I place a bowl of popcorn and a big glass of red wine on the club table, then sit on the old familiar sofa. I’ve always known this moment would come eventually, but I wasn’t expecting it before my thirties. Yet here I am at twenty-seven, watching TV alone on a Saturday night because I have no one to meet. If Mom wasn’t on call, I’d be watching TV with her.
Tonight was supposed to be a house party with frozen pizzas, long-forgotten drinking games and chatting with my friends. But they all seem to have moved on with their lives while I was away, and nobody had the time to welcome me home properly. Next weekend, a couple of them wrote noncommittally. So, I had to settle for the next best thing – wallowing in self-pity like they do in the movies. But even that didn’t go as planned because there’s no ice cream in the house.
Twenty minutes into Love Actually and halfway through my glass of wine, the doorbell rings. I instantly start regretting inviting anyone over. Who could it be, and why are they showing up unannounced? Maybe Chiara had another fight with Denis and came here to cry now that I’m back and she can do it in person. With a sigh, I get up and open the door.
When I see him, thoughts of my fluffy purple pajamas and the Korean face-mask I’m wearing flood my mind, and I can’t bring myself to say hi. I just stare at him.
“Hey,” he chirps, waving at me.
“What are you doing here?” I finally manage to say.
“You invited me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You wrote in the group!”
“Yes, but I was aiming at people I’ve actually seen lately. I haven’t seen you in like a year.”
“No, it can’t be that long.”
“The last time I saw you was last Christmas, Milo.”
“Damn.”
Neither of us says anything for a while.
“Are you going to let me in?” he asks.
“Fine. Come in, I’ll change.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do. I can’t wear pajamas in front of strangers.”
He snorts and walks through the front door, heading straight towards me. Before I can protest, he wraps his arms around me. I can feel my cold, wet mask sticking to his cheek.
“That’s gross,” he laughs as he finally lets go of me, wiping his face, “Can you get me one?”
“One what, Korean face mask?” I ask, following him to the living room.
“No, thanks, I meant a glass of wine,” he says, pointing at mine, now abandoned on the club table, “And a lighter?”
I roll my eyes.
“I’ll be right back.”
I remove the mask and change into my favorite jeans and a red sweater, then let my long brown hair loose and comb it. Thankfully, I washed it earlier. I apply some light makeup, the kind that makes you look better but that straight guys never notice.
“So, you still smoke?” I ask when I return.
“Yeah, but mainly weed. I quit tobacco.”
“Good for you,” I say as I walk towards the kitchen.
“Are you mad at me?” he asks as he appears behind me.
“Are you following me?”
“I’m just trying to talk,” he says, raising his hands.
“We can do that in the living room,” I hiss, grabbing the bottle of wine and another glass.
“How about that lighter?” he asks as we sit on the sofa.
I sigh and get up again to get the stupid lighter and an ashtray. Milo grabs both with a quiet “thank you” and pulls a rolled joint from his jacket pocket. Then he finally takes the jacket off and lights the joint. After a few puffs, he offers it to me.
“No, thanks,” I say.
“Did you stop?”
“I never really started.”
“You used to smoke all the time.”
“Only with you.”
“You must’ve spent lots of time with me then,” he says with a grin.
“You’re an idiot.”
“Okay, so why are you mad at me? I thought we were doing great, being friends and all.”
“Oh, we were. But friends actually see and talk to each other, you know?”
“But you moved abroad! Again.”
“There’s internet in Dublin.”
“Yeah… Aurora, I’m sorry. I’ve just been going through something.”
“You mean your relationship with a minor?”
“Laura is almost nineteen now.”
“Oh, is she? Did you wait until her eighteenth birthday before you fucked her?”
“Screw you,” he laughs, “Anyway, we’re not together anymore. We just, you know, see each other occasionally”.
“So, what are you, fuck buddies?”
“I guess. But we’re not really friends, we don’t talk much.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“We talked a lot, you and me, you can’t say we didn’t.”
“Maybe we did, but we certainly don’t now.”
“Well, what do you want from me? You have a boyfriend.”
“So? Does that mean I can’t talk to my old friends?”
“I’m not just an old friend.”
“Whatever. What is it then if it isn’t Laura? Having trouble with the police?”
“No, why would you say that?”
“Because I heard you’re still dealing.”
“I’m only selling weed to friends occasionally, from my own garden. It’s harmless.”
“And illegal. You’ll be in trouble if the police find it.”
“I live in the middle of nowhere!”
“Maybe Laura will tell them.”
“Are you jealous or something?”
“Of you fucking an 18-year-old? No, Milo. I’m not.”
We’re silent again, and for some reason, my mind drifts back to the first time I saw him. He was smoking a joint in front of an abandoned factory turned squat, a hangout for the underground kids in our town. It was my first time there, and I was looking for the entrance.
“Want some?” he asked. I couldn’t see who it was in the dark, and his voice didn’t sound familiar.
“No, thanks. Is this the entrance?”
“It is. The entrance fee is fifteen euros.”
“What? I heard it was whatever you wanted to pay.”
“You heard wrong, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend, and I don’t believe you,” I said, trying to walk past him, but he blocked my way. The weak light above us finally enabled me to see his face. Sharp cheekbones, green eyes and messy light brown hair. He was about ten centimeters taller than me, but his broad shoulders made him look bigger.
“Stop bothering her, Milo.”
I looked up and saw my friend Lio standing at the door, waving at me to come in.
“So, he’s not the ticket boy?” I asked.
“No, he’s just a jerk.”
Gorgeous, though, I thought.
Milo found me later that night and apologized, even though it was obvious from his laughter that he didn’t feel sorry about it at all. He opened a bottle of white wine, which he said he had stolen from the improvised bar, and offered me a glass. I accepted it, and we spent hours talking about my high school and his, and which universities we were going to attend next year. I said I wanted to study journalism, and he wanted psychology, but his grades were too low, so he was probably going to end up studying sociology or philosophy.
When all my friends had left, he offered to walk me home. He asked for my Facebook username and said we should meet sometime. After we had said goodbye and I was about to turn around to enter my building, he reached for my shoulder. He stared at me for a moment, his hand firmly gripping it, and then he leaned down and kissed me. It wasn’t my first kiss, of course, but it was the first one that felt real and not like a teenage game of exchanging saliva. His hands found my lower back and mine wrapped around his neck. I was standing on my fingertips, my body relying on his for support.
We stopped when a dog across the street started barking. Milo pulled away and smiled at me.
“That was your entrance fee,” he said. Then he turned around and walked away.
“There’s no fee!” I yelled after him.
I walked up the stairs to my apartment half-dazed, thinking that this was the beginning of something big, maybe even my first love story. Oh, how wrong I was.
“Do you want popcorn?” I ask, mostly just to say something. I burnt more than half of the previous batch and ate most of what was left.
He shrugs, and I get up and go to the kitchen again, happy to have an excuse to get away from him. I lean on the counter next to the microwave, counting the seconds between the popping sounds – my mom always says they’re done when you can count to three.
“I was on antidepressants. That’s why I didn’t answer any of your messages.”
I turn around. He’s standing next to the small kitchen table, looking at the microwave.
“Why were you on antidepressants?” I ask.
“Because I was depressed.”
“Why? How bad was it?”
“Well, there were a few suicidal thoughts and all that.”
“Why?” I ask again, my grip tightening on the counter behind me.
“There isn’t always a reason for it, you know.”
“But was there one for you?”
“A few, I guess.”
I look at him expectantly.
“Mostly, I just felt lonely, like I didn’t have any friends anymore. And like I wasn’t really doing anything with my life. Sure, I had a job and went to parties, but … I don’t know. It all just started feeling so empty, you know. With my mom moving to Italy and my dad being in the apartment in the center all the time. It was supposed to be because of work, but I knew it was to avoid me too. It was just weird after she left, like we didn’t have anything to say to each other anymore. And I work from home now, so sometimes I wouldn’t see anyone for a whole week. Until the next party, you know. And then the parties just stopped making sense. I realized that nobody really cared if I was there or not, I was just the guy bringing the drugs. And I didn’t care about them either. So eventually, I stopped going to parties, and then I really didn’t see anyone anymore. And one day when I was walking home from the store, I realized that I was thinking about how it would be if I just stepped on the road and let a truck run me over. I imagined how the eggs I had just bought would fly around. I was kind of standing on the sidewalk, looking for an appropriate vehicle. But then I thought of my mom, of her face when she’d find out. So, I got help.”
When he finishes talking, he’s still staring at the microwave, and I still haven’t said anything. It feels like my brain is frozen, and so is my body. I want to hug him, make sure he’s really still here, bury my face into his neck and feel his shoulder press against my cheek. But I can’t move. I just stand there, clutching the counter.
“I think I started regretting dropping out of uni. And changing our group of friends for those party people. I just felt like everyone in our group was getting so old and boring and nobody ever wanted to hang out anymore. And I felt like such a loser, still living with my parents, with Ani and Tina moving in together and Chiara and Denis getting married and you moving to Ireland to your boyfriend … I enjoyed partying and being with all those people, they seemed so interesting, and I had a great time for a while. But then I once went to an after-party without attending the event that took place before, completely sober, and … it was brutal. Everybody seemed to be out of their fucking minds. Somebody was having sex on the bench outside the rented cottage, a guy who has two children with someone else. I realized that they’re just a bunch of drug addicts who have all sorts of issues, and the drugs are just a fucking symptom. And I was one of them, obviously, the worst of all, probably, providing them with the shit. I think I hadn’t been enjoying it all that much for a while, but that morning it just hit me. It all stopped making sense, and I missed my old life. My friends, being a student, my parents still being married … Everything was so nice and normal just a couple of years back. But by then everything had changed, I couldn’t get any of it back anymore. I felt like I didn’t have anyone to talk to. My mom was gone, Laura was gone, you were gone… you all left.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” I finally manage to say. My voice comes out raspy, almost broken.
He shrugs and says: “I think we burned the popcorn.”
I glance at the now silent microwave, the smell of burnt popcorn once again emanating from it. Then I walk past him and back to the living room, wiping my eyes furiously. I can’t help feeling hurt because he didn’t feel like he could talk to me. When I’m with him, I can never get rid of the feeling that he’s in charge and that I’m helpless, just waiting to be refused again.
I take a breath and remind myself of Milo standing on that road, fantasizing about jumping under a truck. This isn’t about me at all. I lean on the dining table, and he comes to stand in front of me, arms crossed. He takes a deep breath.
“I didn’t know what to say to you. I was in a bad state and felt like nobody liked or loved me. I also didn’t think you even wanted to hear from me. You seemed so happy in your new relationship, why would you want to talk to me after how I ended things and how I didn’t know how to be friends with you after…”
I know we both think of it, the night he invited me to the pub we all used to hang out at all the time. I actually thought it might be a date, and fantasized about him finally getting serious after years of on and off. We were never officially together, but at times I couldn’t differentiate a romantic relationship from what we were doing. Sometimes there were dinners in new restaurants and glasses of wine in bars overlooking the sea. Flowers for Women’s Day and little souvenirs from trips, like a Harry Potter T-shirt or tiny flower-shaped earrings. On other occasions, and there were more of those, I felt like an object, one he cared about and often used, but still an object. He was around, but I couldn’t rely on him for anything other than sex. Sometimes, he wouldn’t even have time for me when I made it clear it was all I wanted. It went on for too many years despite me eloping abroad whenever I could to clear my head, to forget him, to move on. But that night he did it for me – he ended it by announcing that he had a serious girlfriend, who was still in high school. We had slept together just about two weeks before that. I wondered how it could have gone from sex with me to a serious relationship with a teenage girl so quickly. A few weeks later, I went abroad again. And a few weeks after that, I met Sean.
“You had no idea about my relationship because you never asked,” I say.
“Yes, I did. You told me that you met when you were volunteering in Mexico and that he was Irish. And then you moved to Ireland to be with him.”
“Yeah, a year ago.”
I think of the quickly organized goodbye drink with my friends, during which I told Milo and the rest of them that I was leaving. He was shocked, I’ll give him that, and he walked me home. He hugged me for what felt like several long minutes, and I made him promise to stay in touch, which, of course, he didn’t.
“So, you’re not happy or what?” he asked.
“Sean dumped me.”
“What, when?”
“Last month.”
“Why?”
“He’s eight years older than me. He wanted a house and marriage and kids, and I wanted to travel and go to concerts and do a yoga course. He didn’t love me enough to wait. And I guess I didn’t love him enough to give him what he wanted.”
Milo squeezes my shoulder, immediately taking me back to that night, now almost ten years ago, when we kissed for the first time.
“So, this is why you’re back?”
“Yeah. I hated my job, so there was no point in staying.”
“I’m sorry he dumped you,” he says, releasing my shoulder.
“Why did Laura dump you?”
“Because I kissed someone else at a party. But also, because she met someone at uni.”
I nod and let a few delayed, Saun-related tears slide down my cheeks and fall on my sweater. He slides his thumb across my left cheek, catching some of them.
“I lied before,” he says, “I haven’t seen Laura in months. We’re not fuck buddies or anything else. I… I don’t even know why I said that.”
I finally wrap my arms around his neck and pull him to me. He hugs me back, and we stand like that for a while.
“I’m sorry you’re depressed,” I whisper, gently pulling back so I can see his face again. His hands are still resting on the small of my back.
“Oh, it’s alright. I’m still seeing a shrink, but the pills did their job, so I’m out of the woods.”
“You always did well with drugs,” I say, smiling at him. He returns it.
“Do you want to be friends again?” he asks.
“Yeah. But just friends.”
“No benefits?”
“None.”
“So, if I kiss you now, will you push me away?”
“Obviously,” I say.
He kisses me. I don’t push him away.
