So In Love

Afflicted-3

The phone rang at quarter after three in the morning. I was still asleep as I stretched an arm out to snag the receiver off my bedside table, but hearing my name in his tearful voice woke me in an instant. I squinted at the digital clock, my whole body numb. “What’s wrong?”

“You said to call you,” he reminded me. He sounded so small, so distant and lost, a million miles away from the comfort of my warm bed and the fuzzy remnants of sleep that still clung to me. “When I…wanted to—”

Shaking my head to clear it, I said, “Don’t do it, you hear me? I’m coming over.”

“But—”

I slid out of bed, clicking on the lamp and blinking in the sudden light. “Don’t do anything until I get there.” He sighed, a lonesome sound that filled my ear. “Promise me. I’ll be there in three minutes.”

“You don’t really have to,” he started.

But I was already pulling up my jeans, stepping into my sneakers as I zipped up the pants. “I’m on my way.”

His dorm was on the opposite side of campus, but there was no one out that early and I cut through the woods despite the late hour. When I passed the student union building, I broke into a run, sprinting the last few yards to the student apartments. He lived on the second floor; in the predawn silence that draped the campus, my footsteps rung out on the metal stairs like judgment. At his door, I hesitated, unwilling to pound against the wood and wake his roommates, but that wasn’t necessary—the knob turned in my hand, unlocked.

Inside, the living room was dark. The only light came from the small bulb above the oven; it spilled across the tiny kitchenette and splashed against the back of the sofa that separated one area from the other. Stepping inside the apartment, I eased the door shut behind me and waited a moment for my eyes to adjust to the scant light. The door to the first bedroom was closed; I crossed the length of the apartment and peered down the dark hall to see the other bedroom door also shut. He slept in that room, I knew, but I didn’t want to barge in there, not if his roommate were asleep. Would he have called from there?

A shuddery sigh behind me made me turn. There he lay on the floor of the living room, curled into a tight ball as if trying to protect himself from the rest of the world. His arms were clasped tight around legs folded against his chest, his head buried between his knees. Stepping around the sofa, I sank down to the floor, one hand reaching for him. “Hey there,” I breathed.

Beneath my hand, his bare arm was cold. His fingers had turned white where they gripped his elbows, as if he held on tighter than was necessary. With a sniffle, he raised his face toward mine and I saw the light from the stove shine in his dark eyes. “I can’t,” he sighed. “I just can’t.”

I didn’t ask for clarification. There on the coffee table behind me sat an open box of razor blades; I could see from the glimmer of metal inside the box that most of them were gone. Sure enough, a thin blade gleamed farther along the table, its sharp edge flecked with dark blood.

My heart jumped in my chest. Suddenly I was all over him, prying his hands from his elbows, unfurling his arms, stretching out his legs to search for where he might be bleeding. All I found were superficial cuts on his thumb and forefinger, already healing. As I scrutinized them, he explained, “I picked it up out of the box the wrong way. I didn’t mean…”

Before he could explain further, I caught him in a tight embrace and pulled his thin body against mine. After a moment’s hesitation, his arms encircled me, hugging me with a fierceness I’d never felt in him before. Into my shoulder, he whispered, “Sometimes I think no one cares.”

I leaned back so I could look at him. Was he serious? He couldn’t seem to meet my gaze. “You had asked why I did it,” he said. “Remember?”

With a nod, I encouraged him to continue. He glanced past me at the razor on the table, but I still held him tight, preventing him from reaching for the blade. “Tonight was just bad,” he admitted, his voice pouty, sulking, “in so many ways. I was lying in bed and all I could think about was no one gave a s**t about me, you know? No one would care if I.. I don’t know, if I wasn’t here anymore, no one would even notice.”

Dropping his gaze to my neck, he toyed with the collar of my jacket as if unable to look me in the eye. His chin crumpled and he blinked back tears he refused to give into. He seemed unable or unwilling to say any more.

I placed a finger under his chin and raised his face until he looked at me. At me. When I pressed my mouth to his, I tasted the salt of his tears. “I’d notice.” I murmured into him. “Don’t I count?”

His answer was in his hungry kiss. I gave myself over to him, hands and lips claiming every inch of his beautiful, damaged body as I struggled to prove to him just how worthy he was of my love.

THE END