Page 31 of Euphoria
“Thank you.” I hear Orion’s voice in my ear, and I sob loudly as he holds me. I hear sniffling and I know Orion is also crying.
There’s no way I’m ever letting Phoenix go now. No one can ever take him from me again.
* * *
Bowie
I watched everything happen from our Bambi saving Phoenix’s life to her cursing the doctor out. I’ve never really seen that side of her much, but I love it. I love how protective she is, or rather that she’s become like. I couldn’t move my legs to go into the room. It’s like everything in me is locked up. I haven’t been the same since my biological mother passed away from loneliness. Although I never really understood what it was like to lose a mother, I didn’t get the chance to know it still affected me. Sort of stunted me in a way. That impromptu trip that my father and his wife, who I learned to call mother, made me take was for her funeral preparations.
My father lied and told me she died from the sickle cell anemia that she had but Mother told me it was from that and a mixture of loneliness. Her words were always “you see Bowie, dear. No one on this planet is meant to be alone. You may come into this world and leave alone, but it doesn't mean you live it alone. You need someone, anyone to numb the ache. I have your father but you, you’ll have no one. Just like your mother, you tried to take what was mine, I took what was hers. Now, you’ll both always suffer with the loneliness eating away at you.”
She was right, because when I came back, it ripped apart my world. I didn’t know how to mend the relationships that were broken so I ran away instead of facing it head on. I ran away from the skeletons in my closet, from everything and now, here I am, having to face one head-on. The moment I heard the machine flat-lining, I couldn’t think for myself. I ran towards the glass with Bambi but I wasn’t myself. I was on autopilot. I prayed for the first time in my life for my best friend to come back. For the first person who made the loneliness less lonely and much bearable. For the person who introduced me to two different loves the love of friendship and brotherhood and the love of my life. A love so profound, so deep, so worth risking everything. He deserved to live. He deserves everything. It doesn’t even matter what it is. “Open your eyes, Nix. Come on, brother. You can’t die like this. Not like this man,” I whisper. I shut my eyes and lay my forehead on the glass, feeling the tears I’ve never truly produced leave my eyes. My mind goes dark. It goes somewhere that I’ve never wanted it to go after I gave up fighting. All of my fights come back to me like some scenery and I relish in the pain that showed only through the bruises on my body. I grit my teeth as if I’m there. The hits that made me feel alive, that made me feel human again and then after, when I knocked the other one out. My best friend, my brother would come sometimes and each time, he gave me a smile that reached his eyes. One that people who don’t know him think is not genuine. The ones who judge him by his condition. They know nothing because they never give him a chance. How can someone who doesn’t feel teach me the meaning of Philia love and again, lead me towards the woman that shows me what true Eros love is like? I feel a small hand slip into mine.
“He’s breathing…” Guinevere’s voice breaks through my dark moments and I let go of a breath I didn’t know I was holding in.
I feel a firm hand on my back, “it’s not like before, Bow, I know you know what I’m talking about. My son is strong, and this will never happen to him again,” Andres says.
I don’t know what causes me to break down and sob. I don’t move and neither do they. I’ve always searched for a family never having my own and now, it’s so clear, it almost knocks the breath out of me. I have a family. I have my two best friends: My wife and Phoenix. I have my brother, Orion, my cousin Jagger and the sister-in-law I never knew I needed, Ainslee, a new friend, Guinevere and a father, one that won’t put others before me. One who won’t make me feel less than because I broke down when my biological mother, the woman who gave birth to me yet couldn’t see me died because she missed me too much. Because she never got to hold me in her arms. I was snatched from her the second I was born but I will always love her even though I don’t know her. She would be proud of my new father. A father who would do anything to protect his family and the lost kid who fought in his underground fight club. He didn’t kick me out or make me tell him my story but he sat with me after every fight; he soothed my wounds. Not just the ones you could see but the ones that no one else bothered to look at. He made me do my homework, told me to be proud of who I was despite the asshole who stepped out on his wife because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. I am better. I am a Hanlon but I’m going to kick Phoenix's ass for scaring all of us and making me cry like I’m his bitch. Stupid asshole.
