Bones

For whatever we lose
(a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves
we find in the sea.
- E.E. Cummings

Jamie is admitted to the general psychiatric ward on a Saturday; it’s the third time Jamie has been admitted to this hospital, the second time to this ward. This time around doesn’t start out as bad as the previous times Jamie’s been here, mostly because he doesn’t resist this time; he’s been defeated and he knows it. He patiently allows the nurse to document every birthmark, mole, scratch, scrape, and scar on his body. He lists his medications, his diagnoses, his low weight and his high weight. He lists his previous admissions, the hospitals he was in, and what he was there for. The hospital is nice, and Jamie even vaguely remembers a few of the nurse’s faces, although he doubts they remember him. Jamie’s mom and Nick stay until he’s all checked in, and then leave awkwardly to let Jamie get settled in (Jamie knows they left just because they didn’t want to be around him, because they don’t know what to say but really who would). The ward he’s on is relatively small; they have group therapy once a day and individual therapy every other day. Jamie has nutritional counseling and interpersonal therapy twice a week, art therapy three times a week, yoga every day. They give him a schedule of activities and therapies he’s supposed to participate in, and it makes Jamie feel like he’s in school again. The rest of his time is spent doing a whole lot of nothing. But the facility has a garden, and Jamie sits there during free time, swimming in his large sweaters and gnawing at his fingernails until they bleed.

Nick brings him books, and he sits with Jamie while Jamie hugs himself and stares at the wall. They don’t talk, not really.

Jamie’s mom comes every day for visitation. She tries to talk to him about the living situation that needs to be put in place for when he’s released. She doesn’t think Jamie should go back to living with Nick, and Jamie really doesn’t either but there’s no way in hell he’s going to live with his mom. Jamie doesn’t even know if Nick will allow him back after all the shit Jamie’s put him through. The doctors talk to him about relapse plans and make him fill out crisis worksheets and give him the numbers of emergency centers. They weigh him daily to make sure he’s gaining; they check his arms and thighs and stomach and jot down notes to compare any new bruises and contusions. The hospital food makes him sick, literally. His body can’t handle it; soup and yogurt and cinnamon toast is all he can take. They say it will get better, that soon the food won’t make him as sick. Jamie just nods and agrees and internally strangles them.

Jamie’s dad shows up on a Tuesday. His dad talks and talks and talks and Jamie listens to his rant on depression and positive thinking and all that the Secret type bullshit. His dad only stays for an hour, and when he asks Jamie if he wants to come live with him after he’s released Jamie starts to cry, and really, that’s enough of an answer. His dad leaves, and he doesn’t call or come to visit again.

Jamie purges that night. Well he tries to anyways, but the one hour supervision after meals is kind of a bitch. He scratches the skin stretched tight over his hip bones until there’s small, jagged, weeping scratches.

Jamie feels like he’s being slowly lobotomized. The Seroquel and Prozac make him feel like a zombie, so he tongues them; it seems like they change the dosage of his meds every day. He has to ask for cough drops every couple hours because his throat still hurts like fucking hell from the tube that was shoved down it. The nurses forget a lot, and Jamie feels too embarrassed to ask for them repeatedly.

By the third week Jamie is bored out of his mind. So he asks his mom to bring him something he never thought he’d ask for. Knitting needles and yarn.

Of course, the nurses keep the needles in the lockers behind the nurse’s station and he can only have them with supervision. Jamie discovers that he likes knitting. It calms him, helps him focus on something. Instead of counting calories he starts counting stitches and rows. Jamie feels an odd sort of delight from the shitty scarves and hats he learns to make. He likes that he’s producing something, and that he can give those creations to other people, and that the things he knits might make other people happy.



Jamie counts the days of his recovery by his receding ability to wrap his fingers around his thighs, by how much more difficult it becomes to finger the notches on his spine. He cries a lot now.

He feels like he’s dying. Like he’s being fed to death. He wants to die more and more every day, but he makes no attempts to do it himself, and he honestly doesn’t know why not. He wants to die, for it to stop, but he can’t bring himself to act on any of the urges. Even the ones to cut his food into ninety-nine little pieces, to shove his fingers down his throat to pull his stomach up through his lungs, to cut himself open and let his bones free of the heavy weight of his skin – to free himself of the heavy weight of living.



The hospital really isn’t as bad as Jamie remembers it being. It’s just boring. The fact that they send him to an open ward surprises him, but given that the main reason for his admission this time is a suicide attempt it really shouldn’t. The reason for the other patients’ hospitalizations ranges greatly, and Jamie finds some sense of comfort in that. He’s not surrounded by a highly female population (because females have always scared him a little bit, not because they’re women, but because whenever a bunch of women are thrown together in a small area it’s like a breeding ground for problems) like before, when he was admitted for his eating disorder. The only sense of competition in this ward is who is sicker than who.

But that’s something else that he kind of likes. In the hospital no one has any qualms about honesty. Everyone is there for a reason – they’re all fucked up. And it’s nice to know that Jamie isn’t the only fucked up person in the world. He doesn’t feel quite as lonely.

The other thing that Jamie likes about the hospital is that it’s perfectly acceptable (not to mention normal for all the patients) to only wear socks or slippers everywhere. It’s not like Jamie had really worn shoes a lot before anyways, being the veritable hermit that he is. Jamie lives in sweatpants and baggy t-shirts and cardigans – which, again, not so different from what he wore at home. But he somehow feels less self-conscious. He knows no one’s judging him for how he looks – or, rather, what he wears (he knows those judgmental stares when he sees them from the other patients, the ones that scream who the fuck let the skeleton out of the closet; but he also knows the looks of envy and maybe even jealousy from the other patients there for eating disorders). And as messed up as it is the latter of those looks make him feel a little proud, a little conceited, a little delighted, if you will. I’m sicker than you bitches, so suck it. And Jamie knows it’s wrong, knows that pride is misplaced and wrong, and that those are thoughts he should not be having, but he can’t help it.

It gives him a disgusting sense of self-confidence.

But then again, that’s why he’s currently a resident of a general psychiatric ward, tour of duty number five (maybe six, maybe four), new unit after new unit after new unit, in a life-long rotation of service.

Jamie is the sergeant major of the Skeleton Crew.



Jamie meets a nice boy named Luke on a Wednesday, four weeks into his hospital stay. It’s Luke’s first time in inpatient, and Jamie’s never met someone he’s ever felt more comfortable being with. Not even Laura before she lost her shit. And part of Jamie wonders if Luke is real or imaginary, because after the last few months of his life he feels it’s necessary to ask himself such questions. And isn’t that just a bit sad.

Luke’s there because he had a manic episode coming off of a two week meth binge. It was either jail or hospitalization and Luke took the “easy” route, as he puts it. Luke’s a lot more open about his drug problem than Jamie would expect, and he opens up completely about it during the first group session they have together. Luke doesn’t remember what happened for most of the time; he says he remembers feeling the most amazing he’s ever felt in his entire life. But, really, isn’t that what drug addicts spend most of their life doing? Chasing that first high until they eventually kill themselves trying to reach that original state of euphoria? Well, Luke managed it, somehow. Luke says it was like he was in a different world, like he was opened up to all the secrets of the universe. He says it was the most sober and clear headed he had ever felt. And then the real binge started, and he says it was like he went to sleep with intermittent nightmares (i.e., reality) and woke up fifteen days later with sunken eyes, a figure even Jamie would find stomach churning, and mysterious burn marks on his hands and torso. He was also down £950. And, apparently, Luke made a few new friends during his two week blackout. He says that he found out later that sometime during the binge he had decided that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ, and he even gathered a group of disciples. When he woke up (when the money ran out), there were people he’d never seen in his house, he was hallucinating, hearing people that weren’t there. Except some of the people actually were there, and Luke thought that they were trying to kill him – his disciples were trying to kill him. So, he retaliated. He says that all he remembers is that he found his gun and started screaming at the people in his house, waving the gun around wildly and chasing them out. He says he was screaming so rabidly and loud that he was nearly foaming at the mouth, spitting saliva with every consonant he spoke. Luke says that once he chased all the people out of his house he started shooting into the air, and he says that even after all the people had scattered he was still stomping back and forth across his front lawn, waving the gun around and screaming at people that weren’t there. He didn’t hear the infant crying from within his basement, didn’t hear the mother gasping as the life faded from her body, didn’t hear the sirens or see the lights in the distance. Just the taunts. Only the taunts, the smirks, the conceited laughs hidden behind high-class, old-money palms. Luke just screamed at people he wasn’t sure were there or not while firing his .22 Ruger into the air intermittently until he was out of bullets; this continued for about another twenty minutes until three squad cars sped onto his street, his driveway, and into the front lawn, completely surrounding his house. Luke recalls that the police officers had to tase him to get him down.

Luke was diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder, thrown some Lithium, and sent to the hospital for a thirty day round of inpatient to detox. Luke doesn’t necessarily look crazy, doesn’t look like the people in the anti-meth ads he’s seen. He’s tall, thin, blond – a little bit like Jamie, but also completely opposite of Jamie. Luke has a thick Glaswegian accent, so much so that it’s hard for Jamie to understand him at first when he speaks. Luke talks fast, pressured. He’s calm most of the time, but he rarely looks people directly in the eyes, and he fidgets almost constantly, chewing on his fingernails or scratching at his palms. He’s all lanky bones and too-long limbs and hollow eyes, and he’s the most skeleton-ish looking human Jamie has ever seen.

Jamie wonders, in his sicksicksick fucking twisted little mind, what meth is like. If it made Luke’s body fat drip from his bones, turned him into a skeleton. Jamie ponders the thought of trying meth, because Jesus, look at him. He is every goal Jamie has tried to ever reach.

Because Jamie is sick.

Because Jamie wants to be sick. He needs to be ill. Being ill is who Jamie is.



Jamie wants to talk to Luke, he really does. But he’s just so enamored with him that Jamie doesn’t know how to start a conversation with the other man. Whenever Jamie looks at Luke he feels a combination of waves of empathy, connection, and judgment. Jamie can’t help himself, but he looks down on Luke even though he doesn’t even know him. Because Luke is a fuckin’ tweaker. Because Luke is a skinnier than Jamie (maybe. Not really.) Because Luke has fucked his life up more than Jamie could even dream of doing to his own. Jamie yearns for that state of lost-ness in life. Because Luke is a drug addict.

But Jamie is an addict, too.

And all Jamie can think is:

How much do you weigh? What’s it like – what is meth like? How different is it from Adderall?

Do you miss it?

Because Jamie misses his Lucy, his Mary Jane, his Roxy, his sweet disposition. His reason for living, his reason for dying. But most of all Jamie misses his drug of choice.

Starvation.


Eventually, Luke talks to Jamie first. They become quick friends, since Luke is a talkative motherfucker. (And, really, Luke is the first person Jamie has legitimately felt comfortable calling a friend since She Who Must Not Be Named, but that isn’t saying a whole lot, now is it?) Jamie mostly just…

Sits there.

And listens.

Jamie listens to Luke’s stories, and most of them he doesn’t believe, but some of them are just so vivid with detail and memories that he can’t help but put his faith in Luke.

One day Jamie asks Luke what meth is like compared to Adderall. Because Jamie has taken a lot of Adderall in his day. When he was 15, Jamie added orange and white capsules full of amphetamine beads to his rainbow of pills after he complained to his psychiatrist about not being able to concentrate in school (it was actually just the depression slowly stealing his life-force one smile at a time, no big deal).

As soon as the question comes out of his mouth Jamie’s heart starts to race. He knows he shouldn’t have asked such a question, he knows he wouldn’t want to be asked such a question. For a moment Luke’s face is totally stoic – he doesn’t move, he doesn’t breathe. He just sits there silently leaning forward, elbows on his knees and fingers loosely woven together.

Fuck.

Jamie starts to apologize, but before he can get himself to string together a series of coherent syllables that when combined form words with a sense of apology behind them, Luke speaks.

“Adderall is a light bulb going off inside your brain. Meth is the sun,” Luke says, not once glancing away from the tiles of the common room floor as he says it. Luke is quiet for a moment as Jamie soaks up the weight of the words that just came out of Luke’s mouth. And then, Luke says, “Do you want to hear about it? What meth is like?”

And Jamie is genuinely curious. Because he’s only ever heard about meth, seen the exaggerations in the media and the worst-case-scenario documentaries and photos of addicts, the anti-drug PSA’s. Jamie is fully aware of the fact that meth is considered an epidemic in parts of Asia, that the Czech Republic has had major problems with the drug. But Jamie finds it odd that the drug doesn’t have the same hold here as it does there. Jamie thinks of meth as a dirty little secret – because Jamie has been offered a lot of drugs in the past, but he’s never been offered meth.

So, Jamie reluctantly nods his head in response to Luke’s question. Because, really, curiosity never killed the cat – what killed the cat was the burden of truth, of grief, of the horrid melancholic sense of nothingness that comes with truth.

Luke tells Jamie what meth is like. He tells him about the euphoria, the happy emptiness, the freedom. Luke says that he tried it for the first time when he was 18, when he was into going out to clubs and dancing all night. It started as a few bumps here and there, and then it snowballed from there. Luke talks about how fucking impossible it was to find meth where he’s originally from. How he’d mass buy it from dealers when word got to him that someone had been able to smuggle it across the border or had learned how to cook a decent recipe. Luke tells Jamie that when he found a reliable dealer is when his once-in-a-while recreational club use spiraled into every-day recreational use.

Luke also tells Jamie about the fucking emptiness and hatred and sadness and self-loathing that comes with a crash. Luke talks about how meth completely depletes the dopamine in your brain, and how he’d feel absolutely hopeless and sad after a binge, that the only thing that ever seemed to make him feel better was more meth.

Luke tells Jamie about the time he ground his teeth against the metal of his father’s shotgun, how Luke tasted metal and gunpowder in his mouth. Luke tells Jamie about the time(s) he wrapped his lips around his father’s shotgun and wept, crying out apologies and pleas to someone to please please make it stop.

Jamie decides then and there that he will never ever romanticize or consider trying meth again, right after he looks Luke in the eyes, sees the emptiness, the darkness, the need and the want. The Devil. Lucifer, he’s in Luke’s eyes. Luke’s dead.

Jamie cries that night, the night that Luke tells him those stories. Because he never wants to get there

But he knows he has already far surpassed that level of lost-ness.

And Jamie weeps for himself. He weeps for his mother, his father, and most of all Jamie weeps for Nick, for the things he’s done to him, for the things he’s made Nick suffer through. And Jamie makes a promise to himself, that he won’t hit bottom like Luke (again). Jamie will get better. He makes a promise to himself to find his way when he is lost, to find his path.

To find his way back to Nick, whether it may fork or end.

Because, no matter what, Jamie knows (sadly) that Nick will always be waiting for him wherever his path may lead.

He doesn’t really want to be lost anymore. He wants to find his way back.



Jamie struggles, still. And he keeps some (a lot) of it from his psychiatrist, Deanna, as well as from everyone else he encounters. He admits that after a while the medication does in fact begin to help, but he can’t completely bleach his brain – the thoughts are still there, no matter how much he tries to ignore them.

On day 35 of Inpatient Care Round Bazillion, Jamie cries at his bi-weekly weigh-in. He’s up sixteen fucking pounds since he was admitted, and he just can’t help it. He was so close and now all that hard work is completely fucking gone. One-oh-six; that’s the true number of the Beast.

The nurse, Katie, looks at him with concern, worried pity apparent in her eyes. She asks, “What’s wrong? This is good news.” Jamie just continues to cry, and she squeezes his shoulder in the most professional manner of reassurance she can give. Jamie likes Katie. She doesn’t ever bullshit him or beat around the bush or treat him like a child. She acts like she genuinely cares, and Jamie finds that admirable.

Later that day at his check-in with Deanna, Jamie talks to her about what happened at his weigh-in that morning.

“It’s like there’s a war going on inside my head. I want to get better, I honestly do. But I want this, whatever this is. This disorder. I’ve had it for nearly half my life, it’s mine and mine alone. It’s the one thing in my life that I have total and absolute control over. I don’t know how to not be sick.”

Deanna sits there for a moment, looking at Jamie.

“Do you know why this it?” she asks, pausing for a moment so Jamie can shake his head no.

“Being sick is what you know, Jamie. As out of control as your eating disorder is, it’s still control in your mind. Life beyond it isn’t as simple. It’s going to be terrifying. You’re going to make mistakes; you’re going to screw-up sometimes. But that’s okay. That’s how recovery works. You may not always know the right thing to do, but you can take the lessons and coping skills you’re learning here and past experiences and apply them to a situation when you don’t know what to do. You may not know the exact right thing to do, but you’ll know what the wrong thing to do is; all you need to do is consider the wrong thing and do the exact opposite of that. You won’t get better unless you put forth the effort to.”

Deanna hit the nail on the head, and Jamie doesn’t quite know how to respond. Instead, Jamie looks down, rubs his thumbs together through the sleeves of his sweater. It makes his chest tighten in terror the same way it did when his English teacher (almost) caught him cheating during a final in his last year of school. His first instinct is to lie through his teeth, but after a moment of thought he realizes that lying isn’t going to help anything.

“You’re right. This is all about control, for me. It’s always been about control. It started when I got depressed, when I was a lot younger. Then it spiraled when I met Laura – I’ve told you about Laura,” Jamie glances up at Deanna, and she nods her head in recognition, but she stays silent, encouraging him to continue. “And then, after that, it was just how I lived. It’s never really been about weight. I mean it has, but not also not really. It’s been about wanting to be invisible, about wanting to disappear. Completely. And that’s one of the hardest parts about all of this, about trying to get better. Because control has been my life. As sad as it is to say it, I feel like my eating disorder gave me a purpose in life, even if that purpose was to starve myself and disappear. Without this disorder I don’t know what I am. I don’t know who I am. Without this disorder I don’t know anything. If I get better what am I supposed to do with myself?” Jamie asks the last question earnestly looking for an answer, because he sure as hell doesn’t have one.

“Live, Jamie. That’s what you’re going to do: live. You’re just going to have to re-learn how to do it.”

Jamie really can’t argue with that. Because the answer is so simple, yet so complex, and as confused and scared as he is, he understands. He accepts it. And at least that’s a step in the right direction.



Nick brings Nilla to see Jamie, and Jamie cries and cries, wrapping the cat up in his arms and burying his face into her fur. That’s the day that they forgive each other, and it’s also the day that they forgive themselves. Nick forgives Jamie for all of the lies and the deceit and the acting, and he forgives him for the burden, for the pure millstone Jamie has been. But Nick forgives Jamie for being broken, a grudge Nick knows he should have let go of a long time ago. And Nick forgives Jamie for trying to kill himself in his bathroom, for the image of Jamie’s nearly lifeless body sprawled across the tiles; he forgives him for the sense of fear and sadness and loss and terror he gets whenever he steps foot into his apartment. Because Jamie almost died there, and that thought gives Nick a twisted feeling whenever it appears in his mind.

And Jamie… he doesn’t forgive Nick for anything. Because Nick has never harmed him in any way, he’s only tried to frantically help. But Jamie does let go of the lingering grudge he’s been holding against Nick for not letting him die. Jamie thinks that’s definitely progress, especially given the way he felt towards Nick when he was first admitted – spiteful, hurt, angry, betrayed. More importantly Jamie begins to forgive himself, and that albatross of regret and un-voiced apologies begins to lift.

It’s also the same day that the decision is made for Jamie to return to living with Nick when he is released. Jamie is thankfulregretfulworthlesssadhappynervousworthlessworthlessworthlessthankful. Jamie’s honestly surprised that Nick would even allow him to come back to live with him, but Nick also imparts some rules and regulations Jamie has to follow.

“You’re going to get a job. You’re never going to be able to get totally better until you can support yourself. You know it’s not about bills or anything – I just want you to do something, to have responsibility for something,” Nick states, leaning forward in his chair and clasping his hands together. Jamie simply nods in acknowledgement, and Nick continues speaking.

“You’re also going to participate in outpatient care and therapy. I know you already know about this and that it isn’t necessarily mandatory, but you’re going to do it whether you want to or not until they release you.” Jamie’s eyes shift downwards to his hands curled in Nilla’s fur. He nods in agreement again, albeit rather slowly.

When Nick gets ready to leave he hugs Jamie. He hugs Jamie so hard he thinks he might crush him, and Jamie clings to him, entwining his fingers in Nick’s hair and burying his face into his shoulder. They stay like that for a moment, because they both know that if things had gone a little differently this moment wouldn’t be happening. As Nick pulls away Jamie whispers in Nick’s ear.

“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you so much. I love you so much Nick.”

Jamie doesn’t explain for what, but the apology itself speaks volumes. Because Nick would give Jamie the world if he wanted it; Nick would travel to the ends of the earth for Jamie. And if that’s not what love is, it’s at least close enough.

Eventually Nick pulls away, and as he does so he smoothes back the stray strands that have fallen from Jamie’s bleach blond rat nest braid. “I love you, too,” he says, and kisses Jamie on the forehead.

Nick packs up Nilla and heads home, leaving Jamie to his own devices. And as Nick walks home he thinks that maybe they finally just had that pending talk he’s been meaning to have with Jamie for a while.



“The thoughts – the cravings, I don’t think they’ll ever really go away,” Luke says, pausing only to take a drag from his cigarette. He and Jamie are sitting together on one of the benches near the garden, each of them with a cigarette held loosely between lanky fingers. “I’m always going to want to be high. And yeah, I mean, I’ll still smoke weed, but that’s nothin’ – that’s natural, Mother Nature’s gift to humanity it is, truly. But I’m always going to have to fight. I’m never not going to be an addict. I’m just going to be an addict in recovery, y’know?”

Jamie thinks on Luke’s words for a couple moments, glances up at the sun high and bright in the sky, and then at the rows of flowers in the garden. Last week he and a girl named Sarah planted sunflowers near the end of the lot. (Jamie hopes they grow high and bright and yellow, and he hopes that during the day they reach for the sun, and at night sleep in the presence of the moon. He hopes they grow and grow and grow, he hopes the petals are the brightest most vibrant shades of yellow anyone has ever seen.)

“Yeah, actually. I know exactly what you mean, Luke.” Jamie drags the last hit of the cigarette, and as he stubs it out on the edge of the bench he glances sideways at Luke. And as out of place as it may be, Jamie smiles at him. It’s a big smile, one that makes the skin around his eyes crinkle and makes his dimples show. It’s a genuine smile – the first one in a long time – and just the thought of that makes Jamie inexplicably joyful.



After about two weeks in the hospital Jamie stops getting sick from eating real foods. He sees his nutritionist, Liz, twice a week, and at first – much to Jamie’s surprise – they start out at a mere 1000 calories a day when he’s admitted. It’s mostly liquids – protein shakes, fruit juices, Jell-O, broths and soups, yogurt, fruits and vegetables that can be pureed, and even light meats like chicken and turkey. Once Jamie’s body can handle real foods again they slowly start to increase his calorie intake, usually between 250 and 500 calories each meeting, and they start to work on a solid meal plan, one that he can use as a guideline once he’s out of the hospital. At first Liz wants Jamie to do an exchange meal plan, but Jamie literally laughs in her face. He tells her that the last time he was in the hospital the nutritionist tried to get him to do an exchange plan, and well, obviously that didn’t work. Jamie’s honest with her, and he lets Liz know that having to count calories and weigh the food he eats would just serve as a trigger, and he actually wants to get better this time. So they set out to set up a meal plan that works for Jamie – one with foods he used to actually eat and like, back before eating consisted of countingcountingcounting and cleangoodbad. It’s not easy, but Liz is patient with him and willing to work with him, and Jamie has a lot of respect for her because of that. Eventually they come up with a plan that they’re both satisfied with, and while just the thought of eating at least 3000 calories a day nearly sends Jamie into a total panic, he promises to do his best.

Even though Jamie has a vast knowledge of nutrition and food, they go over everything again and again – vegetables, fruits, proteins, carbs, fats, and dairy, the types of food in each group, why Jamie needs to eat baseline amounts of each food group every day, what they do for his body – and even though he’s relearning nearly everything, he doesn’t mind. Liz doesn’t chastise him, doesn’t treat him like he’s stupid or like he’s a child. She makes it clear to him that it’s okay to mess up sometimes – that it’s okay if there’s some days where he eat too little or too much. She even encourages him to indulge and eat junk food sometimes – “If you’re hungry and it tastes good, eat it,” she says. One of the things that Liz emphasizes the most is to not worry about specific calorie amounts – to eat when he’s hungry and to stop when he’s full. It’s takes a while for Jamie to adjust to this because hunger is who he is, he doesn’t know what it’s like to not be hungry anymore. But eventually his body starts to adjust and he learns to listen to what it’s telling him. Most of what she’s teaching him is supposed to be applied once he’s out of the hospital, but Jamie finds himself applying the things Liz has told him during meals and snacks. He actually also learns a few new things from Liz, too. Jamie had never understood before why food is pushed so hard on people when in inpatient, why the calorie counts are so high – he’s been forced to eat anywhere between 3000 to 8000 calories a day during his previous trips through hell – when the suggested caloric intake for a normal person is only around 2000. Liz explains it like this: the body needs energy, and it needs lots of it. She says that when you’re in recovery you have to eat enough foods to give yourself not only the energy you need to replenish fat tissue and repair your organs and bones, you have to be able to provide enough energy to help reverse the overwhelming psychological damage that self-induced starvation has caused. She says that’s why it’s so rare for people to be able to recover on their own; while they might be gaining weight and repairing their body, they’re not getting enough energy to repair their mind as well. So they end up just getting caught in this vicious ouroboros of recovery because while their body may be recovering, their brain isn’t, the thoughts and impulsiveness and anxieties and fears are still there. And Jamie understands this completely, too, because even though he’s only at the beginning of his second month in the hospital he just feels better. He feels more alive. He actually has energy to do things other than cry and wallow in self-loathing. His nails aren’t brittle anymore, his hair’s softer and thicker, his eyes aren’t as dark or as hollow, and he’s starting to look like a Real Boy again.

Jamie has bad days with food, too, of course. There’s some days he looks at all his meals and snacks and just can’t fucking stop himself from thinking that eating equals failure, can’t stop himself from crying into his food, can’t stop himself from picking at his plate, cutting everything into tiny pieces and organizing each bite by size. There’s some days it takes him an hour or more just to eat one meal, and there are some days that he just can’t force himself to eat all of it. He wants to tear his shinynewstrongsharp nails through the skin of his stomach, rip apart his intestines, and claw away at the tissue around his stomach to get it out, please just get it fucking out</i>; he wants to scratch his throat raw with those pretty new nails until the bile burns his throat so bad he’s sobbing.

Jamie doesn’t like to talk about those bad days, or the bad thoughts. He tries to keep it to himself, for the most part, but sometimes he’ll talk to Luke about it. Because Jamie knows that Luke has those own twisted thoughts himself. They might be battling two different monsters, but they’re monsters all the same.

So Jamie takes it one day at a time. Because at this point that’s really all that he can do. Whenever Jamie has a bad day he simply tells himself that tomorrow will be better.

And, usually, it is.



Around two months into Jamie’s stay at the hospital Luke is cleared to leave. His thirty days are up, and even though it’s been such a short amount of time Luke looks like a nearly different person. His cheeks aren’t as hollow and the dark bags around his eyes are starting to lighten. He doesn’t look like a skeleton anymore either, but he still has that look to him, that look that screams, “I used to be a hardcore drug user.” It’s that look of knowing, of ecstasy and horror and pleasure and tourniquets and love that’s embedded itself into his skin. Horrors; horizons. It’s that look that never really goes away. Jamie’s happy for him, and in an odd sense proud of him. Luke’s the first friend Jamie’s had in years, and he’s really not used to the kindness of affection that friendship brings with it.

“So, they said I’m going to be released in two days. Which, you know, is super exciting. But I wanted to ask you about something,” Luke tells Jamie while they’re sitting outside. Jamie glances at him, dragging his cigarette, and nods.

“You’re a good person Jamie. And somehow I think we’ve managed to become friends. We’re alike, you and I. Even if the differences between us greatly outweigh the similarities the similarities are what are most important. I don’t think you’ve ever really judged me for what I am, and I’m not used to that. When you have a drug problem everyone sees you as an addict instead of a person. And it makes me really happy that you were one of the few to actually acknowledge that. And now I’m kind of rambling, so sorry, but I guess I just wanted to ask if I could have your phone number? If we could maybe stay in contact after we’re both released?”

Jamie nearly drops his cigarette in surprise. Rule number one of nearly every psych ward Jamie has ever been to is to not exchange personal information with other patients and to not interact with them after release. Something about codependency or whatever. But Jamie’s never really been one to follow rules. He knows that transitioning back into his normal life is going to be hard, and he knows there’s going to be times where he can’t talk to Nick about some things. Because sometimes what you need is a friend, not a brotherloversavior.

Jamie happily agrees, scribbling his cell phone number on a scrap of paper he finds in the pocket of his cardigan while Luke does the same.

That day is definitely one of the good days.



Luke leaves on a Tuesday, and the days drag on. Right after Luke is released Jamie is rewarded with daytime leave on the weekends. The first Saturday Jamie is allowed to leave the hospital his mom comes to take him to lunch. She takes him to a small café-slash-bistro he likes called Café Diem. Jamie likes the café mostly because of the name pun, but he’s also pretty fond of the food and coffee they serve. As Jamie holds the door for his mother as they enter the café he finds himself staring at the logo, and he cherishes the irony of the name and the play on seize the day. Because this is a test and he knows it. The reward of daytime leave is his doctors’ way of seeing if he’s ready to begin transitioning back into the normal world yet – to see if he can be trusted to eat on his own, to not hide his food or shove his fingers down his throat to get it out.

They pick a table near the window, and Jamie begins to get a little nervous. As the waitress greets them he finds himself thoughtlessly alternating between picking at the beds of his fingernails and attempting to pop his knuckles. He orders a vanilla chai latte, while his mother orders jasmine tea. Jamie hates the taste of the tea but he loves the way it smells, like flora and honeysuckle, with hints of citrus and hibiscus.

As soon as the waitress leaves Jamie opens the menu she gave him and begins to look it over. His anxiety rises much more than a little bit as he notices that all the menu items have calorie listings next to them. At first Jamie begins to panic. This is exactly the type of thing he’s trying to get away from, counting calories that is. He takes a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself, and then he notices the napkin holder on the table. Jamie pulls a napkin from the holder and places it over half the menu, effectively covering the numbers. His mother gives him an odd look as he does this, glancing down at her own menu in confusion.

“It’s the calorie listings, mom. Looking at them is kind of triggering, I guess,” Jamie says nervously as he pulls the sleeves of his sweater over his fingers out of pure habit.

“Oh,” Caroline says, and the look of surprise on her face quickly transforms into a much more cheerful smile. “Whatever you have to do, honey. It’s okay. I.. uhm,” she pauses a moment as she thinks about how she wants to phrase what she is about to say. “I’m proud of you for that, Jamie. Really. That’s a big step for you, I think. It makes me so happy to see you getting better, even though it might seem like you’re just taking three steps forward and then two steps back sometimes. I love you so much, Jameson.” Caroline gives Jamie a wide, honest smile as she reaches out her hand to Jamie. He clasps her hand and squeezes in reassurance.

“Thank you mom. I love you too,” Jamie says as he glances back down to his lap and a shy smile appears on his face. It’s a mindless reaction to offerings of praise; the words just fall out of his mouth before he really realizes it. And Jamie catches himself lying, but he can’t make up his mind as to if that sentiment is directed towards the first or second half of the sentence.

Jamie ends up ordering a bowl of smoky lentil soup, a grown-up grilled cheese sandwich (because apparently there’s a difference between a kids grilled cheese sandwich and an adults grilled cheese sandwich that no one ever told him about), and an apple and candied walnut salad. He kind of surprises himself with how much he ends up ordering, especially since three months ago the mere thought of eating that much food would send him into a spiral of panic. At one point in time all of those dishes were some of his favorites, but eventually everything except the salad was removed from his list of safe foods. But he’s proud of himself for doing it, and he knows his mother is as well.

As they wait for their lunches to come out they talk a little, mostly small talk and Caroline gossiping. After she runs out of stories to tell Jamie an awkward silence falls over them. Eventually Caroline gets up the nerve to ask Jamie the question she’s been dancing around since the start of their conversation.

“How are you doing Jamie? Honestly,” Caroline asks, her voice quivering a bit at the beginning.

Jamie knew it was going to come up at some point, but he’s still isn’t sure exactly how to answer it.

“I.. uhm,” Jamie fumbles over his words, falling over this swirl of consonants and vowels, trying to think of a way to actually answer that question. “Better, mom. I’m doing a lot better. And I think, after this time, things are going to keep getting better. At least I really hope they do.” After all the words are out he takes a deep breath, and then he takes a bite of soup.

The words still don’t feel exactly right, but they’re out there and it works.

“That’s good, Jamie. I’m so proud of you. I know you can do this. I love you so much,” Caroline says in a relieved voice; Jamie notices a glint in her eyes, they’re just a little glassy. He realizes his mom was just so overwhelmed and worried about him that she was nearly crying in relief.

“I love you more.”

“But I love you most,” Caroline says, and Jamie finds himself shyly staring at his lap again.

(They share a piece of tiramisu, and it’s the best thing Jamie has ever tasted in his entire life.)

After finishing lunch Jamie gets slapped with a pretty nasty twist to his otherwise enjoyable date with his mom: she wants to take him shopping. Caroline says that one of Jamie’s main nurses, Emma, suggested it. Because as much as Jamie hates to think about it or admit it to himself he’s getting bigger. Not bad big, he knows that, but there’s still a voice in the back of his head screaming at him because his stretchiest pair of jeans will barely button now. He needs new clothes, at least jeans anyways, and he can’t force himself to refuse his mother’s offer to take him shopping.

They visit several clothing shops, and with each one they enter the knot in Jamie’s gut double knots itself over and over again. By the third store he’s trembling from his wrecked nerves. By the fifth store he wants to break down crying, and in the sixth store he actually does. He’s got a haul of jeans and cardigans and sweaters, and even though Jamie’s has almost always leaned to loose and oversized tops, the hike in jean size makes him want to never have to buy clothes ever again. He tells himself it’s just a number it’s just a number it’s just a number youaremorethananumber. But as hard as he tries he can’t stop the tears or the shaking, and he desperately snaps at the rubber band around his wrist as he tries to breathe.

Jamie ends up choosing the majority of the clothes he gets from that sixth store, because he can’t bear to make himself go into another one. And when he and his mother get into the car Jamie allows himself to fall forward to rest his forehead on the dashboard of the car while he covers his face with his hands with a pure, unabashed sense of shame and loathing and anger.

“Why is this so hard, Mom? Why does this have to be so fucking hard?” Jamie gasps between sobs. He lets his hands travel up towards his hair, twining into the blond strands and softly pulling. He feels a hand on his back, slowly rubbing figure eights around his spine. Infinity. Eternity. This will never end.

“Oh, honey,” Caroline almost whispers. “I’m so sorry.” And her sincerity is evident in her voice. Because her voice has changed so much, deeper with the weight of uncertainty and fear, sadder with choked sobs of worry she only lets slip her lips when she’s alone in the shower on rainy mornings, her speech more reserved and her words more particular and unambiguous from years of tripping over words and being scared to say the wrong things. It’s the voice of a mother with a sick child whom she has no idea how to help.

Jamie doesn’t talk for the rest of the car ride back to the hospital. Instead he simply stares out the window, picking at his nail beds and cuticles until they’re raw and bloody and he thanks God for Esteban (Cortazar), because the only thing he can do to hide it is to pull the sleeves of his jacket over his hands and shove them deep into his pockets.

Caroline hugs and kisses him goodbye, and once she leaves Jamie goes back to his room with the bags of clothes that she just bought him. He undresses slowly, slipping out of his clothes until they fall to the ground in a heap. And one by one he tries on each article of clothing piece by piece. And Jamie cries.

And once Jamie is finally done wallowing, he slips out of the new clothes in the same manner as he did with the old ones, and he numbly walks to the bathroom and starts the water in the shower. He lets it run, turning his hands through the stream, fingers dancing in piano chords that somehow might be a song. And once the water has been running for several minutes Jamie ties his hair back and shoves his fingers down his throat, scratching his throat until it’s raw and he’s gagging and spitting up blood through snot and tears. It’s useless and he knows it but old habits die hard. Jamie lets himself rock back until the back of his head is resting on the seat of the toilet and he’s clutching his arms to his chest, one hand tearing and scratching at the skin of his other wrist, crying and choking on sobs and breaths he can’t catch.

After Jamie is done having his little fit of angst he cleans himself up and showers properly, letting the blood and grime and tears wash away. He dries his hair and dresses, and then he goes outside to the garden to smoke a cigarette.

Because some things don’t ever change. But sometimes they do, too.



The next day, Sunday, is a better day. Or, at least that’s what Jamie tells himself. Because positive thinking produces positive reactions and positive results. Or some bullshit. Jamie wakes up expecting it to be a lazy day. The events of yesterday are a little fuzzy and his head feels foggy, but he forces himself to get out of bed and brush his teeth and braid his hair, so at least there’s that. Jamie feels funny, like he needs to do something, get up, move. And it’s still somewhat early and not too many other people are up yet. So Jamie wanders for a bit, gets an apple and juice from the cafeteria, and walks up and down the winding hallways of white and cornflower blue.

And Jamie isn’t religious, but when he passes the chapel he finds himself stopping suddenly and back stepping to peek his head through the stained glass windows. And he decides to go inside. No one else is there, so he sits in a pew alone and looks at the glasswork and art hanging on the walls. Fucking Catholic hospitals; the idols and crucifixes and cherubs and trumpet blowing. Jamie sits awkwardly for a few moments, glancing around now and then until he just starts talking. It’s not to anyone in particular, and he makes sure to state that, because Jamie doesn’t know whether or not God(s) exist, but if they’re out there he has a serious bone to pick with them.

He blathers for a bit about random things, about the hospital, and he apologizes for everything that happened yesterday, but the apology is aimed more towards himself, to Nick, to his mother, but it needs to be said even if it’s not to their faces. Jamie finds himself asking open ended questions to thin air, looking around like he actually expects answers. He decides after that that he should probably leave.

Around noon one of the nurses comes to tell him that he has a phone call. It’s Nick.

“Get dressed,” he says. “Let’s go do something.”

So Jamie gets dressed, and Nick’s there and then they’re gone.

They walk around Park Street for a bit, dipping in and out of shops. Nick buys some incense that makes Jamie’s nose tingle. It’s a lot of walking and it doesn’t take long before Jamie’s out of breath. So Nick darts into a small alley between two large buildings and stops near a large planter. Jamie hoists himself up, resting his back against the concrete while staring at the mural painted on the opposite building. Shortly after he catches his breath he hears a lighter click and when he turns his eyes in the direction it came from – to his sheer, abject horror – Nick lighting and then blowing on the end of a neatly rolled joint. Apparently Jamie isn’t the only one that’s been making some changes in their coping habits.

Nick looks at Jamie through a billow of smoke as he exhales. “What?” Nick questions, and Jamie just scoffs and rolls his eyes, looking away from Nick.

“Geeze Jamie, c’mon.” Nick says as he coughs and laughs a little. Once he wipes the smile off his face he hit the joint again “Live a little,” he says, leaning over and blowing smoke in Jamie’s ear. The hot warmth of Nick’s breath on his ear and neck sends shivers down his spine. When Nick leans back he holds the joint in Jamie’s direction, and Jamie eyes the offering, glaring at it

“Fuck you,” Jamie says, snatching the spliff from Nick. He inhales, chokes, and then catches his breath. Nick’s laughing, happily and wholeheartedly, and that makes Jamie soften a little. Because he hasn’t seen Nick like this for a while, and it’s nice. Jamie thinks he probably missed it more than Nick did – Nick being happy, that is. And the thought crosses Jamie’s mind that maybe Nick’s happy again because he hasn’t been around Jamie much, and try as he might to shake the thought it still lingers in the back of his mind like a demon. So Jamie just hits the joint again, flipping Nick the bird and blowing round white and gray circles of smoke. Jamie’s just full of neat party tricks today.

They finish smoking the joint, passing it back and forth to each other while making small talk. Nick tells Jamie that he went to a co-worker’s band’s live the night before at some shabby little bar (to reiterate his point about the bar Nick informs Jamie that the bar is actually listed under ‘dive bars’ on Yelp. Jamie decides that Nick is definitely a frequenter of classy nightlife spots. Oh yes). Nick says he got really drunk, and was almost convinced to sing karaoke after the set. He laughs through the recollections and the little stories about what happened the night before. And it makes Jamie uncomfortable, because it reinforces the ache of guilt in his gut because Nick used to have a life before Jamie fucked it up. Nick used to have friends and go out and do things, and he’s starting to again. And Jamie feels jealous and hurt even though he knows it’s wrong and stupid.

“What have you been up to?” Nick asks, and before the words are even fully out of his mouth he realizes his fuck-up.

“Oh, you know,” Jamie says flippantly. “The usual. Witchcraft. Orgies. Med checks. Breakfast snack lunch snack dinner snack. Blood sacrifices.” Jamie rolls his eyes at Nick again, feeling his mood dampen a bit. He can tell it makes Nick uncomfortable by the way he shifts his stance, so Jamie tries to back peddle a little. “I’m doing fine Nick. Obviously. They wouldn’t be allowing me day leave if I they didn’t think I was getting better.” Jamie catches his wording after it’s already too late.

“So are you actually getting better, or are you just faking it?” Nick questions solemnly.

And Jamie doesn’t know why, but the sudden fleeting urge to wound Nick with his words comes across him, and he tells Nick in a very flat tone, “Well I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we.”

Jamie pushes away from the wall, and he gets a head rush as he does so. “Come on, let’s at least go walk around.”

The high slams Jamie without warning, and suddenly he feels all warm and tingly, and the colors of the park they’re walking through assaults his senses.

“Nick,” Jamie says, his voice cracking. His mouth is so dry, dear God. “I’m pretty sure I’m the highest person in the world right now.”

Nick bursts out laughing, wrapping his arm around Jamie’s shoulder and kissing him on his temple. “C’mon, adventure awaits.”

They end up at a movie theater that’s doing a special one day only run of some French movie Jamie vaguely remembers watching before. The theater looks absolutely dead and the cashier looks bored out of her mind; the next show time is only in fifteen minutes. So they decide to buy tickets, make their way inside, and find a spot in the center of the theater to sit and watch the movie.

The movie passes somewhat quickly, but Jamie finds himself sucked in. He remembers bits and pieces of the movie, and even though there’s English subtitles Jamie’s a little proud of himself that he can make out bits and pieces of French that he still understands.

Les temps sont durs pour les rêveurs.

Jamie’s eyes snap over to Nick, and he finds that Nick is already looking at him, smiling gently.

“I love you, Jamie.”

Jamie has a moment then of something similar to, but not quite, euphoria.

“I love you too, Nick,” Jamie says, and then suddenly Nick is kissing him, fingers in his hair. Nick kisses his lips, his cheeks, his eyelids, his forehead. And Nick rests their foreheads together, panting softly. Jamie’s heartbeat is insane, the anxiety and anticipation and sadness fueling the quickened thumps in his chest.

“Promise me something, Jamie,” Nick whispers. “Just promise me okay?”

Jamie opens his mouth to say something, but then thinks better of it and shuts his mouth, nodding slowly.

“Please. Please don’t try to leave me again. Please.”

Jamie wants to cry. It’s a desperate plea from a desperate man, and it makes him so sad to see Nick like this that he just –

“I promise.”

Nick breathes a sigh of relief. Because they’ve had this conversation before, at least variations of it with heavy vagueness. And Jamie’s always lied before, broke his promises, but Nick didn’t expect anything other than that really. He doesn’t hear the usual tone in Jamie’s voice that appears only when he lies. Nick can live with that.

They leave before the movie is finished and go back to Nick’s apartment. Jamie feels odd going back, anxious and uncomfortable. He notices that there’s multiple new things about the living room. The lamps and vases and picture frames he had broken in his little tantrum had all be cleaned up and replaced. There were a few other new things too, but Jamie can’t remember what’s missing exactly. After he glances around the room he bee-lines towards the bathroom. He can feel Nick’s eyes on him, but he knows Nick isn’t following him.

When he gets to the bathroom door he has to force himself to turn the knob, and he peeks inside slow and cautious. Everything’s been repainted to a teal, cream, and brown color palette. The rugs on the floor are different, and the design on them actually matches the shower curtain now.

Jamie doesn’t like it. He backs out and shuts the door quietly as Nilla comes out to greet him, circling between his legs.

Before Jamie knows it he’s wrapped himself around Nick, tugging at his clothes and kissing his neck, breathing in the scent of his cologne. Nick wasn’t expecting this, and this is pretty clear in the way that Nick completely freezes until the realization of what is happening hits him and he relaxes his hands on Jamie’s shoulder blades, cupping the arch of the bones. Jamie wasn’t really expecting this to happen either, but it’s happening, and there’s not really anything he can do to take it back so he goes with it.

Jamie’s fingers fumble with the hem of Nick’s shirt and slip it off, tossing it near the vicinity of the sofa. Nick knows he should say something, push Jamie away, but instead Nick just sighs into his hair and lets his hands wander down Jamie’s back. Nick finds peace in the fact that Jamie isn’t just knobs of bones anymore, he’s soft in spots now, and even though Nick can still feel his ribs through his shirt he can’t see the knobs of Jamie’s spine shadowed by his t-shirt.

After much fumbling over buttons and tripping over shoes and then jeans Jamie and Nick fall into Nick’s bed. It happens fast, really fast, and Jamie’s just moving on instinct and running on lust. He’s missed this, missed the warmth of Nick’s skin, the whispers in their kisses. He’s missed the pull of Nick’s hands through his hair, fingers skimming cheek bones and ear lobes.

Jamie misses the antici–

PATION.

He exhales sharply as he feels Nick’s hands trail his stomach, fingernails sliding down and teasing the soft skin right above the hem of Jamie’s underwear.

“I love you Nick.”

“You too.”

It’s a tangle of limbs and sheets and desperation and want and need. Everything is hungry, every movement a bite. They fuck. Pure and simple. It’s angry and needy and apologetic, but it’s full of something like trust that’s been broken and repaired far too many times.

When they’re finished they both just kind of… lay there for a few moments, panting and staring at the ceiling.

Jamie feels huge and vast like a valley, but Jamie is also unbounded. Endless.

Infinite.



Jamie feels oddly lonely in the weeks after Luke is released.

Nothing really changes, except that Jamie talks to himself a bit more and talks to other people a little less. He keeps gaining weight like he’s supposed to, keeps eating and working on meal plans, keeps taking his meds. Lamictal for his moods, Seroquel for sleep, Adderall to keep him awake, and Klonopin to calm down. He even starts participating in a transitional living program to help him prepare for outpatient living, and to help him figure out how to practice his recovery skills – it’s mostly just trying to teach Jamie how to be an adult and how to properly take care of himself. His mom and Nick come by a couple times a week, and they take him out for day leave every now and again, one day even all three of them going out together. He can feel a sort of tension between his mom and Nick, because she’s still holding a grudge against him for something that even isn’t his fault, because Caroline finally has someone to blame other than herself, and Jamie thinks that’s probably why Nick endures her icy glares and near silent treatment.

Jamie understands.

He keeps going to group therapy and individual therapy, and gradually the doctors begin to weigh him a little less often and leave his meds the way they are at his check-ups.

The angry red scratches and scars on skin that’s had to sew itself back together begin to fade and lighten to white. Jamie still likes to run his fingers over the scars that are raised, because he likes those ones the best; they’re tangible reminders, a coping habit, harm reduction, whatever you want to call it, it is what it is. He snaps the rubber band he’s taken to wearing around his left wrist every time he gets urges, when just touching the scars isn’t enough. His therapist gave it to him, told him it was okay to snap it until there were angry lines on his arms, to snap it so hard it broke. As long as it helped, Deanna said she would give him as many as he needed. And it really did help, as much as Jamie misses sharp objects, it really does help.

Jamie starts to knit a lot again. It keeps his hands busy.

But then, on a Tuesday in mid-August at one of Jamie’s bi-weekly individual therapy sessions that Deanna happily tells him that he’s been cleared for release, as long as he thinks he’s ready. He’s speechless for a few minutes, because even though he knew it’d come eventually, he didn’t expect it to happen today. It’s an odd mix of excitement and nervousness that hits him, makes him feel a little numb with fear.

“So,” Deanna asks slowly after Jamie’s had a few moments to let it sink in. “Do you think you’re ready Jamie?”

“Yeah,” Jamie says with a sense of confidence which is most definitely present but in all honesty a little lacking. “I’m ready.”



Going home is odd. Not odd in a bad way, but it’s different – different coming home to an apartment that doesn’t really feel like his anymore, that feels like it’s been completely remodeled even though the only things that have actually changed are the new vases and picture frames, and the redecoration of the bathroom.

But Jamie feels good about it. Determined even, possibly. This is going to be the last time. Even if he slips and falls and has to force himself to crawl back up again he will never hit that bottom again – he will never let himself get that sick again.

But most of all Jamie feels happy. And he knows that at some point he’ll be nostalgic about the days when he was bad sick (because Jamie will always be sick, just like Luke will always be an addict, just like Nick will always be his brother’s keeper, just like Caroline will always blame herself, and just like Laura will always be a ghost), and that he’ll miss the depression, the feeling of being empty, the feeling of comfort he always got when he ran the tips of his fingers across his collarbones. Because he’s been through this before, and he knows how the process works. At some point Jamie is going to be really happy. Like, downright fucking ecstatic about life. And then one of those memories will pass by and Jamie will convince himself that he doesn’t deserve to be happy. Because Jamie is stupidfatuglystupid w o r t h l e s s fatcrazystupidworthlessworthlessworthless c r a z y unstable s i c k evilcrazy.

Jamie knows he will never have a normal life, that he himself will never be “normal”, but he accepts that.



Jamie waits two days after his release to fish out the crumpled piece of paper that’s stuffed inside the pocket of one of his cardigans. It’s the same day that Nick goes back to work, and Jamie decides to wait for Nick to leave before he tries to get ahold of Luke. Because for some reason he feels guilty about it, like it’s something that needs to be hidden; it’s something Jamie wants to keep to himself.

And that’s when Jamie realizes he’s already lying to Nick again.

Luke takes a little bit to respond, but Jamie’s ecstatic when he does. They chat back and forth for a bit, and Jamie feels a little proud of himself when Luke tells him that he’s doing good, that Luke is happy for him, and that Luke believes in him, believes that he can do this.

They talk nearly every day after that, usually just about how their day has been, if either of them went to a meeting or support group or therapy that day. Jamie likes that he can face time with Luke, because then he’s not just a voice. It also calms Jamie’s nerves a bit and serves as a sense of comfort to see Luke continuing to heal physically. Jamie can tell that Luke’s continuing to gain weight, and every day it seems like his eyes have more light – more life – behind them. He smiles frequently, and when he laughs he gets these crinkles around his eyes that make Jamie happy for him.

Jamie’s still getting there.

Luke tells Jamie every day how much better he looks, and while Jamie appreciates the compliments and positive reinforcements, it makes him feel a little odd, a little out of place, a little nervous. Sometimes Luke asks Jamie to show him his ribs, his hip bones, his hands, and Jamie doesn’t mind. There’s nothing sexual or predatory behind the requests, and both of them know that without it having to be said out loud. It’s just Luke’s way of affirming to himself that Jamie is getting better, too – because sometimes Luke worries that Jamie’s faking it, that he’s still sick and just hiding it under thick layers of clothes. Luke worries that maybe he shouldn’t talk about how well he’s doing with his own recovery whenever he wonders if maybe Jamie is lying or being too vague or when he just seems off. Jamie is thankful for Luke, and he tells him that. Because it’s nice to know that someone else out there genuinely cares about him, about his recovery.

Because Luke is really all that Jamie has, other than Nick and his mom and Nick’s dad. And Nilla, Jamie has Nilla, too.

But it’s hard for Jamie to talk to them sometimes, because they don’t get it. And Jamie doesn’t hold it against them – no one really knows what any type of recovery is like until they have to go through it themselves. And even though it’s a tale of two very different diseases, they’re diseases all the same. Jamie and Luke understand, at least to a point, what the other is going through, and that kind of support and understanding is both priceless and precious to the both of them.



Jamie hates the way he can see the weight shrink away from Nick after he comes home. Because Nick is cooking everything now, but he’s not cooking shit like he was most of the time before. Nick sticks to grilled chicken salads, low-cal low-fat low-everything smoothies, homemade kale chips, fried rice with egg whites, grilled eggplant, stuffed mushrooms, and cucumber sandwiches on whole wheat bread. Nick barely uses butter or cheese, and anything remotely Italian in origin is completely out of the question. Everything is baked or grilled or sautéed, not fried or breaded. Nick eats clean(ish) to ensure that Jamie eats period. Nick cooks everything and sits with Jamie throughout meals, watching him eat, watching for tricks; for Jamie to excessively push his food around his plate or to cut it into unnecessarily small pieces. Nick sits with him afterwards, too, and talks to him when Jamie’s fingers start to twitch and fidget and mindlessly knot and pull his hair. Nick hugs Jamie and holds him when he sobs, when the twitching gets too bad.

But Nick starts to lose weight rather quickly, and Jamie doesn’t know whether to be concerned or jealous.

Jamie starts to go through these little phases. They come every few weeks or so, and they come out of nowhere. He will go to bed completely fine and the next morning he’ll wake up with a weight on his chest, a rapid heartbeat, and shortness of breath. The depression hits hard, so hard to the point that it’s nearly debilitating, and Jamie can barely force himself out of bed simply to brush his teeth or to comb his hair.

It’s on one of those days that Jamie starts to crack.

His nerves are bad that day, almost totally shot. He’s taken 4.5 mgs of klonopin by noon, and he’s more than a little sleepy and disorientated when Nick leaves for work after they eat lunch. He can see it clear as day in Nick’s body language – it’s the tightness in his shoulders, the way his fingers constantly play with and twist the couple rings he wears, the pursed look on his face and the slight frown to his lips. It’s in the way he hugs Jamie from behind, wrapping his arms around Jamie’s shoulders and nuzzling his face into his hair. Nick rubs his thumb across Jamie’s collarbone, slipping his hand just a bit under the collar of his shirt.

It’s in the way Nick says, “Make sure to eat later – there’s a salad and leftover pizza margherita in the fridge for you. I’ll be home around ten, okay?” Jamie nods. “Oh! And remember you have outpatient with Deanna tomorrow,” Nick adds quickly.

Jamie nods again and lets himself relax into Nick’s hug while he lets his hand travel up to rub at Nick’s hand, specifically his rings, in a gesture of reassurance.

“Good. I love you! And try not to take anymore meds unless you have to, okay? Actually, there’s a joint in the nightstand in my bedroom, smoke that instead if you feel too bad later. Take a nap, get some rest. Eat, watch some TV – I recorded that marathon of that one show you really like, the one with the brothers and the angel and whatever.”

Jamie nods again and Nick squeezes him, kisses the top of his head, and then Jamie hears the front door open and lock from the outside, and then Nick’s gone.

Jamie sits there for a while, floating in a benzo daze. Everything is dreamlike, a little hazy, a little too bright. He feels attached and unattached to his body at the same time, and he’s numb everywhere. Jamie can feel himself existing, and Jamie can feel the vibrations of the atoms in his body.

It’s quite a lovely feeling.

He snaps back to reality, and when he glances to the clock on the wall he realizes that nearly and hour and a half has passed since Nick left for work and he hasn’t moved since then. Time moves so fast in a benzo daze, but it makes Jamie feel like he’s living in slow motion. There’s no sound coming from the TV, and Jamie realizes that the, “Are you still watching?” Netflix screen has popped up.

Two hours.

Jamie stands up, moving carefully since he’s admittedly a little wobbly. He makes the trek across the room to where the remote is charging and hits play, and thankfully the disturbing empty silence in the apartment is replaced with the white noise of dramatic music and people talking.

He sits there for a moment, his thought process close to thinking, debating, maybe, but not quite there yet. The TV plays in the background as white noise.

And Jamie floats.

He snaps back again, pushing himself up from the couch and walking towards Nick’s bedroom without really thinking about what he’s doing. He finds himself pulling the drawer of Nick’s nightstand open and fishing out the perfectly rolled joint. He wanders back into the living room and sets the joint on the coffee table next to his cigarettes, and then he goes into the kitchen and pulls out the meal that Nick left for him. He gets a glass of milk, and while he’s digging in the freezer for ice cubes (because milk is always better with ice cubes) he catches sight of a clear, mostly full bottle of Absolut that’s been pushed to the back. He stares at it for a moment, the cold seeping from the freezer making his face and fingers cold. The attached part of him says no, but the numb and unattached part of him says yes yes yes.

Jamie says fuck it and digs the bottle out.

He carries everything into the living room and arranges it on the coffee table. Joint, food, milk, food, vodka, milk, food, vodka vodka vodka.

Jamie only smokes half of the joint before he puts it out because he almost feels like he’s too high to move. He eats slowly, but the dryness in his mouth makes it hard to chew. So he gulps down some milk, and then pours himself a shot of vodka. It burns his throat on the way down, and as he waits for the bitterness to disappear he stares down at the plate of food in front of him. He feels his face start to twist into an expression of disgust and nausea. So Jamie sets the plates on the table, and then he takes a shot, chasing it with a gulp of milk. Then he takes another, and then another, and then another until the glass of milk is completely gone and all that’s left is half melted ice cubes.

Jamie leans back into the couch, slouching down into the cushions. He switches the TV over to the episodes that Nick recorded for him, and it plays somewhere in the distance. His head is swimming in nausea and sadness and emptiness and loneliness.

He stares at the food on the table. He ate maybe a third of the food, and he knows that if it’s not at least mostly gone by the time Nick gets home they’re going to have a talk, and that it won’t be a fun one. So Jamie picks up the plate of salad and a fork; he stabs a piece of lettuce and tomato, scrapes off the extra dressing on the edge of the bowl, and then for a moment he holds the fork at eye level, studying the bite of food in front of him, twirling it between his fingers.

He takes the bite, and while he chews he thinks about all the amazing flavors that dance in his senses. He despises it, and he despises himself for liking it.

Jamie takes another shot.

Five hours.

After Jamie forces himself to eat the rest of the food he smokes the other half of the joint, his eyes glancing back and forth between the television, the clock, the empty plates, the quarter of a bottle of vodka that’s left. Jamie moves in slow motion as time swirls around him and sucks him up.

After the rest of the high sets in Jamie makes his way into the kitchen and starts searching for snacks. He grabs everything he can find that he likes and doesn’t actually have to cook, and then he returns to the sofa and spreads the food out on the table.

He eats all of it – all of it. And after he’s done Jamie feels sick, so, so sick. His stomach is stretched and bulging and it hurts. He looks at the empty crisp bags, the crackers, the salsa, the apple cores, the chocolates. Jamie wants to cry, and he does.

He takes another shot.

The high is starting to fade because of all the food he’s just ingested, and Jamie’s starting to come back to reality a bit, and he doesn’t like that. Jamie can’t help but run his hands across his bloated belly, and he hates himself. He picks up the bottle of vodka and drinks straight from the bottle until he’s gagging from the burning in his throat and chest.

Seven hours.

Jamie smokes a cigarette, inhaling the smoke. It makes him feel a bit sick, and bit more nausea. He smokes two more cigarettes back to back before he finally feels the churning in his stomach. He feels it rising, so Jamie goes into the bathroom and sits on the edge of the bathtub, observing the redecorations in the room. He has to admit that he doesn’t hate the new bathroom as much anymore. The teal hues remind him of water, of the ocean. It’s calming, maybe even a little comforting. He also likes the three-print chocolate and turquoise French damask canvas prints that Nick picked to hang on the wall. The new towels are soft and giant, and Jamie’s taken to simply sitting in the living room in the towels and letting his body air dry whenever he gets out of the shower. But to be honest, Jamie’s favorite thing is this decorative cylinder lamp that sits on the corner shelf by the sink. The image printed on the lampshade is that of a tree in winter with white twinkling lights strewn between the branches, the waxing gibbous moon visible behind them. The blacks, grays, purple, white, and yellow hues of the tree are offsets the teals, aqua, greens, and dark and light blues of the night sky in the background. Even when the lamp is off it’s a beautiful image, and for some reason it makes Jamie happy, but happy in a sad sort of way. The colors are vigorous; those of the sea placed in the sky. It’s infinite, almost, and it makes Jamie feel safe. But it makes Jamie feel dumb kind of, because it’s a fucking lampshade, for Christ’s sake.

He stares at the toilet, and all he has to do is think about the massive amount of food he’s just eaten. About how disgusting and worthless he is. Because Jamie is a failure, a giant fucking failure.

His stomach twists and turns, and before he realizes what’s really happening he’s on his knees retching into the toilet, hugging the cold porcelain. It’s such a familiar event – the way his tears start to mix in with the snot and vomit, how he retches so hard he can’t breathe or move, how his body freezes in almost complete paralysis when he gags hard.

Once Jamie’s confident that everything that’s going to come out is out he turns on the shower and let’s the water wash everything away. Once he’s done Jamie changes into a new pair of pajamas, combs his hair and then pulls it into a bun at the base of his neck. He returns to the living room to clean up the mess he made. There’re only a few sips of the bottle of vodka left, so Jamie drinks it and then chucks it into the trash with the rest of the evidence of his failure.

Jamie gets himself a glass of water, and then returns to the couch. He reaches for his phone, staring down at the screen. He wants to call Luke, but he debates with himself whether he should or not, because this is so silly and stupid and Jamie is a fucking failure, but then he thinks about what he would do if Luke ever called him in the middle of a relapse. After all the pondering and debating Jamie decides to call Luke.

The phone rings and rings and rings, and then it goes to voicemail.

Jamie tries again, and the phone rings for what seems like forever before the voicemail message pops up. At this point Jamie feels almost frantic, because all he can think about it if Luke is okay, all the reasons that he could not be answering his phone. Maybe he’s just sleeping. Jamie tries once more, but this time the call is different.

The phone doesn’t even ring, it just goes straight to voicemail.

A heavy sense of loneliness and something like… disappointment lingers in his chest. But it’s a different type of disappointment, it’s unfamiliar to Jamie, and it takes him a bit to realize that it’s different because it’s disappointment in someone else. He’s never really been disappointed in other people, except Laura; mostly Jamie’s only ever been disappointed in himself. He stares at his phone for several minutes hoping it will ring, that Luke will call him back, that he was just busy and couldn’t answer his phone at that moment.

Jamie’s phone doesn’t ring.

Jamie feels numb. He’s not even high anymore, a little drunk maybe, but the benzos have worn off and the marijuana is drifting away slowly as well.

It’s not a good combination.

After some time Jamie gets up, walking towards Nick’s room in somewhat of a trance. Jamie finds himself curling into the blankets on Nick’s bed. His head is still buzzing, still spinning, but to Jamie it’s the same feeling you get after meditation – simply, existence. No thoughts, nothing. Just clarity, evenness.

Jamie falls asleep quickly. It’s a deep sleep, one that he needs desperately. When Nick gets home he’s surprised to find Jamie In his bed. It makes Nick a little happy to come home to Jamie being there in his bed, in all honesty. Nick undresses and crawls into bed with Jamie, wrapping his arms around him. He nuzzles into Jamie’s hair, stroking his hand up to feel Jamie’s heartbeat; it’s slow and steady.

Slow and steady.



It’s nearly two months before Nick finally tells Jamie that it’s time for him to get off his ass and get a job. Jamie doesn’t argue – he’s had enough time to get used to living at home again, and he’s adjusted somewhat well to it; he has his routines for how he goes about his day, at least. Jamie wakes up at 8 a.m. everyday and brews a pot of coffee, he smokes two or three cigarettes while he drinks his coffee and watches the morning news. Then he gets up and brushes his teeth, takes a shower, and then gets dressed, even if he has no appointments to go to that day. Jamie and Nick trade-off on who makes breakfast, but Jamie’s actually starting to get kind of good at cooking and he finds himself almost automatically starting breakfast himself when he’s awake before Nick (on Saturday’s they have pancakes). After breakfast Jamie will either read or do yoga, but there’s also days where Jamie just says fuck it and watches TV all morning. Around noon or so Jamie eats lunch, but Nick is usually at work by then depending which shift he’s scheduled for (surprisingly, Jamie has found that he really, really enjoys grilled BLT’s and hummus, and he’s started teaching himself how to make different flavors of hummus). Unless it’s a day that he has outpatient therapy Jamie usually spends his afternoons crafting. He likes it because it keeps him preoccupied and keeps his hands busy (but, in all honesty there’s a lot of times that “crafting” really just equals him scrolling through Pinterest for six hours straight while he cuddles with Nilla on the couch). Then when Nick gets home one of them will cook dinner, and Nick will tell Jamie about how work was, recounting annoying customers of the day and any drama or happening’s with his co-workers – because seriously, those people act like they’re either still in high school or stuck in a bad daytime soap opera (it’s a bit more like Degrassi, actually), and Jamie will tell Nick about what he did that day – what happened on the news, what he ate for lunch, what he’s been working on that day, what he’s been reading, how his appointment went if he had one. Jamie still naps quite a bit, and he still snacks often, and he still feels sick some days, too, feels like he wants to die, feels like he wants to scream, to carve geometric shapes into his skin. But it’s not as bad as it used to be.

It’s a Monday morning when Nick brings it up. He’s in the kitchen cooking breakfast. Breakfast mess, to be exact – it’s a mix of sausage, onions, bell pepper strips, potatoes, and scrambled eggs, and even thought it’s the type of meal that used to make Jamie want to kill himself, and sometimes it still kind of does, it’s his favorite. Most people’s guilty pleasure is sweets, like candy or cake or soda. Jamie, on the other hand, his weakness is breakfast foods.

“Look, I know it’s kind of scary for you – I know it’s really scary for you – but it was part of the rules for you coming back to live with me. And like I said before, you know it’s not about money. And I know you have hobbies now, which is great,” Nick says sincerely. Because Jamie used to do nothing, and it makes Nick happy that Jamie has found things to do which make him happy. “But you need more responsibility, and honestly Jamie, you need to meet new people – to interact with people other than me.”

Jamie gives Nick a look. It’s a fuck you kind of look, a dramatically annoyed, displeased, and sarcastic look. Nick just rolls his eyes.

“I’m off today,” Nick says while handing Jamie a plate of food and a bottle of ketchup (because breakfast mess is so much better with ketchup). “Why don’t we go and check out some places you think you might like and grab some applications?”

“Yeah, yeah. Let me finish my coffee and eat and stuff and then I’ll get cleaned up and dressed,” Jamie says while shooting Nick a sideways glare.

Jamie pours ketchup over his food and mixes it in, and then he eats it like he hasn’t eaten for weeks. Then he gets a second plate. And Jamie is pretty damn proud of himself for that.

But that doesn’t mean that Jamie’s not going to procrastinate any less while showering and getting dressed because Nick is trying to make him go outside and force him to become a responsible adult.

Jamie’s never had a real job before (except trying to both slowly and quickly kill himself, and goddamn that’s a lot of work. But that doesn’t exactly look too great on a resume, now does it). That’s part of why this whole ordeal is so terrifying.

And it’s also why Jamie procrastinates like a motherfucker doing it.



The day goes better than Nick honestly expected it to. They go to the typical types of jobs someone with no prior experience would apply for – serving (even though they pass it, Nick steers clear of the diner that he himself works at; one of them would end up murdering the other if they ever ended up working together), retail, caretaking, call center and bill collecting type shit. Jamie even found an ad in the paper for a job where literally all you did was count the number of cars on traffic videos. But that reminds him too much of numbers stations and UVB-76 his friend Philosopher Slash Conspiracy Theorist Mason used to tell him about (Because he had two friends named Mason; there was Philosophy Slash Conspiracy Theorist Mason and Emo Mason) when they would get together and smoke weed in Mason’s basement while they switched between watching Night of the Living Dead and Mars Attacks. Jamie takes a moment to let himself wonder what Thing One and Thing Two are both, respectively, doing these days. He hasn’t talked to either of them in years, hasn’t thought of them in months, but it makes him wonder when exactly they disappeared and if maybe, for whatever reason, they think about him from time to time.

He doesn’t think on it too long. Instead he drags Nick into a sex shop and proceeds to horribly embarrass Nick by asking the sales clerk, whose nametag boldly states that her name is MADISON, questions that Nick could most likely never actually speak out loud himself. With Jamie’s coercion MADISON informs Nick of the importance of g-spot stimulation, but when Jamie informs MADISON that Nick is actually more inclined towards those of similar gender she immediately lights up and excitedly shows him the newest model of anal vibrators. MADISON also informs Nick of the different types of lube, explains the difference between water-based and oil-based lubes, and even gives him a personal testimony as to how fantastic the Astroglide Sensual Strawberry flavored lube is. Then, to top off their tour of the store MADISON hands Nick a DVD copy of Batman XXX: A Porn Parody, saying that she thinks he would enjoy it. And Nick looks at the DVD for a moment, actually reading the brief summary on the back of the disc when he realizes that it’s not a parody of the Christian Bale’s forced, gravelly I’M BATMAN Batman, it’s a parody of the 1960s Adam West Batman. Nick wants to just get out of this fucking store but he’s also oddly curious and would really hate to completely waste MADISON’s time, so he buys the DVD as well as a pin which reads, “My significant other goes ‘meow’.”

Nick leaves with very red cheeks, and he even momentarily thinks about buying a newspaper from the bin outside the store just so he can roll it up and smack Jamie with it.

Their journey proceeds, and they pick up a few more applications from various establishments, including a pet store which Jamie manages to spend an hour procrastinating in after he insists that they walk down every aisle once, hold the ferrets, play with all the cats, and then hold the ferrets again.

Eventually Nick literally throws his hands in the air, muttering, “Fuck it,” because, quite frankly, he doesn’t know how much more of Jamie’s bullshit he can deal with today. They end up with a total of 16 applications, and Nick prays to whatever higher power may or may not exist that at least one of those places calls for an interview, because he doesn’t know if he could survive another day job hunting with Jamie like this clusterfuck of an ordeal. But even under the annoyance and boredom the whole thing makes him quite happy. He hasn’t seen Jamie this happy, this playful and snarky since, well, Nick doesn’t rightly know when. Ever, he supposes. Because even back when Nick met Jamie when their parents had gotten past that Point in dating that they felt it was necessary to introduce their children Jamie was never really happy, never really all the way there. And it intrigued Nick at first, the air that Jamie had. Because even back when Nick first met Jamie he was like a ghost: pale, quiet, cold, silent, emotionless, platinum blond Jamie. And that intrigued Nick, at first, that air that Jamie had. Nonchalance mixed with indifference and detachment and sprinkled with piles upon piles of jadedness. But Nick was too sheltered and too oblivious and too infatuated to ever truly recognize the mess that Jamie was (still is). But after time passed Nick learned why Jamie was the way he was, and Nick learned to be afraid of that air of Jamie’s, even though he was obsessed with it, obsessed with Jamie, obsessed with trying to help him, trying to save Jamie from himself.

So Nick doesn’t mind it, not really, even if he can’t keep him immediate annoyance to bubble to the surface in the moment. Jamie quiets soon after they leave the pet store, shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, and Nick can tell by the minimalistic movements of Jamie’s fingers that he’s scratching at his nail beds, picking at his nails and scratching and pulling the tips off until they’re completely down to the nub. Nick notices when he gets quieter, when he starts to fidget, how his eyes dart around in an almost paranoid sense, and Nick sees the instantaneous tired look that overtakes his eyes. He’s feels a little bad about it, and he can’t help himself that the reason Jamie’s most likely feeling that he did something wrong, even though he acknowledges and accepts that it could be any other numerous reasons that’s causing Jamie to act like this, if he thought of or saw some kind of trigger. Nick doesn’t question it, just files into his memory bank to bring up when they get home. Instead he asks Jamie if he’s hungry (and he can tell when Jamie lies when he says, “Yeah,” through grinding teeth and clenched fists, and for a millisecond Nick feels guilty and bad and sorry for his brother, for Jamie.

So Nick takes him to a bar, which is mostly a coffee shop-slash-diner-bar and buys him a late lunch. Nick likes the food here and it’s close to the apartment (secretly Nick kind of hopes that Jamie’s rampant decline in mood is simply due to low blood sugar or something). The diner is busy for it only being 4 p.m., but then again Nick figures that the diner is near the business side of town and it wouldn’t be unusual if many of the business men came here for drinks after work while lying to their wives about having to stay an hour or two late at work – an hour which turns into two or three or maybe even an entire night.

Jamie, he’s a different story. His anxiety skyrocketed after they left the sex shop while he was wondering if he had pushed it too far, if Nick was legitimately upset with him. The thought tore his insides apart, made his heart stutter and skip. He quieted himself, forced himself to keep him mouth shut with the lingering thought that whatever he had to say wasn’t important, that he messed with Nick a little too much and that Nick hated him now.

After a few blocks of walking Nick asks him if he’s hungry, and for a moment Jamie has to battle the echo of the soft, lyrical voice in the back of his mind that whispers no, hunger is weakness, hunger is nothing and spitting out a, “Yeah,” while grinding his back teeth in anxiousness. Jamie doesn’t realize he’s been picking at his cuticles until he withdraws his hands from the front pouch of his jacket and sees that the beds of several of his nails are red and irritated and a couple are even bleeding. When they’re seated in a booth towards the back of the diner Jamie simply pulls his sleeves down his hands as far as he can, even after he realizes that resistance is futile, after he realizes that no matter how much he pulls the sleeves over his palms and the first knuckle of his hands that the bloody mess of his fingers will pretty much be visible no matter what.

The waitress takes several minutes to get to them, but before she makes it around the first time Jamie darts off suddenly, almost like a deer. Nick looks at the waitress, who doesn’t even introduce herself in her rush, and they share a look of (nearly) pure surprise and astonishment. She looks at him, not saying anything, just pen poised above notepad ready to write but then again not really ready.

“I’ll have a vanilla chai latte and he’ll have an Angry Balls,” Nick says absently, looking into the crowd of people while he tries to spot Jamie’s bright blond mop of hair through the strangers. The waitress gives him a look similar to What the Actual Fuck, so Nick goes on to explain, “Equal parts hard apple cider and Fireball. Just don’t say anything about there being alcohol in the drink,” Nick insists. The waitress simply nods, not even bothering to ask for ID, and dashes off to retrieve their drinks and menu’s. Nick searches through the crowd, but after a few moments after the waitress (Cindy, he learns then, is her name) brings the drinks to the table he stops looking and turns his gaze from the crowd to the menu in front of him. Jamie is better, Nick tells himself. Whatever he went to do, he’ll be okay.

Nick reassures himself a lot, but he also tends to lie to himself a lot. He really needs to learn the difference between the two.



Jamie is not okay, no matter how much Nick may convince himself that he is, Jamie Is Not Okay.

The diner? That’s okay. The nutrition-less, calorie dense foods? Those are okay, too. The crowd of people around him, which Jamie feels are judging him and laughing at him and whispering about him? They’re okay, too. What’s not okay is the mop of dirty blond hair pass through the crowd. It’s Luke and he knows it – Jamie gets on of those feelings in his gut, one of those feelings which urges him to get up, go, live, live, live your fucking life you pathetic piece of shit.

So, Jamie obliges. He darts away from the booth he and Nick had been sat at despite Nick’s cut off gasp of, “HEY!”, and he stalks around the corners of the crowd at first, just quietly observing the people and trying to figure out if that was actually Luke or not. Jamie sees the dark blond mop again, heading for the door with a group of three other people, one other man and two women. Jamie feels a sense of relief wash over him. Luke is okay. He’s alive, at least. Jamie counts that as a plus.

He pushes through the crowd with muttered “excuse me’s” and “pardon me’s” and “sorry’s” until he reaches the front door, till he’s all the way outside the building on the street nearly gasping for breath. Jamie braces himself against the beaten brick stones of the restaurant nearly gasping for breath. Until, suddenly, there’s a hand at his elbow and a soft, guilty voice asking, “Are you okay?” Jamie glances up, the breathing exercises Deanna had taught him in the back of his mind. He looks into Luke’s eyes and all Jamie can say is, “Hi.”

Luke gives him a look, one full of confusion and lies. And just as Jamie feels his heart begin to melt Luke asks, “Have we met before?”

Jamie’s heart shatters, and for a moment he can’t breathe. He squeezes his eyes shut, just trying to breathe, just trying to latch on to something tangent.

“Are you okay, Jamie?” Luke whispers as he leans in close, pretending that he’s helping Jamie keep himself standing. Luke stays there for more than a moment with his hands wrapped around Jamie’s wrists, body pressed close, his face nuzzled into the crease of Jamie’s neck inhaling the scent of lavender and vanilla, until he finally pulls away and looks Jamie in the eye’s. The sadness and sorrow and unspoken apology is obvious in Luke’s eyes, but Jamie can’t figure out of the sorrow is present because he’s truly sorry for how he’s treating Jamie (for whatever reason or another, Jamie could make up multiple excuses for Luke based solely based on the sneers and expressions of shock and intrigue on his friends’ faces) or if he only vaguely remembers Jamie, if their sort-of friendship was just fake, if Luke was just lonely.

After a long moment of searching Luke’s face and eyes, eyes he felt he used to known but never really did, Jamie slumps and gives up. He chalks the encounter up to some haphazard mix of his two assumptions.

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” Jamie says, straightening his back and shoulders in a feeble attempt to intimidate his attacker. “I’m just fine,” Jamie spits with venom dripping from his lips, but even then he knows that poison on his lips isn’t just for himself.

Jamie pulls himself out of Luke’s grip, and maybe, just maybe, he glances back at Luke as he walks away and back into the diner. But Luke isn’t glancing back – the only present look on his face is one of amusement at something the brunette girl had said as they walked away. Logically, Jamie knows that there’s somewhere around a 95% chance (he’s rounding up) that whatever they’re laughing about was in no way related to him. But that last 5%, no matter how small it may actually be, rips him apart.

Jamie saunters back into the diner, and as he slowly sips the drink that Nick ordered for him he feels himself slowly begin to relax. A few minutes after Jamie sits back down Cindy comes back to their table with her tray already pulled out of her apron and resting on her tray, pen at the ready. Nick orders some kind of sub; Jamie isn’t really paying attention, he’s just blankly staring at the menu, so he doesn’t even realize that poor Cindy has been staring at him for nearly a whole minute until Nick snaps his finger in front of Jamie’s face, bringing him back to reality.

“Sorry,” Jamie mutters as he glances up towards the middle-aged red-haired waitress called CINDY, according to her name tags. “Jamie clears his throat and then states, “I’m okay with coffee for now, thank you,” and then he closes the menu and hands it back to Cindy.

Jamie ignores the look that Nick is giving him, the one filled with fury and rage and concern and maybe even a hint of loathing. Jamie fidgets for a moment, feeling a numbness spread through his hips and abdomen.

Finally, after Jamie feels like Nick’s judgemental gaze has burned a clean hole through hi very being, he speaks,

“I’m sorry, Nicky,” Jamie stutters, and Nick feels his heart break a little. “Not today. I’m sorry, but just not today. Let me be a little broken today.”

Jamie stares down at his drink, his hands wrapped tightly around the mug. He has to force himself to hold back the tears. At least pretend to be strong.

Jamie glances up to Nick glassy eyed and oozing hormones that yell pity me forgive me please please just fucking love me. And Nick can’t say no to that – no matter how hard he tries he can rarely say no to Jamie. But Nick has gotten better about it, and Jamie has also gotten better about placing him in those types of situations.

So Nick simply nods, albeit with a tone of chagrin behind the mere tilts of his head. “But we’re going to talk about this,” Nick states, staring Jamie down. “Later, we will talk of this.”

Jamie doesn’t look up, just continues to stare at the light colored mixture of brown and cream in his mug. “Right, Nick,” he agrees in a somber tone. “Just not today. I’m too tired today.”

Nick feels a shiver run up his spine as he watches Jamie run a hand over his face in what Nick thinks is exhaustion, although he realizes that there’s something else under that expression. He just nods and hopes that Jamie had glanced up long enough to see him do it.

Nick’s food arrives, and as he eats Jamie order another drink, whatever the first one was. He watches Nick eat, and all Jamie thinks about is how the shrimp diablo pasta that Nick orders used to taste on his tongue.

He gets a sick satisfaction from simply thinking this. He’s disgusted with himself.

They head home after the diner fiasco. When they get to the apartment Jamie instantly heads towards his bedroom – not Nick’s, where he’s been sleeping more and more of the time which makes Nick heart break just a little bit more – and states that he’s going to his bedroom to work on the applications.

It’s not a total lie, but it’s one which is convincing enough to cause Nick to allow Jamie to lock his door and which also forces Nick not to bother Jamie for the rest of the evening.

And Jamie works on the applications – for a while anyways. He turns on his laptop, pulls up iTunes, and blasts the music loud enough so that Nick can’t hear him crying.

What the fuck was that about? He texts furiously and quickly to Luke. It’s almost two hours before Jamie sends another text, only this time it’s in the midst of a benzo daze. I thought you were my friend.

One pill, two pill, three pill, four; how many more until Jamie hits the floor?

It’s two more hours until Luke responds.

I’m sorry, but we just can’t talk anymore. I’m sorry, Jamie. I’m really fucking sorry. I’m so sorry.

Jamie spends somewhere around ten minutes staring at his phone, until it beeps again.

Please delete my number. Things are… bad again. I’m really sorry, Jamie. I’m so sorry.

A minute of so later his phone buzzes again with a second message.

I just don’t want you to get caught up in my personal shit, Jamie. Because I know you’ll feel my pain just as much as me. I know I’ll end up calling you at 4 a.m. after a three day binge just so that I don’t feel alone, and I know those conversations will make you feel sick and sad and helpless, even though it’s something that’s completely out of your control. I know you’ll empathize with me too much, and I know that after a while of you constantly worrying about me it’s going to start to rip you apart. You’re too obsessive, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, but I know you’ll want to try to fix me, Jamie, I know you will. But me… you can’t fix me. There’s some things that you can try to fix but all you really end up doing is layering fresh bandages over old, bloody, soiled ones; you just end up trying to cover up wounds that won’t ever really heal, especially if all you do is try to hide them and cover them up. You can’t fix this for me.

And as Jamie’s limbs go numb and the fog takes over his mind another message beeps through a mere ten seconds after the previous text.

Please keep trying to get better.

Jamie doesn’t respond to the last message; he throws his phone against the wall. It doesn’t break, but the screen shatters and Jamie finds himself on his knees sobbing into his hands. He thinks he hears a light knock on his door, and maybe it’s there and maybe it’s not, maybe it’s just his imagination. Either way he screams, “FUCK OFF,” through his slobbering sobs.

Whether it was actually Nick knocking at the door or not is of no importance. What is of importance is that even after an hour after he throw’s his phone at the wall and screamed at the top of his lungs there is no one knocking at his door. And that makes him more than a bit sad. As much as he might resist the comfort and support at times it’s the most vital part of what’s getting him through this.

After Nick goes to bed, somewhere around 10 p.m. since he has to work in the morning, Jamie digs inside his closet and finds the sweaters that have been rolled up and stuffed in the very back of his closet far behind his wish box of reminders of lives that forked to different paths – lives he maybe could have lived. Lives where maybe he would have died instead.

Wrapped between the warm layers and sleeves of sweaters that used to drip off him like droplets of rain – or tears depending on how you look at it – the sweaters that dripped off of him like as a dress, but are now just a bit too tight, is a bag of pills – oxycodone, xanax, lyrica, adderall, hrydromorphone, etcetera etcetera etcetera. Jamie pops two blue oxy’s, and then proceeds to break up and crush both an 8 mg hydro and a 30mg adderall. Jamie snorts the adderall, and the high instantly hits him. He pushes the lines of hydromorphone away, saving them for later maybe, and Jamie stares at the ceiling of his bedroom. He blasts Fall Out Boy’s Take This To Your Grave because he can’t really help it. He spins himself in circles in his computer chair, listening to the words and staring at the posters and articles and glow stars and photos that litter the ceiling of his bedroom in a somewhat confused manner. He remembers hanging those, covering the majority of his bedroom in a collage of photos and articles from magazines, all the way back to when he was only fourteen or fifteen. Remembers the faces but not the names of many of the people in the photos with their arms thrown around each other in friendship and love. Jamie is partially bewildered and partially amused and partially sad. Bewildered because when did he listen to these bands seriously what the fuck, amused because it’s been so long and the photos and music memory triggers make him think of at least three different occasions where he was inexplicably happy (but more than twenty where he was inexplicably hopeless and sad and lost), and Jamie’s sad because Jamie is always sad, and Jamie has, at this point, come to accept that sadness will always play a part in his life. Even if it’s barely present or if it’s full blown to the point that he can barely even leave his bed or do anything other than sleep, sadness will always be a part of him. So instead of fighting it Jamie accepts it. He starts to learn how to deal with it, and through trial and error Jamie learns how to not deal with it as well.

After Jamie comes to terms with himself over the events of the evening, and after he can hear Nick snoring lightly from the next room, he quietly stalks to one of the bookshelves across the room. Even though the high is starting to fade now he runs his fingers over the spines of numerous books, some worn so much that they’re nearly falling apart because he’s re-read them so many times, and others barely touched, no sign of crinkles on the spine whatsoever. Jamie finds the book he wants through touch alone, recognizing the frays and tears and creases in his copy of Infinite Jest (first edition, always, always, always; This Is A Must), and he turns it to one of the countless dog-eared pages, but specifically to the one which bears the words, “Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it,” in all of its heaviness and surrender, and Jamie retrieves the hidden straight razor from midway down the page.

Tomorrow will be better, Jamie tells himself. Tomorrow will be a new day, it will be better than today, and tomorrow…

I will not do this tomorrow.

Jamie repeats the Serenity Prayer to himself as he draws bloody line after bloody line across his hip bone, which is less and less tangible day after day after day.

Tally marks of progress is what Jamie convinces himself they are.



Jamie gets hired at a liquor store a few blocks from the diner where Nick works. It takes two weeks for them to call him back, and while Jamie spends a good chunk of his time around Nick pretending to scour the newspaper for new job postings he’s actually just scanning the obituaries and police calls and arrests praying that Luke’s name isn’t among them.

He starts on a Sunday morning shift. It only takes three days for Jamie to train at the store and then he’s on his own from that point onwards. It’s not a hard job, but it’s boring if no one’s in the store except him and his co-workers. Most of them aren’t very talkative, except for Mike who seems like he can’t stop talking. Jamie likes Mike, and he always feels like there’s a sense of pressure lifted from his shoulders when they’re scheduled on the same shifts together.

It’s three months into that job when Jamie gets called in to cover a shift by his boss Jean. It’s three months until Jamie finds himself chugging a mug of coffee and rushing to throw on clothes for work, and it’s three months before Jamie really starts to grow up, to mature, to realize that he has to start being an adult, to realize that he is important and needed even if it’s just to cover a shitty fucking shift at his shitty fucking job. Jamie rushes out the door while he pulls his coat on. He briefly explains to Nick why he’s leaving in such a manner, and Jamie makes sure to hug Nick and places a soft but long kiss to his temple before he leaves. Nick’s still mostly asleep and knows that whatever Jamie told him will register after he has his coffee.

Nick scans the newspaper in the same manner that everyone else in his immediate age range does: he simply looks for names of previous classmates of co-workers throughout the paper (when Nick is really bored he’ll go to mugshot websites and browse through the photos of people in his area to see if he knows anyone; he’s found five co-workers and nineteen classmates’ names in the paper for various reasons, albeit almost none of those reasons are good.)

It’s the first day in three months that Jamie doesn’t steal the paper from Nick (or, more accurately, it’s the first time Jamie doesn’t snatch the paper away from Nick in one swift motion as soon as Nick walks through the door of the apartment; after a while the shock wears off and Nick comes to terms with the fact that Jamie has decided that he gets the paper first. Nick doesn’t fight the realization when it finally dawns on him; he just sighs in defeat and hands it over as soon as he walks through the door). It’s the first time that Jamie doesn’t clutch it to his chest as he stalks away into the kitchen with a virtual snarl of possessiveness on his lips. But that day is also the same day where Luke’s name finally appears in one of those very specific categories that Jamie has poured over every single day for nearly three months. Nick throws the paper away that afternoon without a second thought, and when Jamie comes home he doesn’t even think to look.

He still looks for Luke’s name in the paper, but searching every day soon fades into searching every other day and then into searching every other week until the perceived importance of looking for Luke lessens and lessens until the thought of his face and eyes and smile only crawls across his mind early in the hours of the morning when Jamie can’t sleep.

He texts Luke every once in a while, if only to try to give himself the reassurance of the knowledge that Luke is still alive, still breathing, still sticking needles full of red phosphorus and lithium and pseudoephedrine and ammonia and iodine and sulfuric acid and acetone into his veins. Jamie doesn’t ever really expect an answer, but there’s an odd sense of comfort in the fact that he doesn’t get an automated message stating that THE NUMBER YOU ARE TRYING TO REACH IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE.

At least, until one day somewhere around the fourth or fifth month after Jamie gets a job, he in fact gets a verbatim automated message of the one that used to run through his brain, tugging at his amygdale releasing various chemicals of a sense of sadness that almost completely lack empathy . He has the day off, but Nick doesn’t. At this point Jamie’s developed a sort of habit of taking too many klonopins or making the trek down to his job while praying that Nick doesn’t spot him on one of his breaks or something, and Jamie takes full advantage of his discount at work. He sticks mostly to vodka, but sometimes he’ll buy a pint of Fireball and slam all of it in a matter of two or so hours. Those are the nights that Jamie locks his bedroom door, when he hooks up the surround sound to his laptop and blasts music, when he sleeps on the floor after feebly calling for Nilla until she parades herself into his bedroom meowing for attention and locks the door behind her, pulling the comforter from the top of his bed and curling around it while Nilla forces herself into a nook of cat heaven between his legs on top of a blanket that Nick has termed the Fuzzy Purple Cat Crack Blanket. He gets a verbatim message exactly like the same dreaded message that replays over and over again in his head. He drops his phone, because he really wasn’t expecting that. The screen fractures a little more, spider-webbing to the upper left and lower right. He’d become used to calling Luke and the phone automatically going to voicemail because at least then he could hear Luke’s voice.

There’s an odd tug in Jamie’s chest but he can’t place why. He doesn’t think about Luke that much anymore. That day is when Jamie finally starts to grow the fuck up, when he finally starts to accept responsibility no matter how small and miniscule it may be in regards to The Big Picture. It’s the same day that Luke’s name is mentioned in the paper for the last time ever, and it’s also the day where Jamie gives up and stops looking for it period.



Jamie goes to a group therapy meeting on a Friday. It’s not mandatory for him anymore since he’s “better” by his most previous wards’ standards, but it’s a Friday night and Nick has to work and Jamie just really doesn’t want to be home by himself.

He stays quiet the entire time and just listens to the other member’s stories. He doesn’t know why, but it comforts him to listen to strangers talk about their struggles living with the same disease he does – whether the stories give him a satisfactory feeling of I was sicker than you could ever be or an uppity air of I’m doing better in recovery than you ever will – but despite whatever reason it is that Jamie chooses to attend the meetings, it’s almost always solely to prove a point to himself that he is doing better, that he is better than them.

Jamie really only goes to group support when he’s having a moderately bad day; because Jamie honestly no longer thinks of himself as being sick, he thinks of himself as currently being sick although he used to be a lot sicker, and the only reason that he really goes anymore is simply to internally laugh and snicker at the girls and occasionally boys that come to group fresh-faced from their first round of treatment (their first stage of the disorder is how Jamie thinks of it), and to make himself feel better about his own errors in the way that the wisdom of experience can only grant. Sometimes he feels bad about laughing at them, sometimes he doesn’t; it really just depends if it’s an I was sicker than you could ever be or an I’m doing better in recovery than you ever will type of day.

And then, a mere two days later on a Sunday Jamie attends an almost completely empty meeting because he is actually having a bad day. He feels weak, sick. He called into work that day, and the guilt of having to do so quickly wormed its way into his gut and spread to his brain. He hasn’t eaten since Friday night, because Nick trusts him now, like actually trusts him to be a big boy and make big boy decisions. But what Nick doesn’t realize is that on the nights that Nick is at work and Jamie eats alone that Jamie either chews and spits the food or boxes it up in Tupperware and takes it to the homeless woman who usually sleeps six blocks south of their apartment. Her name is Barbara, and sometimes when Jamie takes too many klonopin he’ll sit with Barbara and hand over his meal, maybe share a pill or two with her, and then listens to her stories. He doesn’t know if they’re real or not, but they’re entertaining all the same. Even though Jamie might be faking it on the outside he’s pretty much just as fucked up on the inside as the outside – liver damage, heart failure, and all.

Jamie hates himself more now than he ever has before in his entire life.

At the Sunday meeting Jamie is nursing a minor hangover (he doesn’t know how Nick went to work this morning because right now, even after 6 p.m. he wants to kill himself to get rid of the awful wine hangover nagging at the tense muscles of his neck, near the base of his skull. It’s that night that a girl who does not share her name and who Jamie has never seen before, speaks.

“No one else sees you. No one else sees your insecurities or thinks about how large your nose is or how many inches your waist is. And even if they do they don’t actually care. They’re just using you, using as something that is, in their mind at least, a measurable sense of worth. No one else sees all your flaws and imperfections and perfections the way that you do. You are worthy, you are worthy of anything, anyone, everything. Don’t waste your time wondering why you wouldn’t be,” She says, and she stares at Jamie as she speaks.

He had tuned out for the first part of her speech, lost in his own head in overbearing ugly thoughts, but the last part makes something twist in his chest. It doesn’t help that her eyes burn through his titlted down head for the rest of the meeting.

“Your worth is immeasurable.”

And Jamie can feel her eyes on him, just like talons tearing through his skin. He doesn’t speak to anyone as he leaves, just keeps his head down and skulks out quietly while he clutches his scarf around his aching neck. Part of him kind of hopes she’s just some kind of psychosis induced hallucination, but he knows that’s even more wrong than judging the other people in the group support meetings. Momentarily, he thinks about Luke, but the thought is quickly pushed away by the words that the woman in the meeting spoke.

Jamie doesn’t go back to group therapy after that Sunday.



When Jamie comes home that night Nick is sprawled across the couch somewhere between sleep and awareness with a book open across his chest. Jamie bursts through the door, yanking at his jacket, scarf, and jumper, and throwing them across the floor with a complete lack of care which Jamie usually treats his clothes with as he storms through the apartment. He toes off his shoes grumbling about them and how much he hates any type of shoe that aren’t slip-ons until he pulls them off in a bout of frustration and haphazardly tosses them away from him. Across the room TV On The Radio’s Wolf Like Me plays on the surround system. Nick looks at Jamie with a sense of shock as to how Jamie entered the room, and Jamie snarls back at him. Nick starts, closing the book on his chest not minding to mark the page as he sets it on the coffee table as he tries to sit up. But before he can sit up all the way Jamie’s pushing him back down and straddling him, growling down at him. The look on Jamie’s face reminds Nick of a feral animal; it’s a look full of terror and fear and rage. Nick’s trying to talk, trying to ask what’s wrong, but the words get lost in his throat when Jamie starts pulling at the collar of his tank top, biting at his shoulder and neck, running long fingers through Nick’s hair and sharp nails down his chest, grinding his hips down into Nick. And Nick can’t force the thought of, “How the fuck am I supposed to explain this at work tomorrow, Jamie? Seriously, what the fuck?! You know how people in the service industry are! We’re cruel, heartless, bastards, and some of us are religious and some of us aren’t, but we all hate every single other fucking human being on this planet to some degree, but we make fun of them even more whenever a hopeless twenty-something comes in with needy hickeys of their neck!”

Nick doesn’t stop the internal rant in his head, but he pauses when he realizes that Jamie isn’t talking or arguing, just staring down at him with the irreversible look of pity and sadness. Maybe it’s actually just self-loathing, maybe it’s just sympathy – maybe Nick said those words out loud, maybe he didn’t. Even if the words did actually fall out of his mouth in an elegant example of word vomit, even if it was just him rambling to himself which he so often does these days – Jamie gives him a sorrowful, indignant, sad look, and it applies either way, which makes Nick inexplicably angry more than anything else in the world.

By this point Daughter’s cover of Get Lucky is playing, and all Nick can do is allow the lyrics to run through his head, with Jamie humming into the area just above his jugular, sucking kissing, biting. All of a sudden Nick is on top of Jamie with the blonds’ wrists pinned to the cushion. For a moment they both pause, look at each other – check to see if the other person’s pupils were dilated. And when Jamie returns Nick’s gaze, his sleep deprived wide eyes staring up at Nick with a low smirk playing across his lips.

It’s immediately after that all too short moment that the playlist changes to Kevin Gate’s Posed to Be in Love, and all Jamie can do when he hears the line, “I thought it was legal to beat yo’ hoe, beat yo’ hoe,” is roll over onto his side away from Nick, laughing so hard that he coughs and nearly chokes. It’s then, right after, when Jamie giggles and snorts because he’s laughing too hard at Nick’s reaction. Nick’s still not amused, he kind of wants to wrap his hands around Jamie’s throat until his eyes are wide until he can feel his brothers’ pulse under his fingertips. It’s also then that Nick loses whatever remaining fuck he had to give away.

Nick doesn’t feel as bad about sleeping with Jamie as he used to anymore. He’s known Jamie for quite a long time, and although he means it in the best way possible, he’s pretty sure this is the highest weight he’s ever seen Jamie at. He’s no longer simply bones and sharp angles; Nick can dig his fingers into Jamie’s thighs and actually grip a handful of skin, and Jamie doesn’t bruise when Nick grips him just a little too hard anymore. No more purple green black fingertip shaped bruises on Jamie’s body, just occasional cresent moons left by too sharp nails and sometimes even red lines of lies whispered by hidden weapons; weapons – words or blades, it doesn’t really matter.

Nick has always loved Jamie in at least one way or another, always. That love has evolved over the years and Nick kind of hates himself for the words he attributes to that evolution of love. But he loves Jamie even more with the skin to cover his bones, loves the sight of laughs and giggles, of Jamie’s hair cascading across his face while his hands cover his mouth trying to stifle the hiccups of laughter, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Nick doesn’t think the word “like” necessarily applies, but he feels more confident when he witnesses the contraction of skin between Jamie’s rib bones. Because those hollows between bones used to come and go simply when Jamie was trying to force himself to breathe; now they only appear when Jamie can’t breathe because he’s laughing too hard.

The moment of neediness and lust is gone now, but they stay like that, moving so that they’re laying side by side while facing each other on the couch. And truly, Jamie is a sight to behold. Most of his face is covered by his half undone braid, but Nick can see his face, see Jamie bite the smile that remains on his lips even though he’s trying to force the giggling to stop. Nick smiles. He’s happy. Both of them are happy, and it’s moments like this that make all the bad shit that’s happened in the past bearable, and it’s moments like this that he know will make all the bad shit in the future – whatever it may be, because bad shit is bound to happen, that’s life – okay. Everything will be okay. Because it has to be.



Jamie gets a tattoo on a Wednesday. He goes to a small, relatively new parlor called Matryoshka, but it’s actually a Thursday when he visits the shop for the first time. One of his co-workers, Alicia, recommended the shop to him after he finally sucked it up and asked her if she knew of good artists in the area. Alicia, for some reason, intimidates Jamie to no end. She’s made up mostly of long brunette hair that’s usually knotted in a bun near the bottom of her neck, plaid button downs and sheer collared tanks and long flowing skirts, and bright red lipstick. She’s well-read and incredibly smart, and when it’s slow she’ll talk to Jamie about chakra and the positive energy she feels whenever she sees he’s wearing his amethyst necklace, but she’s also a complete stoner who explains the different strains of marijuana and her favorite ones and why they’re her favorites. She likes to braid Jamie’s hair sometimes, running her fingers through it, twining different types of braids into it before she either ties it back of runs her fingers through the weaves if she’s not happy with it. Alicia likes to talk, too, and Jamie doesn’t mind because he likes to listen. Alicia is also covered head to toe in ink, tattoos nearly covering her arms and chest, creeping up her neck. On the rare occasions he’s seen her wear shorts or shorter than normal skirts he’s noticed that she has several tattoos up and down her legs as well. His favorite tattoo is the one on her left thigh; it’s a linear, geometric lion with its teeth bared in an intimidating snarl of power. Instead of fur the lion’s mane is made up of interwoven feathers, flowers, and strings of jewels. When Jamie first sees the tattoo it takes his breath away.

He’d been thinking of getting a tattoo for a long time, it’s something he’d always wanted but never really had any reason to get. Now, he feels, finally, is the right time.

So, he asks her. Alicia immediately lights up, the first word out of her mouth is, “Matryoshka!” And even thought Jamie isn’t as smart as her and probably wouldn’t be able to pronounce it right he knows by the way she says it that it’s Russian. “Just ask for Valerie, she’s done several of my tattoos,” She says excitedly. “Valerie did my Fibonacci spiral,” Alicia says as she rolls up the sleeve of her shirt to show him the spiral of geometric lines and curves and angles with underlying watercolor-esque splatters of hues of violet and navy and turquoise and crimson that’s tucked between other designs on her right forearm. But Jamie knows that the tattoo means a lot to her, given that it takes up the majority of her forearm. After she shows him the other various tattoos that Valerie has done – all of which are completely beautiful – she goes on to explain that Valerie co-owns the shop with her husband, Sam. “He did my tragus and septum piercings,” she says, tapping the tip of her nose to point out the tribal-ish brass ring that hangs from between her nostrils; the design reminds him of a lotus flower. “They’re usually pretty booked since there’s only three tattooists and one piercer, so call them first.”

Alicia inquires about what Jamie is wanting, and he feels a little stupid and a little silly when he explains to her what he wants and why. Alicia doesn’t know much about him, but in a moment of openness he tells her a little about himself, a little about his past, a little bit about how he got to where he is. There’s a moment of silence after Jamie words vomits all over the place, and it causes a feeling of anxiety to rush into his chest. He looks up at her nervously, and she has a look of contemplation on her face, lips pinched to one side as she thinks.

“I like it. It fits you, Jamie,” she says finally, looking at him with a wide smile. And for whatever stupid reason her approval means a lot to him, even though it really shouldn’t. But gaining it makes him feel a lot more confident about his decision.

So when he gets off work later that day he calls the shop, speaks to the receptionist, and sets up a consult for him. Jamie really didn’t realize that getting a tattoo took so much time and scheduling.

Jamie knows he’s either seen or heard the word Matryoshka before, but he can’t quite place where from and the meaning of it can’t quite surface to his brain. As he enters the shop a bell jingles above his head. He looks around, taking in his surroundings. The front part of the shop is more like a lobby than anything else. There’s a tall desk to the left that’s connected to the front of the building. Scattered across the desk are knick knacks (mostly cat figurines) as well as an elegantly displayed nesting doll. To the side of the desk is a silver tree-like stand branching out a display of an assortment of what looks to be hand-made necklaces and bracelets crafted from of glassy gems and crystals. He notices a pair of knitting needles and a half-way done scarf on the stool behind the desk. The walls of the shop are painted a deep purple and all of the panel moldings, window casings, stools, aprons, chair rails, crowns, baseboards and pilasters are painted a deep, dark grey that’s nearly black. After the desk ends there’s a small area with two steps down, and then a narrow hallway which Jamie assumes is where the actual tattooing and piercing stalls are.

Before Jamie can completely take in the beauty of his surroundings a woman appears from a door he didn’t even notice was behind the desk.

“Can I help you?” She questions, squinting at Jamie a bit. The woman is rather large, and she has long, long wavy grey-blonde hair cascading down to the base of her spine. She’s wrapped in long, draping layers of earth tones, her skirt trailing behind her on the ground just a bit as she walks. There’s a pair of reading glasses perched atop her head, and she has deep green shawl wrapped around her with one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, and when she steps down the stairs he notices the jingling bells of an anklet. Jamie can only assume that it’s Valerie.

“Oh, hold on,” She says as if she’s remembering something. She glances at the Kit-O-Cat clock on the wall. “I didn’t realize it was already this early. Are you Jamie?” Valerie asks as she glances down to what he assumes is an appointment book behind the desk.

Jamie glances at the clock. It’s two in the afternoon and he doesn’t know hoe anyone could consider this early. He ignores the thought and nods his head.

“Wonderful!” Jamie watches as Valerie extinguishes her cigarette in an ash tray she pulls from behind the Mary Poppins desk and then sets on the top of the desk. “Come let’s talk.”

She motions for Jamie to follow her as she starts to head down the hallway to a room at the very end.

“Do you have a specific design in mind?” Valerie asks as she pulls her glasses down from the top of her head, sits down at a drawing desk, and begins rummaging through supplies to pull out several pieces of paper, pencils and colored pencils, and different sized ink pens.

“Kind of. I have a general idea of what I want, I just don’t have a reference image,” Jamie says nervously while he pulls at the sleeves of his sweater, stretching it as far down his fingers as he can.

“Alright, well let’s do some sketching!” Valerie says happily. Jamie assumes that she doesn’t get to do a lot of custom work, that it’s more likely that she gets a bunch of infinity symbols and anchors.

Valerie begins to ask him questions about the font he wants, embellishments, color, shading, and size. After he writes down the two phrases he plans on getting Valerie begins sketching. As she does that she asks other questions about embellishments, color, shading, and size, adding in more details after Jamie answers. She finishes the rough sketch in about five minutes and then they talk about it a bit. Jamie tells her about a couple things that he doesn’t care for and she makes the changes he asks for. She also gives some suggestions of her opinions on the piece and where she thinks maybe some things might need to be changed. Jamie appreciates her input and takes most of her advice, so they tweak it just a bit here and there. Twenty minutes later they’re done, and Jamie is more than happy with the design that Valerie created.

“We can set up an appointment to actually do the tattoo, but I want you to hang onto that sketch for a few weeks to make sure that you still like it, okay?” Jamie agrees with her, so she schedules an appointment into her book, gives him a large, warm smile, and tells him she’ll see him soon.

Jamie keeps the design like Valerie tells him to. He doesn’t tell Nick about it, or even mentions that the idea of getting a tattoo had been rolling around in his head for some time. He keeps the piece of paper folded up in his room, and he glances at it frequently, and even after a month he’s still completely in love with the design.

Jamie gets a tattoo on a Wednesday, and it doesn’t hurt, not like he thought it would anyway. Valerie works slowly, outlining the font and swirls first on each of his wrists, and then moving on to fill in the text. After that they take a short break because Valerie needs a cigarette (or two or three or four) and she says that Jamie’s skin needs a break.

When they go back inside Valerie’s husband is there, and he sits in while she finishes the rest of his tattoo, occasionally getting up to answer the phone or when the bell above the door jingles. A couple other tattoo artists show up, streaming in and stopping by the station to say hello. Sam and Valerie banter back and forth and Jamie just likes listening to the way that they growl at and insult each other with love filled passive aggression in the only way that a couple who had been married for more than twenty years can. It makes him oddly happy.

They finish it all in one day, and before she wraps the bandages around Jamie’s wrists she lets Jamie take a good look at the ink now inscribed onto his skin.

In elegant, sprawling cursive the phrase “c’est la vie” dances across his left wrist while its antonym “c’est la guerre” is scrawled across his right wrist in the same elegant font. The black ink stands out boldly against his pale skin while the grey and white hues add shadows and depth.

C’est la vie, c’est la guerre – that’s life, this is war. This is just the way life is, this is just the way war is.



Jamie doesn’t really know how to inform Nick of his tattoo, so he just waits until a little after Nick gets home from work and is mostly done slipping out of work mode. When Jamie leaves his bedroom he finds Nick slouched on the couch with the posture of surrender absentmindedly petting Nilla and watching the news.

“Hey, Nick?” Jamie asks. Nick’s scan tiredly over to Jamie.

“Yeah?”

“Uh. I wanted to show you something,” Jamie says, uncrossing his arms and walking across the room to sit on the couch beside Nick. “Don’t freak out okay?”

Jamie rolls his sleeves up, and as soon as the bright white bandages wrapped around his wrists is visible he hears Nick breathe in sharply, tensing up. It makes him a little sad, that that’s where Nick’s mind immediately goes to.

To save Nick’s sanity he peels off the bandages quickly, and then presents the tattoos to Nick. Nick stares at his arms for a moment, almost like he’s confused, maybe a little speechless, and he wraps his fingers around Jamie’s wrists, pulling them out straight, and tilting his head at an awkward angle so he can try to read it. Nick speaks French, so he knows what the tattoos mean, as well as the metaphors behind the phrases. Once Nick processes it he visibly deflates, exhaling in a relieved manner.

“You could have found a better way to do that.”

“Yeah, I know, sorry,” Jamie laughs as the anxiety and worry flood out of him.

C’est la vie, c’est la guerre.



It's just one of those things.

Nick doesn’t love Jamie because of ideas or nuances or first impressions. Nick doesn’t love the idea of Jamie, which is how far too many people love one another. Nick loves Jamie because of his curves and arcs and fractals of intricacies, the kind that take a person years to learn about another human being. It’s the kind of love that hurts and aches from the pain of knowing someone so well that it makes your heart heavy, that it physically weighs you down. But it’s the kind of love that makes you not care about the pain, makes you not mind sharing the burden.

Whenever Nick tries to think about it he can’t really name specific qualities of Jamie he likes. He just knows and, really, that’s all that matters.



It’s a Saturday night, nearly a year after Jamie died and then learned how to live again, when Nick finally feels a sense of resolution rest upon the entirety of the apartment. It’s like exhaling a large breath, the kind that makes you want to yawn.

Nick’s sitting at his desk, knees pulled to his chest, chin resting on his left knee, head lolling to the side. In one hand is a cigarette and the other a glass of red wine because there’s nothing wrong with a little wine on a cold night. His eyes are at half mast, staring at the screen of his laptop. He’s reading through old e-mails and in return trying to kill the overbearing sense of nostalgia that overcomes him with copious amounts of wine. He ponders why it’s so much harder to get drunk when you’re alone versus when you’re with other people. And when Nick is done pondering, he keeps drinking, because thinking is taking too much of his brain and killing the tingle in his limbs. So, he thinks, this is what contentment is like. This is what peace is like.

Happiness isn’t always found in a bottle.



Jamie’s eyes wander the night sky, staring at the stars. He tries to pick out constellations, but the stars are dim tonight; he doesn’t know if it’s from the lingering rain storm, the lightening flickering in the far off distance, or if maybe the stars just aren’t as bright as they used to be. He tries to focus on the stars, but they dim and flicker, and Jamie doesn’t know if he’s ever really seen the stars glitter like people say they do.

He’s sitting on the balcony with the door open, a blanket wrapped around himself with a mug of tea in his cold hands. He can hear voices coming from inside, leftover noise from whatever Nick is watching that’s also mixed in with the noises of the street below. Jamie never used to go outside. Now he does it because he actually wants to. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Nilla slink through the open door and then jump on the balcony beside him. She looks at him and meows expectantly. It makes Jamie smile, so he sets his mug of tea on the balcony and pets her, scratching at her ears. He can hear her purring.

Jamie stares at the sky and he pets his cat and he sips his tea.

Jamie loses track of time, but not in the bad way. It’s the type of distractedness that only comes with contentment, and he’s okay with that. Some time later he senses Nick step onto the balcony. He feels a hand squeeze his shoulder, and he looks back at Nick.

“It’s getting late. I’m gonna go to bed,” Nick says as he leans down and kisses Jamie’s forehead.

“Okay. I’ll be there in a bit.”

As Nick walks back inside Jamie lights a cigarette, and the smoke almost makes him cough. He sips his tea and he looks at the stars and he watches the smoke drift into the open sky. Once he finishes his tea he calls Nilla inside with him, closes and lock the door, and pulls the blinds. He crawls into bed with Nick, wrapping the quilts around himself, and he closes his eyes, and he sleeps.

It’s a Saturday night with red wine and the sky and a calico cat that Jamie finally believes that things are okay, and even if maybe someday they aren’t they will be.

Things will be okay.