Page 50 of My Best Friend Is Broken
I almost laugh at that one. Mental health concerns. Like the nightmares and panic attacks and suicidal ideation are just minor inconveniences rather than the defining features of my daily existence.
“I’m managing,” I say, which is technically true if you count clinging to Nicky like a life raft as managing.
She types something else, then finally looks up at me with the kind of professional disinterest that makes it clear this interview is nearly over.
“Right. Next appointment is...” She flips through a paper diary, running her finger down dates without any apparent system. “January fifteenth. Same time. Don’t miss it, and contact this office immediately if you change address or get arrested.”
That’s it. Ten minutes of questions that reduce my entire existence to a series of checkboxes, and now I’m dismissed until next month when we’ll go through the exact same routine.
“Any questions?” She asks, but she’s already looking past me toward the door, clearly eager to move on to the next case file.
“No,” I say quietly.
“Good. You can go.”
I stand up, legs unsteady beneath me. Not from panic or fear this time, but from the strange deflation that comes from having something precious made ordinary through sheer bureaucratic indifference.
The walk back through the corridor feels longer than it did coming in. The other people in the waiting room look exactly the same. Tired, defeated, marking time until they can escape back to whatever passes for normal life in their worlds.
But I’m not like them, am I? I have somewhere to go. Someone waiting for me. Someone who loves me enough to call me his boyfriend and mean it.
I’m practically bouncing down the stairs of the probation office, taking them two at a time in my eagerness to get back to Nicky. He’s waiting in the car outside, he insisted on driving me even though I lied and told him I could manage the tube, and the thought of seeing his face, of telling him about my boring appointment and having him actually care about the answer, makes everything else fade into background noise.
I’m digging my new phone out of my pocket to text him that I’m on my way when a hand clamps down on my shoulder.
“Well, well. Look what we have here.”
The voice freezes my blood. Deep, gravelly, with that particular accent that screams violence and casual cruelty. I know that voice. I’ve heard it whisper threats in thedark, heard it laugh at things that should make any decent person sick.
I turn slowly, already knowing what I’ll see but hoping desperately that I’m wrong.
I’m not wrong.
Wayne Thompson stands behind me on the stairs. On the featureless landing I just ran past. The door to that exit still swinging behind him.
Wayne Thompson just strolled into the same stairwell I’m in and I was so distracted by wanting to text Nicky that I didn’t even notice.
Wayne Thompson is here, grinning that same predatory smile that used to make my stomach turn in Brixton. He looks exactly the same. Early forties but already lacking most of his teeth. A tall, broad-shouldered, thick-set man, with arms covered in prison tattoos and dead eyes that find amusement in other people’s pain.
My cellmate for two of the worst years of my life. Not the only person who hurt me, just the first.
“Hello, Pretty Boy,” he says, and the nickname hits me like a physical blow. “Didn’t expect to see you here. Thought you wouldn’t get out for a while.”
I can’t speak. Can barely breathe. My whole body has gone rigid with the kind of fear that bypasses rational thought and goes straight to pure animal terror.
“What’s wrong?” Wayne steps closer, and I can smell him, cigarettes and unwashed clothes and something else, something that takes me right back to a six-by-eight cell where the air never moved and safety was a luxury I couldn’t afford. “Not happy to see your old friend?”
Friend. The word makes bile rise in my throat.
“I…I have to go,” I manage, my voice barely above a whisper. “Someone’s waiting for me.”
“Someone’s waiting,” Wayne repeats mockingly. “How sweet. Got yourself a little girlfriend, have you? Someone who doesn’t know what you really are?”
He reaches out as if to ruffle my hair, the same casual gesture Nicky made just this morning that felt like love and protection. But when Wayne does it, it feels like ownership. Like a reminder of all the times I couldn’t stop him from touching me when I didn’t want to be touched.
“Don’t,” I whisper, but my voice has no strength behind it.
Wayne laughs, a sound like breaking glass. “Still the same scared little rabbit, aren’t you? Still trying to pretend you’re better than what you are.”
