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There’s something up with Jay.
There has been for a while, if Matt’s being honest with himself. He’s not entirely sure when it started, because he seemed more… well, Matt doesn’t want to say normal, because what the fuck is normal, but he used to be… less spacey, at one point. His mother had raised him to be a coddled and anxious boy, so that’s nothing new, but Matt’s slowly come to realize that he’ll deliver an entire monologue–a really good fucking monologue, by the way–only to discover that Jay hasn’t absorbed a word. When Matt gets his attention to point it out, Jay will startle, look up at Matt with these sad, watery eyes, blink a couple of times, and apologize.
Matt does believe Jay’s not doing it on purpose. He’s not the malicious type, and he’s not afraid to tell Matt if he’s going in a weird direction. Not that Matt tends to take the feedback, but Jay will give it. It’s just that every once in a while he zones out so intensely.
He’s also started disappearing more often. Although, maybe that’s a symptom of their living together for the past two months; Matt is able to track Jay a lot more closely. He’ll get this weird look in his eyes and disappear upstairs for a bit. He’s quiet when he comes back, his eyes darting around like he’s anticipating something. Yesterday, he even did it while they were watching TV together. Just, up and disappeared for over half an hour.
Matt would suspect that Jay’s just taking care of himself, but he’ll leave looking almost tortured, and come back looking exactly the same.
Maybe he’s into some weird, existentialist porn that makes him question the point of being alive? Matt needs to get him onto just searching for big tits and hot, older women like a normal person.
Matt sits on the couch and watches Jay now. He’s standing in the kitchen, staring into the sink. One hand scratches idly at the back of the other. He looks like he’s waiting for something, but Matt can’t fathom what.
“Birdy?” Matt calls out. Jay snaps his head to the left, his eyes blown wide.
“Matt,” Jay replies softly. “Yeah?”
“You alright over there?” Matt asks. “You’re kinda staring at the sink really hard. You planning to do the dishes?” Matt secretly hopes yes, because he did them the last time, and put them away. Between the two of them, he kind of expected Jay to be the girl in the relationship, but he seems a bit more lax about having clean plates.
“Huh?” Jay asks. “Uh… no.” He takes an uneasy step back from the sink. “I–I don’t think it’s… I think I need to go.”
With that, Jay runs upstairs, and Matt has to fight the urge to scream after him to do the damn dishes! What the fuck is his problem? Is he just strangely horny?
Matt carefully slides off the couch. He knew that they wouldn’t be playing the Rivoli right from the get-go. They needed to get settled into the place and to living together and run a couple of practices before they could go knocking at a place like the Rivoli asking to play. But, he’d assumed it wouldn’t take too long. It’s already been two months and they haven’t made a single move. How can Matt expect that the pace will pick up if Jay keeps running off?
He creeps up the stairs, careful not to make a sound. He’s still learning which stairs creak and how, but he manages to arrive at the top without too much fuss.
Jay’s door is open just a crack, and he leans in closely to listen. He realizes quickly that he might be about to hear something he can’t unhear, but he shrugs it off. They’re best friends, they live together now–he was going to hear it eventually.
At first, Matt does think he hears a moan, and he’s ready to back away when he realizes how pained Jay sounds. Again, maybe he’s into some freak shit, but…
“God,” Jay whispers, a harsh, angry sound. “Pull it together.”
Okay, that could kind of go either way.
Matt keeps listening, but nothing more comes from the bedroom. All things considered, he’d probably be able to hear a bit… more if Jay was pleasuring himself. Is he just… stressed about something? Could explain how distractible he’s been.
Oh, God. Is he stressed about their living situation? Is Jay having regrets? Matt knows that Jay had some sort of blowout with his mom before he moved out, that it had something to do with Matt himself. Jay hadn’t given him the details. He said her opinion didn’t matter. They were going to start a band, and that was all Jay cared about.
What if that’s not true anymore?
Jay’s bed creaks, and Matt barely has enough time to scramble to his feet and launch himself into his own bedroom before Jay’s door is opening. He tries to look nonchalant, quickly picking up the closest book on his nightstand. As Jay comes to stand in the doorway and Matt realizes the book is definitely upside down, he’s sure he’s been caught.
“Hey, Matt… can we do something together?” Jay asks. “Maybe watch a movie or something? Maybe a fun one…?”
“Oh.” Matt’s eyebrows lift in shock. He would love nothing more, but…
“And maybe we can have a sleepover tonight, too,” Jay continues. “I, um… I know we live together now, but wouldn’t it be fun to spread out in the living room like we used to?” Jay wipes his hand under his nose, and Matt realizes that Jay’s picked off the scab that was forming there, blood blooming along the raw skin.
Jay never told him what had happened to his hand. He just shrugged and said, “I dunno,” in that sleepy tone he had. Matt wonders again what happened.
“Uh, yeah,” Matt says. “Yeah, yeah, of course. Sounds great.” And, it does, but all he can think is that Jay clearly has something going on that he’s not telling Matt.
“Great.” Jay smiles wide, his sharp teeth on full display. “I’ll start grabbing pillows and blankets.”
Matt just stares after him.
Jay has the blankets pulled up to his chin as he sits back on the couch. There’s a box of pizza on the coffee table in front of him, and he’s watching Matt sift through the collection of VHS tapes that made the move with them. He should feel perfectly content.
Instead, his heart is slamming into his chest, his brain is a tangle of worry, the back of his hand itches where he scratched the scab right off, and he’s scared to even blink, lest images of Matt broken, beaten, and twisted in pain surface in his mind’s eye.
He tries to pull in a deep breath, but it doesn’t quite clear the weight on his chest. He wishes he could talk to someone, but who? He never felt safe enough to confide in his mother. Matt’s his best friend in the entire world, but he also can’t tell Matt. What would he even say?
Sometimes, I picture you dying. I think of your funeral, and my entire chest collapses. I can see you knocked out and splayed across the ground in so many violent ways, and sometimes I worry I must like it, or want it. Why else would I think about it so much? I feel like an evil, awful person, and I can’t even do the dishes because I don’t feel comfortable around the knives. I don’t know what to–
Jay’s heart sinks as he studies the coffee table. “Matt?”
“Yeah?” Matt doesn’t look up from the tapes. “What’s up?”
Jay tries to keep his voice calm. “Why is there Lysol spray on the coffee table?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, it was on the floor over here. I just moved it out of the way. Not sure why it was here, but… why, what’s the matter?”
“Uh, nothing,” Jay says. He reaches out and takes the bottle off the table. He’s careful not to touch the nozzle, not to accidentally trigger the spray. He throws the blanket off his body and takes the bottle to the kitchen, where he places it under the sink.
Okay. There we go. Nothing to worry about.
Except… the pizza box is open. The bottle could’ve sprayed out when Matt set it down. There could be cleaner on their pizza right now.
Jay sighs. It’s ridiculous. There’s nothing on their pizza, and even if there is, it’s hardly enough to kill anyone.
His stomach churns. He can’t eat this. But Matt can’t, either, then. If he refrains from eating and leaves it all to Matt, and Matt gets sick–
Stop worrying about Matt getting sick, you’re being so absurd right now.
Oh, so you don’t care about Matt anymore, is that it? You’re not concerned with his well-being?
Stop twisting my words and stop worrying!
You’re the one fantasizing about Matt’s death. You probably don’t even care about him. You’re incapable of caring about anyone but yourself. Your mom raised you to be distant, and that’s all you’ll ever be.
“Birdy!” Matt calls out, and Jay startles back into focus. His eyes fix back on the pizza and he wants to throw it in the garbage.
“Yeah?”
“Bird, what’s going on with you?” Matt asks. He comes to sit next to Jay on the couch. “You’re so spacey lately.” He holds out two different VHS tapes. “I’m trying to ask which movie you want.”
Jay looks at the options. Jaws, for some ungodly reason, which, right now, would probably give him nightmares about Matt getting murdered by a shark, or… Jurassic Park.
“Do you have any movies where people don’t die?” Jay immediately cringes at his own tone of voice. He sounds pathetic. Scared of fictional sharks and dinosaurs. “Actually, no, let’s just do Jurassic Park, it’s fine.”
Matt shoots him a look. “You’re sure you’re okay?” He places both of the tapes on the coffee table and reaches for a slice of pizza.
“Matt–” Jay says, and then he bites his tongue. He can’t do this. He can’t let himself be such a fucking freak.
“What?” Matt says.
“Nothing, nothing. Sorry. Just…” Do not fucking say it. He scratches at the open wound on the back of his hand. “Nothing.”
“Okay…” Matt says. He goes to take a bite of his pizza and Jay has to force himself to look away.
His mind flashes with images of Matt passed out in a pool of vomit. How would Lysol poisoning work? Would Matt vomit it up? Should Jay go call poison control?
At least they’re doing this sleepover. Jay can keep an eye on him.
“Bird,” Matt says, standing from the couch. He goes to crouch in front of the TV. “You gonna have a slice?”
Jay tries not to grimace, though at least Matt’s back is to him.
“Um… I’m actually not hungry,” he says. He should eat it. If Matt’s going to eat it, he should eat it, too. But he feels like he’s going to vomit just thinking of it. “You, um… is it even good? Pizza?”
Matt turns back to Jay and scoffs. “Is it even good? Dude, it’s your favourite place. Seriously. What is the matter with you?”
Jay’s been asking himself the same question.
Matt’s eyes keep darting between Jay and the two slices left of uneaten pizza. He doesn’t know how to address it, but the fact that Jay’s not eating is just solidifying all of his concerns.
He thinks of learning about eating disorders in high school. Those kids he remembers would barely eat a thing all day. Is that what’s happening to Jay? Is he worried about his body? He’s so fucking skinny, though. Although… wasn’t that something they talked about? That sometimes people with eating disorders don’t even have a good perception of how they truly look?
Fuck. Matt presses a hand into his own stomach, an idea forming in his head.
“Ugh…” he groans. Jay’s eyes dart to him, immediately filled with concern.
“What?” he asks quickly.
“Uhh, I just think I ate too much,” Matt says. He slides his hand under his shirt and pulls it up to reveal his stomach. It is a bit rounded from all of the pizza he ate–more than his share, but if Jay wasn’t going to eat it, someone should–but still relatively flat. He squeezes it and looks back up at Jay. His eyes are wide with horror.
Is this it, then? Jay really is just scared of weight gain?
“Do you feel like you might throw up?” he asks. “Maybe you should. Just to make sure… if there was something wrong with the pizza?”
“Wrong?” Matt asks. “No, I just think I ate too much. Ugh… I feel so… fat,” he tries, watching Jay’s face.
Jay’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “Fat? Matty, you’re hardly fat. What does that have to do with the pizza being bad?”
Matt just blinks at Jay. “I don’t think the pizza’s bad, I just think I ate too much of it. Do you ever feel that? Like, you just ate way too much and you hate yourself? Maybe you feel like you shouldn’t eat at all because you’re afraid you’re too fat?”
Jay’s nose scrunches. “No… not really. Why, do you feel that way?”
Matt drops his head back against the couch cushion. Why is Jay so difficult?
“Do you feel like you need to throw up?” Jay asks again. He places a hand on Matt’s shoulder and leans in with anxious eyes.
“No!”
“I don’t know. I think the pizza was bad. I’d feel better if you did.”
Matt stares at him. “What is wrong with you?” he asks. “You… you want to see me throw up?” Matt’s mouth drops open. “Oh! You think I’m the fat one. You want me to lose weight.”
“What?”
“Or, no, you have some sort of sick little kink and you want to see me vomit! I knew you were into weird shit.”
“Matt!” Jay shouts, a bit of a whine coming through in his voice. “Why the fuck would I want to see you throw up? I’m just trying to protect you!”
“Protect me? From what?”
“Food poisoning!” Jay shouts, like it’s obvious.
“You’re acting really fucking weird, lately, Bird,” Matt says, launching up and off the couch. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with you!”
He glares down at Jay, feeling self-righteously upset about this goddamn mess of a situation.
Tears form along Jay’s lash lines, and he pulls his lip between his teeth.
Matt’s heart immediately cracks, but he reminds himself that he’s mad at Jay and he can’t just cave the second Jay looks a little bit–
Oh, who is he kidding?
He drops back down onto the couch. “Birdy, what is it?”
Jay squeezes his eyes shut. “Nothing,” he says, wiping furiously at his tears with the back of his hand. “Nothing. I’m just… you know my mom had some weird rules.”
“Uh-huh,” Matt says. Did she ever.
“I just remember her saying if you eat that much pizza, you’d throw up. Like… no matter what. Your body would reject it. It’s stupid.” He looks down at his hands, shame clear in his eyes.
“Huh,” Matt says. It is an objectively stupid statement, but it does sound like something Jay’s mother might say. She’s full of weird shit.
“If you’re feeling fine, though, we should probably just drop it,” Jay continues. There’s something that niggles at the back of Matt’s mind.
His eyes fall back on the pizza. “You don’t want even one slice?” he asks.
Jay shakes his head. “I’m really full from, uh, lunch,” he says. Matt tries to think back to lunch. Jay had… no, he has no idea what Jay ate. Harder to argue with him, then. Maybe it’s true.
Matt leans forward and grabs one of the last slices of pizza. The cheese has started to congeal, but he just shrugs it off.
“Alright, Birdy,” Matt says. He leans back to refocus on the movie, and he’s aware of Jay’s eyes. He keeps his head straight, focused on the TV, but he keeps darting Matt looks out of the corner of his eye. He seems like he might be sick. Matt gets the feeling that there’s still something deeper.
Jay leans into Matt as they play Mario Kart. He feels like he might pass out any moment, but he’s terrified to fall asleep and wake up to Matt dead. He let Matt eat the pizza because saving face and seeming normal was more important to him than protecting his best friend, and now he has to live with the fact that his best friend is probably about to keel over and die.
His stomach rumbles, which Jay tries to cover up with a sudden coughing fit. Matt looks at him.
“What was that?” he asks.
“Uh, nothing, nothing,” Jay says. He forces another fake cough. “I’m alright.”
When Matt falls asleep–which, he kind of hopes is soon–Jay plans to dart into the kitchen and find something to snack on. He supposes he could just admit to Matt now that he’s hungry, but there’s still one slice of pizza left, and he’s terrified Matt will offer it to him. All of this anxiety is making him feel insane.
He lets himself imagine the bag of chips he’ll open when Matt’s asleep. A nice, fresh bag, completely untainted–
“Ha!” Matt shouts out. “I won! Suck it, Jay!”
Huh? Oh. Jay was so distracted thinking about his chips, he hardly even noticed the race.
“I think we’re tied now,” Matt says. “How about winner takes all? Loser does the dishes?”
Jay winces. Back to those fucking dishes. There’s a massive knife in there–definitely something Matt dirtied, though Jay’s not sure doing what–and he’s really prefer to just not face it.
It’s stupid, because he knows he’d never stab anyone. He’s too fucking anxious about it to actually do it. But, at the same time, even just looking at it dredges up all of these awful thoughts. It makes him picture stabbing Matt even more than he already does. Slitting his throat, stabbing him through the heart, slicing his stomach wide open, cutting off his hand–
“Bird,” Matt says, his voice a tinge angry.
“Huh? Oh, God, sorry, Matt.” he says. He hopes Matt can’t tell by looking at him what he was thinking about. Jay’s pretty sure that’s impossible, but you never know.
Matt would never look at him the same. He’d probably hate him, even more than Jay already hates himself. There has to be something fucking wrong with him that he even thinks this.
“Jay McCarrol, what the hell is happening with you?” Matt asks, and now he sounds really mad. Jay looks over at him guiltily, aware that he’d immediately zoned out again.
“Nothing, Matt,” Jay says quietly. He’s not sure he’s ever seen Matt like this. He’d complain about people pissing him off sometimes, but he’s never seemed so genuinely angry. There’s a quiet terror to it. “Sorry, sorry, I’m just… I think I’m tired, maybe? I’m having trouble listening. Maybe we should go to bed.”
“Jay,” Matt says, and his voice is softer now. “I’m sick of this. Okay? I’m fucking–I know you’re–well, I don’t know what it is you’re hiding, exactly, but I know you’re hiding something and I’m sick of it. You’re spacey, you’re being really fucking weird about not doing the dishes, you refused to eat and I’m pretty sure it’s not that you’re not hungry, you seemed uncomfortable with me eating, you insisted we play this game despite looking about ready to pass out, you keep zoning out all the time and not listening, you have a weird gash on the back of your hand, and… earlier I heard you in your room and you sounded upset? Maybe? I don’t know! I just… Bird…” Matt looks at him with such pain in his eyes that Jay feels like he’s been stabbed in the chest. “Tell me, what is it? Is it just your mom?”
Jay stares at Matt, his mouth hanging slightly open. He has no idea what to even say.
“Matty,” he tries, tears forming in his eyes. “Matty, I–you put the Lysol next to the pizza and I’m scared it got all over it and I didn’t want to seem like a freak but I couldn’t eat it thinking it was all covered in chemicals. But I didn’t want to scare you so I just let you eat it and… God, Matt, please.” He reaches out, a hand on each of Matt’s shoulders. “You have to go throw it up or something before it kills you because I’m so scared you might die–”
Jay catches the moment something shifts in Matt’s face, and his throat closes around the words. It’s not that Matt’s outright laughing at him. He can just tell Matt doesn’t believe him, and that’s just as bad.
Jay shakes his head. “You don’t get it. I–it’s stupid.” He drops his arms from Matt’s shoulders and stands from the couch.
“Jay, wait–” Matt’s hand catches around Jay’s wrist.
Jay halts, trying to decide what to do. He could turn back to Matt, hear him out. He could wrench his arm out of Matt’s hand and storm back upstairs to cry into his pillow.
He’s been trying not to let Matt notice–though, apparently, he has–but it’s something he’s been doing with increasing frequency.
The thoughts first started a few years back, and they felt more… reasonable. His mind reminding him that the knife he was holding was dangerous. Pointing out that he should be careful about germs and cleaners and chemicals in the kitchen. Telling him that he was capable of doing harm if he wasn’t careful. That felt like a good thing for him to remember. But as it went on, it started to get more outlandish. That certainty that anything dangerous anywhere near his food would taint it, too. He remembers watching Matt a few weeks ago in the grocery store. He had set a bottle of bleach into the cart next to the bananas. How was Jay going to eat a banana now? There could be bleach, soaking past the peel and into the fruit itself. He knew it probably wasn’t reasonable, but was it worth the risk of having to get his stomach pumped? Or… worse. And he couldn’t let Matt eat them. He’d had to throw them out when Matt left the house, then pretend that, yes, he ate five bananas in the one hour Matt was gone. He’s surprised Matt doesn’t bring that up as part of his strange behaviour.
Point being, his mind just won’t let him be. And now it keeps telling him that at any moment, he could lose the people he cares about the most.
That loving someone opens him up to the possibility of losing them. To all of the pain that comes with it.
The fear that a loved one could die was a newer thought for him, something that almost seemed to come with Matt. He’d been a lonely kid, and his parents were typically cold. Matt was the first time Jay had someone to lose. And his mind seemed to want to torture him with that fact.
As the thoughts have intensified, he’s found himself at his wit’s end more and more. The more he wants to let go of them, the more intense they seem to become. He tries to ignore them and they just knock louder at his mind. At the same time, if he gives them attention, they also seem to grow. It’s like he can’t win. Sometimes his mind tells him to do things. Make sure all the knives are in the block. Check that Matt’s toy gun is still definitely a toy. Look in the fridge for anything suspicious. It soothes him for about ten seconds before the feelings come back and he thinks about checking again.
When it gets too much, when he feels awful for even thinking about Matt dying and all of the horrible images just exhaust him and he starts to worry he might do something because what sane, normal person would even think like this if they weren’t secretly an evil monster with something deeply wrong with them… he typically has a good cry.
Needless to say, he’s been having a lot of them lately. He could not be happier to be living with Matt, but it feels like it’s done nothing but worsen his insanity.
Jay makes up his mind, turning back to face Matt.
“Birdy, I–” Matt starts. “I think I’m confused, but I want to get it–you’re afraid I’m going to die because of chemicals on the pizza? I think I’d have to drink, like, the whole bottle for that to happen.”
Jay sinks back onto the couch. “It’s so fucking dumb.”
“Please, explain it.”
“It’s not just the chemicals,” Jay says. “Although, yeah, I mean, if you put the Lysol that close to the pizza, or you put bleach right next to the bananas in the grocery cart, or you get really fucking loose with the chicken juice–”
“Is that why you wouldn’t eat the chicken parm I lovingly made?”
Jay grimaces. “I mean, you also didn’t buy real parmesan, and you crumbled a bagel instead of breadcrumbs–”
“It’s gourmet!”
“But, yeah, I… I don’t know. I can’t help but think of the dangers. And–it’s not just with that sort of stuff.” He looks down at his hands. “I don’t like doing the dishes because there’s a knife in there and it’s massive and scary. It makes me think of all the ways I could hurt you, and it’s stupid because I don’t want to, but I do. I think about it non-stop, like a never-ending chorus. Matt could die, Matt could die, Matt could die. It’s fucking endless.” Jay squeezes his head in his hands, clutching his hair. “I’m scared of you getting hurt. And I’m the only other person in the house, so I guess as long as I avoid anything there is to hurt you with, it should be fine. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I can’t be a band with one person. You’re the only person I have.
“And the more I don’t want to think about losing you, the more I do.”
“Oh, Jaybird.” Matt holds his arms out, and though Jay’s never been big on touch, he allows himself to be folded into Matt.
“It’s not normal,” Jay mutters into Matt’s shoulder. Tears fill his eyes, soaking into Matt’s plaid pajama shirt.
“Maybe not,” Matt says. “Is that why you wanted a sleepover?”
Jay nods. “I thought it’d be a good distraction. I just feel like I’m fighting with my brain so often these days, trying to tell it to shut up about everything awful that could happen. That’s why I keep zoning out, I’m having arguments with myself. It keeps wanting me to picture you dead and…” He chokes out a sob. “I fucking hate it! There’s something so fucking wrong with me because what sane person would even think like this?”
“Birdy,” Matt says in a soothing voice. “So, I’m definitely not going to go puke because I promise I’m not going to die of the probably zero Lysol that got on the pizza. But, I am going to sleep right next to you and I promise you’re going to be alright. Maybe this is something other people have experienced,” he adds. “You ever been on Yahoo! Answers? They have everything there. We’ll figure it out.”
“Thank you, Matty,” Jay says. He continues to sob into Matt’s shoulder, and Matt just runs his hand in circles across Jay’s back.
“It’s okay, Birdy. It’s okay. You’re not evil. You’re just… I don’t know. Having a hard time.”
Eventually, they move to set themselves up on the living room floor, blankets and pillows piled high. Jay reaches out and takes Matt’s wrist in his hand, feeling his heart beat softly. It’s reassuring. Matt’s here. He’s safe. He’s here. He’s safe.
And while Jay can already feel some of the anxiety creeping back into him, he’s also so relieved that he’d finally told someone else and that Matt understands. It feels like a weight off his chest to know he’s not alone.
“Jay!” Matt shouts the next morning. He’d asked Jay’s permission to go do some Googling on the computer upstairs, and left him to watch You’ve Got Mail, a VHS tape Matt is adamant was his sister’s.
“Why would I have bought You’ve Got Mail?” he’d asked. “You think I’m like, hot for Tom Hanks or something? You think I’m a fag who wants Tom Hanks to kiss me?”
Jay hadn’t, but now he does have his doubts.
“Jay!” Matt shouts again as he hits the bottom of the stairs. “Have you ever heard of OCD?”
“OCD…” Jay repeats. He cocks his head. “No… what is that?”
“Obsessive compulsive disorder,” Matt says, a bit smugly.
“Oh, yeah, wait… isn’t that that thing where you really care about organizing or you’re afraid of germs? What does that have to do with me?”
“First off, do not pretend you’re not scared of germs,” Matt says. “Second, it turns out it’s like… actually a lot more in depth than that? It includes unwanted and distressing thoughts or images, obsessing over fears, even outlandish ones… it’s like a type of anxiety. Typically the fears are ego-dystonic.”
“Eggo…d-d-district?” Jay repeats.
“It means that they’re thoughts that go against who you feel you are as a person. That’s why it upsets you so much to think about hurting me; because you know you never want to. It’s kind of flattering,” he adds quickly. “And, sometimes the OCD forces you to act certain ways, perform ‘compulsions’. Things you need to do to feel better or dismiss the thoughts. Like… try to get me to vomit or throw out all those bananas.”
Jay lets that sink in. “Oh…” He rolls the acronym around in his head. OCD. Huh.
“Anyway, I figure we can try looking up resources in the city, maybe get you a meeting with some fancy head doctor to fix you right up?”
Jay looks at Matt. “I think you’re making it sound a bit easier than it really will be.”
Matt shrugs. “Well, even if it takes a long time, and a lot of work… we’re gonna get you help, Birdy.”
Jay stares up at him. He knows it’s going to take a long time, but he feels hope, for the first time in a really long time.
“Thank you, Matt.”
“Of course.” He throws himself sideways onto the couch. “Now, what’s Tom Hanks up to?”
Jay raises his eyebrows.
“What? I’m just curious. Is the movie doing it for you?”
“It’s uh… it’s not making things worse,” Jay answers honestly. “Which is maybe the biggest win we can get right now.”
Matt nods and wraps his arms around Jay. “I’m gonna take care of you, Bird. Isn’t that what I said when you moved in?”
Jay smiles. It was.