Fo' what? It's not gross! Don't be that guy. Nobody likes that guy." I nudge her head with my elbow. Dick.
"No, ew TÚ. YOU are gross, talking to YOU about my sex life is gross," she's rolling onto her side away from me wheezing with laughter.
"Okay, okay," I concede, palms up in surrender. I pause, "Pero like..was that a yes or no? Your reaction has me torn here, like on the one hand I'm like--."
She's wiping her face and holding her gut and she's barely got her shit together. She holds out her hand. "Shhh, no talking," she gasps.
I make sure I'm staring at her with a grin. When she lifts her head she squeals and almost loses control and starts laughing again, but she quickly hides her face. "Jonny! DO NOT!"
I can't help but smile but I make sure that I am looking away. Hearing her laugh feels really good. It's relieving.
She pulls herself up into a sitting position, wiping her red tear streaked face and it's really fucking nice to see silly tears instead. If you can get Veronica going she will laugh until she cries and it's so infectious.
"No," she clears her throat. There's still the shadow of a giggle behind her words. "We didn't get that far--do NOT look at me, Jonathan, I will laugh and my face hurts."
I cover my face with my hands, because I know my grin makes her laugh and I can't stop grinning because her fucking laugh makes me grin. I am in danger of catching this giggle fit and my face fucking hurts.
"What I'm hearing is that you almost went down to coochie town," I say, muffled by my hands on my face, but she goes, "Shhhh---hhhh-hhhh," struggling to hold back the laugh. "Don't you dare," she wheezes.
After a solid thirty seconds of silence and steady breathing I ask into my hands, "can I look up now?"
She leans into me. I drop my hands and wrap an arm around her.
"You going with Asa to visit the farm for New Years?" she asks quietly, but without venom. She purses her lips to the side.
"Vivi," I start, nervous.
"No, no, it's okay. I don't know. You look so happy. Like actually happy. And you've chilled out a lot, también, as hard as it is to admit. I think he grounds you, and you bring out his silly side. I can't be mad at that. I mean I am but," she shrugs and sighs. "I think I'm more angry at the fact que I can't have anything without you being in it. Like anything. Even our fuckin' birthdays, tu sabes?"
I nod and look down at my hands. Our birthdays are close, so Mom only ever threw one joint party. Cashflow.
"Mami very obviously likes him better than us, though, so I guess I gotta get used to it."
