I stood looking eerily across at the silhouetted shadow of Skipp sitting silently on his living room couch, with only the glow of streetlight coming through the window to highlight his blonde hair messily fallen over his face, his misbuttoned open shirt, and a bottle of half-drunk liquor in his hand.
‘’He huffed, and he puffed, and he blew the door down’’ he chuckled quietly, slowly raising his head now and smoothing back his hair to look at me ‘’congratulations little piggy, you beat the big bad wolf’’ he said guzzling down a mouthful of drink.
‘’Playing victim now? Didn’t think that was your style Skipp’’ I said stepping inside the apartment and closing the door behind me.
‘’Like betraying your friends is yours?’’
I just smiled. I had to if I were to remain calm and refrain from fucking slaughtering him.
‘’So…came for the knife you stabbed in my back did you?’’ he snorted bitterly across the room at me, before letting out a haughty chuckle as he took another large swig from his bottle of liquor
‘’In your back?! Fuck, you really are a piece of work Skipp, you know that?!’’ I hissed through gritted teeth.
‘’Is what it is ole boy’’ he said downing another long swig from out his bottle. I no longer cared at that point, I was now beyond fucking rage as I stormed over and smacked the bottle from his hand! It went crashing to the floor in a loud shatter, before my enraged hands grabbed him up by his shirt and shoved him hard against the wall.
‘’You vindictive belligerent bastard. Why Skipp? Why’d you do it, huh? Tell me!!!’’
‘’Why not.’’
‘’Do you even know the fucking damage you’ve done?!!!’’ I roared tightening my angered grip on him.
‘’Yes, I was rather conscious throughout’’ he replied with a snide smirk.
‘’You get off on this shit don’t you??’’
‘’Amongst other things that get my dick hard’’ he smirked again rudely.
An obvious pattern was beginning to form, as my mind flickered like a movie reel of our entire friendship from beginning to now. It was all about one-upmanship, had been from the start. I got a girl, he had to have two. I got a new suit, he needed the loudest in the room. But over time that wasn’t enough for him anymore, as eventually the sincere form in which the imitation of flattery was delivered, was also kleptomaniac-ly robbed in the manifestation of jealousy.
‘’I know you slept with her’’ I said up close in his face, and released my grip on him with my eyes darkened in bitter anger.
‘’So, she finally told you’’ he said calmly.
‘’It doesn’t matter who told me, you knew how I felt about her at the time. And you watched me attempt to slit my own fucking wrists over someone you knew all along didn’t give a shit about me!!!’’ I cried shaking my head at him ‘’seriously, of all the low-life things Skipp, why her??’’ I said, as the last thorns of hurt in my side over all that happened exited my body liquidated in tears.
He said nothing.
‘’…and there you were, my shoulder to lean on, my ‘friend’ in my darkest hour. I bet the two of you rejoiced like an evil cult over the mockery you made out of me!’’ I roared in his face, and slammed his back against the wall in anger, ignoring the shattered glass of a picture frame that fell ‘’and yet it still wasn’t enough was it? Because here we all are twelve years later, the same players in an old Shakespearian tale. Only difference is now my Juliet loves me back, and I refuse to lose her on account of your poisonous jealousy’’
Clap, clap, clap ‘’how poetic Avery, but you still fail to see the bigger picture’’
‘’Which is?’’
‘’Your fate. The one you’re doomed to repeat, because you ole boy never learn from history’’
He then took a step closer to me…
‘’Your Juliet will always be my Juliet, because unlike you I learned how to break that star-crossed lovers curse’’
His riddled words had my eyes narrowed and brows knotted in confusion, as I released his clothing and stepped back just looking at him ‘’what did I ever do to you Skipp? Is it jealousy? My success perhaps in creating Tazer?’’
He was silent now.
‘’We built this company from the ground up you and me. Took every piece of knowledge we’d learned to make my idea come to life. And I made us both filthy rich because of it. All of this what I gave you Skipp’’ I said gesturing around his apartment ‘’…the lifestyle you live, the clothes you wear, the places you dine, inadvertently even the women you bed. All of it in the end still wasn’t enough for you, was it? You couldn’t just ride that success and be happy with what you had, you wanted more’’
I stood staring stone-faced at him when seeing him cover his own with his hands, and in his drunken state break down and begin crying…
‘’Huh, what’s that?’’ I said, unable to quite hear his mumble jumble now with his face still covered by his hands.