13. Roman #2
Theo comes to my apartment that night. No warning. Just a knock, and his voice through the door, “Roman, it’s me, open up.” There’s no pretending I’m not home because my truck’s right there in the lot.
I open the door six inches. Behind me, the place is a disaster and I know exactly what it looks like, what it smells like.
I see him clock it over my shoulder in the first two seconds, the bottles on the counter, four of them, five, the takeout graveyard, the physio gear still in its shrink-wrap by the wall where it’s sat for weeks, the framed jersey, the rotting kitchen, the whole museum of a man coming apart.
I watch it go into him. I watch my best friend’s face do the math.
“Hey,” I say, too bright, too fast, my body filling the gap in the door so he can’t come in. “Sorry, man, place is a wreck, I wasn’t expecting—”
“Can I come in?”
“It’s not a good time. I was about to ice the knee and crash. Early night.”
“Roman.” His voice cracks a little. He’s not looking at me, he’s looking past me at the bottles.
When his eyes come back to mine, they’re wet and scared, and I have to look away.
“Man, what is going on with you? Talk to me. This isn’t—you’re not okay, anybody can see you’re not okay, and I’m not leaving until—”
“I’m fine.” It comes out hard, harder than I mean, the cornered-animal hard. “Theo, I love you, but I’m fine, and I need you to go, okay? I’ll call you. We’ll get the boys together. I just need a couple weeks to get the knee right and I’ll be back to normal, I swear.”
And I get him out. I actually do it. I stand in my own doorway and I shoulder my best friend of fifteen years back out into the hall with a smile and a lie, the man who’d take me into his home tonight if I asked, who has a plate of birthday dinner in his freezer with my name on it.
I shut the door on his worried face. I lean my back against it, slide down to the floor, and I can’t breathe for a second.
Because I had to get him out before he saw the rest of it. Before he saw the part of me that was already, even then, even sliding down the door shaking, thinking about the only place I wanted to be, which was not here and not with Theo and not getting better.
Through the door I can hear him not leaving.
Just standing out there in the hall, breathing, his weight settling against the wall across from my door.
I picture his face on the other side of two inches of wood, the big easy face that’s never once been anything but glad to see me.
I know if I open the door right now and just say his name, just say Theo, with nothing else, he’d have me out of here in five minutes.
He’d carry me to his truck if he had to.
He’d sit up with me all night and never once make me feel like a thing that broke.
The whole rescue is sitting in my hallway leaning on the wall.
All I have to do is open a door I just closed.
And I sit on my side of it with my knees up and my hands over my mouth so he won’t hear, and I wait him out.
That’s what I do. I outlast my own best friend’s love, sitting on the floor in the dark, until I hear him finally push off the wall.
His footsteps go heavy down the hall, the stairwell door bangs, and he’s gone.
The relief I feel that he’s gone is the sickest thing I’ve felt yet, because it means the part of me that wants the locked room has started winning even against Theo, even against Sammy’s empty chair, even against the last good thing I’ve got.
—
I last about twenty minutes alone before I text him.
I sit on the floor against the door with the bottles looking at me, Theo’s truck pulling out of the lot below, the silence coming down, that specific four-walls silence that’s worse than any pain. I make it about twenty minutes. Then I pick up my phone and I text Elias.
coming over
I don’t ask. I’ve learned not to ask, asking gets me the coat. I just tell him, and I sit there on the floor holding the phone. The three dots come. Then his answer comes. It’s one word, and it’s all I needed and all he ever has to give.
come
That’s it. One word, lowercase, no punctuation, the least a person can say, and it goes through me warmer than anything Theo said tonight, warmer than I’m worried about you, warmer than just talk to me.
Theo wants me to be okay. Elias wants me to come over, and right now the second one is the only language I can still hear.
I’m up off the floor before I’ve thought about it.
I’m grabbing my keys. I’ve got one shoe on and I’m carrying the other, hopping toward the door of my wrecked apartment past the bottles, the shrink-wrapped gear, the dead man on the wall, out into the night toward the locked room.
And the awful thing, the thing I’ll have to answer for someday, is that for the first time all day I feel okay.
Not good. Okay. Pointed at the one thing that quiets me, finally moving.
The metal railing bites cold into my palm as I take the stairs two at a time.
I don’t tie the second shoe until I’m already in the truck.
Somewhere behind me Sammy’s plate is in a freezer, Theo’s concern is still unanswered, and Blake’s offer still stands, day or night.
I drive away from all of it toward the one door in my life that locks from the inside, and I tell myself, like I tell myself everything now, that I’ll fix it tomorrow.