"Hey."

My eyes roll open slightly, no doubt aided by Jessie's relentless slapping of the cheek she didn't punch. I grab her wrist tightly and pull her hand away from my face and with my other hand push myself up off the floor, shaking my head to clear my definitely addled mind. As she backs away and I let go of her wrist, my hand shoots immediately up to my jaw. Stuck, sitting up, about a quarter of the way between laying down and my ultimate goal of standing, one hand comforting a wound and the other propping me up, I start to realize just how completely and utterly defenseless I would be if she decided she wanted to hit me again. I don't know why she would but at the same time, I don't know why she did. Anything's possible. Instead however, she backs up and puts both of her hands in the air, and hastily, I push myself up to my feet.

"Hey. I'm talkin' to you. What, did I make you deaf?"

"You expect me to chat you up after you almost knocked me out?" I ask, looking past her.

"Oh, don't be so melodramatic. I don't need to deal with any emo bullshit."

In lieu of an actual response to that, I roll my eyes at her and start to make my way back to the couch.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?"

"Wherever you aren't," I say without so much as a passing glance over my shoulder. Once I get to the couch, I look around it, hoping to find wherever it was I left my shoes. Yes, I'm planning on leaving my apartment with a psycho inside. At this point, my only concern is getting as far away from Diaz as humanly possible. However, in my haste I didn't even hear her footsteps shuffling as she came up behind me.

"Wait!" she exclaims, latching onto my arm for dear life and spinning me around. With the hand not in her grasp, I think of giving her a punch or twelve in retaliation. And then I do. She loses her grip on my arm and falls backwards onto the floor, covering her nose with her hand. I stand over her, eyes wide, almost bulging out of my skull and satisfaction in my heart. Even if for a moment, I got her to shut up.

"Ow! What the fuck?!"

Or not.

"Oh, now you're complaining? Isn't that funny?"

"You fuckin' sucker punched me!"

"And you didn't?"

"Of course not, I just hit you when you weren't paying attention."

Again, as I can honestly find no words to convey just the range of conflicting emotions I feel as her words hit my ears and the meaning of the sentence unravels in my brain, I shrug and say nothing. She shakes her head disapprovingly, as if still thinking I was somehow in the wrong before her eyes lazily glides across the room and focus on something I'm surprised she didn't point out sooner.

"The fuck happened to your arm?"

"I cut myself," I say with a smile, tilting my head to the side. That's the plan now; act like a lunatic and maybe the actual lunatic will get freaked out and leave, going somewhere else and finding someone else to help her on her meth fueled delusion, or whatever it was she felt was so important. Though my hopes were high that it'd work, I'm not too surprised to hear her laughing like a hyena.

"Really? That's what you're going to go with? Seriously? I feel like I shoulda asked this question a while back but now I'm compelled to. Are you a little slow? Do you need me to find your helmet or something?"

"Right, I'm dealing with the physical embodiment of instability. How could I have ever expected my thinly veiled excuse to ever work?"

"So really, what happened?"

"I'll tell you if you tell me why you're here."

"Just like that, my curiosity has run dry. Better luck next time!"

Guess I should've saw that one coming. She finally gets up to her feet, pulling her hand away to reveal an awfully bloody nose to which I chuckle slightly. Her glaring eyes cast judgment upon me; judgment that feels a lot less impactful than she'd like to think it be. Our eyes meet for a prolonged period of time. What in reality was maybe fifteen seconds feel much longer; not like an eternity or something equally as preposterous, but a duration much longer than reality. In that wordless exchange of glances, I see every range of her emotions -- be they anger, disgust, a tinge of sadness -- and in return all she got from me was, well, nothing. Nothing at all. A blank, emotionless expression. Well, not totally expressionless, a slight smirk dotted my face so maybe she caught a fraction of the immense satisfaction sweltering just under my flesh. The same satisfied feeling that was driving me to hit her again. And again. Though, due to an uncanny amount of self control, I don't. I stand still as a statue, again. Only this time not out of fear for what she might do to me.

Just the opposite.

"So, I'm supposed to just go with it? Can you answer me this; where are we going?"

"Yes, and somewhere far away."

"That's descriptive."

"It's an answer which is more than I really should be telling you. Trust me. What's so hard about that?"

"You're really asking that? Seriously?"

"Touche."

A brief silence eclipses us. My sense of satisfaction falters and dissipates, escaping my body as quickly as it arrived. The aching urge to hit her again is at an all time high; I think this is the most I've ever wanted to relentlessly thrash someone and it's over something so, odd. I'm over her hitting me. I really am. Yet still, my hand is clenched in a fist, it never uncurled and I know, I just know she's seen it.

"You're in danger."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"That's why you have to come with me. It isn't safe here."

"So, you want me to leave because for some inexplicable reason it's dangerous to stay? Oh, and let me guess what your answer is: exactly?"

She nods her head, with the most sincere smile I've seen on her face. With her thumb, she motions over to the window at the other end of the room. I'm guessing that's where she was planning on us making our escape.

"You want me to just uproot everything, leave my roommate to deal with whatever danger there is on her own without any warning?"

"Call her and tell her it isn't safe."

"Right, 'Little Miss Tripping-Her-Fucking-Ass-Off' telling her not to come home. She'll totally buy that."

"You don't need to get snippy with me."

"Okay fine. I'll go."

I feel like gagging just saying those words, but somehow I force them out of my mouth and before I can even finish Jessie runs over to the window and pulls it up. A gust of wind blows into the room, pushing her hair back though it settles back into place a few moments later. Shaking my head, I make my way over to her, taking a deep breath. She sets herself up on the windowsill, crouching underneath the window but still bumping her head off the bottom of the wooden window pane.

"Now, watch closely and do exactly what I do. It ain't the fall that'll kill ya--"

"Is it the landing?" I interject before placing my foot on her back and shoving her out the window. She screams into the night air before smacking against the ground with a thud. Or, at least that's what I was waiting for. No, the only thuds I hear are the ones against my door.