Dive Deep into Creativity: Discover, Share, Inspire
Trigger Warnings: Overdose, cheating, alcohol
“He would do anything for you,” his friend says to him one day. The coffee in front of her had already gone cold, but she still stirs it with an idle hand. “He would hang the moon for you if you asked. I have no doubt.” He laughs, and doesn’t understand. She looks at him through dirty lenses, and her eyes speak a thousand words, a whole galaxy of thoughts swirling in brown eyes and gold rimmed glasses.
“He would.”
And he still doesn’t understand.
He doesn’t understand when his boyfriend follows him like a lost puppy, or when he hugs him tighter than anyone else he knows. He doesn’t understand when the lights go out and he feels a hand trying to grab his own under the covers, or when he sees him cry in the corner sometimes.
He could write a song about the silent, slow, rare tears he saw on those nights. It was the kind that travelled down your face and dripped down your neck, and you didn’t care enough to wipe it away. The kind that you didn’t sob out, but rather let go.
It didn’t really matter to him, though. Saltwater was saltwater, and he didn’t care why it came into existence.
“You should go home,” she tells him one night. “Your boyfriend is probably worried, and it’s late.” The club is pounding, pounding, pounding, the bass creeping into his veins and making his breathing and heart stutter just a little bit. Her glasses are reflecting the neon bar sign, and the glare someone’s camera flashing is caught in her purple hair. He couldn’t care less.
“Another Blue Sunset!” He calls out, with a wild grin on his face. There was no way he was leaving before three.
She glances at him from the side, eyebrows scrunched and eyes unsure. “How are you gonna get home?”
“I’ll call my boyfriend,” he waves it off and grabs his full drink. It was fine. He was fine. Everything was fine.
And that’s what he tells himself.
That’s what he says when he starts to leave with strangers and promises that it won’t happen again. (He doesn’t know if he’s trying to convince his boyfriend or himself.) That’s what he says when he starts to bring a toothbrush and a comb when he goes to the club. (It’s so he can fix his hair and brush his teeth after having a few.) That’s what he says when his boyfriend’s crying became more frequent and more and more resigned.
(He doesn’t know when this became their normal.)
His boyfriend doesn’t really look at him anymore. He sort of looks at him with his eyes to the floor. And he starts to forget which stairs creak in their house and he stops leaving his socks everywhere because he sleeps in a new house every other night. He doesn’t have the time.
(He doesn’t know when his house stopped being his home.)
The sky looks sad today. He looks up and it’s bright and sunny and clouds are few and far apart. He squints. The beams of light make dots in his eyelashes and he stares at them until his neck aches and his eyes burn. It’s a good day.
(He doesn’t know what that is anymore.)
He never understood why his boyfriend cried more often. He never understood why he wanted more. He never understood why his heart was broken. He never understood that maybe he was like this because his heart was never there in the first place, like it was just ripped out, like there was a hole in his chest and every second of every minute it was straining to get it back, straining to exist a little longer, like he was as empty and hollow as a skeleton in a secondary school biology classroom, like he would never understand how to understand.
(And when he was lying on the floor, his actual heart slowing and his boyfriend screaming a terrible broken sound that made his voice shudder and shake like it couldn’t contain whatever it was feeling and kneeling on the floor next to a bottle of pills that no longer rattled, he still didn’t understand.)