“Boy what a year that was” said Charlie lying back in his brown leather chair and resting his hands on his head. He slowly rubbed his eyes, prompting his thinly framed spectacles to rise up his forehead like they were finally getting a better view.
Charlie always had a way of dramatising things, but I owed it to him, he was right. It had been a hard year. A year I half wished I could throw away like plastic and bury deep into the ground without the fear of it ever returning.
2012 had brought Charlie and I a sickly sweet cocktail of illness, crippling heart-ache and death - all shaken, stirred and poured over the coldest ice, without any glamour of a tailored blue suit or Ursula Andress on our arm. In a funny way though, despite everything, the year had brought us closer which was the only thing I could hold on to. The only thing I could take from it.
“I really miss her mate.”
Sometimes it was hard to know what to say to him. Charlie’s
girlfriend Megan had ended things after five years. Taken off with some friends
to travel the US and “find herself” she’d said. I never did tell Charlie what she actually meant was “find a fuck”. Probably from the preppy baseball
player I’d seen her with on Facebook.
“It’ll get easier bro. Seriously. We’ll go out and get you laid
and you’ll forget about her. Realise she wasn’t right for you, ok? Just get on
with your own life mate. She wasn’t worth it. She’ll be out of your mind soon
enough”.
Charlie didn’t respond for a while, but then turned to me with a look of resentment in his eyes.
“What, like Tom yeh?”
I was silent.
Charlie continued looking at me with a winning expression. “Didn’t
think it was that easy”.
Ok it was a shit thing to say, but he'd made his point. Just
hearing Tom’s name made my insides feel hollow. Like my guts had upped and
vanished and I was yet to feel the impact; i’d describe it as a kind of
terrified anticipation.Tom was my best mate. A friend of the family's, so Charlie knew him too. But we were closer. Tom and I would spend our days playing football together whilst his parents lived next door or getting stoned together in the skate park. We’d lie on the grass with the clouds morphing into beams of light, and we’d dream. We’d dream about our future; the girls we would fuck, the millions we would make, the spliffs we’d smoke in every cafe in Amsterdam.
It was February when it happened. Tom was pissed,
the stupid tard that he was, and fell. From six stories. He was on his own at the time and
you know what? That’s the worst part. He was on his own and no one could have
helped him even if he was screaming in agony. Turns out his mates were just outside the apartment, at the pub.
They didn’t even realise he was missing until the morning. Until it was too late.
I couldn’t think about it and looked down at the paper I
had begun to scrunch in my hand. As I flattened it out, all I could see were shock stories of shootings, kidnappings or economic gloom, and as it
all became too much, I looked back up at Charlie and he was grinning.
“What’s funny?” I said, miffed.
"It’s your...It’s....it’s...” He couldn’t contain himself. “The
dogs just shat in your shoe mate”.
Charlie was bent over with wild laughter, his spectacles now
flying off his forehead and landing on the carpet like they were making a quick
escape.
I slowly looked down to see Badger’s dark brown turd,
resting itself in the middle of my right Converse and you know what? I couldn’t
control myself. I laughed hard. So hard my ribs hurt and tears poured out of my
eyes.
It was the loudest we’d
laughed all year.
