007 I'm Done

“Hey, be gentle with me, will you? It’s my first time!”

Mateo’s cheap line makes me throw another glare at him, and that shuts him up effectively -- for about five seconds.

“I’m not mad at you for ruining my line in front of our enemies,” Cautiously, he sticks his annoying grin to my face again, “So...truce?”

“You are one to talk!” I throw the gauze and scissors on the table, and before I could let out the volcano inside me, he grabs his broken hand with the good one and flees as if I’m some monster.

After he showed his broken arm, I had to drag him back to the hospital for treatment. I don’t know how mad that made Damien, but I surely heard Amber’s snort as I left.

So whose fault was it that caused us to not be able to fight back and left those jerks there laughing?

“So you broke your arm, came to a hospital, and just decided to leave it hanging for a cup of coffee??” I pick up the gauze again, ripping them into stripes as I imagine them being Mateo’s goddamn neck, “If you want to lose an arm, there are much easier ways to do it. I’m perfectly capable of providing you with an amputation! Put that damn arm of yours back on my table!”

“It’s just a dislocation.” With a timid smile, Mateo comes back and puts his arm on the table in an exaggerated, tame way, and it becomes harder to stay mad at him. “Besides, it did feel better when I saw you.”

Nope, his cliche line ruined that effort.

“It’s a dislocation WITH a two-millimeter fracture on your left radius! It could have--”

“Ugh, don’t attack me with those big words of yours!” Mateo protests, “I know only poems, lyrics, and elegies. Not the long, nasty, medical words that mean so little.”

“...”

I got home really late. After I got rid of my annoying, no-brain, flirty best friend when he showed a bewildering attachment to a hospital, I had to make the detour for Damien’s steak by subway, which is twice the time than usual.

But I need a peace offering for the nasty fight last night.

Keeping forgetting things might not be my intention, but I AM the one with a rotting brain. Damien has every right to be annoyed, and I want to make it up to him.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, swallowing my pride when I step on our porch. My back is all sweaty and smelly from taking the metro, and my legs sour. I need to repetitively remind myself that none of these is Damien’s fault when all he did was take his own car...

...after I crossed the line by mentioning his precious.

Me swallowing my pride and apologizing is how we solve all our fights. He is too proud to apologize, whether it’s his fault or not. I’m well-practiced at this.

Finding my friendly smile, I push open our door and raise the steak: “Look what I have got, Mr.Dunn!”

Damien is in the kitchen. He turns around with a disgusted, mean look on his face, and when I see where his foot is, my smile freezes as my heart stops--

He has one foot on Thunder, who is whimpering with his belly pressed to the floor.

In my whole life, I have never imagined that Damien would hurt my dog. Even when he was annoyed with me pursuring him, even when we got into fights. He would turn into an iceberg and say mean things, but not this.

“What the hell are you doing?!” I throw everything in my hand to the side, dashing toward Thunder.

Damien lifts his foot, and I take Thunder into my arms.

“Would you take a look at what he was chewing before you start shouting?” Damien backs away with a disgusted look, rubbing his shoe on the carpet as if Thunder carries some “deadly virus”.

His mean tone stings my eyes watery: “Dogs chew, okay?! Whatever the fuck he broke of your luxrious furniture, I’ll pay!”

Thunder shivers in my arms, probably at my hysterical shout. I let go of him to keep him away from the battlefield, stand up, and face Damien with a new level of fury burning in my chest that I had never experienced before with him, not even when he went out with Amber and lied about it.

She is his scar from the past, I understand. And so long as he doesn’t cross that physical line, I can tolerate.

But not this. He can hurt me because I’m too fucking stubborn to not love him, but he can’t hurt my family. Thunder is family!

“Your dog--” Damien starts, but I have no mind to listen.

My eyes reddened by anger as blood rushed into my brain. I grip my fist as words burst out of me with all the wronged feelings that have been fermenting inside my chest--

“Damien Dunn, I’m fucking done with you!”