Five

I wake up on the couch. The rain on the roof is a soft alarm, thunder rolling slowly overhead. It's storming, and the rain crashes, crashes, crashes down.

I press my face into my hands and curl up into one cushion, groaning.

It's an overflow day. My mind races through so many thoughts at once that I can't focus on even a single one, but there's no escape. Just the white noise of the rain. Nothing to drown it out, and no energy to find something to drown it out.

I stuff my head into the pillow, hearing Arthur in the laundry room. The washing machine starts, and then he makes his way out into the kitchen. I hear the fridge open, but I'm not really paying much attention. There's so much going on.

I try to focus. On just one thing. Just one. If I can hold onto just one, I can make it today. I can pretend to be okay.

It's like catching butterflies with your hands. You try to catch one while it's landed, and it flutters away before you even get close. The ones in the air are faster, and there's more of them can you can reasonably conceive. I end up desperately grasping at the air, and finally catch one.

I mangle it in the process.

It's a single image, a snapshot, like so many of my memories from so many years ago. No, I wasn't always blind. It was an accident.

And before the accident, I could see the world. It was beautiful. Him, especially. He was beautiful. Visibly, yes, of course. He was probably the most attractive person I'd ever seen. He could've been on the cover of magazines and walking runways if he'd wanted to.

But he was gorgeous in a way that you couldn't see. Funny, and sweet, and kind. Patient in ways I couldn't comprehend. He held me up out of the water in a time where I had almost resigned myself to drowning. When I had no one else, he was there. When I couldn't figure out who I was, he helped to show me. It still baffles me, the difference that just one person can make. I would've died all those years ago without his lifeline.

It's a snapshot of him.

Well, a few of them. When one comes, they all come. Every mental photograph I have of him.

The first night we met, I was working. At the time, even though I was too young to drink, I was still naturally strong and tough enough, and I worked at a nightclub as a bouncer. I liked that job. There was a lot of fighting sometimes, but I never lost. One day, he showed up. And I got confused.

Yeah, he was physically attractive. Everyone could see that. But his smile put butterflies in my stomach, and I felt my skin get hot when he looked at me. I'd never felt like that before.

I could never forget the smile he gave me. So big, so warm, so genuine. Perfect. He told one of the dancers to give me his number. I walked home that night, without any idea of how to feel.

And while I was distracted, I was mugged.

My hand automatically goes to the scar, now. I remember the pain. It was the shock that he actually did it that still gets me. The utter breathlessness, that 'Oh my god. Oh my god, he actually stabbed me.' moment.

I had no one else to call. His number was right there.

He showed up in the emergency room and played it off like he was my brother. I think I loved him instantly. As soon as everyone had left and it was just me and him, I couldn't stop myself. The stream, a gushing pour of apologies. Telling him he didn't have to come, he was just a stranger, he could've told me to fuck off.

He ignored it all.

He told me that when someone needs you, you go to them. No matter what.

He told me about his night; a broken heart, a dead-end job, a life filled with people but a life so lonely it hurt.

He told me that if he could help me tonight, he could prove to himself that the world was still beautiful.

He was still beautiful.

He made everything beautiful around him.

That wasn't the last time we saw each other. Never, in a thousand lifetimes, will I let that be the last time we saw each other. If I could go back and do it again, I'd do it all the same.

We had three beautiful years together.

Three years full of light, and laughter. He held me up out of the water until, at last, I learned to swim. In the quiet evenings, when no one else was around, we held each other. I learned that there wasn't anything wrong with me. I learned that I was gay. By then, I had no one to come out to but him, and he already seemed to know.

And after that, as long as he was with me, I didn't care that people didn't approve.

If I could go back and do it again,

If I could go back to that last day and see him one more time,

there's only one thing I would change.

I would've tried to save him. I would've tried to convince him to stay home. I would've fought him, tooth and nail, to keep him from going. If I had known.

If I had known about the drunk driver going down 12th Avenue, pursued by three police cars in a high-speed chase. If I had known, I never, ever, ever would've let him go.

The third snapshot is the TV that morning. The news, coverage of the chase. I watch a car that looks just like his get t-boned.

Both cars spin out, and the drunk driver gets flung into traffic. The other hit the corner of the barriers and burst into flames.

After a few seconds, it explodes. I watch them drag the drunk driver out of the car and load him into an ambulance. A fire truck puts out the flames. They tow both cars.

I get a call a few hours later.

I get a call.

I get a call. And I can't remember anything else. I can't remember anything past that in detail. Flashes of fluorescent lights in hospital hallways, the beep-beep-beeping of machines. It was never quiet enough to gather my thoughts.

I remember seeing him in the hospital for the first time, no longer outwardly beautiful, but all I wanted to do was hold him and make the pain go away. He was still beautiful to me.

He got better, at first. Came out of his coma and started to get better.

But he never seemed convinced that he was going to make it. And I should've known. I shouldn't have let it blindside me like it did. He never talked about the future, never talked about how hopeful he was. I should've prepared myself for the worst, but I didn't. I couldn't force myself to think about the possibility that I might have to live without him.

But you see where I am now.

He died.

They told me his injuries were too extensive.

They told me that they did everything they possibly could.

They told me that he went quickly.

They told me that he went peacefully.

They told me that he went to a better place.

They told me that the bright side was that he wasn't in pain anymore.

But I didn't care.

The world is cruel, and selfish, like the people that exist in it. People like the one that took him from me. I was stupid to believe that the world would let someone like him exist forever.

I wish I could've walked away before it exploded in my face. But he was too brilliant to look away.

I take a breath. The pillow is wet and so is my face. My entire body feels too heavy to move, but I know that I'm strong enough if I really wanted to.

I don't want to.

I want to fade away.