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Bright morning sun is seeping into your room. It filters through your drawn blue-green curtains, bathing your surroundings in a weak aquamarine hue. It’s as if your house has been submerged in the sea while you weren’t looking. It wouldn’t even be the first time.
It’s silent. Empty aside from you still sat at the table where an unfinished game of Pokémon Monopoly is spread out in front of you. In this serene backdrop you’re as still as a statue, feeling like you’ve gone from breakneck forward momentum to a dead stop. Like you’ve just been in a car crash and all your internal organs are sloshing around inside of you at the sudden stop. Your ears are ringing. You’d been holding your breath and at this realization you suck in a gulp of air and cough quietly.
Tord is gone. That really goes without saying. Your mind hadn’t yet finished processing his words before reality itself started to tear away beside him to reveal swirls of whites and greys. He’d said some half-hearted goodbye and stepped into that strange turning abyss and you were alone.
Three months and then your Tord is gone too. And what a disorienting thought that is. Tord is a constant. Like the moon high in the night sky there’s Tord: telling terrible jokes, ripping off the dry skin on his bottom lip absentmindedly when he’s concentrating hard on something, enthusiastically informing you about the hidden deep meaning in ME!ME!ME! By Teddyloid and he’s just so damn invested and his grin is so wide that you find it in you to nod along even as you tune his words out. In your head you see him on the couch with you, laughing at the actor in some B horror movie as she gets decapitated, his face pale and flickering in the television’s light. You feel him pressed against you, pulling the blanket tighter around both your shoulders and snaking a cold hand around your arm. Telling you how warm you are.
And you can see him scowling, his fists balled up so hard his knuckles are white. You feel the rasp in your throat from trying to get him to hear you over whatever the hell is going on in his own head. His lip pulled up like a snarling dog. The endless expanse of emptiness that stretches open between the two of you sometimes, even when he’s close enough to touch. Reaching across the emptiness and trying to yank him back to you but only sometimes succeeding. Laughing together but the jokes cut a little deeper, have a sharper bite. It’s all in good fun. The push and pull that you can rely on, you didn’t even know it had an expiration date.
Would you have changed anything if you’d known?
The silence is broken by a shuffling from the hall and Tord stumbles into your open doorway. He’s frowning. He props one hand against the doorframe and squints into your room.
“What are you doing?” he asks, voice scratchy like he’d just woken up. You suppose he had.
You nod down at the monopoly board in front of you then, after a beat, supplement that with, “Playing monopoly.”
“By yourself?” he asks incredulously.
“Yeah. I almost lost.”
He opens his mouth, closes it, shakes his head as if to shake his thoughts into place, then drops the issue like a bag of potatoes.
“Mmkay,” he mumbles.
His eyes are bloodshot, you notice. His fringe has fallen into his face. There are a thousand thoughts swarming around your head like irate wasps and you want to turn them into words but you’ve seemingly lost the ability. They bubble up your throat, get trapped behind your teeth, and fizzle away to nothing. Instead, you stand up and start putting away the Monopoly board, purposefully gathering the brightly colored faux money into little piles. You need to say something, you only have three months. Panic is welling up inside your chest but you’re folding the board and sliding it into it’s box. You expect Tord to have left by now but when you look up he’s still hovering by the door, leaning against the frame and watching you passively.
If he did turn and walk away, would you stumble after him like a lost puppy and would that whole scene be the perfect metaphor for your whole relationship? The thought makes your hands tighten around the cardboard box and it bends slightly underneath your fingers, making a soft popping crack.
You're almost startled by his voice when he says, "I'm going to put on a pot of coffee, you want some?"
"Five sugars and cream?"
"Oh you can absolutely make it yourself, I'm not your maid."
"Well, there was that one time," you offer, helpfully. He smiles a sliver of a smile that turns into a yawn and then you are both making your way down the hallway to the kitchen.
-
Tord drinks his coffee black. To him, coffee is a means to an end. Input of beans and output of energy, like a machine. In a lot of ways like that, Tord is simple and predictable. You'd watched him once, after a few weeks where he'd been scarce, shove a hand into the bag of instant coffee and deliver the mound of coffee dirt to his mouth, chew, and swallow. That was the natural progression, really. You wonder how long it might be before he stops fucking around and just injects it directly into his veins.
You didn't miss the way he wrinkled his nose just a bit with every bitter sip he took, though. No doubt, there was also probably some performative machismo about it all. Manly men drink black coffee, and all that.
You preferred the fully hedonistic lifestyle of allowing yourself to drink what you wanted in your own home.
He's across the kitchen table from you, clutching his steaming cup like a lifeline. Matt had wandered downstairs and is now lounging over you like you're furniture. His arms are wrapped loosely around your neck as he reads the newspaper over your shoulder, complaining loudly if you turn the page before he's done or if you don't turn it fast enough. Tom would be dead to the world until three pm at the earliest when he would begrudgingly reanimate from his hangover-induced death to chug coffee straight from the pot and pop a few painkillers. It'll most likely be cold by the time he's up but you'd put on another pot for him when he does anyway. It occurs to you that his drinking couldn't exactly be considered "healthy" but you figure that if you held an intervention for all of the ways each of your friends waged war on their own bodies, the lot of you would probably be there for weeks on end. And that's only if they don't immediately tell you to fuck off at the mere mention.
Matt reaches over you and takes a long sip from your cup as you groan loudly in his ear to signal your displeasure.
"You gonna eat anything?" He asks Tord. Tord's hunched forward, elbows on table, hands wrapped around coffee cup, eyes closed, and face practically in the cup. He doesn't move but to take slow, deep, breaths.
"Tord."
He opens one eye. The way Ringo does when she's trying to sleep but everyone is being particularly annoying.
"Eat? You gonna?"
He offers a dismissive grunt, too busy praying to the coffee gods to even look up.
"He subsists off dick," you add and Matt gets up from lounging over you in disgust. He takes your cup with him. Dammit. Your coffee having been repossessed, you get up from the table to pour yourself a new cup. Soon Tord is getting a call, his expression turning serious, and he's rushing out of the kitchen. Hands on his hips, Matt watches him go.
"What is his problem?"
He's leaving us. He's leaving me.
"Who do you think keeps calling him? And why do you think he never lets anyone listen in? My money is on sugar daddy. Is one or has one, I'm not sure."
He's leaving.
You are pouring coffee into cup, then creamer into cup, then sugar into cup. One spoon. Two spoons. Three spoons. This is very important and you must focus.
"Earth to Edd!"
Stir stir stir. Crushing sugar granules at the bottom under the tip of the spoon. This requires your absolute concentration.
Matt deepens his voice a little in what must be an imitation of your own voice, "Wow, Matt you're so funny and also handsome, I'm so glad I'm your friend and get the honor of talking to you instead of ignoring you like a huge dipshit!"
He picks up the newspaper that you had abandoned, rolls it up and tosses it at your head. You flinch as it makes harmless contact with the back of your head. The cup in your hands is warm, like a hug.
"Sorry, Matt."
He throws his hands up in exasperation,"Yeah, well, find me when you're ready to tell me what all this is about."
You can't though. What could Matt do?
You listen to him stomp away. You don't hurl the cup in your hands against the wall. You don't. You don't because then you would have to clean up the aftermath and that would be more embarrassing and pathetic than you can possibly bare.