#hopefully the last ugh they're so toxic

[hannahssimblr]

In the early evening once the dishes have been cleared away, I wait in Michelle’s room. Downstairs, she speaks to Jen and Hazel for a while, their voices soft and solemn, until eventually Hazel goes home, alone. 

“They couldn’t find him?” I ask her when she sweeps into the room, though I already know the answer.

“No,” she rolls her tights down her legs to start changing into the sweatpants she prefers to spend the evenings in while I fidget my hands in my lap. She’s trying very hard not to look at me, her shoulders have that tense line about them that I know so well. With anxiety slowly unfurling inside me I decide I would much rather get this over with than prolong the inevitable horrors.

“I didn’t let him escape on purpose. You realise that, right?”

She can’t hold back the tremble in her voice, “I just can’t believe you left the door open.” 

“It was an accident, I didn’t mean for it to happen.” 

“Accidents don’t just happen, Jude,” She says, her tone rising with each word, “You were supposed to be watching him, Hazel said that he could escape if we weren’t careful.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

My guilt and remorse only irritates her more, “You were just standing there like some kind of fecking eejit with the door wide open, how could you not notice?”

“Because you were picking on me over the wine, I was distracted.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault now?”

“Oh God, please.” 

“What?”

I hold my head in my hands and exhale a frustrated laugh, “Nothing.”

“Do you have something to say?”

“Let’s focus on Goose, okay? I’m going to do everything I can to find him. I’ll search all over Clontarf, I’ll knock on doors, I’ll put up posters...”

She scoffs, “Goose is probably under the wheels of a train by now.”

The violent imagery of that is enough to make me rear back in shock, “How could you say that?” 

“Because that’s probably what happened. Nobody wants to say it to Hazel, but we’re all thinking it. The tracks are right there, and it’s probably the first place he went.”

“I wasn’t thinking it, God, Shell, what a horrible thought to have.”

“Well,” she shrugs, “that’s reality. This is what you’ve done, so, I hope you know.” 

I watch her, speechless as she casually steps into her grey jersey sweatpants, casually picking bits of lint off her thighs. “Why are you being like this?” I manage. 

She pulls off her sweatshirt to switch it for a vest, “like what?”

“It’s like you’re trying to punish me, I already know it was bad, but it was a mistake-”

“Yeah you don’t have to keep saying that. We all know it was a mistake, but it was the kind of mistake that only you would make.” 

“What does that mean?”

“You know what it means.” 

“Why don’t you just say-”

She whirls around and flings her jumper at me, “Because you’re an idiot!” She explodes, “You’re a fucking idiot and this is the kind of shit you do!”

This is the kind of shit she does. She starts screaming out of nowhere, and then inevitably gets louder and louder and shouts over me until the room shakes and I have to shout back to be heard. I usually skip the foreplay these days and escalate it immediately. “Oh,” my voice scrapes my throat, “you think that’s helpful? Just throwing shit?” 

“Please, shut up!” she’s digging through her chest of drawers for something else to wear, and her movements are tense, jerky with anger, “and stop looking at me!” 

“Why? I’m talking to you.”

“Because you don’t get to look at me in my underwear when I’m mad at you.”

“My God, what? You think I haven’t seen it all before? Do you really think I’ve got that on my mind right now?”

“Yeah, because that’s about all you think about isn’t it? That’s all you want me for.” She wiggles into a vest and crosses her arms, “Sex, sex, sex, when am I getting it? Where are we doing it? You’re an animal.” 

“Oh please, you think about it all the time too.”

It’s almost inconceivable to think of now, that first time we ever did it right here in this room, on this bed, and the shadowy shape of her beneath me as she revealed to me how often she’d secretly imagined this, how long she’d wanted me. Sometimes I don’t recognise those people at all. It’s like I’ve stolen from someone else’s memories.

“Yeah, and then sometimes I can’t think of anything worse.”

“And you think I’m gagging for you at this moment? That I lose my fucking mind when I see you standing around in a bra? When you act this way?”

“This way? What is this way?” 

“Fucking annoying. Annoying and irrational.”

She puffs her chest out like a boxer, like she’s rounding on me, and if I wasn’t so furious with her I might laugh, the sheer confidence of my girlfriend, squaring up to a man a full foot taller than her. Sometimes, on smoother days, her moxy is what I love most about her.

“Oh really? That’s what I am?” She says. 

“Uh huh. Yeah. You’re actually the most annoying, irrational person I’ve-” A notebook comes spinning right at me, whipped right from her desk and I duck quickly, head to knees as it wallops against the wall behind me, sending a burst of loose papers flying over the carpet.

“Jesus!” I cry, “What are you doing?” 

“That’s how much you piss me off sometimes!” 

I hold my hands up in surrender before she can reach for something else, crashing back into myself as my anger dissipates, overtaken once again by the rational part of my brain, “Look, let’s stop this, okay? I don’t want to fight anymore. I don’t want to hurt you, I’m sorry.”

“We are in a relationship,” she explains, as if spelling it out to an infant, “that’s what happens. We hurt each other. It’s impossible not to.”

“Can’t we avoid doing it on purpose?”

“I’ll stop it when you stop being such an arsehole.”

“God, Michelle,” I grit out, “why do you make everything so hard?”

“Hard?” She repeats witheringly, “Being with me? Well imagine what it’s like being with you. The most self-involved, shallow, selfish person I have ever met.”

“Selfish?” I echo as my spine stiffens, “Selfish?”

“Uh huh! Yeah!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I feel like I have had a glass of ice water tossed at me, and though I have stopped shouting, Michelle keeps it up.

“I know well enough! It’s all about you all the time, you go on and on about how hard your life is, how sad you are. Meanwhile your dad bought you a fucking car for your birthday and you weren’t even grateful for it. Look at you! Strutting around with your little Ralph Lauren T-shirts and your ten thousand euro teeth! Who do you think you are?”

For some reason, her dragging my composite bonding into this feels like the biggest betrayal of all. A low blow. My teeth were weirdly short for my mouth until dad fixed them. It felt like the easiest, most obvious solution for a cosmetic issue without doing drastic work, yet revealing it to Michelle late one night as we murmured our secrets to one another in the dark felt so incredibly intimate that I’m momentarily lost for words at her treachery. 

“My teeth have literally nothing to do with any of this.”

“They prove that you’re spoiled.”

“It’s so obvious that you’re jealous of me.” I say. I’m not usually the kind of person to choose their words solely for the damage they can inflict, but something horrible within me feels a twinge of satisfaction when I see the stricken look on her face. 

“Jealous?” She splutters, faltering, “What the hell is there to be jealous of?”

I just look at her, because it’s all I need to do. I know, and she knows, and I feel disgustingly satisfied and contemptuous in my knowledge of it. I already know how she can’t bear to hear about my achievements, to see me hanging out with other friends. It is agony for her to hear about my grades or to look at my artwork, knowing I’ve worked harder than she has. She won’t come to parties with me anymore, because people laugh at all my jokes, and them crowding around to talk to me is hard on her self-esteem. Even cats like me better. I sense it in her every molecule, the atoms around her vibrate with envy. 

Fresh rage shimmers in her eyes as she stares at me, fists clenched as though she’s wrestling the urge to wrap her hands around my windpipe and squeeze. “You can get out if you’re going to be like this,” she seethes. 

“Oh, I’d love to leave.”

“Then do!” she stalks towards the door and yanks it open with such ferocity that I fear it will escape its hinges. “Get out!” Her voice echoes through the whole house, bouncing off the ceiling, reaching a frequency I am surprised doesn't rattle the glass free from the windows, and I have brief concerns about what everyone else in the house must think before remembering they’ve heard it all before. In fact they’ve lived this for years. 

So I do, I get up and walk out, turning toward her at the last moment, facing her stinging hot face to say, “you know what? I think it’s a good idea if we talk about taking a-”

“No! Fuck you!” she spits, and slams the door in my face. 

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[leximitchells]

Scenes like yesterday's and when Ben went off on Phil in the pub are what was really needed tbh. Imo the show has a way to go with sorting out how they're writing and using Ben, but it's a start. I don't expect them to have Ben and Phil completely estranged because there's too much history (good and bad) between them and tbh I think their relationship will be important if things like heather and Stella ever get revisited. But they need to let Ben progress and idk actually have emotions that aren't just for the sake of one scene or one dramatic moment. It feels like ever since January or maybe even late last year, his character journey has stalled and it's super frustrating.

Tbh what Ben and Phil really need is a conversation about how Eric treated Phil as a kid and how that's affected Ben. Not to absolve Phil - he needs to acknowledge that he's been abusive and toxic towards his son and imo Ben needs to hear those words from Phil! But like... there's a scene from when Phil first goes to AA meetings in the 90s where he talks about his dad abusing him, and how he's scared he'll do the same to Ben.

And that's exactly what happened!!!!! Phil loves Ben but he doesn't understand him, he's scared of being a dad to him, he's failed to be a good parent at crucial times, and he's even admitted that he's scared of Ben because of what happened to Heather - I think he even said Ben's "dead behind the eyes" like Eric was.

I mean... hello??? So much material there and does Ben even fully understand all of this? Does Phil? I would kill for some sort of conversation about Stella between them bc that was the point where the relationship really fractured and I think Phil just... was completely unprepared for dealing with the long term consequences of Ben being abused, and that's never been resolved. Does he know that Stella told Ben that Phil hates him? If yes, did he ever reassure Ben that it wasn't true?? The show is either really good or horrendously bad at getting the balance right on this relationship imo!!

Ugh anyway idek what the point of this was. I'm glad Ben called Phil out and I hope Ben, and the Ben/Phil relationship, gets better writing from now on 🙏

wow amazing thoughts all around!!! i think the jags stuff really got in the way of the whole thing about the wedding where ben was supposed to officially choose callum over phil and start his journey to becoming “better” without his dad. hopefully in the next few months since it kinda seems like ben and callum don’t have a big storyline, we’ll get to see a little better how much ben has changed and is changing from being apart from phil (unless ben or callum save phil from the fire next week and we just go right back to where we started 🙃)