I have survived to this day
The place looks sad.
It's a wet day in Trenton--Mike is starting to wonder if there are really any other kinds of days here--and the rain beats against the windows and turns the light in the apartment cold and gray. It's somehow both smaller and larger than he had remembered it--small living room, kitchen with what he's heard irritatingly described as a "breakfast nook", single bedroom, bath. The floors are wood and creak pleasantly, but the walls are painted a flat, drab, slightly dingy-looking white, and all the fixtures look like they date from one of the worse years of the 70's.
On second look, it reminds him a little too much of the apartment his mother died in.
He's standing in the middle of the living room, leaning on a cane with his prosthesis still clunky and awkward under him. There's a threadbare couch against one wall, of which John and Neil have refused to reveal the source--though he's pretty sure it came off someone's curb. There's no TV yet, no anything else yet, except for an Ikea bed in the bedroom, which makes him feel almost like he made it to college after all.
Neil and John also won't reveal which of them put the bed together. He thinks that's probably for the best.
John's already said goodbye. It was awkward, but not as awkward as before, and he thinks maybe he can feel something warming between them. Things might never be the same, but they might also not be horrible. In time. But even so, he's feeling a certain degree of relief that he's gone. In another week, John will be headed back overseas.
And now the idea that he might not come back feels more real.
But there's nothing to be done about that.
Neil is hovering around somewhere. Mike sinks down onto the couch--ugly salmon pink, suspicious stains on one of the cushions, and he can see why it was (most likely) in the garbage, but it's comfortable enough and it doesn't really smell. He leans back and closes his eye. He's exhausted. His head is throbbing, the pain centered somewhere behind his dead eye. His skin feels dry and tight. He'd been glad of the ride up here, but he had still felt like he had been stared at the whole way, surrounded by eyes that he can't even see. There's too much that he can't see anymore. He's no longer painfully aware of the dead spot on the right side of his vision, but the world still seems only half there.
And now all he wants to do is go to bed... and maybe or maybe not get up tomorrow.
But there's Neil to contend with. There's the phone to hook up. There's more shit to buy, all the trappings of what other people call a life--a life that he's still only partially invested in. It all seems insurmountably difficult. All those things. All those people. Looking at him.
He used to know how to do things. And yes, he has Neil. But Neil, for all his patience and all his loyalty and all his...
love
Neil can't make him whole again.
"Shit," he breathes, throat tight, eye narrowly open and turned to stare out the window at the flat rain.
It's a wet day in Trenton--Mike is starting to wonder if there are really any other kinds of days here--and the rain beats against the windows and turns the light in the apartment cold and gray. It's somehow both smaller and larger than he had remembered it--small living room, kitchen with what he's heard irritatingly described as a "breakfast nook", single bedroom, bath. The floors are wood and creak pleasantly, but the walls are painted a flat, drab, slightly dingy-looking white, and all the fixtures look like they date from one of the worse years of the 70's.
On second look, it reminds him a little too much of the apartment his mother died in.
He's standing in the middle of the living room, leaning on a cane with his prosthesis still clunky and awkward under him. There's a threadbare couch against one wall, of which John and Neil have refused to reveal the source--though he's pretty sure it came off someone's curb. There's no TV yet, no anything else yet, except for an Ikea bed in the bedroom, which makes him feel almost like he made it to college after all.
Neil and John also won't reveal which of them put the bed together. He thinks that's probably for the best.
John's already said goodbye. It was awkward, but not as awkward as before, and he thinks maybe he can feel something warming between them. Things might never be the same, but they might also not be horrible. In time. But even so, he's feeling a certain degree of relief that he's gone. In another week, John will be headed back overseas.
And now the idea that he might not come back feels more real.
But there's nothing to be done about that.
Neil is hovering around somewhere. Mike sinks down onto the couch--ugly salmon pink, suspicious stains on one of the cushions, and he can see why it was (most likely) in the garbage, but it's comfortable enough and it doesn't really smell. He leans back and closes his eye. He's exhausted. His head is throbbing, the pain centered somewhere behind his dead eye. His skin feels dry and tight. He'd been glad of the ride up here, but he had still felt like he had been stared at the whole way, surrounded by eyes that he can't even see. There's too much that he can't see anymore. He's no longer painfully aware of the dead spot on the right side of his vision, but the world still seems only half there.
And now all he wants to do is go to bed... and maybe or maybe not get up tomorrow.
But there's Neil to contend with. There's the phone to hook up. There's more shit to buy, all the trappings of what other people call a life--a life that he's still only partially invested in. It all seems insurmountably difficult. All those things. All those people. Looking at him.
He used to know how to do things. And yes, he has Neil. But Neil, for all his patience and all his loyalty and all his...
love
Neil can't make him whole again.
"Shit," he breathes, throat tight, eye narrowly open and turned to stare out the window at the flat rain.