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He’s been an adult doing adult things for almost a decade now, but Adam still finds himself begrudging the menial tasks that come along with it. He thinks that if he had to create a comprehensive ranking of those sorts of things, he’d put changing all of his things over to a new wallet somewhere near rock bottom on the list.
The only reason he’s doing it in the first place is because this wallet has disintegrated into something that doesn’t quite resemble a wallet anymore. The chain broke a month ago, and the new hole that he’d punched for it using one of his friends’ stud setters had ripped, too. There’s a hole in the billfold that means that he almost loses his cash when he has cash to carry, and it’s a fifty-fifty chance his ID lands on the ground any time he pulls the useless chunk of leather out of his pocket. It’s gotten more inconvenient than he can really excuse, so he’d snagged the cheapest bifold he could find at the chain department store.
All of the contents of his old wallet are scattered across the rough surface of the table in the kitchen of his apartment. Random coins, half-crumpled bills, his ID (that’s expiring in two weeks, but going to the DMV for a renewal feels sort of like torture, and that means something, coming from him), a few ticket stubs from movies that he’s caught with friends that haven’t made it into one of his scrapbooks quite yet.
He slides the hang card along the imitation leather of his new wallet, tossing it in the vague direction of his overflowing trash can and most definitely missing. He’ll pick it up later. (He won’t.) He’s been meaning to clean up around here anyway. (He’s become blind to the mess.)
Adam carefully tucks his cash, his mementos, and his ID card into the appropriate places in his new wallet, and then folds it shut. Unfolding his left leg from where his knee is tucked against his chest, he slides the wallet into the front pocket of his jeans, testing out the shape of it there. It’s rigid, nowhere near as worn-to-the-shape-of-his-body as the last one was, but that would come with time. This would definitely do.
The wallet is placed back on the table, and Adam traces a particularly deep gouge in the wood with one finger, picking up the lit cigarette he’d left smoking in the ashtray. His eyes land on his old wallet and linger there, and the longer he looks without moving, the more his organs squirm and shuffle themselves around in his chest cavity.
Hesitation only makes it worse. The best course of action is to rip off the band-aid, right? The layers of skin that come off with it will grow back.
Eventually.
He picks up his old wallet and slides two fingers into the slot behind the ID window, and when he withdraws them, a small stack of photos comes out with them. He tosses the wallet aside, taking the cigarette from between his lips and exhaling smoke through his nose, flicking his ash in the vague direction of the ashtray.
One-by-one, he looks at the photos, sliding them into their new place, behind his new ID window. One of him with his bandmates, sweaty and drunk after a show. One of his favorite stray, from the alley behind his old apartment building. One of his mother, framed in sunlight coming in from the window over the sink, in the kitchen of his childhood home.
He sets down his cigarette as he turns over the last photo, holding it between the thumbs and index fingers of both hands.
It’s rare that he looks so happy in a photo, and even rarer that he keeps a photo of himself that he can actually say that he likes, but this is one that ticks both boxes, and the thought leaves him feeling hollow and cold.
Lawrence beams up at him from the glossy photo paper, smiling so wide that his blue, blue eyes are crinkled at the corners. Adam can see the fine lines of his crow’s feet, even from an arm’s length away from the picture. He can see his own smile, too, half-obscured by Lawrence’s shoulder where he’s tucked his face in against his wool sweater at his shoulder. He remembers the moment with crystalline clarity, remembers how Lawrence had cracked the stupidest joke seconds before he’d pressed the shutter on the cheap disposable Adam had brought to the New Year’s party.
He remembers the way Lawrence had been practically glued to his side all night, until they were both tipsy on champagne and propping each other up.
He remembers the kiss at midnight, and three-word declarations at midnight-oh-one.
It’s hard to forget the five-word sentence that had brought it all crashing down around them.
(”I’ve been lying to you.”
"What do you mean, lying?”)
He can’t ignore the silent phone calls from blocked numbers, the notes slipped under his door, the feeling of eyes on the back of his neck everywhere he goes.
(”Adam, I’d really like to talk about this,” says the eerie-calm voice in the messages he leaves. “I wish you’d let me explain.”)
Adam reaches for the lighter tucked into the plastic of his cigarette pack, yanking it out hastily. His brow furrows, and his vision blurs, and he grits his teeth in an ugly snarl before his bottom lip has the chance to wobble.
The flame flickers orange, and he holds the photograph over it, and he’s panting like a cornered animal, lurching with each breath like his whole body is working to get the oxygen in-out-in. The heat warps the paper, and Adam watches it bubble for a moment before his senses come back to him.
He tosses the lighter away, and it skitters across the table to clatter onto the dingy laminate. He feels lightheaded as he draws the photo close again, and when he blinks at it, tears track hot and angry down his cheeks. Lawrence’s smile has been transformed by the flame into something closer to a grimace, and Adam’s stomach feels as though it’s made of lead.
The photo is tucked behind the ID window with the rest of them, at the very bottom of the stack.
He prefers the pain of a slow-peel, when it comes to band-aids.