Broody (Metagoth)

You know the perfect song for this pensive, dully angry, feeling. You set it to play on repeat and begin picking your way down the path that leads down to the water. It's not as muddy as you feared. It's not great, by any means, but all the same you make it down to where the water begins. There's no beach, just a place where the ground plants and grasses end and the water begins. The jetty is small, less than twenty feet, and has a little mud on it from Dex's duck boots. But it's not too bad and he didn't track it everywhere. You go down to the end and set down your phone and the bottle of rum, then take off your flip flops and sit cross-legged. You pull your earbuds out and listen, to see if anybody is actually coming down here to join you, but you don't hear anything.

Well, whatever. They'll turn up, or they won't. If either of them turns up without the other, you're prepared to scold him to the point he doesn't even want to stay anymore, because you're sick of them both ignoring your feelings in the name of niceness and not telling you the truth. You can't control what they do, but you can choose not to be part of it.

You take a huge swig of the rum, which tastes terrible, obviously, without anything to dress it up, and then three more huge swigs, and then lie on your back with your earbuds in, enjoying the low key intensity of this bass line and remembering the time you were fourteen or so and Dex's uncle Dan took you both to see this band live at a music festival. Neither of you knew shit about the Breeders then, but since they're cool as fuck, obviously it was a good time. This song was your favorite—even though this same band has two, count them, two, songs about penis!—and for this reason you will probably never not have a sort of girl crush on Josephine Wiggs.

You wore your All Nerve concert t-shirt until it basically disintegrated, after which Dex found a replacement online and gave it to you, with a little note that said, Dayton: hey it's not Cleveland!

At least he and you are okay, probably. And at least neither of them is demanding that you take his side against the other. So you and Scott are probably okay, too.

It's weird trying to decide why that feels so fucking sad.

You sit up again and take another big drink of rum, even though you're starting to feel a bit properly buzzy, and flop back down again.

It's sunny, but still shady where you're lying on the jetty, and you lie there letting the music fill your ears and generally overtake you.

You are silence. You are sound. You are silver.

You are drunk.