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“I know, man,” Oli said as if he understood my silent communication. He choked back his own tears and pulled me into another hug.
That’s pretty much when the switch flipped. I had always been a bit uninterested, generally speaking, but the weight got heavier that day. I “celebrated” my nineteenth birthday at a university full of English Class Devil’s Advocates and What’s Your Sign Frat Boy Schmucks instead of laughing with my two best friends at The Cheesecake Factory. The weeks just dragged on, and it had not gotten even a smidge easier.
???
“Jonah,” Oli said, entering the dorm room, back from his morning class. “What are you up to?”
“I just got off the phone with Kai.” I don’t actually know how much time had passed since our call ended. I’d zoned out.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked happily. “How is she?”
I leaned back in my seat and looked up at the ceiling. “Lost without me. Begging me to take her away. Head over heels in love with me.”
“Well, it took her long enough.” Six years, had it been true.
I glanced at him and offered a sad pout. Sarcasm covered up my desolation pretty well for the most part, but I didn’t have to do that around Oli.
“I know, man,” he said just as he had that fateful day. “But…” He walked to his closet and pulled one of those bottles of whiskey from the back.
I groaned in approval and lifted myself out of my seat. Oli had a lot of cool things about him, but during those first few months of college, my favorite thing about him was his thick, brown beard. I mean, seriously. We were nineteen years old. The guy looked like he was forty. A real mensch. He was twice my size, an entire head taller, and his cousin was damn good at making fake IDs. If it weren’t for that very adult-like beard, I would’ve had to face it all sober.
Nearly the entirety of freshman year was spent in our dorm room, imbibing and writing music together. I handled vocals and guitar, Oli played drums, and this kid Noah from Oli’s English class played bass and backup vocals. Noah was still growing on me. He both looked and acted like a golden retriever, and while he was talented, his enthusiasm was suffocating and honestly downright annoying. So, his participation was relatively limited still. Oli and I did most of the writing in our dorm room, and then when it came time to find space in the city to practice, we called on Noah. We did all right.
Anyway, Kai probably wouldn’t have been too proud to see me drinking whiskey before 10:00 a.m. or smoking cigarettes out the window. I mean, she would’ve joined in, but she would’ve said something heartbreaking like, This isn’t you, Jonah.
Chapter 3
Kai, The Next Summer
Last year’s move to Madrid was an explosion of emotions that I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with, but there wasn’t much room to ponder it anyway. I would’ve been foolish to skip out on the opportunity to have a good education. So, when my parents decided to follow a few of our relatives over to Spain with the promise to pay for my college tuition, I had little choice but to follow. Sure, I was ripped away from everything I so deeply loved and cherished, but it was the right move for the family and my future.
It wasn’t so bad. The upside was that the pain of being forced away from my life was so great, so deep, that eventually it ripped all the way through me until I felt nothing. A free fall into my emotions. A clean slate. A hole to fill with whatever I desired. I took the whole thing as an opportunity. I was granted a new life, a safe life, a decent life. That was nothing to sneeze at. Not everyone was so lucky.
And I enjoyed myself this past year in Spain. I enjoyed a lot of other people, too. But my brain wasn’t in it. My body continued through the days without change as my mind struggled immensely to find the meaning behind it all. I felt like an alien who had been dropped on planet Earth and left with no other defense than to blend in. Not that I didn’t. I was relatively good at pretending to be likable. But every time the hole inside of me filled, it emptied just as fast.
I just turned twenty. Twenty-year-olds party. They have sex, they drink, they make stupid decisions. I did all those things, though they could’ve been categorized just fine beneath the latter. The problem was that I didn’t feel I was enjoying them as much as other kids my age, but I ignored that as best I could. I needed to coalesce with the masses.
I moved through the hours taking in the color of smoke in a dark discotheque, the pain of fluorescent lights in a dull classroom, or the feel of a chilled down comforter the next morning in some unknown apartment. That’s what everyone else did, so that’s what I did too.
I spoke much less these days. I spent most of my time smiling, pretending to listen, or better yet understand, as the world around me spoke in tongues. Inside remained a complex set of controls and compartments, whirring away behind a plain smile, to be shared only with myself and, of course, Jonah.
It was morning now, perhaps. Or mid-day. I was swirled up in one of those cold, white down comforters, staring out of some stranger’s bedroom window overlooking the city, though nobody back home knew that. My skin was fully wrapped in crisp fabric, except my neck and head. The window, so typical of a snobby adult’s penthouse, framed a perfect view of the sea. From floor to ceiling, I gazed. The sky was far past pink to the point of blue, and the water curved inside the arm of the beach, lined with tall buildings and hotels. It was beautiful, no doubt, but funny. Madrid doesn’t have a beach. Then again, blonde isn’t my type, yet here I was.
I began rolling my neck and shoulders, stretching as I always did before making my first move of the day. Looking to the lower right corner of the bed, I noticed a small collapsible table. On that table was a glass of orange juice, a magdalena, and a note. I crawled on all fours and fished my underwear and a T-shirt from deep beneath the covers to put them on. Then, propping myself up on widened knees, I drank the juice with my left hand and picked up the note with my right.
Gone to work. ?
I rolled my eyes. Good effort.
My toes slid out from beneath myself, and I stabilized onto the hardwood floor, a movement followed by the sound of slapping feet as I walked across a wide-open living room. A round, metal table stood in front of a gray couch, covered in empty glasses and bottles. In the reflection on the flat screen, the kitchen island could be seen, dressed in half-eaten sweets and oily pizza boxes.
A rummaging sound coming from a room toward the back of the apartment caught my attention, and I set my course for it. I walked down a short but well-equipped hallway and, after passing two doors, I peered into the third which was slightly open. Pushing my fingertips to the wood, the door opened swiftly and quietly, and I saw what appeared to be some type of animal fussing around under a pile of white sheets and pillows.
Ana’s head shot up from the fluffy swirl. I lifted my orange juice glass with a smirk as my friend from English class pushed a mess of hair out of her face and clicked her mouth to get rid of a bad taste. I entered and opened the window by the head of the bed.
“You smell that?” I asked her. She was now looking around confusedly as outside air rushed into the room.
“Mm. The ocean,” she mumbled. “Reminds me of mornings in Corf— Wait a second! Oh my fucking god, Kai. Where the fuck are we?” She giggled and jumped up to look out the window.
