The Best of Us

seventeen

NOVEMBER. 2014.

THOMAS AND I were sitting at the kitchen table together, silently eating the grilled cheese sandwiches that I'd made us for lunch. It was a miserable Saturday afternoon, cold and dark and damp, and Thomas had slept until I'd shaken him awake to come and eat with me.

Rubbing his eyes and yawning, he'd forced me to drag him out of bed by grabbing his hands and pulling him. Then, he stumbled after me down the stairs and into the kitchen, his feet barely lifting off of the floor. His dark hair was sticking up, his eyes were heavy and bruised from rough sleep, and his shoulders were hunched. He was wearing an old, loose grey t-shirt that he'd taken from dad years ago and boxers, and he looked terrible, but over the past couple of days he'd been eating regularly again and there was a pleasant flush in his face, his cheeks less hollow than they had recently been. So, even though he was a dishevelled mess, I didn't comment on it.

"How was work?" I asked after swallowing another bite of my sandwich.

All day, I had been alone, submerged in my own silence. Dad had been missing all day— no doubt running errands and seeing friends— and I wasn't in the right mood to spend time with anyone else.

After spending a long morning at the gym, catching up on homework and reading some Neruda poems, I'd wandered around uselessly, desperately trying to avoid piling thoughts of college applications and life after graduation. It was futile, though, because my chest was stiff, my head aching and my bones heavy, with the crushing weight of looming tasks that I felt unable to approach or break down. In my head, they formed a terrible, indistinguishable lump of seemingly unsolvable problems. I felt the way I imagined Sisyphus might feel if he ever gave up on pushing that boulder.

Bizarrely, Thomas relaxed me. Even though I spent a lot of my time worrying about him, he was the easiest person to be alone with and it was much more comforting to be alone with him than to be alone with myself. He never demanded anything of me and whenever we were alone, sharing silence or grilled cheese sandwiches, all that he ever asked of me was that I continued to exist alongside him, taking up the space he saved for me in the quiet. There was no room for anyone else.

"Agonising," he grimaced, taking a slow bite of his sandwich. "Kayla came in last night, right up to the bar."

"Where else would she get a drink?" I mused, glancing up at him as I took a sip from my glass of water.

"I'm not the only bartender," he frowned, shaking his head and taking another bite. He shook his head as he chewed. "She does it all on purpose. We're not together right now." Then, he lifted his half-eaten sandwich and nodded in approval. "Good sandwich, kiddo. Thanks."

Half-smiling at him, I nodded and took another bite of my own sandwich. "I thought you and Kayla were together again."

"No," he replied gravely, a dark severity in his eyes when they briefly flickered up to meet mine. "It was awful. She came up to the bar— in a popular club on a Friday fucking night— and asks for her drink but demands to get it from me. So, I give her the drink and tell her how much, and she starts getting all aggravated because I'm refusing to acknowledge her." He emphasised his point by rolling his eyes and using air quotes. "Then she leaves and comes back five fucking minutes later with some guy who wanted to buy another drink for her."

"What guy?" I grinned, peeling the crust off of my sandwich and biting into it. "What was she trying to do? Make you jealous?"

"Probably," he huffed. I was pleased to see that he had eaten almost half of his lunch and was still eating. Usually, during depressive episodes, he had no appetite and, though I always tried to get him to eat, I knew how difficult it was for him. "I don't know."