Page 21 of My Best Friend Is Broken
The shower still smells like Nicky, that soap he has always used, sandalwood and something else I can’t name. I used to love that smell. When I told him he smelled like home, I meant it. Now it just makes me feel sick.
How many people has he killed? How many families were destroyed so he could buy Italian marble and German appliances and a car that costs more than most people earn in a year?
How many times did he come home to this perfect apartment, wash blood off his hands, and think about me locked in my cell?
The thought makes me double over, retching into the pristine white toilet. Nothing comes up but bile and the taste of betrayal.
When the heaving stops, I sit on the bathroom floor with my back against the wall. The tiles are cold through my clothes, grounding me in a way that feels almost like punishment. Good. I deserve to be uncomfortable. I deserve to feel small and lost and broken.
Pretty boy who killed that girl.
That’s what I am to the world. That’s what I’ll always be. The stupid kid who got drunk and drove a car into a tree, who took an innocent life because he was young and reckless and thought he was invincible, even in the rain with a dodgy tyre.
Except...
The memory comes without warning, sharp and brutal as a knife between the ribs. I’m eighteen again, stumbling out of the pub with Sam and Olivia, the three of us laughing about something I can’t remember now. Amy had to work late at her weekend job at the cinema. Saving money for university. We were supposed to pick her up at eleven.
Sam was behind the wheel initially. Of course he was. it was his car, his license, his responsibility. But then Amy called, crying, and everything changed.
“I know you’ll be here soon, but I have to tell you now because I’m freaking out. I just…”
He snatched the phone off speaker and held it between his ear and shoulder. I watched as his face turned pale.
“I’ll be there soon, baby,” he said, and then he dropped the phone onto the center console.
“She’s pregnant,” Sam had said, his face white in the glow of the dashboard. “Fuck, Liam, she’s pregnant and her mum’s going to kill me. Kill us both.”
Olivia had been in the front passenger seat, trying to comfort him, telling him it would be okay. She was always the reasonable one, the one who could fix things. Even drunk, she was trying to take care of everyone else.
Then came the squeal of rubber on wet tarmac. The jolt. The shattering of glass. The world went dark for a moment, and I don’t think I ever did fully find my way back to the light.
“I can’t get arrested,” Sam had said, his hands shaking on the steering wheel as steam hissed from the mangled remains of the engine. “If I lose my license, I lose my job. If I lose my job, I can’t support her. I can’t support the baby.”
And Olivia... God, Olivia had seemed fine. Shaken up but alert, talking, moving. When the car hit the tree, she’d been conscious. She’d been asking if everyone was okay.
It was only later, at the hospital, that the internal bleeding became apparent. By then, the story was already set in stone. By then, I was already the driver.
I’d made that choice in the space of a heartbeat, climbing over the center console while Sam scrambled into the back seat. A stupid, impulsive decision born of loyalty and love and the naïve belief that I could handle whatever consequences came. Because I was the brave, tough, confident one.
I thought I was being noble. I thought I was saving Sam’s future, protecting Amy and their unborn child. I thought the worst that could happen was a fine, maybe a suspended sentence.
I never imagined Olivia would die.
I never imagined five years in Brixton.
I never imagined losing everything, my freedom, my sanity, my sense of self. And Nicky.
Especially Nicky.
The irony cuts deeper than any blade. I sacrificed myself to protect someone I cared about, and it destroyed my life. Nicky sacrificed others to protect our future, and it destroyed his soul.
We’re both monsters, just different kinds.
The tears come then, hot and silent, running down my cheeks like acid. I don’t try to stop them. In prison, crying was dangerous, a sign of weakness that could get you hurt or worse. But here, alone in this blood-bought bathroom, I let myself fall apart completely.
I cry for Olivia, whose death I couldn’t prevent no matter whose hands were on the wheel. I cry for Sam and Amy, who got their happy ending while I rotted in a cell. I cry for the boy I used to be, confident and cocky and full of dreams that seem impossibly naïve now.
And I cry for Nicky, for the man he’s become and the boy he used to be. For the future we planned together and the present we can never escape.
