[Jaemin] Beautiful Dirty Rich (R) IX P1
NINE
BANG BANG BANG!
The noise of someone banging on my door woke me up from my afternoon nap. I was sweating due to the summer heat of my room.
“What?” I shouted with my groggy voice.
“Jaejoong!” It was my mom’s voice. She sounded angry. I could tell even from the muffled effect caused by the door. “JAEJOONG!” She continued to slam her fist on my door as she shouted my name. This was not the best way to wake up.
“What? What?” I tried to balance my newly awoken self on my feet as I swayed to where my door was. I opened it just a creak and got a peek at my mom’s displeased face. If I had taken a picture of my mom’s face then I could’ve sold that on E-bay as a device for scaring babies. Seriously.
“What the hell are you doing in there?” She pushed the door open with much force and considering the fact that I was a bit light headed at the time I just let her in.
“I was sleeping, mom.” I ran my hand through my disheveled hair.
“Sleeping.” She mocked me. “I smell smoke! Were you smoking in here?” I swear to God the woman didn’t know how to converse three octaves lower.
“Mom,” I tried to calm myself. “I was sleeping.”
“Then why did I smell smoke?”
“I don’t know. I can’t smell the things you do.”
“Give me your laptop. I’m confiscating it!”
“What for?” My voice went a little high. I couldn’t help it. Seriously, I felt as if she were trying to find ways to anger me.
“Whatever else for? I told you to stop smoking!”
“I wasn’t smoking.” I stopped smoking in my room ages ago, yet she still claims that she smells smoke from my room. Is she serious right now? In my head I was already cursing her with every word of profanity I could think of.
“Don’t you lie to me!”
“The last three times you caught me I owned up to it. But I wasn’t smoking this time so just try to trust me.” I couldn’t keep as calm as before. So long as I didn’t raise my voice. I used to quarrel with her worse than this. But because of certain circumstances such as my education being put on hold I didn’t want to get on my mom’s bad side as often.
“Then why does is smell like smoke?!”
“I don’t freaking know mom! If I knew why, I would answer you, but I don’t.”
“Just give me your laptop!”
“Are you for real right now?!”
“Do not talk to me in that tone!”
“I’m trying here, mom, okay? Listen to me, please. I don’t smoke in this house anymore.”
She looked at me and paused for a second. “I smelled smoke!”
“Oh my God!” I sighed. I walked over to her and wrapped my arms around her.
“What are you doing! Aigoo, Jaejoong. When will you ever learn?” She tried to push me off her. Recently, I found out how I could talk to my mom without her losing it. As it turns out my approach method for nineteen years, which consisted of raising my voice and making it higher than hers whenever we fought, was not the best idea. I wasn’t the perfect son, that I knew clearly. What bothered me was that she thought of herself as the perfect mother.
“Mom,” I held her tighter. “Please. I didn’t smoke. Okay?”
She never apologized for accusing me or anything like that. Come to think of it she never really apologized for anything. So, maybe I was used to her unapologetic self, but at the same time I couldn’t help but wonder why she never did. My parents have proven to me that there actually is such a thing as love without like. Fascinating, isn’t it?
Later that day, due to my extremely wound up state, I decided to text Amber asking her is she would accompany me with another one of our chat sessions. She complied and we met up at our usual place around three o’clock in the afternoon.
“Where’s Yoochun?” I asked as I sat down.
“He’s hanging out with his new trophy.”
“Amber, seriously. Sometimes, I don’t understand your references, like, at all.” I shook my head as I reached for a cigarette. “Trophy?”
“Yeah. Hazel.”
“Oh, right!” I suddenly remembered. “How’s that going for him?”
“He says they’re not ‘officially’-“ Amber had to gesture quotation marks in the air to emphasize her point. “-together, but that he and Hazel are getting along swimmingly.”
I knew that Yoochun didn’t say those exact words because, one; Yoochun didn’t speak like that. He would never use the word swimmingly to indicate a happy relationship because he was too much of a guy. He would’ve said something like “awesome” or “fantastic”. Well, maybe not fantastic…something else that meant the same thing only manlier. And, two; Amber had this way of Amberizing words and phrases. At first it was a bit annoying because I couldn’t understand half the things she said, but after a while I kind of got used to it. Now I’m her fucking translator.
“Why aren’t they official yet?” I asked.
“Hazel’s not as out and about as most girls.” Translation: She was a virgin and she didn’t sleep around.
“Good for Chunnie. It’s so funny how you know all of this. You didn’t used to be so in with the news.”
“You would’ve known the same things too…you know…if you weren’t absent all the time.”
“Pampers!”
“How is that rich son of a bitch, by the way?” Amber asked as if they were old time friends.
“Pretty good, I guess. He thanked me for the shake and sandwich.”
“Oh, I bet he did.”
“I meant that he sent me a text message.”
“Oh, I bet he loves sending you text messages.”
“I’m sorry, were you trying to make that sound sexual?”
“Anything can sound sexual when you say it in a deep voice and raise one of your eyebrows, like so.” Amber demonstrated as she spoke.
“You look like a pedophile.”
“Sexy one, right?”
“Something kind of happened.” I said carefully.
“What?”
“He…uhmm…he saw…my…on my shoulder…”
“He saw the scar?” Her eyes widened a bit.
“He touched it.”
“How?”
“I just got out of the shower. I didn’t know he was at home…and I sort of forgot.”
“You forgot?”
“Yeah..” I looked down. “Is that weird? That he makes me forget about that night.”
“But at the same time, your nightmares are coming back to you ever since you started this whole ordeal.”
“Pretty fucked up, right?”
“I’m no shrink.” Amber started. “But maybe you should tell him about it.”
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
“Because you trust him. You just don’t know it yet. Plus, he seems curious enough.”
“Okay, first of all it’s none of his business. Second, I doubt that he would care.”
“How can he care about something he doesn’t know?”
“He didn’t even ask about the scar when I told him that it was nothing. He isn’t interested.”
“He wouldn’t ask in the first place if he weren’t. And besides,” Amber continued. “He is in no position to be all brotherly all of a sudden considering the things that he’s put you through.”
“My promise to take that incident to my grave was already broken when I got drunk that one night and told you. I’d shoot myself first if I ever decide to tell him.”
“It’s not that big of a deal.”
“I’m a fucking guy, Amber. That shit shouldn’t have happened to me.”
“It’s not your fault that it did.”
“What if he tells me that it is? What if he tells me it was all my fault just like my mom did, huh?”
“You’re mom is a psychopath who needs to develop a drinking problem in order to be normal! She’s fucked up in the head, man. You don’t tell your own child, regardless of gender, that it’s their fucking fault that they were molested.” Amber bit at her words. “I’m not a parent and even I know that. It’s not your fault. It was never your fault.”
I could feel a burning sensation in my eyes as the tears started to flood around them. Amber looked at me as if she were trying to drill her words into me. My memory of the night I first told her about this was a bit blurry what with me being drunk and all (and according to Amber I was balling like a bitch). But since then this was the first time, and hopefully the last time, that it ever comes up in our conversation. As Amber spoke her thoughts it was as if she had practiced her lines for a long time, only waiting for the perfect opportunity to tell me.
“It’s been two years, Jae. You aren’t 17 anymore. Shit happens. It’s nothing to be ashamed off. And, besides, isn’t it kind of weird that he brings out all of these memories?”
“Your point?”
“My point is that…and don’t react immediately, lemme finish first….maybe you feel guilty about what happened.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? This makes complete sense! Especially now that you’re certain about your feelings for him you feel as if what happened to you makes you unworthy of him…and his time…and his money.” Amber made exaggerated hand gestures, one of her mannerisms, to emphasize her point. She would always do this when she was talking about something that she was either excited or angry about. “You’ve put this guy up on a pedestal just like you do every other guy that you’ve fallen for just because you always see yourself as someone that has nothing to offer.”
“I am not certain about anything. He’s like a fucking happy meal. You just don’t know what toy you’re gonna get. And what happened to me…”
“Happened. Okay, it fucking happened. Don’t dwell on it, Jae. You learn from it then you move on.” Amber puffed on her cigarette before continuing, her voice was softer when she spoke again. “You know, when my mom past away that was traumatic for me too. But that’s when I realized that traumatic experiences, although they do hurt aren’t just meant to scar you for life. They’re there to make us stronger. Not weaker.”
My eyes were swimming in tears that refused to flow as I listened to Amber’s words. Seeing her from the perspective of most people and not knowing her as well as I do, she would not seem like the type of person that you would seek advice from. The thought of the world missing out on such an insightful person just because their judgments came first was comforting and sad at the same time.
“It’s depressing how you think you’re not good enough for him just because of that. He has a girlfriend, who may or may not exist and he has to pay for affection.”
A smile spread on my face.
“He doesn’t deserve you.” Amber slammed her palm on the wooden table in between us making a few people in the café turn to our direction. “There! I said it!”
I looked away as I fought back my tears and wiped them away with my forefinger. “You’re a fucking sleezeball.”
“And you’re a slut. I think that’s why we’re friends.” Amber said in such a straight face that I laughed so hard that the tears I tried to hold back came flowing down my cheeks.
“I thought you weren’t a shrink.” I managed to say in between chuckles.
“I watch a lot of Springer.” Amber said proudly. “I ain’t no ho, ho!” She tried to imitate an African American accent as she waved her finger in the air. “That show is riddick!”
We laughed for a bit before I spoke again.
“He scares me.” I said suddenly as our laughter died down.
“Why?”
“Because…he has this ability to destroy my world and he doesn’t even know it. How the fuck did this happen?” I said, as I continued to stare at the cigarette in my hand. “I thought I had him eating out of the palm of my hand. I’m just as stupid and naïve as I was 2 years ago.”
“Here’s the thing, Jae.” Amber straightened herself in her seat. “For the first time, since hearing about this I’m gonna be straight with you.”
“You and straight being put in one sentence is just beyond me.”
“Shut up, homo!” Amber shouted. “Why do you like him so much?”
“I don’t know.” I thought for a moment. “Because…maybe because he doesn’t need me.”
“And you thrive on that because…” Amber urged me to continue.
“…because I want him to need me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means….I dunno. Business man strikes me as the kind of guy that has had everything offered to him on a silver platter. For once, I want to make him suffer a little bit.”
“Why do you want to make him suffer?”
“Coz he makes me suffer.” I laughed. “God, he has some sort of hold on me. Do you know that everytime my phone rings I jump? Like, out of excitement, coz I know or hope that it’s him. And that night when he was drunk and he said that he loved me-“
“Wait, what?!” Amber interrupted me.
I realized what I said and tried to slow down. “Oh right, I forgot to mention that minor detail.”
“He said he loved you..”
“Well,”
“While he was drunk.”
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