Chapter 7
chapter seven
The skin on my thumb right beside the nail was covered in black scabs and red, irritated skin.
Some of the red parts had a sheen of liquid over them.
I’d looked it up at one point to figure out what the liquid was.
Plasma, if I remembered correctly. Some sort of plasma to try and heal the open wound.
It must’ve been really strong with how hard I made it for it to heal.
I couldn’t help but pick at the sides, opening the wound further.
I planted the side of my thumb between my teeth, tearing at the scabs there, and chewing the skin to pieces.
Most of my fingers had some sort of wound on them. They always looked awful. My nails never grew very long because the moment I saw white, I was biting all of it off. They were jagged and sharp, leaving scratch marks along my face and arms when I had an itch.
My favorites seemed to be my thumbs, index fingers, and pinkies. They had the most torn skin out of the rest.
When I pulled my thumb away from my mouth, I noticed blood pooling in the dip I’d created.
I watched it fill and slowly start to leak out from the sides.
I looked around for a napkin, but there weren’t any on the bar counter.
I waved my hand at Jack, who was just getting finished serving another customer.
He walked down, standing right in front of me. “What’s up? You need another club soda?”
“Nah.” I held my bleeding thumb up to him. “I need a napkin and maybe something to cover this with for a minute if you’ve got one.”
His eyebrows pulled together. “Jesus, Cal. What is that even called? Self-cannibalism?”
“I think it’s called anxiety, but what would I know?”
“Are you ever going to stop doing that to your fingers?”
“Are you ever going to stop worrying about other people’s fingers and get me a napkin?”
One of his eyebrows rose just before he leaned down, grabbing a napkin and handing it to me. “Sorry. I think I have band-aids in the back if you want to go get it.”
I pressed the napkin against my thumb, applying pressure. “No, it should stop soon.” I turned my attention across the bar, looking at every table within eyesight.
“You looking for Tobi?”
The way my head immediately whipped toward him at the mention of Tobi’s name was a bit embarrassing. “You know his name?”
Jack pointed to the same table Tobi had sat at when I talked to him last. “Yeah, of course. He sits over there almost every day until I close. Except for today. I think I scared him off.”
I pulled the napkin away from my thumb, staring at the red dotted across it.
There was already a sheen of plasma starting to coat it, and I wanted to tear it apart again already.
Even though I’d done damage, something in me had decided the damage wasn’t enough.
When it would be enough, I had no idea. “What do you mean, you scared him off?”
“Well, I was talking to him, and he had his daily full bottle of vodka. He drank all of it pretty early and then asked if I would get him another. He was pretty drunk. Like, his accent got a lot thicker, and he was slurring his words a lot. I didn’t really feel comfortable getting him another one.
” Jack shrugged. “I basically tried to tell him no, but he has autonomy. I told him I didn't want him to pass out in my bar. So, he said he’d take it somewhere else. And he did. I just hope he made it to the subway without any issues.”
I couldn’t even imagine Tobi drunk and slurring his words like Jack was describing. It was so unlike him, even though I’d seen him drinking last time. It just didn’t feel right. The Tobi I knew was so different from the Tobi we were all being faced with.
I tried to resist the urge to plant my feet and run. Run away from the ache in my heart that was slowly building and building, soon to be too much. I could feel the impending break, and there was nothing I could do about it. “He was going to go home like that?”
“Home?”
My eyebrows came together in confusion. “Uh, yeah?”
He shifted where he stood, looking to the side. “You guys really haven’t talked in a while, have you?”
Was it hot in here, or was I getting ready for an official silent disco? “No, we haven’t. Why?” My heartbeat picked up the pace, brushing against my rib cage with each pound in my chest.
“Tobi doesn’t have a home. I’ve seen him hang around the subway, though, so I think that’s mostly where he stays. He said you guys had known each other for a long time, but that you don’t anymore. I guess he meant you guys haven’t kept in touch.”
I needed a fucking cigarette. Like right now, or else I’d be turning the silent panic in my head into something very loud and very public. “Can we go smoke and talk?”
He turned his head, looking down the counter. “Let me get Mav to take over. I’ll meet you out back.”
If I were to open my mouth, all that would come out would be pained noises, so I kept it closed as I rose from the barstool and made a beeline down the hallway and through the back door. The wind almost knocked me on my ass, slapping me right in the face the moment the metal door creaked open.
There was so much snow on the ground, it almost had me wishing I’d never picked up smoking.
Almost. Years’ worth of memories came and went in my mind as I turned toward the wall, holding my hand up to protect the flame from the lighter.
The first drag from the cigarette coated my lungs in relief and toxicity, forcing the memory of Tobi’s voice to pause.
His old voice. The voice I’d fallen in love with so long ago.
Now, his voice sounded like it was being crushed by anguish and pain. It was as if he was screaming through a straw that stretched for miles, each syllable of every word he spoke getting cut off before it could get to me.
There was emptiness in his eyes and torturous hell in his throat. I could feel it when I sat across from him. I could see it on his skin, right there in plain sight.
I lost Tobi ten years ago, and even though I’d found who was supposed to be him, I didn’t think I’d really found him. I didn’t know what’d taken him, but it had crushed him, and it crushed me, too.
The door creaked open again as Jack came out and stood beside me, rubbing his shoulders with a shiver. “Holy fuck, it’s cold.”
I blew out the smoke I’d been harboring in my lungs and kicked some of the snow surrounding my feet. “Yeah. I really hope Tobi made it to some shelter.”
Seeing the pavement covered like it was didn’t bring good feelings or memories.
Whenever it snowed like this, all I could ever think about was the panic during the snowstorm that had happened twelve years ago now.
I could still see it on Tobi’s face as tears kept coming, staining his cheeks, and I couldn’t get him to tell me why.
I remembered the fear in his shaky voice when he came inside the restaurant and finally told me that Crew had disappeared into the storm.
I’d taken him home with me that day. I’d slept on the couch while he took my bed, and I could hear his cries from all the way in the living room. He’d cried for the entire night.
Jack took a puff from his cigarette, letting the smoke blow with the wind. It billowed and traveled in front of our faces so peacefully, like it wasn’t in any hurry. “So, how do you and Tobi know each other? I asked him earlier, but he was more concerned with getting more booze.”
Sighing, I let myself fall against the wall behind us. There wasn’t enough nicotine in the world to make remembering any easier. I wondered if it ever would be, or if I’d be stuck in a constant state of fear and unrest. “Do you remember me telling you about my first love?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Tobi and I met each other at The Arch. We worked together. We started dating twelve years ago. And then one day, two years later, out of the blue, he started acting weird. Really fucking weird.” I took a final drag from my cigarette, holding onto the smoke in my lungs as I let it fall to the ground.
I wanted another one. I wanted a hundred more.
I wanted to drink so that maybe I’d understand why Tobi did it.
Maybe I’d get why it meant more to my parents than I did.
“And then not too long after that, he left. Disappeared. Vanished from all of our lives like he was never there in the first place. I haven’t seen or heard from Tobias Weaver in ten years. ”
“No fucking way.” Jack gasped and turned toward me, his eyes wide. “He’s the guy?”
Nodding, I looked out across the snow-covered ground. There was nothing to look at aside from that, really. “The one and only.”
“No wonder he looked so fucked up when I mentioned you.”
“He looked fucked up?”
“Yeah, like, he had this distance in his eyes. Like he was stuck in thought, and the thought was making him sad. Really fucking sad.”
Was Tobi sad when he thought of me? I knew I was when I thought of him. The usually happy memories we’d had together were shrouded in grief. The grief of losing someone like him.
Even though he was alive, I’d grieved him as if he were dead.
I think we all did. Crew and I had regularly searched for obituaries just in case, typing his name into Google along with different states, holding our breath as the search results populated.
They never said his name, but we were ready. We were prepared for the worst.
“I’m sad, too. I was hoping to see him today so I could talk to him again. I want to try, you know? Try to understand and let him see that we all still miss him.”
Jack threw his cigarette butt onto the ground, letting it sizzle into the snow. “Do the others know?”
“Just Crew and Price.” Crew’s face when I told them still haunted me.
“I don’t think I should mention it to anyone else until Tobi is ready to see them.
I showed up at their front door that same night, all messed up and panicking.
I had to go see Pops the very next day. Barely held myself together. ”
“That makes sense. How is your grandpa, by the way?”
Shaking my head, I tried to breathe through the tightness in my chest. “He’s okay, I think. They’re catching up to the infection with medicine, and his heart seems to be holding strong.”
“Thank God. Let me know if you want me to come with you next time, though. I don’t mind being some comedic relief.”
I turned my head, eyebrow raised. “Comedic relief? I think you have to be funny for that.”
His jaw dropped as he put a hand over his heart. “I am so funny! You’re just jealous.”
I laughed just as my phone started to buzz. I reached into my pocket, looking at who was calling me. When I read the name, everything stopped. Everything in the entire world pressed pause. “Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. It’s the hospital.”
Jack leaned closer to me, looking at my screen. “Shit. Answer it, Cal.”
No, no, no… They only called when shit went wrong. I wasn’t ready for shit to go wrong. I didn’t think I could handle it if something was going wrong with Pops. How did I answer it? My fingers didn’t want to. My brain didn’t want to. I didn’t want to.
If I didn’t, though, it’d go to voicemail, and I’d have to face it anyway.
Though my hand was shaking violently, I somehow got myself to answer the call, putting the phone up to my ear. “Hello?”
“Hi, is this Callum Stanton?”
I had to swallow through the huge fucking lump in my throat that was making it harder to breathe. My tongue was numb. Why was it numb? “This is he.” How was I even speaking right now?
“My name is Molly Harris. I’m a nurse here at the Stanley Planes Memorial Hospital. You’re the emergency contact for a patient we have here by the name of…” She trailed off for a moment, and the sound of papers being sifted through came over the speaker. “Tobias Weaver. Are you able to come here?”
I blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. “What?”
“Tobias Weaver. Do you know him?”
“Uh, yeah, I do. He’s at the hospital? Why?”
“It’s best if you come in.”
That didn’t sound good at all. Why wouldn’t she tell me what was going on? “I’ll be there soon.”
After she hung up, I turned to Jack and pocketed my phone, swallowing once more to try to keep whatever was still in my stomach where it belonged.
It was churning and cramping, and spit was building in my mouth like I was about to throw the fuck up.
I knew that if I did, all that would come up would be panic, pain, and confusion. “It’s Tobi. I gotta go.”
“Tobi is at the hospital?”
“I’m still his emergency contact, apparently.”
“Oh, holy fuck. Okay. Uh,” he looked me up and down. “Let me drive you. I don’t think I trust you to get there in one piece.”
That was probably a good idea. When I looked down, I noticed just how much my hands were still shaking. Snow was still falling. My stomach was about to give out at any moment, along with my heart.
Fuck. I hoped he was okay.
If I truly lost Tobi before I could ever find out the truth, I was sure I’d find peace in the same ground he’d lay beneath. Right in the same coffin. Under the same headstone. Together for the rest of the afterlife, even though we didn’t get to spend very long with each other in the life before.