Milo
OLIVER WAS ONE of my oldest friends. He was the sort of easygoing guy who would go along with any plan, no matter how crazy.
I’d lost count of how many times I’d nearly given him alcohol poisoning or gotten him killed performing stupid stunts.
If I said jump, his answer was always the same: how high?
I found comfort in the way we both ruined our relationships, just in different ways. Oliver couldn’t seem to keep his heart in one place, while my devotion always became my undoing. He was a serial cheater, and I was the pitiful romantic.
Even though my love ran deep, I tried never to let it get that far.
It was easier to string women along and make a game out of seeing how many would fall for me, safer than the alternative of opening up and exposing all of the mangled parts beneath.
The way I loved was too much, too intense, too goddamn consuming.
Girls swore they wanted a guy who obsessed over them until they had one.
Then I was just too needy.
Too controlling.
Too suffocating.
Why was I like that? Why did my brain translate my lover’s friendships as threats? Why did it feel like when they weren’t physically there with me, their feelings vanished along with them? I’d give anything not to be like this.
“You scared the shit out of me,” Oliver lamented, crushing me in his toned arms. We barely made it to the couch before he started falling apart.
Despite his size, he was the softest man I knew, and it broke me knowing I’d dragged him through the dirt with me. And for what? I couldn’t even kill myself right. All of that drama, and the only thing I’d gotten was twenty-four hours straight of puking my brains out. The nurse was right.
I’ll choose something faster next time.
“I know,” I acknowledged guiltily, trying to escape his hold. I patted him on the back, signalling that he was crushing me with his affections, but he didn’t budge. I cursed my scrawny limbs, stuck there at his mercy.
“Don’t pull a stunt like that ever again,” he pleaded.
“I won’t,” I lied again. I was sure he knew it was complete bullshit, too. “Puking my guts out all night sucked pretty bad.”
“I thought I was gonna lose you.” He gave me one last squeeze before letting me go, fidgeting anxiously with the box chain around his neck instead.
I didn’t know what to say.
I’d gone and traumatized him. One minute, he was comforting me over my breakup in the living room, and the next, I was locking myself in the bathroom, swallowing a whole bottle of pills.
I didn’t plan it. I never did. It was the flip of an invisible switch, and after that it didn’t matter that he’d been in the next room.
I could still feel the sensation of his trembling fingers forcing down my throat, trying to undo the damage while he waited for an ambulance I never wanted.
Judging by the tears in his big brown eyes and steady dribble of snot that was pouring from his nose, he remembered the whole thing just as vividly.
I didn’t even have the guts to text him which hospital I was at once I was admitted, because the thought of him seeing me like that was too much.
Guilt twisted in my chest as I looked at him. It was strange seeing him this way, a big, athletic guy who I knew to be bubbly and fun-loving, reduced to waterworks. I couldn’t fathom someone caring this much about whether I stayed or went.
If he knew what was good for him, he’d leave me alone.
Every encounter for the next two weeks was going to look like this. News would inevitably spread fast among friends and family, and I’d have to go through this at least ten more times, reliving the moment in some way. It would be tears, apologies, and empty promises not to do it again.
“I don’t wanna talk about it anymore,” I blurted, smoothing my hands over my bouncing knees in a fruitless effort to still them. “It’s just making me even more depressed. I wanna forget about it.”
Even though I said that, the memory was ingrained in my brain. It wasn’t going anywhere, not with the knots of tension that riddled my body—my shoulders, my chest, deep in the pit of my stomach. There wasn’t a single part of me that wasn’t screaming in the aftermath of my self-inflicted punishment.
Every ache only said one thing.
You failed.
The same way I failed to hold onto anything I’d ever loved.
“Okay.” He cleared his throat and brushed his fingers over my knee in tentative comfort.
“Sorry,” I apologized half-heartedly, shifting my leg away from his touch.
I had to be extra careful. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d given him mixed signals just because I needed a shoulder to lean on. It wasn’t that I was straight. I wasn’t. Where Oliver could love multiple people at once, I couldn’t.
I needed to be the center of someone’s world.
“Jasper said you need to eat,” he reminded me, gracefully accepting both the change in subject and my subtle rejection. “Why don’t I make you some instant ramen? You know I make it the best.”
Right. Before he left, Jasper had recited a long list of things Oliver would need to do to help keep me alive. A painful rumble spread through my abdomen, a reminder of my negligence. If I didn’t eat something soon, the acid would begin to burn through the lining of my stomach.
Maybe it already had.
“Fine, you’ve convinced me,” I agreed.
I dragged myself to the balcony for a routine cigarette and watched Oliver rummage around in the kitchen through the window.
I had to admit, he did know how to elevate ramen.
Half of the time, I couldn’t even be bothered to cook it.
I’d crush the dry noodles in the bag before opening it and shake the contents of the flavour packet inside.
I took to the whole self-sufficient adult thing ten times slower than everyone else.
My throat was still raw, protesting each time I took a drag.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to look at Tylenol again.
The taste lived in my mouth, and tobacco did nothing to erase it.
The hospital beds were shit, and waking up every couple of minutes to vomit did a number on me.
Toward the end, I’d managed a shocking half an hour of uninterrupted rest, which, truthfully, wasn’t much different from how I slept on a good day.
Eating, I could tolerate. Sleeping?
The thought made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
The only thing worse than being alive right now was being unconscious—too many unwelcome thoughts manifested into fucked up dreams, resulting in wildly unhinged nightmares.
I hated the way my mind twisted things up until they were unrecognizable.
What was my subconscious trying to say to me?
I inhaled sharply, nearly dropping my cigarette as the cherry burnt my skin. I quickly stubbed out the burning filter, shaking my hand and inspecting the bright red marks of irritation. I needed to get out of my head.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and my heart hit a restart.
Sofia?
Jasper: Eat.
I glared at the message. I considered responding to tell him I was eating, but all I wanted to do was fight his care. I was mad he couldn’t stay. Mad that he had to work. Mad that he had school.
Didn’t he know I was slipping away? Didn’t he see that I was dying? This was supposed to be more important. I was supposed to be more important. I tried to remind myself that the line of intrusive thoughts was unreasonable. I was being irrational—I knew that—but fuck.
Stuffing my phone back into my pocket without replying, I begrudgingly headed back inside to find Oliver serving his better-than-mine instant noodles on the coffee table.
There was no dining set because Sofia and I hadn’t gotten that far.
We’d only just started getting settled as a newly moved-in couple before shit went down.
We hunted for free furniture online and grabbed odds and ends from discount outlets.
At this stage, there wasn’t so much as a complete set of pots and pans.
It was remarkable that we—that I—had a singular set of matching plates and bowls.
As it turns out, moving out of your family home for the first time isn’t as easy as I originally thought. Looking back, I wasn’t sure why I thought I’d ever be able to manage. I wasn’t exactly known for my independence.
No wonder Sofia left me.
I wasn’t a provider.
“Thanks, housewife,” I teased, sitting on the floor in front of the table and inhaling the steam rising from the bowl. My stomach growled again.
Oliver plopped in front of me with his own bowl, looking pleased. He shook the mess of auburn hair out of his face and gestured toward the food. “Come on, or we’re both gonna get yelled at.”
“Yeah.” I heaved an exasperated sigh, solemnly twirling my fork in the noodles. “He’s already texted me once to harass me about it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. Even though you're older, he’s got the big brother vibes,” Oliver said casually between shovelling forkfuls into his mouth.
I frowned, stabbing my fork into my bowl. “Are you saying I’m less mature than him?”
“No,” Oliver answered slowly, weighing his words. “He just worries about you like one, that’s all.”
That only agitated me more. Every bite felt like I was furthering his point by doing what Jasper wanted me to do. Alone, I might’ve stopped eating out of spite. I wasn’t a child, and I didn’t need to be babied. I was fucking capable.
I whipped out my phone.
Milo: Don’t tell me what to do.
The tension left my body the second after I hit send, the urge to rebel satisfied. I set the phone down and continued eating, this time with unnecessary aggression, knowing that if I didn’t finish, Oliver would report my failure to Jasper like the little traitor he was.
“You wanna go shoot some late-night hoops after this?” Oliver asked, refusing to let me wallow in silence.
I considered my recurring nausea and the way all my muscles ached. Then I remembered Jasper would hate it if I went out instead of resting, and suddenly the idea became ten times more appealing.
“Hell yeah,” I said with a grin. “You know I’d never say no to that.”
I’d rest when I was dead. If there was one thing I excelled at, it was punishing myself. Did I need rest? Probably. But if I wasn’t fainting, I wasn’t pushing hard enough. I could do more damage.
“After that, straight to bed, dude,” Oliver added, head tilted and brows raised in that I know what kind of bullshit you’re on expression.
Fuck that face.
Fuck everyone who tried to treat me like a child.
“I’ll think about it.” My shoulders slumped. “You won’t go anywhere while I’m sleeping, right?”
The words sounded so pathetic as they fell from my lips, and it made me want to crawl into a hole and never be seen again. But Oliver didn’t seem to mind. He never did.
“After all that?” He waved towards the kitchen, referring to my attempt on my own life. “Hell no, man. I’m not going anywhere.”
Warmth bloomed in my chest, and I polished off the bowl with no further protest, trying not to think about when he’d eventually have to leave.
We’d shoot hoops, play video games, and co-exist in the apartment for a couple of days, and I’d soak it up greedily.
Then I’d find someone else to replace him when he inevitably returned to a life that didn’t entirely revolve around me.
My gaze drifted back to my phone, horribly silent. Not a single notification. Jasper must’ve been at work by now. Sofia wouldn’t be messaging me, and I had a feeling that she might have even gone so far as to block my phone number, done with being subjected to my suicidal guilt-tripping.
The despair crept back in, and my heart rate began to climb.
“Alright, let’s get some fresh air and play ball,” I said suddenly, standing and shaking my head to dislodge the thoughts before they could consume me.
“You’ve got it, loverboy.” Oliver jumped up.
I winced. “Don’t call me that.”
There was only one person who was allowed to call me that.