Josh Dylan (less_traveled) wrote in mcdermott_game, @ 2009-10-13 15:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | josh, josh/juliet, juliet |
Backstory
Who: Josh and Juliet
Where: 2009 Spring Carnival
When: May 2009
What: A fight at the carnival leads to the end of the relationship
Rating: PG-13 for language
Status: Complete
The only thing Juliet could think right now was 'Shit'.
Actually, that was a lie. She was thinking of a million things. She was thinking of how everyone was pulling her in a thousand directions. How there weren't enough tickets to give out, and they had to improvise and make some til she ran and got more. How one of the games weren't working, and so she needed to call the rental place and make sure she got her deposit back and convince them no, it wasn't anything they did. How volunteers from several booths didn't show up and so she had to try and make things run smoothly. How somehow the ring toss was short money and where it went. Juliet loved to organize and plan and run events, she did. She was really, really good at it but sometimes it got to be a bit much. On days when absolutely everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong ... yeah, it was stressful.
But still, a predominant thought was 'shit'. And Juliet didn't even curse very frequently, but when she did, it was merited. But a glance at her cellphone showed some aggravated texts from Josh and the crashing realization that she had agreed to meet him almost 45 minutes ago at the ferris wheel. There had been no time inbetween everything she was doing, and she had gotten caught up and forgotten. Finally freed up for a minute, she hightailed it to the ferris wheel but after a minute of looking, it was evident he was gone. Shit, shit, shit. She tried calling him but no answer. But finally, thankfully, she saw him in a crowd of people and slipped through them, tugging on his arm. "Josh!"
Stupidly, Josh had been looking forward to the carnival. Sure, Juliet was in charge but she swore she only needed to look over things for a few minutes, just to make sure everything was running smooth and then she could go have fun. They needed the fun. There hadn't been a lot of fun with them, recently. Instead, they'd had bitter fights and long silences. Riding the ferris wheel was supposed to be romantic, a chance for him and Juliet to hang out for once. Too bad she'd blown him off. Again. And right now, he really didn't want to talk to her. "What do you want?"
He was angry. It made sense, she'd left him hanging but he had to understand that certain things were out of her control. People looked to her to fix things when they ran amok, and it was her responsibility to do so! She wanted him to understand. "Don't ... do that," she muttered, cutting someone off for a second as she angled herself around people so she was in front of him. "I'm sorry. I got really caught up. Everything was just falling apart and ..." Juliet rolled her eyes. "But it's done now."
"Yeah, right," Josh muttered under his breath. "Done for how long? How long until the next thing falls apart?" He glared at her for a second. "Whatever. You left me waiting for you like some kind of idiot. Go be big and important, I'm going home."
Juliet's eyebrows furrowed, and she got that familiar irritated feeling under her skin. Yeah, she had stood him up but it hadn't been intentional. Why did he have to make it so completely about him? She was the one who had been stressed out completely for the last hour! And because of that fact, she felt something snap in her. "Go be big and important? Are you serious? Sorry that I had line ups, Josh! Phone calls and problems to fix. It's not like I planned them. It's not like I had fun doing it."
Josh ground his back teeth together. "And me waiting for you for an hour was fun? I'm supposed to stand around and not care?" His phone went off in his pocket with Zoey's ringtone and he silenced it with a push of a button. Part of him was tempted to meet up with Zoey and leave Juliet hanging for once.
"I told you, I'm sorry!" Logically, she knew he had a right to be upset and while generally, Juliet was a slave to logic, right now she was angry enough to ignore it in favor of emotion. "What else do you want from me? What--" She could make out a ringtone in the midst of the noise the crowd was making and she set her jaw. "Zoey?"
"Yeah. So? She wanted to meet me if you didn't show." Not this whole Zoey and Juliet drama again.
"So you were basically taking bets on whether or not I was going to show?" Wow, that wasn't a huge slap in the face or anything. "God, am I holding you up? Zoey's probably waiting."
"No. Nobody would bet on that because nobody in their right mind would ever think that you'd actually show up." That was more than a little mean and Josh didn't care. "And what are you getting mad about? You're the one who blew me off."
Juliet swallowed at Josh's comment, hurt flashing through her eyes but she replaced it quickly with a glare. She didn't want to let him know how much that stung. "And I apologized! I didn't blow you off on purpose! If you haven't noticed, I've got a couple things on my plate!"
"You're not sorry!" Josh yelled. The people around them were starting to look over at them now. "Sorry means you made a mistake and you wish you had done things different. But you'd do the same thing. If it's not this then it's some other stupid commitee or meeting or whatever. You'd rather do that than spend time with me."
"That's not true!" she yelled back. And it wasn't. Not entirely She loved Josh, she loved spending time with him, but she also loved everything else in her life. She had always tried to balance them but ... clearly, that wasn't happening. It frustrated her that she was failing, and it was easy to take her frustration out on Josh. "And they are not stupid!" It offended her that the things she felt so passionate about he deemed stupid. "God, Josh."
Josh didn't believe her when she said it wasn't true. Nothing Juliet ever did convinced him otherwise. "Yes it is. If that wasn't true, if you wouldn't rather be doing anything else than spending time with me, you wouldn't have stood me up for forever because the color of the balloons was wrong. What's the point of even wanting to spend time together if you're just going to bail? I don't even know why I bothered waiting for you."
"It wasn't the color of the balloons--" She began but then cut herself off. Moot point. "I don't know why you waited either because clearly you expected me to not be there. I said I was sorry, you didn't want to hear it! Go find Zoey or something! I'm sure she'd looove to spend her every waking moment with you since it's so obvious that's what you need."
"Maybe I will!" Josh yelled. "At least Zoey wants to spend time with me, which is more than I can say for you. Sorry I'm not happy to be just something you can mark off on your to do list. Homework. Check. Club meeting. Check. Spend twenty minutes with Josh. Check. Committee. Check. You think running around being a party planner is more important than being with me, so excuse me if I want to hang out with someone who actually wants to hang out with me."
"Someone's whose in love with you!" Juliet practically screamed back. She didn't often lose control, lose poise and grace but all those things were very far gone now. "Watching you go out with her all the time and she's completely all over you? I can promise you, Josh, it's worse than you getting shafted for any of my meetings!"
"She is not!" Josh protested. "That's stupid, Juliet. Zoey's my best fried and I'm not going to stop hanging out with her cause you're jealous that I'm spending time with someone else when you're not around. It's not my fault you're busy and I'm not going to sit around and wait for you because I get screwed every time."
"It's not stupid! It's the truth and if you can't see that?" She shook her head. The implication was clear: if you can't see that, then you're stupid. "Then what is the point of this anymore?" The words struck her as soon as they tumbled out of her mouth and the rage began to collapse into something much more painful than just blind anger.
There was no way Josh would ever believe Zoey had any feelings for him. They were friends, good friends, and nothing else. Juliet was being completely ridiculous and he was tired of it. Tired of having these same fights over and over again. "I don't even know," he said honestly. "It's not like we're ever together anyways." He and Juliet had stopped being fun a long time ago. Wasn't being in love supposed to be easy? Somewhere down the line, something had changed.
And so that was it. No fighting for each other. Just ... fighting. And it wasn't worth it anymore. Juliet was tired enough as it was, always running around. This just made her even more exhausted. And it was true, what he had said. Sometimes Josh really was just something on her checklist. When had that happened? That wasn't how relationships were supposed to be. "So then that's it, right?"
It suddenly occurred to Josh that they were breaking up at a fucking carnival off all places. He was standing in a front of booth where you throw ping pong balls into goldfish bowls and breaking up with his girlfriend. Worse, people were looking at them with expressions half horrified, half interested. Suddenly, he wanted to be anywhere else. "I guess. I mean, whatever. I'm tired of this and I'm done."
I guess. I mean, whatever. They'd been dating how long and that's all he had to say? I mean, whatever?! She was angry again, and she was glad for it. Something that had felt suspiciously like sadness had started to trickle into her within the last few moments, but once again it had been replaced by her anger. Anger was easier to deal with and better than that, it gave her much more control. "That makes two of us. Now, can I go? Like you've pointed out, I'm very busy."
"I've never stopped you before." His voice was cold and it was easier to be mean. Hurting Juliet felt better than acknowledging a sudden hollow feeling in his stomach. "Go be busy. It's not my problem anymore." Josh refused to give her the last word since this was all her fault, and he turned on his heel and stormed away.
"What?" she snapped at a couple people who were practically gawking at her. She was usually pleasant and polite but she figured she had a free pass right now. She was angry. She was angry and she was annoyed and she was stressed and she was now boyfriendless. And despite how hard she tried for it not to, it hurt. It hurt a whole goddamn lot. This was a feeling she didn't enjoy in the slightest so after taking a breath to compose herself, she reported back to the ticket booth.