Breathe

By L Christopher-Frank Nyx

Chapter One

If it wasn't for you
Don't know what I'd do
Unpredictable like the sun
And the rainfall

“The Sun and the Rainfall” by Depeche Mode

I’ve gotten kicked out of another club and I’m drunk out of my mind. This time I had mind enough to crawl over to the side of the sidewalk that wasn’t as busy because, last time I didn’t, a lovely lady left me a memory of her stiletto heel across my stomach that I’m going to carry with me to my grave. It was right across the ribs too. I remember seeing her, but I don’t remember the pain that followed afterwards. She may as well have been an ex-girlfriend of mine, but I don’t remember.

How sad. A poor drunk man whose still trying to live the college life. Well…I shouldn’t say “still” since it’s only been…two years? I can’t even remember. I’m young though, and isn’t this what every other twenty-something single is doing in New York City? I should say this right now: I’m not above following the crowd, or at least attempting to do so.

It seems that every time I catch onto a new trend it becomes unfashionable; by the time I can buy those new clothes, the ones I got insulted for wearing the week before are all the rage. Nothing’s right. My parents sent me off to college hoping that I’d be something great. They spent all of that money on the hopes that I would succeed. What would they say if they saw me now? I’ve gotten kicked out of the second club tonight and I’m still piss drunk.

Too bad. So sad. They’ve still got my brother.

It doesn’t matter anyway. They always thought I’d be a failure, and this just goes to prove they’re right. Currently I spend four out of seven days at my job in the mail room of some important company—a failure to my folks because they expected me to be quite a few stories up from the mailroom—and two other days I work at a local thrift store. The pay for both is crappy, but together they pay the rent, and that’s the important part, isn’t it? Besides, the days at the thrift store are short, which frees me up to volunteer at soup kitchens and such. Oh yeah, that’s another failure—it frees me up to do something I never do.

Just to add another thing to my night of excitement, besides the prospects that I’m going to have the hangover of a lifetime tomorrow morning, it has started to storm. It didn’t warn me, no thunder, no lightning. Rain just began pelting me as I lay here on the cold concrete, my right side aching as all of my weight is on it. I flip over onto my back, with full knowledge that I’m going to throw up soon. I can feel it.

As the bile in my stomach bubbles and rises in my throat, I close my eyes, thinking about what it looks like inside, what I’ll look like afterward. What does it look like inside a person who chokes? I bet my brother would know; he became a doctor, just like they wanted.

Will they not know who I am immediately? It certainly won’t be the first time I’ve had the ambulance called on me. Will they even bother to do an autopsy when they see all of the vomit smeared across my mouth and chin? Will my family mourn? I doubt it, highly, all of it. The ambulance will know me; they all do. The autopsy will probably be deemed unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer’s money. As far as my family, they’ll just shake their heads at it. They’ll say how much of a pity it was I wasted my life not doing anything useful. All of that potential that was put to no good use anyway is about to be gone.

Cry me a river. They still have my brother.

It’s not so much that I’m living in the shadow of my older sibling as my whole family is, well, my generation in the family is. All of my cousins are stuck in the same position I am, and I don’t know who has it worse. Is it me for having to hear about my brother at the dinner table whenever he does something new, or is it them for having to hear about a relative they only see at annual family functions? I suppose it might be me though, because while my cousins only hear about his monumental accomplishments, I hear about every little insignificant thing.

It’s always, “Jonah just finished the triathlon and got first place!” or “Jonah just got into the medical school he wanted!” or “Jonah just wiped his own butt! Can you believe it!?” It’s not only his uprisings I hear about, but when he gets second place in something or when he fails at something minor (since he never seems to do that at something major) he goes into this depression that he’s not good enough.

I used to do stuff too, and sure I got recognized, but it took me longer than my cousins to realize that facts are facts. We are all just molehills to Jonah’s Mt. St. Helen; he’s greater than us, and can destroy us at any given second. Facts are facts, and, just like the sky is blue, my brother is better than I am.

I can feel it coming, my demise, and as my abdomen lurches, begging me to turn over, I feel my stomach gurgle and then smack the pavement, my head saved from being splattered only because it was now hanging over the side of the curb, retching everything into the storm drain. The grates of that rusty old storm drain were cleaned only a few seconds after that—it had begun to rain that hard.

It was after the fifth time that I finished puking my brains out, and the thunder rolled and I saw a few scattered people call cabs. I looked up and the lightning illuminated my saviour.

“What’d you do that for?” I snarled at him. He looked down at me curiously, cocking his head to one side. He was holding a red plaid umbrella that shielded both of us from where he was standing. I squinted to see him clearly and, with the help of the lightning, saw him looking down at me as confused as ever.

“Come on,” He said to me, helping me off the cold, slick sidewalk. I told him I didn’t need his charity as I nearly slipped and fell. He asked me where I lived as the held my hand and walked down the street with me. My hand was cold and clammy in his warm and calloused one.

I’m pretty sure he called a cab since it was raining, but I really don’t remember anything else. I’m waking up to the felling of my scratchy sheets against my clammy body—clammy, but dry. Thank goodness that they haven’t had a decent wash in ages—one of the benefits of being poor.

I roll over out of my bed, yawning and stretching before I walk out my door and down the hallway, my feet padding softly against the vinyl flooring. I freeze—the coffeemaker is going and it’s obvious that the curtains are open, in the kitchen and living room. While I may have forgotten to turn off the coffeemaker, which wouldn’t be much of a surprise, but with all the headaches I have the curtains are never open.

“Hello?” I ask with less confidence than I thought. “Damn,” I think.

“Peter?” I hear a voice answer back, a voice I’ve never heard say my name before. It sounds pretty nice except for the fact that, you know, I don’t know who the hell it is. A face appears—a striking face with an inquiring expression.

“W-who are you?” I asked. “Not that I don’t want you to stay…” I thought fleetingly.

“You don’t remember do you?” He asks with a sort of half smile, as if to say he figured I wouldn’t. “Last night, you were really messed up…”

“We slept together?” I ask. It was the first probable thing, but as it doesn’t feel like I’ve slept with someone in the past few hours.

“No, I took you home. You asked me to stay so I did. I told you I’d make coffee in the morning…”

“I…uh…” I decided to close my mouth and furrow my brow in thought. Memories of the previous night rush back and I remember him walking me up to my apartment, putting me to bed, and me basically begging him to stay. Oh, and that bit about me puking on him before we got into my apartment. “Oh. Yeah.”

“I hope you don’t mind me borrowing your shirt,” He says in a guilty way. It kind of cute how nice he is, even if I didn’t know he was there until just a moment ago.

“It’s just a shirt,” I say. It’s not like the old green t-shirt he’s wearing is my most favorite in the world. I walk into the kitchen and move some stuff off the on of the chairs so I can sit down at the over cluttered table. He put a cup of black coffee in my hand, spoon already in it. He put the coffee creamer on a space he made on the table along with the little porcelain thing I kept my sugar in. “Thanks,” I said as I mixed it.

“You mentioned something about work last night,” He says.

“I must’ve been really out of it…” I shake my head. “I don’t have work Saturdays. And, not to be rude, but don’t you have somewhere to be?” Even I could hear the attitude in my voice.

“Uh, oh yeah, of course,” He coughed and looked the other way. “I, um…” He let out a long breath. “I actually don’t have someplace to be, but I guess I’ll be on my way now,” He says, turning to go out of my kitchen. “I’ll just show myself out.”

“Whatever, thanks for the coffee,” I say as I hear more than see him open the door.

It closes back and I begin to sip on my coffee. “Um…” I hear his voice again.

“I thought you had left,” I say definitively. My tone’s screaming at him to leave.

“Yeah, but…I was just wondering,” He starts as he comes in my line of vision again. “Do you need a housekeeper or something?” He asks the question like it’s not already evident. My place is a wreck, from the floors to the ceilings, and since my roommate moved out it just gave me more room to be a slob.

“Yeah,” I answer suspiciously, taking another drink from my coffee.

“I’m a good cleaner. Maybe I could do it for you?” He said with an upward inflection that told me he was asking.

I scoffed. “I don’t have any money to spare; I’m barely paying my rent as it is with my two jobs.”

“I’ll do it for free,” He said and immediately my eyes narrowed.

“You mean in exchange for something else other than money,” I caught him on his lie.

“Well, yeah…”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t have any place to live,” He begins. “And I know you have that extra room, and it’s not like I take up much space—”

I stop him right there. “Sure, I don’t care.” I’d been looking for a new roommate anyway, and now I’ve got one and a housekeeper to boot, free of charge. “You keep it clean, you’ve got a place to live.”

“What about rent?”

“You just said you didn’t have a place to live. I assume you don’t have a job,” I say, looking him straight in the eye. He flinches and glances away, rubbing his neck. “Thought so,” I said. “Well, since you’re no longer homeless, do you have anything you need to move in?”

“Already got it,” He said. “I don’t have anything, but my clothes and the money in my pocket.”

“Wow,” I was unable to censor myself. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Sorry to make you uncomfortable,” I amended. “Since you kinda saved my life, I guess you can ask me something to make me uncomfortable.”

“Okay…” He scratched his chin in thought. “Um…What were you doing last night?”

“Celebrating; it was my twentieth birthday.”

“You almost died,” His eyes couldn’t have gotten wider. “And how’d you get in there anyway; you’re only twenty.”

“It’s called fake ID,” I shrugged. “Besides, you saved me,” I pointed out. “So, you know my name. You got one?”

“Yeah,” He smiled shyly. “Dylan.”