And if you were to turn around in that moment, you might have seen the cold pinch of fear on my face, but you didn’t. You bent down to throw a searching hand under the bed and produced a pair of underwear before showing me the greyest, most shit eating grin I ever saw.
“Not looking at my arse, were you? Cheeky.”
“…Haha, yeah.”
#
It’s hard to be a friend nowadays.
Every statement has to be tempered with a but that’s just what I think or but who am I to judge tacked onto the end. Who am I to judge? Only your best friend in the whole world, and I was supposed to just watch you drive off a cliff, and who am I to judge turns into I wish I had known, when I did know, we all knew, but yeah, who are we to judge or something, haha, Jesus Christ.
I think you knew what we were saying when you weren’t around. I think it’s kinda why you hated us. You hated us when we told you to your face too, and I think you hated yourself as well, but probably not as much as you hated me. It was a different type of hate when you looked at me.
Luckily for you, it was nothing but love on my end! It’s why I decided to take the wheel.
You’d missed one of your exams, an important one, and l’d spent half an hour tracking you down to the crossroads outside the flats. I took your hands in mine, and I said, to the best of my recollection;
“You sausage. You’ve missed Reasoning 3. Do you know that? Show me that you know that. (Of course, you didn’t.) Okay. Okay. Okay, I’m saying it. I’m saying it. I’m gonna say it. (I took a deep breath.)
Listen, you don’t know what you’re doing. Not about the exam, and yeah, you messed up there, but I’m talking deeper than that. I know your life sucks. I know the sky is grey and the trees are grey and everyone’s out to get you. You’re gonna die. I also know you don’t care about that. Shit, you’ve made sure everybody knows you don’t care about that. That’s fine with me. Well, no– it’s not fine, but– okay. Here. I’ve known you how long now. Bare time. Enough time that I know, like, you didn’t used to be like this. You didn’t used to want to die, y’know. I think you’re in a corner, and you keep fucking yourself over because of it. Looking for more corner. (I cringe now, thinking about this stupid speech. I’d rehearsed it while I was searching for you, but it still came out wonky.) You don’t know what you’re doing, and you don’t care that you don’t know. Right? (You were looking at me carefully.) I care. I’m your friend and I’m telling you that I care. So you might as well let me try. Yeah?
I’ve got a proposition for you. Give me, erm… three months. Till the end of exams, and, um, resits. Just three months to fix everything. (I almost added something about and if I don’t then you can go and die since you want to so bad, but I didn’t because that seemed irresponsible.)”
Your eyes were opaque with curiosity now. I felt the breeze move backwards as you considered it.
You said, “And what would I have to do?”
“Nothing. Except for what I tell you. Apart from that, do nothing. Please.”
And so you said yes, and I grabbed control of the careening vehicle, and the wind returned in force, and the earth rumbled, and I held onto your hands, and I looked into your black gaze, and I wondered why I felt I was staring into a wide, slobbering mouth, instead.
#
Saving you was hard work, but I managed it, didn’t I! Filed all your claims, turned in your dissertation, made sure you resat the exams you missed, even the ones you didn’t tell me about. Got you sober for a while. I started to celebrate getting your shit together once we approached that three month deadline and I relaxed enough to mention that I was planning on going back to Iceland (my favourite place in the world) for a work placement year, which, in all fairness, I shouldn’t have done. Won’t go into it here, since I’m sure you remember well enough without me… rehashing it all. We both said some things.
I remember most of all when you were on the floor afterwards, holding your cheek. I told you to get up but instead you flopped down, smiling like the cat who got the cream and I remember being scared of you then, that was the first time. When I came back a week later, you were still on the ground exactly where I’d left you, and your stomach had concaved. I thought to myself, I’m cooked.
You got up when I told you to, that time.
#
I have a few different memories of our first kiss. One whilst you’re resuscitating me after I drown in the tub, another when I’m greening out behind the school bins; the last memory is in the pitch-black of a cinema after the film’s ended and the credits are about to roll.
Regardless, what happens next is always the same. I’m inside you up to my shoulder and your heart is in my hand. I think it feels good if I go by the look on your face and the sounds you’re making but I don’t know. I don’t know! I’m panicking.
“Is this good? Is this good?”
You say something to the effect of agreement, but I’m having a vision of violently snatching my arm back. Your entrails follow in my immediate wake, lower intestine, appendix, blood, so much blood. You bleed out in minutes and I have to explain to your mum how you die. Minutes later the embarrassment kills me too, so in real life I end up staying put.
In real life, you come around my armpit in a wet clench that lasts for so long my hand starts to numb from the stifled blood flow. I lose a few fingers in the extrication effort afterwards. They’re still in there I think, somewhere around your stomach and liver. Your shrivelled, scarred up liver. Yeah, I want my fingers back, you fucking bitch. Kidding.
#
It’s a lot going on in the world. I used to worry about, you know, about making everything just be better. It made my brain small and frightened and hard but I’m a whole different me now, and I have you to thank for that. No sarcasm, no irony, no nothing, I deeply mean it. I’m better now– happier. Calmer. My favourite place is your torso because I like listening to the ringing and echoing. It’s also possible that that’s just my tinnitus since I hear it even when you’re not in the room, but there’s nothing like putting my ear to your skin and letting the sounds replace my thoughts. I think it’s more like meditation than meditation.
I asked you if you ate, and you said you didn’t so I told you to go and you did. The walls have slimy folds. They’re slowly scrunching up in strange, hypnotic contractions, then releasing. Our bed’s a little wavy now in a way that’s hard to describe to you– I wish I had the proper words. I don’t know, maybe I don’t really need them. You of all people know what I’m on about– I’m on about the acid leaking from the ceiling, of course! The mush piled up on the ground, the screaming, the shouting downstairs! The ringing!
#
I asked if you ate and you said you didn’t so I told you to go and you did. You made a creamy pasta carbonara, and bought me up a bowl.
“Where’s yours?”
“Watching you is enough,” you said, busying yourself around the room. I’m not a huge fan of pasta, but you keep making it anyway, which is fine– no sarcasm, no irony, no nothing, I promise.
