Page 1 of Loverboy

1

Milo

ONE OF THE perks that comes with failing to kill yourself is seeing who shows up for you. This wasn’t my first time, and it wouldn’t be my last. If I could stop myself from self-destructing like this every time I was faced with the possibility of being alone, I would. But the thought of being abandoned, of having to start all over again—it made me fucking sick, and it wasn’t just the entire bottle of pills I’d swallowed.

By the time the nurse made another round, my face was buried deep in a metal bowl twice the size of my head, already brimming with vomit. My eyes burned, but there were no more tears, only spurts of bile clawing up my throat. There couldn’t be much left.

My insides were raw.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her standing there, unblinking, entirely unbothered by the mess I’d made. At first, I was embarrassed. But not anymore. I was only numb, and she’d probably seen a dozen losers like me before.

“Next time, you should pick something that acts faster.” Her shoulders shook with a quiet laugh. “Acetaminophen works slowly. Shuts down all your organs first.”

What the fuck. Who says that to someone?

My throat seized, and another wave shot up. Not empty yet. I was a little over twenty-four gruelling hours in, but at least it had stopped coming up a vibrant Tylenol red. A win was a win.

She checked my IV and then left me alone again, following a distant beeping sound beyond the curtain. It was just me and my bowl of puke once more.

It’d been hours since the psychiatrist stopped in. Each time he did, I was welcomed with a grimace and the promise that he’d come back later. I’d managed to avoid him this long by rotating between vomiting and passing out, but time was running out.

I didn’t need his assessment. I still wanted to die.

As the hours dragged on and left me with what I was convinced were the early signs of bedsores, I came to understand that nurses had a remarkably dark sense of humour. It wasn’t some medical drama trope I saw on television. The IV working to purge the shit out of my system had started to leak at one point, and when I mentioned it to another nurse, he joked about me sabotaging his master plan. Master plan to what? Every true crime podcast I’d listened to about angels of death in hospitals whizzed through my mind, and this guy thought it was fucking funny.

My phone lit up on the bedside next to me, the vibration making my chest tighten. Maybe Sofia had answered one of my dozens of text messages. Maybe she was sorry, and my near-death experience changed her mind. I’d lie and tell her I could be different.

I could be less like me.

Jasper: Did you hurt yourself?

I nearly crushed the phone. It wasn’t her. I was so unlovable that she didn’t care, not even about something as serious as this. In the end, all she wanted was to get the fuck away from me. I couldn’t blame her. I fantasized, briefly, about tearing out the IV and letting the entire pharmacy of pills in my system finish the job.

Jasper: What did you take?

My worst-case scenario had come to life. The only explanation was that my so-called best friend had broken his promise to keep his mouth shut by telling my younger brother. If I weren’t dead now, I would be later.

Fuck you, Oliver.

Hours of rehearsing what I might say to Jasper evaporated in an instant, my thumbs paralyzed over the keyboard. There wasn’t a single thing that made up for what I’d done, not after he spent the last two nights trying to console me about the breakup over text. I’d promised I’d let him know if I needed anything.

Spoiler: I never did.

Milo: Hi.

It was the only response I could muster. The two-letter apology had to be enough to make him forgive me. I needed him to see past my inability to communicate and read between the lines, to know that I was alive and sorry, so fucking sorry for making myself into another mess for him to clean up. Like always. He never complained, even when we were teenagers.

Jasper: Milo.

Only my name. He was scolding me, reprimanding me, judging me—worrying about me. I didn’t answer, at least not with any words. My thumb hovered over the button to share my location for a moment that stretched into eternity before I pressed it.

“Fuck,” I grumbled. I dropped my phone onto the bed and threaded my fingers into my hair, yanking the bleach-abused strands to punish myself. My eyes flitted to the phone as it lit up again, the little chime making my heart skip.

I didn’t need to look.

Jasper: I’m coming.

The hours I spent convincing the staff to discharge me while Jasper took his sweet ass time getting there were hell. I had to swallow my distaste for mental health professionals and speak to the psychiatrist, play along and pretend I didn’t want to get out of there and walk in front of the first bus I saw.