Page 6 of Loverboy

The apartment buzzer cut through the awkward silence that had fallen over us, and we made our way out to the intercom by the front door. Knowing the only person it could be was Oliver, I held down the button to let him inside.

“You gonna head out now?” I asked, stomach sinking as my face betrayed my dismay.

“Yeah.” Jasper sighed, slinging his backpack over his shoulder as he leaned down to slip on his shoes. “It’s the weekend, Milo. You know I work at the bar on the weekends.”

I knew that, of course.

“Right.” I nodded reluctantly, the air between us heavy. “I knew that.”

3

Milo

OLIVER WAS ONE of my oldest friends. He was the sort of easygoing guy who would go along with any plan, no matter how crazy. I’d lost count of how many times I’d nearly given him alcohol poisoning or gotten him killed performing stupid stunts. If I said jump, his answer was always the same: how high?

I found comfort in the way we both ruined our relationships, just in different ways. Oliver couldn’t seem to keep his heart in one place, while my devotion always became my undoing. He was a serial cheater, and I was the pitiful romantic.

Even though my love ran deep, I tried never to let it get that far. It was easier to string women along and make a game out of seeing how many would fall for me, safer than the alternative of opening up and exposing all of the mangled parts beneath. The way I loved was too much, too intense, too goddamn consuming. Girls swore they wanted a guy who obsessed over them until they had one.

Then I was just too needy.

Too controlling.

Too suffocating.

Why was I like that? Why did my brain translate my lover’s friendships as threats? Why did it feel like when they weren’t physically there with me, their feelings vanished along with them? I’d give anything not to be like this.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Oliver lamented, crushing me in his toned arms. We barely made it to the couch before he started falling apart.

Despite his size, he was the softest man I knew, and it broke me knowing I’d dragged him through the dirt with me. And for what? I couldn’t even kill myself right. All of that drama, and the only thing I’d gotten was twenty-four hours straight of puking my brains out. The nurse was right.

I’ll choose something faster next time.

“I know,” I acknowledged guiltily, trying to escape his hold. I patted him on the back, signalling that he was crushing me with his affections, but he didn’t budge. I cursed my scrawny limbs, stuck there at his mercy.

“Don’t pull a stunt like that ever again,” he pleaded.

“I won’t,” I lied again. I was sure he knew it was complete bullshit, too. “Puking my guts out all night sucked pretty bad.”

“I thought I was gonna lose you.” He gave me one last squeeze before letting me go, fidgeting anxiously with the box chain around his neck instead.

I didn’t know what to say.

I’d gone and traumatized him. One minute, he was comforting me over my breakup in the living room, and the next, I was locking myself in the bathroom, swallowing a whole bottle of pills. I didn’t plan it. I never did. It was the flip of an invisible switch, and after that it didn’t matter that he’d been in the next room.

I could still feel the sensation of his trembling fingers forcing down my throat, trying to undo the damage while he waited for an ambulance I never wanted. Judging by the tears in his big brown eyes and steady dribble of snot that was pouring from his nose, he remembered the whole thing just as vividly.

I didn’t even have the guts to text him which hospital I was at once I was admitted, because the thought of him seeing me like that was too much.

Guilt twisted in my chest as I looked at him. It was strange seeing him this way, a big, athletic guy who I knew to be bubbly and fun-loving, reduced to waterworks. I couldn’t fathom someone caring this much about whether I stayed or went.

If he knew what was good for him, he’d leave me alone.

Every encounter for the next two weeks was going to look like this. News would inevitably spread fast among friends and family, and I’d have to go through this at least ten more times, reliving the moment in some way. It would be tears, apologies, and empty promises not to do it again.

“I don’t wanna talk about it anymore,” I blurted, smoothing my hands over my bouncing knees in a fruitless effort to still them. “It’s just making me even more depressed. I wanna forget about it.”

Even though I said that, the memory was ingrained in my brain. It wasn’t going anywhere, not with the knots of tension that riddled my body—my shoulders, my chest, deep in the pit of my stomach. There wasn’t a single part of me that wasn’t screaming in the aftermath of my self-inflicted punishment.