Chapter 3 First Try
First try
Kaze
The night air bites against my skin, but I don’t feel it. My hands are shaking, and I don’t know if it’s from the cold, the withdrawal, or the rage simmering just beneath my ribs. Probably all three.
I stumble down the sidewalk, my guitar strapped to my back, my phone clutched in my hand like a fucking lifeline I can’t let go of. The streetlights blur together, flickering like the edges of my memory, like my parents’ faces, like the shouting that still rings in my ears.
“You need help, Kaze.”
“We can’t keep doing this.”
“If you don’t fix yourself, we will send you away.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. My breathing is ragged. I feel like I’m going to fucking explode.
They don’t understand. No one does.
How fucking hard it is to wake up and just exist.
How exhausting it is to fight my own mind every second of every day.
How much I need the pills to quiet the chaos inside me.
I hate them for not giving me the money. I hate them for threatening me. But mostly, I hate myself for needing any of it in the first place.
I should go to a party. Drown it out. Find something, someone, to make me forget, even if just for a few hours. But I know myself too well. I’m too wired, too angry. If I go, I’ll start a fight, break something, maybe end up unconscious in some stranger’s bathtub. It wouldn’t be the first time.
So I just… walk.
One foot in front of the other, through streets I barely register, past people who don’t even glance at me. A fucking ghost. Maybe that’s all I am.
The urge to call her is overwhelming.
She’s the only thing in my life that doesn’t feel completely wrecked. The only one who listens without trying to fix me. Who makes me feel like I’m worth something, even when I don’t believe it myself.
But I can’t talk to her like this. Not when I’m spiraling. Not when I’m just another drunk mess who can’t get his shit together.
She deserves better than that.
I don’t know how long I’ve been walking when my phone vibrates, now in my pocket.
I stop breathing.
I pull it out with shaking fingers, and her name is on the screen. Just a single letter, the initial of her name that also matches mine.
“Hey, you. Busy much?” she says, her voice smooth, light, like the first inhale of a cigarette before the burn hits.
I swallow, my throat dry, my pulse hammering in my ears. My tongue feels heavy in my mouth, like every word I could say would come out wrong, twisted, or too much.
“Something like that.” I adjust my grip on the guitar strap, redistributing the weight on my back. My legs feel unsteady, but I keep walking, one slow step at a time.
“You sound tired,” she notes, a teasing edge in her voice. “Sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have called.”
“No,” I say, too quickly, too raw. I clear my throat, forcing steadiness into my voice. “I mean… You can call. I don’t mind.”
She hesitates, and for a second, I think she heard something in my tone, something that might give me away.
“You sure?” she asks, softer now. “I feel like I caught you in the middle of something, but since you didn’t call…”
I let out a breath that tastes like regret. “Sorry. I’m… Just walking.”
“Walking where?”
I glance around at the empty streets, the neon lights bleeding into the pavement, the distant hum of a city that doesn’t give a damn about me. I don’t know how to answer that.
“Nowhere, really.”
She hums, a thoughtful little sound, and I can almost see her tilting her head the way I think she does when she’s thinking, even though I’ve never actually seen her.
“Are you okay?” I ask because it’s easier to focus on her than let her focus on me.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
I don’t believe it. Not entirely. The way she answers, too quick, too easy, sounds familiar. Like an old song I know all the words to.
“You sure?” I press, because I really need her to be fine.
She exhales softly, and I picture her, wherever she is, maybe lying on her bed, maybe curled up in some dimly lit corner of her room, the way I always imagine when we talk at night.
“I mean… yeah. Just one of those days, you know?”
“Yeah.” My voice is quieter now because I do know.
A pause.
“What about you?” she asks. “You’re being… I don’t know. Quieter than usual.”
“Am I?” I force a half-smile, even though she can’t see it.
“You are,” she says softly. “And before you say it, no, I’m not imagining things. I feel these things and… I was getting anxious, you know?”
I swallow hard. My throat feels tight, raw.
“Because of me?”
“Yeah, I think so. Is it weird?” she asks, her voice smaller now, almost hesitant, like she’s afraid of what I might say.
Something shifts in my chest.
“Not weird at all.” I hesitate, the words catching in my throat before I let them out. “Sometimes I miss you, too.”
She goes quiet for a second, and I wonder if I’ve said too much. If I’ve crossed some invisible line we never defined.
“You do?” she asks finally, her voice softer, like she’s trying to hold onto the words. “But… we talk every day now.”
“I know. Is it weird?” I try to joke, throwing her question back at her, and it works because she laughs.
“We’re both weird, then, because I… I think I actually miss you.”
I chuckle, but there’s something sad in the sound. Because she doesn’t know there’s nothing in me to be missed.
A beat of silence. Then,
“So… long day?”
“Something like that.”
I hear the shift in her breathing, like she wants to ask more. Like she knows there’s more. But she doesn’t push. She never does.
Instead, she says, “You wanna talk about something else?”
I nod before I realize she can’t see me.
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” she says, and I can hear the quiet smile in her voice. “Tell me something good, then.”
I let out a slow breath, dragging a hand through my hair.
I think for a second. My mind feels heavy, weighted down by everything I don’t want to say.
But then I glance down at the phone in my hand. At her name, glowing on the screen.
“This,” I murmur, barely louder than the night air. “You.”
She’s silent for a moment, and then she breathes out a quiet laugh.
“Your turn.”
“Your music.”
“Wanna hear it again, don’t you?” It’s becoming a habit. Me playing guitar for her. She is just listening to whatever I feel like playing.
“Pretty please?” she teases.
I exhale through my nose, shaking my head.
“You’re impossible.”
“I prefer persistent.”
I roll my eyes, but she’s smiling; I can hear it.
“Let me find some place to sit, then.”
I keep walking until I find a half-broken park bench, the kind that’s been weathered by time, by people like me who pass through and leave nothing behind. The wood creaks as I lower myself onto it, setting my guitar across my lap.
My phone rests beside me, the screen still glowing with her name, like an anchor in the dark.
I run my fingers over the strings, feeling their familiar tension, the bite of steel against my skin, and then, I don’t think.
I just play. Soft at first, barely more than a whisper against the quiet night air.
A melody she knows and one I’ve played for her before, late at night when neither of us wanted to say goodbye and didn’t know how to stay either.
I don’t know how long I play, only that somewhere between the chords, the voices in my head start to fade. The noise quiets, the weight in my chest eases, and for a little while, it’s just this, just me, my guitar, and her.
I close my eyes, letting the music fill the space where the hurt usually resides.
And then, softly, I hear her sigh.
Not a sad sigh. Not an impatient one. Just… content.
And fuck, something about that gets to me.
I let the last note linger before my fingers still. The silence that follows isn’t empty, it’s full. Heavy in a way that makes my throat tighten.
“That was beautiful,” she says, voice barely more than a breath.
I swallow hard, forcing a chuckle. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she murmurs, like she’s somewhere far away but still close enough to reach. “I think… I could listen to you forever.”
I stare at my hands. My fingers tremble slightly, but not from the cold.
I want that too.
I want this too much.
Because what she offers me, I want to enjoy every day for the rest of my life.
And that’s precisely why I have to stop being the mess I am. For her. For me. For the possibility of us.