1 The Aftermath

Thin streams of light shone in through the window, gently landing on an empty pillow. Sweat stains could be seen on the wide-shouldered back of a young man through the faint illumination. His body seemed achingly small as he sat on the edge of his bed, head in hands and curled up protectively over himself.

Nightmares filled with memories came and went. Shivers ran through his body unceasingly as his heart constricted painfully at the thought of the past, always present and always preventing him from any semblance of solace. A flash of a smile, curly hair, and a taut body haunted his mind as sweet memories of the good old times were quickly overrun by feelings of despair and anxiety.

A quiet knock on his door shook him out of his downward spiral. Glad that he was spared from another round of self-guilt, he worked himself up. His muscles groaned from days of severe lack of use. Twisting the doorknob, he peeked out the crack and saw his friend, L.

"Yo."

"What's up, bro. I haven't seen you in a few days. You good?"

Flashes of the past few days, curled up in bed and unable to sleep, rushed through his head. His heart started stinging again.

"Not again," he thought.

"I'm kind of goin' through it. You know. With everything that's been happening, I can't sleep well and I don't really feel like doing anything."

"Can I come in?"

He opened the door and walked back to his bed awkwardly. L pulled out the chair from his desk, books messily strewn on it, while looking around at the trash laying on the floor. Once a tidy room now seemed like what one would typically expect from a twenty-year old, college student. But L knew that he must be really fucked up if things got to this state—messy as shit, dented beer cans filling the trash can and a big ass bottle of Svedka laying empty on top of his fridge.

"When's the last time you left your room?" L asked.

"Well, I've gone to the bathroom a couple times," he laughed.

Memories flashed by as he spoke. Her chiming laugh in his room as he made a series of bad jokes and her smile as they clumsily danced to Bachata at her request were quickly overrun by her hateful yelling and tearful, yet impassive eyes as she blamed him for their suffering relationship.

It was always a perpetual cycle of the same thing. Fight, break up, miss each other, make up. Rinse and repeat. Her voice saying that they're better off as friends, while returning to carnal pleasures the next day, or the day after, or the day after that. Always coming back together, though.

He always accepted her after all the pain she caused him, while admitting that it was his fault in order to appease her. Back then, though, he really felt that it was his fault. It seemed that whatever he did was wrong and hurtful. Always doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.

"I'm getting a little better, though. With so much time to myself, I've been able to think about things a lot."

"Yeah? What have you been thinking about?" L asked.

"I don't know. Like, I still don't know what to feel about that night. I'm just glad that this whole thing with her is done with. I feel like she kept fuckin' with my mind, always making me think that it was my fault even when I was the one who was always there for her."

"Yeah, I feel you."

"Like, I thought I knew what I was getting into at the beginning, but I guess I didn't. I shouldn't have forced it so much. I knew she wasn't ready for a relationship. She told me."

"Yeah, but she didn't stop you at all. She knew you were a relationship-type of guy and didn't care."

"I don't know anymore, man. I'm getting a little better, but I'm still so confused over everything."

L and him usually had the same opinions of things and talking to him was always helpful in ranting and having someone validate him with a similar opinion. It helped that L was there for all the yelling and fighting that started a few weeks into his relationship. Even now, L knocks and comes in every day to talk to him.

It's been just around three weeks since the relationship fell apart. He would have been feeling somewhat—not really—fine if it was just that, but she went ahead and found other ways to make him suffer.

Their last night together came during one of their "breaks," when she asked him if she could sleep over during her short visit from her study abroad. At the time, he really thought that the weird dynamic between them was done with. After so many times of repeating the same thing, eventually you just get sick of it and start believing that it will be the last time.

But then she knocked on his door. She asked him if she could sleep over because "the heater wasn't working." He ended up remembering the times where she would come in crying as she dealt with depression and trauma, asking him the same question: "can I sleep over tonight?"

Call it whatever you will. A moment of weakness, a moment of being lost in the memories, or a moment where he felt obligated to support her like he did before. Whatever it was, the aftermath left him broken and a shadow of what he was before.