Page 22 of My Best Friend Is Broken
When the tears finally stop, I’m empty. Hollowed out. A shell of a person sitting on a bathroom floor in an apartment bought with crime and violence, trying to figure out how to keep breathing.
I could leave. The thought comes suddenly, sharp with possibility. Nicky gave me a key. I could pack what little I have, walk out that door, and never look back. Find a hostel somewhere, maybe get on benefits, try to build some kind of life away from all this.
But even as I think it, I know it’s impossible. I have nowhere to go. No friends left, they would have moved on while I was inside, got jobs and partners and lives that don’t include space for an ex-convict with moretrauma than sense. No family worth speaking of, my evil stepmother never liked me, and Dad made it clear I was dead to him the moment the verdict came down.
More than that, I can barely handle a trip to the park without falling apart. How would I manage finding a place to live, dealing with landlords and benefit offices and all the bureaucracy of normal life? How would I explain the gaps in my resume, the prison tattoo on my ribs, the way I flinch at sudden noises?
The world outside is too big, too loud, too full of people who look at me and see exactly what I am, a killer, a criminal, a broken thing that doesn’t belong in polite society.
At least here, with Nicky, I’m wanted. Maybe not for the right reasons. Maybe not by the person I thought he was. But wanted nonetheless.
And despite everything, despite the lies, the violence, the way my hands shake when I think about what he’s done… I still love him. The boy who shared his lunch with me when I forgot mine. The teenager who held me when I cried about my dad being a dick. The young man who got drunk with me under the streetlights and promised we’d always be friends.
That person was real once. Maybe he still exists somewhere underneath all the blood and brutality. Maybe if I stay, if I’m patient, I can find him again.
Or maybe I’m just a fool, clinging to a ghost because the alternative is facing the world alone.
I drag myself up from the bathroom floor, my joints aching like I’m twice my age. The apartment feels different now, not like a home, but not quite like a prison either. Something in between, maybe. A way station for brokenpeople trying to figure out how to live with the weight of their choices.
In the kitchen, I make tea with hands that barely shake at all. It’s progress, I suppose. Small victories.
I sit at the dining table that seats six, and drink my tea in the silence, watching the city lights twinkle through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Somewhere out there, Nicky is doing things I don’t want to imagine. Somewhere out there, Sam and Amy are probably tucked up in bed with their child, the child I helped them keep by taking the fall.
And here I am, suspended between my past and my future, trying to decide whether love is worth the price of staying with someone whose hands are stained with blood.
The tea grows cold in my cup as I sit there, waiting for dawn. Waiting for Nicky to come home. Waiting to see if I’ll have the courage to stay or the strength to go.
Outside, the city hums with life I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to join. Inside, the silence stretches on, broken only by the sound of my own breathing and the tick of an expensive clock marking time I’ll never get back.
I think about freedom, about what it costs and whether it’s worth the price. I think about choices made in the dark and consequences that stretch across years like shadows.
And I wait.
Because waiting is the only thing I know how to do anymore.
Chapter eight
Nicky
The first thing I notice when I slip through the front door is how quiet the apartment is. Not the empty quiet of an abandoned place, but the held-breath quiet of someone trying not to be heard. My keys make too much noise in the lock, my footsteps too loud on the hardwood, and I wince at every sound.
I’m exhausted down to my bones, the kind of tired that comes from watching a man beg for his life and knowing there’s nothing you can do to save him. My hands still smell like death despite the industrial soap I scrubbed them with at the warehouse. My clothes reek of fear and blood and the particular stench of violence that clings to everything it touches.
All I want is a shower hot enough to burn the night off my skin.
But first, I need to see him. Need to know he’s still here, still breathing, still choosing to stay in this fucked-up life I’ve built for us.
I find Liam on the sofa, curled up so small he barely takes up a single cushion. He’s wearing the same clothes from yesterday, my old band t-shirt and sweatpants thatare too big for his thin frame. His hair falls across his face in pale waves, and in the gray morning light filtering through the windows, he looks impossibly young. Fragile. Like something that might shatter if I breathe too hard.
The throw blanket has slipped off his shoulders, pooling around his waist. He must be cold, he’s always cold now, like prison leached all the warmth out of his bones. Without thinking, I reach for the blanket, pulling it gently back up to cover him.
My fingers brush his shoulder as I tuck the fabric around him, and he jerks awake with a sharp intake of breath that cuts right through me.
His eyes snap open, wide and terrified, searching for the threat. When they land on me, he scrambles backward against the arm of the sofa, pressing himself as far away as the furniture will allow. The fear in his expression is so raw, so immediate, that it hits me like a physical blow.
“Sorry,” I whisper, raising my hands to show I mean no harm. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
But he’s not seeing me. Not really. He’s seeing whatever nightmare was chasing him in his sleep, whatever horror his mind conjured while I was out doing the things that make him look at me like I’m a monster.
