I'm a little surprised that he actually voluntarily told me something. But, if he's feeling like sharing that with me, then maybe he's willing to answer some other questions?
I decide to go for it. “Wh–”
“Yeah, you see,” he says, cutting me off. “I liked her for years, and I just got so sick of waiting for her, like you said. So, I drugged her, then took her to a field and fucked her.” He turns his whole body so that his entire focus is directly on me. “I made a couple of mistakes that night, though. One was not waiting until she turned eighteen so that she wouldn't be counted as a minor. The other was hanging around the area too long afterward.”
I know that he's determined to make himself look bad. He's trying to appear as if he doesn't give a shit.
His words are meant to shock me and make me hate him more, make me cower away from him.
They're meant to get to me.
And they do.
I hate what he did. It's absolutely horrible. Sickening.
But he doesn't know.
He doesn't know that even though he said the horrible words.
Even though his face looks angry and harder than stone, his eyes tell a different story.
He hates what he did.
He does regret it.
He's not that same man now.
But for whatever reason – well, actually, the obvious reason would be that he's treated like shit by everyone in town – he makes sure to keep everyone away.
So, I don't react to his words. I don't scrunch up my face at him or get up and leave. Instead, I hold his gaze until he finally looks away.
“Why do you keep coming here?” he asks after a few long seconds when he doesn't get the result he thought he would. The same question he asked me the other day.
I shrug. “I guess I'm here to be your friend.”
He lets out a scoff. “Maybe I don't want a friend.”
“True. You may not want one. But everybody needs one.”
Jacob sits up straighter, an inner fire lighting his eyes this time like I just sparked something. “You gotta be fuckin' delirious if you think a friend is worth shit.”
I wonder if he's saying that because of his old friends? The ones I saw in the picture. I can't really blame them for not sticking around with him if that's what he's referring to.
And anyway, his situation isn't exactly an everyday occurrence for most people either.
“I'm not delirious to want to spend time with someone.”
He pokes his tongue in his cheek as if reigning in his annoyance before answering.
“Someone may spend time with you, talk with you, tell you what you want to hear, but at the end of the day when push comes to shove, they're only looking out for themselves. They'll ditch you in a heartbeat if it suits them.”
I shake my head at his words. I don't know a lot about true friends, but I refuse to believe that it's all done out of selfish motives and not a give and take thing.
“I don't think that's the case for everyone.”
“It is. You'll see. All you're doing is filling in some tiny space of their pathetic lives.”
“Aren't we all just filling spaces in each other's lives? Whether you're a friend or not? And whether it's time that you're filling or an emptiness that was there?”
