Just Another Lovesick Boy

Whatever Anya did after I left, it certainly seemed to cheer Eddy up a considerable amount. He was nowhere near skipping down the hallway or grinning like his usual self, but the tension that filled the air whenever he was in a room had disappeared. When Eddy returned back to Free’s hospital room, he returned alone. I knew better than to comment on it so I settled for giving him a small nod, which he casually returned as he lowered himself into the stiff chair next to mine. Eddy’s irritated glances to his father diminished to nothing. Though he still occasionally drifted off in the middle of sentences to stare over at Free, his worried expression was no longer filled with as much guilt as it previously had been. I wondered what Anya said to him to make him relax so much and why she did not come to see Free. However, Anya’s noticeable absence did not seem to bother Eddy at all.

I was surprised when Eddy asked to sleep on a small mattress on the floor instead of with me on my bed that night. Eddy had a tendency to cling and a body temperature higher than normal so I accepted his request with no argument. He made no comment about his new sleeping location until the weekend. I was dozing off lightly when I heard him quietly say my name.

“Yeah, man?” I said in a thick voice through my sleep.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you were asleep,” he quickly retracted. “Never mind, go back to bed.”

“Nope, you got me now. What’s up?”

“It’s nothing. I just…” Eddy trailed off lightly. I remained silent and patiently waited for him to continue. In the week since the accident, Eddy had a tendency to suddenly cut off his sentences before resuming them a moment later. “I really like Anya.”

“I know. She knows. Everyone knows.”

There was a brief pause before he hesitantly murmured, “I don’t think I knew exactly how much I liked her, though.”

My eyebrows furrowed together before I asked, “What do you mean?”

“You know me, man,” he sighed. “If I even remotely like a girl, I’ll tell her and I’ll ask her out and we’ll be together and it’ll be fun and then we get bored and then it ends. But then Anya comes along and it’s like I don’t know what to do. I don’t ever want to get bored with her.”

“I think you two are too different for you to ever get bored of each other,” I said.

“And then I think about that and I wonder if she’ll even like me because I’m so fucking weird,” he continued.

“Eddy, no. She’s just as fucked up as you are. If you haven’t noticed, she laughs at the same weird shit as you. Your little Brit is hiding some freakiness under all her polite manners and shyness.”

“She is great, isn’t she?” Eddy sighed happily.

“You’re both crazy,” I whisper offhandedly.

“I guess with Anya,” Eddy carried on, “I want to be happy with her the way you are with Lee. Or the way Jack is with Cecilia or the way my mom and dad were.”

What could I possibly say to that? That if he just asked her out, she would say yes and they would live happily ever after? I had no idea how Anya really felt about Eddy, even if I had more than hints and suspicions that she liked him back. Even if she did feel some sort of affection for my best friend, there was no possible way to know for sure that they would be happy together for very long. I mean, wasn’t that the point of liking somebody and coming to love them: to not know you’ll be happy together and risking the chance anyway? If that wasn’t the point, what the fuck was I doing?

I turned my head away from Eddy to look out the window. The moon wasn’t visible from my angle but from where I was lying, I could see the small particles in my room float innocently in the rays of the moonlight. My hand lifted up to sway back and forth in the light of the moon, as if the light was something I could actually touch. Why is it that I was always so obsessed with things that there were always simply there but never actually attainable?

“Is happiness just an illusion?” Eddy’s soft voice seemed to echo throughout my room.

As one hand continued to lazily sway in the moonlight, my other ran over the fleece blanket that covered my waist. During most of the year, it was too hot to sleep in anything other than cotton but I could never actually sleep comfortably without my fleece blanket. I couldn’t even remember where the hell I bought it or if someone gave it to me. All I know was that sleep wasn’t possible without it.

My hand slowly came to a standstill as I gave the rays of moonlight one last smile before I closed my eyes. With a final stretch, I winced as I felt the notches in my back give a small pop. As I settled into my mattress, I could feel my breathing slow down and deepen. Eddy didn’t seem to be falling asleep as easily as I was but I couldn’t bring myself to stay awake any longer.

“I like illusions,” I mumbled sleepily.

My blankets never felt so soft before.