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Gabriel Goodman swept into David’s life the same as the winter storm. The whole season had bit fiercer than usual, but in February, in the blizzard of prepping for midterms, an actual blizzard tore its way across the skies. Snow piled in drifts outside the class buildings and swallowed the dorms, and the bare, dead trees dripped with frozen ice shards. Some classes were cancelled, but they couldn’t afford to move exams, and so students trudged through the dead sludge snow to meet their fates.
David didn’t care about any of it. Or he cared too much and there was no room for anything else. He was fighting back the cold with a vodka lemonade and it wasn’t working as well as it should have and he was caught up in consideration of the million things that he should have incorporated into his philosophy paper, but he’d been too preoccupied envisioning this, drinking his fucking brains out, instead of focusing on putting his words in cohesive order.
He was stood outside the pub, nursing his drink as he leaned against the brick wall behind. It was far too busy for a Tuesday night – that was midterms for you – but he’d far prefer to wait out here than shuffle back to his dorm to sit and simmer in his thoughts.
He finished his drink. Five shots in and he couldn’t feel a thing – no, could feel too much, still; couldn’t shake it out of himself. He needed pills, but he’d made the rash and regrettable decision not to bring them out tonight in some pitiful attempt to quit, and he knew that wasn’t a logical way to cut himself off because he was smart enough to comprehend all the horrible things he did to himself but apparently not smart enough to stop.
It was frigidly cold. Why were so many people out and about despite it? Was the end of the second term really that grand of an occasion? David scowled as the bodies moved around him, all engaged in their own conversations and their own flimsy excuses for lives, somehow oblivious to the fact that he was burning a hole through the very ground beneath him, a ticking time bomb, actively dying—
He needed a pill. He needed his brain to shut the fuck up for once and give him one lousy night without a fucking breakdown.
He was on the move before he’d quite settled with the decision to leave. His mind was unspooling rapidly now, an unceasing stream of reminders of things he hadn’t done and people he hadn’t been and things he was supposed to do but cared fuck all about, and he just needed it to stop. He needed everything to stop.
The campus unfolded before him, a net of potential and opportunity that he was seemingly desperate to squander. It wasn’t his choice. It was something rotten and festering that had curled up inside him and made his head its home, but it wasn’t a parasite. It was him. There was nobody before and nobody ahead. He was going to live in this agony until he died.
When he made it to his dorm, he was ready to tear his room apart for those meds. What an idiot he was, actually thinking it’d be so simple to quit. Why had he even wanted to quit? There was nothing to be gained from stopping and nothing to be gained from staying on them and nothing to be gained from anything and he couldn’t fucking think.
His room was a mess. His desk was strewn with papers and textbooks and half a dozen drained energy drinks and his floor was a hurricane of clothing and rubbish that he’d meant to pick up and he bypassed all of this to make a beeline to the plastic bag tucked in his desk drawer. His hands were trembling as he forced a pill down his throat, dry-swallowed. There weren’t many left, but – well, that wasn’t anything to consider, but – should he take them all, the effects would certainly be – he wasn’t stupid, even drunk. He knew what it would do.
He pocketed the bag and slammed the door behind him. The campus may have been buzzing with activity, but he still knew plenty of desolate spots. Thanks to the adoration from all his professors, he was given more leeway than the average student to wander about buildings and find himself quiet spaces. Not that he particularly liked the quiet, but he wasn’t in the state to be around anyone right now. He wasn’t breathing right and his thoughts were far too frequently visited by the fantasy of blowing his own brains out just to get it to stop.
Like the snow aboard the wind, he was a spectre drifting through the world. His boots dug into the icy paths as the buzz began to set in, and peace touched him once again.
It wasn’t a miracle cure as it had been the first few times. Now, it merely brought him to a bearable state. Still those bugs scuttled beneath his skin and the embers flashed within his skull.
He was in a rehearsal building, not completely sure how he’d ended up there. The soft melody of piano music floated through the air, and like a moth to a flame, he followed it. Music was one of the few fields he’d never invested himself in. There was little time for art when you were supposedly the genius of your generation.
In an empty hallway, blissfully disoriented, David leaned against a locked door and watched the ceiling spin. He sucked in a sharp breath of stale, dusty air and swallowed the hacking cough that rose, then sank to the floor with his head on his knees before he vomited his guts out. It wasn’t enough. His brain was fucking burning and it wasn’t turning off. His fingers fumbled to pull the bag out of his pocket, and he gazed at it like his salvation.
This had all devolved into a proper mess. Cambridge, who was he fucking kidding? He wasn’t the prodigy they all built him into; he was a disaster of a person who would simmer in defeat and despair until at last he worked the nerve up to end it. Now here he was, sat on the dusty tile floor of a building he had no memory of entering, staring at the potential to shut his body down and dangerously close to tears.
He pressed his fingers to his temple and felt the skin burn. He needed to invent a method to pass out without teleporting himself forward in time. He needed to sleep for months and feel that blissful peace, but even in his sleep he couldn’t get away from himself.
It wasn’t the sort of thing he really made plans about. He knew he thought about death far more than was healthy for a boy his age, but he wasn’t the type of person to consciously go through with it. Even thinking too hard about the logistics and the fallout and the after made his head hurt. Most likely, there would come a time, perhaps years in the future, when it could catch him unaware. All these debts he took from himself would come due and he would give up running and that dizzying drop wouldn’t seem so daunting after all, and – well, the frustrating part was that he didn’t actually want to die. He wanted to start his life over again; in a new body, a new family, a new mind, untethered from regret and expectation and this burning in his head.
God, he was going to hurl. The bitter taste of that vodka lemonade still lingered on his tongue and perhaps he’d actually had more than he remembered, and the alcohol mixing with the pills made him heavy, which meant he needed to move now if he wanted to avoid vomiting all over the linoleum.
A blink, and he was in the lavatory, hands gripping the basin of the sink. There was a shuffling in the stall that put his nerves on edge. No hiding.
Get it the fuck together.
He splashed water in his face and ran his fingers through his hair and still looked a proper mess. A wave of hot nausea rushed through him and that vodka lemonade came back up and down the drain. He cupped his hands and sipped tap water until he felt close to human. His hands were shaking and it was becoming blissfully difficult to stand, so he curled himself against the plumbing underneath and let his mind and body separate. He couldn’t feel his skin. Everything was soft and distant, as if underwater. That thought was in his mind again: I can’t imagine ever being sober. How did he ever bear it? How could he ever leave this state?
Maybe he needn’t take any more pills at all. Maybe he could just drift off like this, undignified and immaterial. Maybe he could finally rest.
A hand was shaking him. Hard. So hard his teeth rattled against each other.
“If you’re dead, my mom’s gonna kill me.”
It was such an odd statement that he couldn’t help but laugh. His mouth didn’t move. That was probably bad.
A slap against his cheek, then a hissed apology. He was fairly sure he’d flinched, though he had no control of it.
“Please wake up.”
David pried his eyes open. Just because he’d been asked so politely. His vision wasn’t quite right, but the face of his harasser swam in front of him, all-encompassing, and David thought to himself, he’s quite pretty. Then he turned his head and vomited all over the stranger’s shoes.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
“Sorry,” David mumbled.
“Not your fault, I guess.” The stranger shuffled back, out of spewing range. “You’re drunk.”
David hummed something that might have been confirmation. In his unbiased opinion, he was now painfully sober.
“Do I need to call campus security?”
“God no.”
“Oh good, you speak.”
David scowled. “’Course I speak, prick.”
“Well, a few minutes ago I thought you were a corpse, so you can imagine my confusion.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
To his surprise, the stranger laughed. “Not at all. I am very much relieved.”
“You said your mum would kill you?” He was still half sure he’d misheard it.
There was a pause, then a sigh. “Yeah. Um. Long story.” He stuck a hand out. “I’m Gabe.”
David didn’t take it. His hands were probably disgusting and this poor guy did not deserve whatever vile germs they held. “David.”
“Well, David, I’m glad you’re not a corpse.”
Now it was David’s turn to laugh. Oh, the humor of unintended irony. In the eyes of this stranger – Gabe, whatever – he was just another stressed student who couldn’t hold his alcohol. No supposed genius, no burning brain, no painful phone calls. No pills.
He slipped a hand into his pocket and felt the bag he’d placed there. Was it emptier than it had been before? Had he lost time?
Gabe had risen to his feet now and was wiping his face. Dimly, David registered that he looked rather out of it as well. He had half the mind to ask what was the matter, but he didn’t want to risk the question thrown back his way. Instead, he pushed himself up, leaning hard against the sink and swallowing the nausea. “You can come to mine,” he said, surprising both of them. “I mean, to clean your shoes. And I can lend you new trousers, too, since….”
“It’s all right,” said Gabe. His eyes were fixed on his own reflection. Maybe it was just the ghostly fluorescent lighting or the drugs or alcohol lingering in his brain, but David could have sworn he looked downright gaunt.
“You sure?” he asked.
Gabe nodded firmly, more to himself than in response. Then at last he looked back to David. “You should go. Security comes by here around two and unless you’re secretly a theatre major, you will not pass for sober.”
David forced an eye roll. “Theatre. Me. Imagine it.”
“I don’t know, you do have the face for it.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
Gabe only shrugged. “Like I said. Might want to go.”
“What about you?”
His eyes flitted away again. “They won’t mind me.”
How very mysterious. How intriguing. David would have loved to interrogate him further on the subject, but unfortunately he was quite right. The last thing David wanted right now was campus security harassing him about trespassing, though he was fairly certain there weren’t actually any rules barring him from wandering the halls of the music building. Though he couldn’t quite think straight right now. What a relief.
“Okay, yeah, you’re really out of it,” Gabe said, cutting through the haze. “Where do you live?”
His hand was on his elbow already, propping him up. David stumbled out of his touch. “Don’t—”
“You’re really—”
“What are you even doing here?”
Gabe took a step back, and David realized he’d verged on shouting. He shot him a glare and turned to storm out of the door. To Gabe’s credit, he did call after him, but he did not give chase.
The journey back to his dorm was some kind of odyssey. His knees became soaked with snow and bruised by ice. Salt crusted around his shoelaces, which had dragged the whole way back. His body ached and his brain was numb and he hated that he’d have to face the morning, but the second he collapsed in bed, he was out.
And then he was awake. And vomiting again. And out again. And spinning. And waking up two years and yet ten minutes later. Out again. Spinning. Sweating through his sheets.
Is it worth it? His father had asked that the first time he’d caught him drunk, and David had foolishly tried explaining all the benefits and had only succeeded in sounding like an alcoholic. Because I can finally breathe. Because it’s the only time life feels worth living. Because it makes me the closest I’ll ever be to human.
And what had dear old dad said to that? He had told David to stop being irresponsible. Hah.
David tried his best to forget that night. It was a rather embarrassing memory, though far from his greatest humiliation. On the bright side, it was unlikely he’d ever see that guy again, and even less likely they’d recognize each other’s faces. Midterms passed in a blur, the snow melted, and as the other melancholic drinkers took the sunlight as a remedy, David got worse.
The worst part of all of this was the self-awareness. There was no excuse, no pretense. Why are you drinking? Oh, it’s because I hate myself. If you’re so smart, why do you take so many pills? Oh, that’s easy. Because I want to kill myself.
Or, rather: I don’t want to kill myself, but I don’t have a choice in it. I’m putting it off as much as I can, but eventually, it’s going to catch up to me. It followed him everywhere. Haunted the good moments even more so than the bad. Whenever the slightest glimpse of hope for the future broke through the fog within his mind, that voice was waiting, mocking him. It’s too bad I’m going to kill myself.
The next time David met Gabe, it was at the library, and, just as he predicted, he did not recognize him. In fact, he only approached him because he was snoring loudly in what was supposed to be a quiet room. He nudged his shoulder with a pen and grimaced at the drool in the corner of his mouth. If he needed a nap so bad, there were places for that downstairs. Not up on the quietest floor where David was trying to write a godforsaken essay.
He woke with a start, eyes wide as he looked around in a panic. “What – where—”
“In the library,” David provided flatly. “You fell asleep.”
His gaze settled at last on David and narrowed. “Wait. David, right?”
“And how do you know that?”
“A couple weeks ago,” Gabe explained. “In the music building. In the bathroom.”
It was a weight slamming into David’s skull. “Oh. That.” Eloquently put.
Gabe laughed, and the sound was downright intoxicating. “Yeah, you’re definitely not an actor.”
“Why would I be an actor?”
“Nothing. Inside joke.” He paused as though there was something more to say, but evidently decided against it, turning back to the maths on his laptop screen. David took this as the cue to leave. There was no point in making anything of it. The last thing he wanted was to drag an innocent bystander into his pit of misery.
And then that voice was in his head again, begging him to grasp for help, as if some random classmate could be his miracle cure. He had done his part already. Tried to explain the problems to his parents; failed spectacularly. Filled out a form for the campus mental health service and subsequently ignored every follow-up email. If they really wanted to help him, they would have to hunt him down themselves. He just. He didn’t know what he needed. He wanted someone to grip him by the shoulders and shake a confession out of him. He wanted to become someone else.
They started crossing paths more often. Or, rather, now that David was aware of him, he was impossible to miss. Sitting quiet in the back of his linear algebra lecture. Trekking through the snow between classes. Headphones on in the corner of the dining hall. And, presently, engaged in a loud phone call outside the house David had just stumbled out of.
It wasn’t his house, of course, but one of his frequent haunts. Music pumped from the basement like the heartbeat of the Earth, and red LED light bled from the open door. David sucked in revitalizing breaths, head spinning, and took a crouch at the base of the porch. It was far from deserted out there, though most kept close to the heat of the house, wreathed in cigarette smoke. And there, at the edge of the pavement, arms crossed and brow furrowed, was Gabe.
David floated at the brink of sobriety, gaze fixed on him. He looked so out of place here, bundled in multiple layers of coats, nose pink and eyes shimmering with tears. When he at last hung up his call with a huff, he cast a wayward glance at the house behind him, then found David.
For a long moment, there was silence. David wished for a smoke.
“You know, we really have to stop meeting like this,” Gabe said.
“Like what?”
“You drunk.”
“Or you asleep,” David pointed out.
Gabe shrugged noncommittedly and wrapped his arms tighter around himself. David patted the step of the porch beside him and Gabe took a seat, looking out to the road.
“What are you doing here?” David asked.
To his dismay, Gabe’s face fell. “I… I don’t know,” he mumbled. “It’s stupid. I just. I wanted to go to a party like a normal college kid, and now it’s all a mess.”
“How’s it a mess? You haven’t even been in, have you?”
“No.” He twisted his fingers anxiously. “It’s nothing.”
“Okay, then come in.”
There was a conflicted pause. Then Gabe threw his hands up in defeat. “Yeah. Okay. Whatever. Lead the way.”
It was nice, David decided, hanging out with Gabe in this tipsy state. Just sharp enough to keep himself alert. Just numb enough to live. He had – he made the decision a couple weeks ago that he was going to try and learn moderation. There was an optimal state in which the worst parts of existence were subdued enough to get by but he wasn’t constantly hurling or passing out, and he was determined to find it.
Twenty minutes later, he was lost in the throng of the basement crowd, packed tightly with sweaty dancing bodies, something like six more drinks deep, leaning hard against the wall to keep the dizziness at bay.
Gabe’s hand tugged at his sleeve. It was frankly miraculous they hadn’t managed to lose each other in the crowd; David had made no effort to keep track of him.
“David, I think you should slow down.” He was practically shouting to be heard, voice cracking and eyes wide. He didn’t belong here, and they both knew it.
David laughed into his drink. “This is slow.”
“It’s not.”
“Your first party.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Ugh, will you shut it?” David snapped. Gabe took a step back and he regained control. “I don’t – I’m sorry, I just—”
“You just need some air,” Gabe finished. He spoke with such certainty that David couldn’t bring himself to argue.
And then he was outside. And his drink was gone. And Gabe’s hand was on his back and he wanted him gone and he wanted all of it gone and he wanted to be gone.
“Okay, that’s no good,” Gabe muttered.
He was thinking out loud, then. His head was spinning. It was hard to think at all. Sure, he was nauseous and embarrassing and a total fucking wreck, but Jesus fucking Christ it was finally quiet.
He must have said as much, because Gabe’s expression faltered. “What do you mean? How could you possibly like feeling like this?”
David didn’t answer. What could he say? Even this nausea that roiled in his gut was preferably to his default state of being? Even now, in this peace, he still thought of death? Instead, he pressed his fingers to his forehead and willed his body to fall back in tune.
Beside him on the step of the porch, bathed in orange light, Gabe was talking, a continuous rambling drone. David only caught pieces of it. The phone call had been with his mother. He was still undecided on his major, but he was leaning toward physics. Not only had he never been to a house party before, he had never had even a sip of alcohol before tonight. Now he’d had a drink and a half but he hated the taste so he wasn’t keen on more. He was from America and it had been a real task to convince his family that he would be all right on his own at Cambridge. He’d never had a real friend before besides his sister, and he would like to be David’s friend, if that was acceptable.
Finally, Gabe stuttered to a stop and turned to David. The porchlight shone upon his face, illuminating the texture of his acne, the curve of his nose, the divots of his dimples. “How are you doing?” he asked softly.
“I’m thinking that I want to kiss you,” David answered honestly.
Gabe’s face stilled, but the light still moved within his eyes. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Sorry.” God, now he’d ruined it. He hadn’t even screened if this guy was homophobic or not, much less queer. He wasn’t – he had an ambiguous look to him, so David had assumed – hoped, really, spurred by the confidence of a few drinks, sick of emptiness. “Sorry,” he said again.
“It’s not – not that I wouldn’t want to,” Gabe said hurriedly. “I mean, theoretically.”
“Sober.”
“Sure.”
“Sorry.”
“You say that a lot, you know.”
“Got a lot to apologize for. Whatever. Fuck off.”
“That’s more the spirit.”
“Who the fuck even are you?”
Gabe shrugged. “Like I said. I don’t really know anyone else here.”
“And who’s fault is that?”
“If you’re going to be an asshole, you need to commit.”
David let out a cracking laugh and reached out for a drink that wasn’t there. His hand splayed flat on the concrete step as the weight of the world settled back upon him. Why hadn’t he brought pills? Was he out? He couldn’t remember.
“Hey.” Gabe nudged him gently. “You tired? You can crash at mine. It’s like, a block away.”
David mumbled something that wasn’t quite a dismissal but was definitely rude. He wanted to go in for another drink, but he doubted Gabe would take too kindly to that. Not that he cared at all what Gabe thought. Whatever.
“Half an hour,” David said at last. With great effort, he pulled himself to his feet again. Gabe blinked up at him. “You don’t have to come,” he added.
“No, I will.”
“Why?”
Another of those classic Gabe shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m thinking about that theoretical.”
David’s chest shook with a sudden burst of giggles, and he stumbled after Gabe back into the house. As his eyes bore into the back of Gabe’s head, that refrain was in his ears again. It’s too bad I’m going to kill myself.
Half an hour passed far too quickly, and then Gabe was tugging at David’s sleeve, guiding him out of the house.
In the doorway, David tore himself from Gabe’s hold. “What’s your problem?” he snapped. “Can’t you have a little fun?”
“This isn’t fun to me.” He spoke so softly that David was surprised he could still hear him. “I don’t think it’s fun for you either.”
“You don’t know anything about me!”
Gabe made a grab for his sleeve again, but David twisted out of the way. “Please,” Gabe begged. “Please don’t do this. Let’s just go.”
“Fuck you.”
“David—”
“I don’t fucking know you!”
He caught his sleeve this time. “David, please. You’re drunk and you’re sick and you’re not—”
David could feel the eyes of the crowd around him drawn to him, and he imagined what this scene must look like from their perspective. “Fuck you,” he spit again, and he was horrified to find that there were thick tears in his eyes. From behind him, a hand landed on his shoulder.
Gabe released his sleeve and took a step backward. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. I tried.”
And then he was gone, and David fell deep into that pit inside himself. He tore his gut to shreds.
He wasn’t sure how he got home. Someone must have taken him, because there was no way he could have made it on his own. As the night dragged on, he woke over and over – at four, at four thirty, at five, at five again though it felt as though hours had passed, at six, at five, at seven thirty – and partway through, he moved to sleep curled on the floor beside the bin because his stomach wouldn’t stop heaving.
He couldn’t do this anymore. It was more urgent now; death was no longer a promise on the horizon but a beast chasing after him, breathing down his neck.
At night, he took walks. Down the river’s edge, through the nettle-bridled path, where the tawny owls cooed and murmured with bright eyes from trees above. Half-drunk, drifting, he found his home among the animals that crept out in the dark. There was a churchyard of old graves he snuck into. Laid upon the damp grass with his head spinning somewhere in the clouds above and let the corpses in the ground beneath him pull him down.
He’d planned to graduate, at first. Tie up any loose ends at Cambridge and disappear into the earth.
But he’d stopped doing his classwork. Didn’t see the point in it. All of it was dreadfully dull and frustratingly irrelevant. On the weekends, he partied. On the weekdays, he drank alone.
He’d bought himself a length of rope. It felt ridiculous, standing in that store to purchase it, pretending as if he was stringing up some lawn ornament. The cashier’s eyes had burned straight through him, the mess he was, painfully high in the early afternoon.
For days, it haunted the back of his closet. It all felt frighteningly real now. The waiting coils screamed like a telltale heart beneath his floor, and he waited for the moment someone burst in through the locked door and demanded he alter his course.
Nobody came. Stupidly, he even tried going to a class, the one that he used to see Gabe on the way to, but there was no one to be found. He’d successfully pushed away the one slightly good thing in his life. They’d never even exchanged numbers. They weren’t friends. Gabe had no reason to care, and David had made damn good sure he wouldn’t want to.
He sat for hours at a time with his phone clutched in a trembling hand, debating the merits of placing a call. To his mum. To the counselor’s office. Anyone.
His pills ran out. He’d started taking them more often and he was dead out of cash. The end of term drew closer like a terminal prognosis. For the first few weeks of his absence, his email had been flooded with concern and questions from professors. Their beloved star student had abruptly disappeared. With no word back, they’d all long since given up.
The night before he was supposed to graduate, he was in the woods again. The bag slung over his shoulder was weighed down by the coiled rope. Please don’t. There was a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Gabe. You don’t want this.
He didn’t. He feared death just as much as any normal person, but it called for him regardless. He was smart enough to know that there was nothing that came after, that platitudes about an afterlife were nothing more than the inevitable result of a brain incapable of conceiving its own destruction, but there came a point when even oblivion was preferable to this suffering.
After all this work, he wasn’t even going to graduate.
That was the final push he needed, maybe. The last tip in a line of dominos. He hated himself so he drank his brain away so he lashed out and abandoned Gabe in the moment when just maybe there was something more awaiting him than work and death, and so he isolated, and so he stopped his work, and so there was no point to him at all.
On the riverbank, in that spot he always sat beneath the draping willow tree, there was a silhouette.
David took a step backward, pissed that he’d have to go and choose another spot because he couldn’t even fucking kill yourself in peace in this city, but before he could go, the figure turned, and David froze.
“Gabe?” His voice came out small and fragile, and he hated it. He cleared his throat. “What are you doing here?”
Gabe shrugged. “Same as you, probably.”
“I really hope not.” He shouldn’t have said that. Why would he say that? Now Gabe’s eyes were piercing through him and he was dreadfully sober right now and he wanted to die. He wanted to die. He wanted—
“Sit with me,” Gabe said. He patted the ground beside him.
It was the dead of night. What was Gabe doing here? Against his better judgement, David complied. The ends of his scarf dragged in the dirt, and he was reminded of the heft of his bag. He kept it slung over his shoulder.
“I’ve missed you,” David said. “I mean. I missed hanging out. If you wanted—”
“I thought you didn’t want to see me.”
“What made you think that?”
Gabe didn’t answer. David turned and granted himself a brief glimpse of his soft profile before turning back to the glistening black water. His bag was a dead weight on his back.
“I’m sorry,” David whispered.
“For what?”
God, he was too forgiving. “For the party,” he explained. “I was an asshole.”
“Well, you were very drunk.”
“I don’t remember everything I said.”
“Probably better that way.”
“I’m sorry I dragged you in there.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You seemed like you did.”
Gabe hummed thoughtfully. “I didn’t mind me being there, I mean,” he said carefully. “I hated seeing you like that.”
“You haven’t seen me a whole lot of other ways,” David pointed out.
Gabe sighed and pulled his legs up to his chest to rest his chin on his knees. In the darkness, his pale skin looked downright ghostly. And still beautiful.
“I remember,” David said quietly. “When I first met you. I thought you were beautiful.”
He turned to gauge Gabe’s reaction and found only a small smile. It might have just been the shadows of the night, but it looked drenched in melancholy.
“I know,” Gabe said.
“God, I didn’t tell you, did I?”
His lips twitched further upward, just for a moment. “No,” he said. “You didn’t have to.”
Suddenly, David became very aware of just how closely they were sitting, and how both of their heads had leaned in closer as they spoke. And the silent moon above the dark water of the river and the black shapes of the trees and the cooing of the owls and the rustle of the leaves within the warm spring wind, and then his eyes were falling closed and Gabe was kissing him.
It was gentle in a way none of his previous kisses had been. There was no thrum of music or sweat of hot basements or haze of smoke or buzz of drugs. He was, for the first time in weeks, completely sober. He could taste the sugar on Gabe’s lips and a hint of coffee on his tongue and he couldn’t help but grin, and their teeth clacked together, and his fingers found hold in the hair that grew long at the nape of Gabe’s neck, and just for a moment, there was nothing in his mind.
Then he leaned forward, and the weight in his bag shifted, and he drew back suddenly as a stone sank in his gut.
“What’s wrong?” Gabe asked.
“Nothing,” David assured him. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect. It’s just – I don’t – I was – I don’t want to ruin this, but I was – I was going to—”
“It’s okay,” Gabe said. “I know.”
“You can’t possibly know.”
“Then tell me.”
“I was going to kill myself.”
Gabe’s eyes lowered, not in surprise but in disappointment. He hadn’t expected a different answer, but he’d still managed to hope.
“I’m sorry,” David gasped. God, and now he was crying. What a great first kiss.
Gabe’s hand cupped his face, impossibly delicate. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I can’t – you don’t want this.”
“I think you know that’s not true.”
“Gabe, I’m failing all my classes. I drink all the time and if I’m not drunk I’m high. Or I’m drunk and I’m high and I’m vomiting on your shoes and I’m being a proper dick and you don’t deserve that. And so you should probably just go home and I should get it over with and you have to know there’s nothing you can do. I don’t want this to rest on you.”
“I know it doesn’t,” Gabe said simply. He took David’s hand. “It’s your decision. Stay or go.”
“But—”
“If I’m gone, what do you pick?”
David’s mouth was dry. An hour ago, he was so sure of his decision, but now his mind was screaming with doubt again. This life was nothing but misery, but it was all that he had. He was too smart to think this was a wise decision. It was a desperate one and probably a selfish one, but it was not a good one.
“David, you need help.”
Those words twisted cold around his heart. It wasn’t news to him. He just needed someone else to say it to him. And in a kind way – no disappointment, no frustration, no ulterior motives. Only compassion.
He rubbed his hand at the tears that soaked his face, but that did little. If he was a mess before, he was a real disaster now. He shrugged the bag off of his shoulder and the weight was gone. Gabe pulled him closer and he collapsed into the other’s arms, head on his shoulder, fingers clutched in the soft fabric of his jumper.
When he finally untangled himself, it was hard to keep his eyes open. Gabe took his bag and let him lean against his shoulder as they stood. “Let’s get you home,” he murmured.
“Stay with me,” David breathed.
There was a moment’s hesitation on Gabe’s part. Then he wrapped an arm around David and squeezed him reassuringly. “I’ll walk you back,” he promised, “but I can’t stay over.”
“Please.” He sounded pitiful and he knew it, but he’d long since surpassed the point of shame.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe said, and he really did sound remorseful.
“Why not?” David asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Gabe answered. “Just make sure you sleep. And call your mum.”
“I never told you anything about my mum.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He leaned heavily on Gabe as they trudged across campus. Over and over, he wished for a drink, then hated himself for it. The only reason he was sober now was because he wanted to be completely sure of his decision, and even then he’d only confused himself. He wanted to live but he wanted to die but most of all, he wanted a life that was not constrained to the painful confines of his brain.
At the door to his dorm, he clung to Gabe, suddenly terrified that this was the last time they would meet.
“It’s not,” Gabe assured him. “We’ll meet again. I promise.”
He said it with such surety that foolishly, David believed him.
In the afternoon, when he woke, David was half sure that whole night had been a dream. But his bag was lying empty by his door and his scarf was draped beside it, ends still stained with dirt. He sat up and checked his phone. Twelve missed calls from his mum. Three from his dad. They’d come for his graduation.
He wished, once again, that he’d asked for Gabe’s number, but something told him that would be a futile effort. Instead, he rubbed the sleep and the dried tears from his eyes and clicked his mother’s contact.
“David?” Her voice came through tinny and thoroughly peeved. “Where have you been? I’m worried sick about you. The dean says you’re not even graduating, and I said that’s—”
“Mum.” The lump in his throat splintered his voice. “Mum, I can’t – I’m not…..” He squeezed his eyes shut, braced himself. “I think I’m ill.”
“You think you’re ill?”
“I know I’m ill.”
Cold tile, hard and unforgiving. The bite of the frigid winter air. The heat of a crowd. A burning in his throat. In rebellion against the pressure of the dorm room, he threw open the window and breathed in the air of spring.
“Where are you right now? Your father and I will meet you, and we’ll talk in person.”
David slumped against his wall. He wanted nothing less in this world than to attend that conversation. He wanted a pill but he’d drained his supply. He wanted Gabe to fall back into his life.
“I’m at my dorm,” he forced out. “Don’t hang up, mum. Please. I don’t want to be alone.”