Gabriel

11. More Explanations

Warning: contains talk about sexual violence
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I stand there, for the longest time, just dragging my fingers across my tingling lips. I don't understand why he left. Was he upset?
Or angry?
I don't feel bad though, I loved it. It felt so nice. My first real kiss. Well, my first kiss that I liked. He kissed me, but I never liked it. I said no, He didn't care.
Stop thinking about him, Maeve.
So with a deep breath in and another out, I walk to the bathroom and apply Neosporin to the scabbing cuts to keep my mind off of all the thinking.
Then my thoughts float to someone I've tried not to think about for the past year. I didn't even realize the date until I thought about it.

Today is the one year anniversary of my best friend's death. How could I forget? Jake was a year older than me when he died, just under 17. He was a beautiful person, but he was sad, and saw the world like I did, maybe even worse with his battle against depression.
Until he would tell me about Steven. He broke up with Steven when he moved out to Oregon, from Brooklyn. That's the main reason I've wanted to move to New York. To see the city how he saw it. When he talked about Steven and their adventures in the New York he was completely changed.
Steven was a lot older than Jake, but they always seemed to get each other from what I heard.
I never said our friendship was healthy, though because it definitely wasn't. He cut just like me and although he tried to get me to call the cops on my dad, I never could. He smoked weed and I even joined him once or twice.
If he was still here I could image him tagging along with me. His parents would never notice he was gone, and the entire time he would be egging me on to make the first move. And right now, I wouldn't be in here, putting on Neosporin, I would be talking to him in the next room about the kiss squealing together like 12 year old girls.
But he chose the razor over me.
And I can't help but feel like it was my fault for not noticing how his anti-depressant pill bottle stayed full.

I look down at my arms and realize I've been scrubbing the Neosporin on too hard, causing the scabs to peel off and blood to pool in the sink.
Sh*t.
How will I explain this to Gabriel? He ran out though. Why would he kiss me then? Was I too fat, ugly... broken?
I just cover the wounds in gauze and roll down my sleeves.
I go to my dresser where I put my photo album. I pull it out from under the clothes at the bottom drawer and open it, taking a deep breathe. I flip through the first few pages of family quickly until my breath catches. It's a picture of me. I look horrible and the light frames me in all the wrong places, but I'm smiling. A real smile. This was a week after we met and connected instantly.
I haven't seen that smile in a year.
The only reason I kept the photo was because Jake took it.
Jake had an obsession with disposable cameras. Nothing fancy or fake hipster. He was just loved the ten-buck pharmacy cameras. He would go through at least two a week. He even got a job just so he could afford them. He loved capturing every moment.
He said it was because he wanted to remember everything. So he could remember why we are alive.

We both forgot sometimes.

I flip through a few more photos. Some were of a math test. Others were flowers. But everything was important to him. He only let me have a few. When he died his albums disappeared and I knew his parents would have no clue where it went. I wanted to find it one day. I guess I forgot over the months that past.
There were also a few napkins with song lyrics written on them. He had a way with words I had never fully understood. He would write for Steven's band to play them. He still wrote after they broke up, but he gave them to me instead. I cherish every one. I rub my fingers together, callouses from the school guitar fading. I would play and he would sing. It was my favorite.

Tears stream down my face as I remember everything. Then I've reaches the final page of my album. I was expecting a blank but instead I found a lighter and a half-smoked joint in a plastic baggie taped to the page. I read the short note: