Drop Dead.

He lived in the apartment building across the way from mine. Every time I went outside to water my plants or smoke a cigarette, he was there, sitting in his lawn chair with his left leg draped over his right. It was always in that fashion, never the other way around. As a matter of fact, he seemed to have a collection of certain fashions, like his hair, such a dark shade of brown, was never too messy and his jeans were never too loose. They fit his thin legs like a second skin, unlike his shirts that always seemed to be a size or two too large. They hung off him like tunics and often showed off his skinny arms, so covered in tattoos that it seemed as if he didn’t have any skin to begin with. He even had his knuckles tattooed, the words ‘drop dead’ inked across them. I caught a glimpse of them as we passed each other in the parking garage – he was carrying in his groceries, I was leaving for work.

I was the barista of one of the most popular cafés in Sheffield. The job was handed to me when I walked in for a latte and a ‘help wanted’ sign was placed out front. Taking one look at me prior to handing in the application, the supposed owner of the place seemed to know that I was destined for this job. In a way, I was, being faster than my co-workers at preparing orders and cleaning the equipment at closing time. I’d taken the honor of employee-of-the-month for my own three months in a row, also naming myself the target of my co-workers’ envy. Each glance made me suppress a sigh, having no control over my good work habits and politeness.

He came into the café once or twice a week, always ordering a large black coffee. No sugar, no cream, no flavor – just black. Every time I wanted to ask him why he didn’t at least get creamer, but then I’d look at his eyes and understand why he wanted it black, even at four in the afternoon. He always looked exhausted, as if all he did the night before instead of sleep was toss and turn. It was almost agonizing to watch him yawn in the corner and rub the exhaustion out of his eyes. He looked so worn out and I wondered just what he did at night to make him so.

I remember the day I moved in. As I was carting boxes to and fro, he and his friends were gathered by his car in the parking garage, smoking a blunt. I thought it was rather stupid to be smoking out in public, but apparently, he thought otherwise. I almost admired his obvious bad-boy reputation – almost. On the one hand, his disregard for rules made him seem that much more intriguing. On the other hand, such disregard also meant that he was trouble, and I always stayed out of and away from trouble. Trouble had always been off-limits.

When I reached middle school, before I moved across the Atlantic, the people I was friends with wanted to go spray-paint the assistant principal’s house with vulgar, hateful messages. Unlike them, who hated Mrs. Dubois with a fiery passion, I didn’t mind her. She was never anything but homely and polite to me, but maybe that was because I never did anything to bring out the fire-breathing dragon in her – that had been her nickname, after all. So instead of joining the group in vandalizing her home, I locked myself in my room and watched from my window as they smashed her windows – she’d lived behind me my entire life – and wrote spiteful messages on her garage door. When she came home, she seemed to know exactly who’d done it and phoned the police. I watched them interrogate her as she grew teary-eyed and I felt bad for the poor woman. She’d been doing her job; it wasn’t as if she was purposely punishing these kids. They’d earned the punishment. I found out later in that week that my “friends” had been caught and were being prosecuted and fined a decent amount of money for their crime. I never sat with them at lunch again.

In high school, I became friends with this girl named Sydney and her group of friends, who reminded me greatly of the kids I knew back in middle school. In fact, they were exactly like them, though older and much stupider. They wanted to get high behind the bleachers by the football stadium and asked me if I was in. No, I was not in, and I politely declined, forcing a lie that I had to work. I went straight home and locked myself in my room. The next day, Sydney and her friends weren’t at lunch and when I asked around, some boy named Mike told me that Sydney and her posse had been caught not only smoking, but shooting up, behind the bleachers and had spent the night in a jail cell. I never heard, nor saw, Sydney or her friends again. I wasn’t exactly complaining about that fact.

Like so many times I’d skipped out on getting into trouble, the minute I saw him I flushed in embarrassment, from what exactly I wasn’t sure, and I locked myself in my room, eyeing him from my bedroom window as he climbed the outside stairs to his third-floor apartment. He had apparently sensed that someone was watching him because in the split second I took to blink, his eyes connected with mine and everything just stopped. My heart rate, my breathing. I even felt like I’d snap a limb if I moved, so I didn’t. And he just stared right back at me until something seemed to click, and he smirked the tiniest grin, so small I was shocked I’d even seen it. But I did and the next time I blinked, his head was down and he was chugging full-force up the steps. I remember sitting back on my heels and blowing out a sigh, even going so far to mutter a small, “Wow.”