dantesdichotomy (dantesdichotomy) wrote in worldsapart_ic, @ 2019-03-19 18:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | xx_dante ruiz, xx_marcus valentine |
Won't You Be My Neighbor
Who: Dante Ruiz and Marcus Valentine
What: A chance encounter between neighbors
When: Tuesday, March 19th, 2019, 6pm
Where: The common area of their apartment complex in Lincoln Heights
Rating: PG
He remembered a time when he was excited to get the mail. It seemed like a fleeting memory. Back when he would get various types of magazines that his grandparents had paid for in an attempt to broaden his intellectual horizons. Back when he was waiting for college acceptance letters, scholarships from groups that he had hoped would be impressed by his potential to put their own money into his future. Back then, the waits seemed agonizing. Now? Now Dante opened the mailbox to his studio apartment in the common area and saw a few bills waiting for him. Now Dante was very happy to have the chance to wait four weeks to get another notice from people saying ‘hey, you owe us money. Thank you.’
It wasn’t like Dante wasn’t used to “adulting,” he was. There were plenty of ways that his family spoiled him, and in some ways that included monetarily, but his free ride stopped pretty quickly, all things considered. From helping keep equipment clean at the gym for minimum wage, to working at various restaurants, starting in high school and going all the way through college and beyond. Dante had already accumulated a fair amount of self-preservation, despite his relative young age. It may not have always been pleasant, to be sure, but he appreciated it.
And, it was nice to know that, unlike a majority of people his age with college degrees, he didn’t have the looming presence of a college loan to pay back anymore. Financial aid took care of a decent chunk of his schooling funds. There were many ways that Dante was at a disadvantage growing up. No biological father to speak of. Being biracial in a place where almost anyone on the street knew you weren’t exactly like them, and quite a few of those people were more than willing to vocalize their thoughts. But when it came time to fill out college applications and ask the government for money? That worked out pretty well for him. They only asked for the income of his parents, in this case his mom. Didn’t matter to them that he still lived with his grandparents, who made more money than she did (although it still wasn’t that much, to be completely honest). Dante never felt like he was cheating the system, because he was working within the confines of that very system.
Even the years where he was still working at the restaurant, with a degree, while he looked for something that he could do to apply his education, he used a portion of the income to help speed up the payments of the loans that he did have to take out. Sure, it might have been nice to spend them on other things… like traveling outside of California, which, for him, was a rarity. But the choice was made, and while Dante may have strongly wished he didn’t have to make that choice, he also knew that he made the best choice.
Did knowing that he had one less bill to take care of take the sting away a little bit? Sure, minimally. But as he looked at the papers that included his primary credit card and his car payment, that sting sure didn’t seem like it was dulled too much.
In addition to the bills, which were always fun, there was the customary amount of junk mail. Yeah… aside from the occasional order from Amazon or something like that, Dante didn’t get much in the way of exciting mail. Oh, look, one of those newsletters that they gave to Annual Passholders. A “perk” of giving the Disney empire an ever rising chunk of his paycheck, wherein he was told “please come back, we want you to spend more money. We have a food and wine festival in California Adventure right now!”
But damn if that cheese soup in the bread bowl didn’t look extremely appealing. Yeah, he was going to get him some of that, eventually.
Despite the mail slots being located, relatively speaking, in the common area, he didn’t spend a lot of time in said area. He wasn’t an antisocial creature by any stretch of the imagination. An antisocial Ruiz seemed like an oxymoron. There were so many of them that it was neigh impossible to find a moment alone. Even now, living alone, Dante found himself being visited by someone in the family on what seemed like a weekly basis. There were a few of his neighbors who he knew better than others, but even the random stranger was usually greeted by a smile on his face. No need to be anything less than polite.