How To Stay Afloat (BxB)

Chapter 68: kids these days are something else

TW: some more descriptions of a suicide attempt and obviously there will be more mentions in the following chapters, too, so I will not put a tw each time.

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Time to tell all of Austin's friends he's at the hospital, potentially dying. I call Lisa to ask her if I can talk to Matt.

She tells me that he's at home and I can just come by.

Caleb drives me to the dorms and the others wait in the car.

I go to the second floor and then knock on Matt's door.

"Hi." He greets me and lets me in. We sit down on his couch to talk. It smells like weed and he lights a joint.

Of fucking course he smokes when I really shouldn't.

"You want some?" He asks me and I feel so freaking tempted. I really wanna get high. No. I'm staying clean.

I shake my head. "No, I'm trying to go clean from drugs." I explain.

He frowns and instantly stubs out the joint. "Sorry. Shit. Austin told me."

This is awkward. I've never really talked to Matt before except when I was really high on something.

"I- uhm- wanted to talk to you about what happened. Maybe you could tell me what happened on friday and I can tell you all I know?" I suggest.

He nods and leans back against the back of the couch.

"Austin and I used to be best friends. Since we were six." Matt tells me. "But we stopped spending time together a year ago. Did he tell you about his mom's death?"

I wanted to know about friday, not about their whole friendship. I nod my head. "Yes, I know. But maybe not everything."

"He was at my place for his eighteenth birthday. He was mad because his mom didn't come home on time, so I told him to just turn off his phone. So it was my fault he couldn't see her before she died. He never accepted my apologies and we stopped hanging out until in summer when we talked again from time to time." Matt tells me.

"He only told me that he blamed you for something that wasn't your fault." I tell him.

Matt rubs his face with his hands. "On friday he just sent me a message that he's sorry for it." He explains. "I was confused, but didn't think too much of it, but then two hours later Lisa told me that you two got into a fight and I got a bad feeling so I called him."

I nod my head. Fuck. This could have ended so much worse. If he hadn't called him, Austin would have died.

"Austin sounded really weird and confused, like he was drunk. So I borrowed Lisa's car and drove to his flat. I got there within five minutes and he opened the door and he was in a great mood. It was so weird to see him like that." He says, looking at his hands where he's ripping a piece of paper into tiny shreds.

"He told me all these weird things that didn't make sense at all just like he was tripping hard. I asked him what he took and he just told me he took his allergy medication. I didn't think much of it and thought he dropped LSD or something similar. He also smelled like alcohol, so I thought he was just heavily crossfaded." He explains. His voice is shaking a lot, like he's close to crying.

"He called me. I didn't see it until later. Was that when you were there?" I ask him.

He shakes his head. "No, he didn't, but he told me he tried to call you to hear your voice. He left a voice note."

Wait what? He did? Why didn't I see that? Am I stupid? He left me a voice mail?

"I haven't listened to it. I didn't see there was one." I explain.