43. Damien
FORTY-THREE
damien
THEN
I never fathomed a world in which Callum would choose me over his family, over his brother, but that didn’t mean the lack of surprise was a balm to my hurt. Hell, my own parents didn’t choose me. How could I expect anyone else to?
Leaving town and starting over was the only option for me. It had been my plan all along, but I’d always sort of thought that when I started over somewhere else, Callum would be with me.
Being friends with Sam for years had stunted my ability to make new friends.
It was stupid, but I’d leaned on him for so long that without him I was lost. How did people make friends?
Did they just walk up to someone and say hey, we’re friends now?
Everyone on campus seemed to have friends. Cliques. Clubs.
And then there was me. I’d tried to make friends with my roommate, but after a bout of extreme homesickness, they dropped out. For the past week, the other side of my room was empty, stripped of Chad’s belongings so quickly because he’d never settled in to start with.
I’d just finished a solo study session in the campus library, my attempt at being social, or at least not sitting alone in my room every waking moment that I wasn’t in class.
I ordered dinner to be delivered to my dorm and by the time I walked across campus, I only had to wait a couple minutes for the driver to show up.
I carried my dinner up to my room and opened the door to find the other half of my room occupied again.
But whoever my roommate was, they’d already settled in just fine.
Their bed was covered in blankets and pillows of varying colors and textures.
From fluffy pillows to a thick, heavy-looking quilt made out of denim.
“Hey, roomie,” came a voice from behind me.
In my dreams, that voice would belong to Callum. And I’d turn around and he’d be here with me. I’d throw myself into his arms and probably cry, to be honest. But that’s not what happened. Because the voice behind me was too deep to be Callum’s.
I turned and came face to face with my new roommate. He wore workout gear, the kind of muscle shirts that were open at the sides, and a pair of basketball shorts. He turned his hat around backward, then thrust a hand out toward me.
“Bowman Sinclair. But all my friends call me Bowie.”
“Damien Flynn. My friends call me Damien.” I wanted to wince at how awkward I felt, but before humiliation got its hooks into me, Bowie laughed.
“It’s good to meet you, D.”
D. He’d just met me, and he gave me a nickname. In a weird, but comforting way, it felt like he claimed me.
“I got dinner. There’s lots. Um… Thai. I’m kind of addicted to it. We can share?”
His eyes lit up. “D, you and I are going to be best fucking friends.”
So maybe people really did just walk up and claim one another because Bowie and I clicked right from that first meeting where I was a little awkward, but he pulled me out of it without judgment.
I shared my dinner with him that night. And the next one. And the third night. And on the fourth night, Bowie dragged me out of the dorm room and made me eat in public, around people.
“You can’t hide in your dorm forever. You’ll never adjust to life on campus if you don’t live it,” Bowie said to me when I asked him why he was so insistent on making me leave the comfort of our room.
I hated that he was right. And I hated that I had no argument against it.
Later that night, as I lay curled up in my bed, it struck me that if I wanted to move on, if I wanted to not be fucking miserable all the time, that I’d have to let go of Callum. For real. I’d have to give up on the fantasy that he was ever going to choose me.
I thought I was doing a good job of hiding my breakdown when the tears came. I made sure to sniffle quietly, to keep my breaths slow and steady. To not alert Bowie to my emotional crash out.
But then the bed dipped and Bowie climbed in with me.
He was a little bigger than me, and he used that to his advantage and made me the little spoon.
He kissed me on the head and stroked my hair and after a few minutes, once I was in a little better control of myself, he said, “I don’t know what’s got you torn up like this, and you can tell me or not, but I want you to know that you don’t deserve to be so fucking sad all the time. ”
“I’m not.” I tried to argue, but it was kind of stupid when my voice was choked and trembling.
Bowie made a quiet scoffing sound. “Bitch, please. You’ve been the mopey express since the day we met. And I love Mopey-D. Mopey-D is cute and sweet. But I’d kind of like to see you happy too.”
And just like that, Bowie became the one thing in my life that was good. The one thing that didn’t suck or disappoint me. The one person I could count on.
“I’d like to see me happy too.” I sniffled again, but the admission shifted something inside of me. Suddenly things were more clear.
I wasn’t happy without Callum because I wasn’t letting myself be happy without him. Somehow, I’d convinced myself that the only future I could have was either happy with Callum or miserable without him. An alternative never crossed my mind.
But if I could be happy with Callum, I could be happy without him.
Maybe.
Eventually.
It might take time, but Bowie was right. I didn’t deserve to be so fucking sad.
I didn’t get happier overnight, and sometimes I thought it was a pointless endeavor, that maybe I was wired wrong and happiness wasn’t a possibility for me. Sometimes, I convinced myself that I’d only dreamed of being happy when I was with Callum and that it wasn’t real. It never happened.
And then one day in the spring as the end of my first year approached, Bowie and I were lazing on the grass outside our dorm, studying together because we had the same course load, and I realized that I felt lighter than I had in months.
Winter had been long and lonely. I’d lied to Bowie about going home, and I’d spent break alone in our dorm room, eating too much Thai and crying through rewatches of the same movies over and over again.
It was during one particularly cold, wet, wintry day during which I’d forced myself to venture out of the dorm room and get some fresh air and a Frappuccino from a place just off campus.
Bowie was supposed to be back in a few days, and I knew I’d have to stop moping before he returned, but I didn’t know how to break the cycle.
It had been so easy to fall back into. Bowie asked me if I was doing anything for break and I’d said I was going home.
That was a big fat lie. My parents might willingly pay for things, but they didn’t willingly see me, and I had no interest in going back there. Not ever.
With my Frappuccino in hand, I cut through the campus grounds and headed back up to my dorm room.
To my horror and embarrassment, Bowie was back, and he’d found Spike.
“Dude,” he said, turning to face me, Spike in one hand. Concern held tight in the fist of the other hand. “Have you been here the whole time?”
The room wasn’t a disaster. Well, not his side anyway. Mine looked like it had been stirred by a tornado. Take-out containers and dirty laundry piled up. Things I knew I had to deal with but couldn’t make myself.
“I was going to clean before you got back.” With my free hand, I took Spike from him and set my pet rock back down on my desk.
“Why do you have a rock with googly eyes on it?”
Bowie asked too many questions.
“That’s Spike.” It wasn’t an explanation, but maybe Bowie didn’t need one since he walked over to me and just pulled me into a bone-crushing hug.
“You’re going to be okay, D.”
Of course, I hadn’t believed him then. But as the months wore on and one day slipped into the next, things felt easier. Brighter. Better. Until one day I was outside a dorm, on a lawn, reading one of the most boring textbooks known to man when it hit me out of nowhere that I was happy.
Happy.
Not, not-miserable, or not-sad, or just-okay. But actually happy. Happy in a way that lit me up inside when I thought about it. Happy in a way that made me feel like my heart was standing in the sunshine.
And I’d done it without Callum.
I looked over at Bowie and I don’t know if I stared too long or what, but Bowie looked over at me and when he saw the expression on my face, he grinned from ear to ear. “It took you long enough.”
Coming from anyone else, it might have felt like a criticism. But coming from Bowie, I knew it was just him celebrating my triumph.
I’d told Bowie about Callum and Sam after he busted me for staying at the dorm alone during winter break. I hadn’t told him right away, but the story had come out of me in dribs and drabs, each kernel of truth I gave him lightening my load.
“Thank you.” I ignored the way he shook his head at me as if to refuse my gratitude.
Like he wasn’t the reason I found the courage to breathe again.
To live again. If it were possible, I’d have fallen for Bowie, and we’d run off into the sunset and get married.
But Bowie was just a friend and wishing would never make me feel for him what I’d felt for Callum.
Once upon a time.
“I’m always going to love him,” I told Bowie later in the safety of our dark dorm room.
“Of course you will.”
What I loved most about Bowie was that he never tried to make my emotions seem like less or like they were unimportant or that they would change if I just gave it enough time. An emotion was a truth, he once told me. And a truth didn’t stop being true just because it made you uncomfortable.
Yes, I loved Callum. Truth.
Yes, I could live without him. Truth.
Yes, I still got sad sometimes when I thought about him, but those sad spells were getting shorter and shorter.
I would always love Callum.
Truth.
But I needed to love myself enough to let myself live happily without him.
And that was the greatest thing Bowie ever gave me the space and support to learn.
I owed him everything.