Chapter Four Something Wrong? Call Anh Phoong!
Chapter Four
Something Wrong? Call Anh Phoong!
Hours later, once the leftovers have been packed away, Ravi and Hailey say their goodbyes first since they still have to get
home to set up Christmas for Pari in the morning. Kevin doesn’t last much longer, heading over to a friend’s house with the
promise that they’ll see one another bright and early on cruise day.
Just like that, it’s the four of them again.
There’s an awkward beat where Owen is brushing his teeth, and Jacob stumbles into the bathroom. He murmurs a soft “Sorry”
before ducking back down the hallway and awkwardly busying himself on the couch. Kaitlyn and Abigail say their good nights,
and Owen slips into the guest room and under the sheets.
And he doesn’t sleep a wink.
There, in the darkness—surrounded by moving boxes full of constant reminders that the relationship didn’t work out—Owen sits
with his iPad, face lit by the blue glow of the screen, scrolling through the listings that Ravi forwarded to him before switching
over to Zillow and Craigslist to look at apartments for himself.
Might as well start searching for a new place to live now. In a few months, Kaitlyn and Abigail will want to start painting and decorating for the baby, and he won’t want to get in the way.
It’s for the best. He’d never imagined that sleeping on the pull-out couch in Kaitlyn and Abigail’s guest room would last
a year. It was supposed to just be a temporary solution after the breakup; he’d always meant to move out, have his own place
again. But he can’t lie and say moving now doesn’t throw a wrench in his plans.
Owen would never let either of his friends get away with giving him the space for free, but he’s certainly been paying a reduced
rent. Staring at the prices of some of these places, even the ones with roommates, Owen feels his stomach sinking. And when
that gets too depressing, he switches back to looking at studio spaces. Maybe he could just lie, rent a commercial space and
sleep there on a couch. He’ll want a kitchenette in the studio anyway, and he’s taken sink showers before.
Then, when even that gets to be too much, Owen turns off the iPad screen.
Every voice in his brain that wants him to be happy for his friends is quieter than the voices that tell Owen he’s being left
in the dust, that his friends are moving on with their lives, actually becoming adults.
No matter how often Owen tells himself that none of that’s true, that his friends do like having him around, that they appreciate
him, he can’t quiet that ache in his heart that tells him he’s not good enough to stick around for. Never has been.
Not for his parents. Not for Jacob.
And now, not even for his best friends.
Maybe he’s being dramatic, but he also knows he’s not wrong. Kaitlyn and Abigail will have different priorities now. When Hailey and Ravi were pregnant, Owen went weeks without seeing either of them. He hates how badly he’s let this affect him, and he feels bad for feeling bad. Two years ago,
Jacob would’ve pulled him close, his arms tight around Owen’s body, forcing Owen to match his breathing as he talked him through
the feelings.
Now the bed feels cold, empty, Jacob’s distant snoring in the living room only making the memory worse.
Owen picks up his iPad again, but not even drawing can distract him, and after a few attempts at working on a piece for an
appointment, he closes Procreate, pulling up the cruise line’s website.
Pacific Coast Cruises sports routes and stops all over the West Coast. From Chile and Peru, all the way up to Costa Rica,
Guatemala, Mexico, and then north to California, Washington, and finally Alaska.
An Alaskan cruise in December. No wonder Kaitlyn and Abigail could afford these tickets.
When Owen finds their particular voyage, he reads through the lists of activities the ship offers, the amenities, excursion
plans for when and where they dock. The ship boasts two movie theaters, twelve pools, six saunas, a roller coaster, a go-kart
track, nearly a hundred bars and restaurants. And they’ll be hundreds of miles from shore, stuck in a huge metal thing that’s somehow managing to stay afloat.
What if there’s a storm? Can’t cruise ships flip over? What if they’re stuck in the middle of the ocean, and they have to
wait for the Coast Guard to come and rescue them? Or there could be some sort of E. coli outbreak or mass food poisoning that gets so bad they’ll never be allowed into port again and have to live the rest of their
lives on a boat!
Jacob would tell him that he’s being overdramatic.
And he’d be correct. But that knowledge changes nothing about Owen’s distaste for traveling. He likes being home, he likes having his routine, he likes going to the places that he likes.
Owen stops himself from googling “odds of cruise ship capsizing,” letting out a deep sigh and tossing his iPad to the foot
of the bed. Slipping into sweatpants and a hoodie, Owen grabs his keys, a small blue box from his nightstand, and his orange
Bic lighter before he slips out the front door and into the cool December night. Planting himself on the landing of the building,
Owen pulls a pre-roll out with his teeth, cupping his hand over the end to light it.
His weed usage comes up every time he goes in for an appointment with Dr. Brooks. Over the years, some of his doctors have
suggested that he stop due to the increased chance of cancer or liver problems thanks to his biologics. Others almost encouraged
it as some sort of “alternative medicine,” no matter how badly it could affect Owen’s mental health.
Dr. Brooks’s current philosophy is: if it helps Owen feel better, then it helps him feel better. Though she’d prefer he didn’t
smoke, she also knows how to pick her battles.
“Of course there are risks,” she’d told him over her clipboard. “Just like how there are risks with everything. You work around
blood all day, that’s a risk. You live in a state ravaged by wildfires yearly. That’s a risk too.” Her words came without
any real judgment behind them.
Now his posture, on the other hand? A different story.
Though right now it’s less about the pain, and more about the oral fixation. Owen inhales the smoke from the joint, holding
it there for a second before he slowly releases it through his nose. He waits for the relief to come after a few hits, but
the high arrives as a numbness more than anything else.
It reminds Owen of the night of the breakup, when Jacob told Owen that he had to take the job, that the paperwork for his visa was already underway.
When Owen thought of his future, of building a home together with someone, it was only Jacob that he could picture. When he
thought about Saturday mornings at the farmers market on Clement, taking a break from the sun by walking through the shelves
of Green Apple Books, it was with Jacob. Late nights in the kitchen, the only light on the one above the oven, making dinner
or baking something sweet to satisfy a craving, it was Jacob that Owen wanted hovering nearby, perfectly in the way at every
turn, sticking around to tease Owen over every little thing.
Always Jacob.
Owen huffs, blowing out smoke again before he presses his wrist to his forehead. “What the hell is wrong with me?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” The voice behind Owen makes him jump for the second time that night. Kaitlyn bounces down
the steps until she’s standing on the sidewalk in front of Owen, bundled up in one of Abigail’s oversized hoodies with a jacket
on top of it. “Or are you looking for an actual answer?”
“Rhetorical,” Owen replies in a monotone voice. “What are you doing awake?”
There’s no doubting that Kaitlyn and Jacob are siblings. There’s the same golden tone to their skin, same thick black hair,
same hazel eyes and strong jaw, long straight nose. They even both have a beauty mark on the left side of their faces: Kaitlyn’s
above her lip, Jacob’s underneath his eye.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Kaitlyn stomps back and forth dramatically. “And I could practically hear you thinking in the next room. Then I heard the door open and figured it was you since Jacob is still snoring.”
“Hmm . . .” Owen takes another drag from the joint.
“You said you were sticking to edibles.”
“I only smoke socially now,” Owen half jokes.
“And this is a social setting?” Kaitlyn glances around playfully.
“Anh’s here,” Owen tells her, motioning to the hilariously giant Something Wrong? Call Anh Phoong! billboard that was put up months ago. “So, how are you feeling?” Owen asks her, mostly because he’s genuinely curious, but
also because he’d love to avoid becoming the topic of conversation.
“Nauseated, excited, scared, terrified,” she replies, looking down at her stomach.
“Those last two were synonyms.”
“Smart-ass.” She shoots him a glare, lips spreading into a smile. Then, Kaitlyn tucks into herself, her hands under her armpits
as she bounces on her heels. “What were you and Jacob talking about? In the kitchen earlier.”
Owen pauses, flicking ash away. “It was nothing, don’t worry about it.”
“Come on, Owen.” Kaitlyn eyes him, huffing dramatically.
“It’s nothing, I swear—we’re being civil!” Owen holds up his hand like he’s swearing an oath. All while he lies through his
teeth. “And don’t change the subject! We were discussing you.”
For a beat, Owen’s left to stare at her, then Kaitlyn starts to shake her head.
“What?” he asks her.
“You’re ridiculous.”
Owen shrugs. “I’ve heard worse.”
“Sorry about the cruise.”
“Ah, see. Now that I’m open to discussing.”
“I thought about asking Abigail what we should do,” Kaitlyn continues. “If we shouldn’t invite one of you or the other, but
we were already going to miss out on Hailey and Ravi being there.”
“Kait, it’s okay.” Owen forces the friendly tone to his words. “Besides, a cruise with just Jacob and Kevin would be pretty
lousy.”
“Yeah . . .” Kaitlyn giggles. It’s a strained sound. “You’re not angry at me, right?”
“Don’t you think you’d know if I were mad at you?”
“It’s hard to tell sometimes. You’re usually pretty emo and broody.”
“Am not!”