Page 10 of My Best Friend Is Broken
I guess time will tell if I am right about that.
I hand him my sunglasses because even though it is winter, the sunlight is bright, and I can see how it makes the world look sharp and dangerous. He takes them with hands that tremble just a little.
The MX5 rumbles into life and we’re off. He stares out at the passing buildings with a strange, detached focus, like he’s cataloguing exits. To me, the city looks the same as it always has. Trains grumbling, deliveries stacking on pavements, a flock of pigeons erupting from a rooftop. But for Liam, each sight is a possible threat. I can see it in the way he flinches at a delivery van’s beeping reverse alarm, how he watches every face as if it might tilt toward him and recognize him as someone defeated.
We park two streets from the little park that reminds me of the one we used to hang out in when we were teenagers and had nothing but time. He peers out from beneath my sunglasses and exhales like the air itself is somehow new to him.
“It smells,” he says.
“London always stinks,” I say, reminding him. “Pigeons, overpriced coffee and a faint odor of people taking themselves too seriously.”
He snorts. The sound is so small and fragile I nearly choke on it, but it’s a sound. Progress.
We walk slowly. I keep my hand near his elbow, not touching, just a promise of proximity. Passersby drift around us, some hurried, some oblivious, and my eyes watch them like a hawk. Every time someone gets close, Liam’s shoulders bunch up, and he pulls away as if the world might bite.
I should have chosen a better day. It is winter, but the sky is blue. A rare day without rain, where the cold feels invigorating and not something to bear.
It has brought people out in droves. Everyone is eager to soak up some rare winter sun and escape the indoors for a little while.
I should have chosen a rainy day for Liam’s first outing. We would have had the park to ourselves. But it is too late now.
Halfway through the park, a dog rockets past, knocks into a kid, and the kid’s scream is bright and sudden. Liam spins, eyes blown wide, a flame of panic flaring up in him. He takes a step back as if the sound were a physical blow.
“It’s okay,” I say, steadying my voice. I step in front of him because I don’t know any other way to protect him. The kid is already laughing, the parent fussing, and the dog owner hustles the dog away. It’s ordinary, banal. But to Liam, it’s an avalanche.
And it doesn’t stop. The city is relentless. I don’t understand how I never noticed before.
A woman on a bench sneezes loudly. A bus hisses at the stop. Each noise is a jagged edge. His breath comes faster. I hear it before I see the color draining from his face.
“Nic…” he starts. He looks like he might bolt. For a moment my chest drops.
I close the small distance between us. “Look at me,” I demand softly, and when he does his eyes are wild, pupils blown, he is barely an inch from me, and two seconds away from being gone all at once.
“Remember when we ran to the park with all those sweets we had stolen?” I say, worthlessly, but clinging desperately to anything I can think of. “We couldn’t stop puking. Rainbow colors all over the grass. You said it meant we had marked our territory and the park was now ours.”
He blinks. He breathes. He gives me the tiniest of crooked smiles. It’s ridiculous, but it works. I’ve reminded him that he used to be fearless. That we used to be silly. That I’ve always been by his side, through thick and thin.
“That was a different park,” he says.
I grin. “Still counts.”
A glimmer flashes in his eyes. A faint shake of his head at my utter absurdity. But he goes along with it.
“Okay,” he whispers.
We keep walking, but slower, like together we’re coaxing a skittish animal. People brush past, an old man with a blue carrier bag, a teenage girl on a skateboard, and my whole body tightens. I hate that the world is too loud for him. I hate even more that I can’t make it softer.
We reach the little kiosk at the park entrance. It’s run by a woman who wears too much perfume and a smile that belongs in an earlier decade. She takes our order with a brisk nod. “Two flat whites,” she states as she hands them to us. Her voice is mundane and perfect.
Liam takes his coffee carefully. He cradles it as if the warmth through the paper cup is a lifeline. He brings it to his lips and sips. The steam fogs his sunglasses, and for atiny second he looks like a boy again, not a man who has been shaped by life inside metal bars.
We sit on a low wall and watch the world move. He talks in fragments, not about prison, not about the cells or the men, but about the small things. He mentions the game we played with empty bottles as kids, the nicknames we invented, how he’d stolen my hoodie once because he liked the smell of it. He licks the rim of his cup, clearly embarrassed by the memory. I laugh because remembering is how we come back.
But the edges never fully soften. A skateboarder clatters past, music blasting, and Liam startles so violently he spills a little coffee down his wrist. He swears softly, not at the skateboarder but at everything, and a lost look flickers across his face. He drops his gaze, pressing his thumb into the wet stain as if making sense of its shape will make sense of the world.
“Do you want to go back?” I ask.
He looks at me as if he’s considering whether to hand me his life. “Not yet,” he says with, an achingly familiar, stubborn lift of his chin.
