1
Fuck. My. Life. I tangled my fingers through my hair as I blinked a few times before looking at the computer screen again. There had to be some sort of mistake. No way in hell was my bank account balance that low. I hadn’t expected to log in and see millions accumulating interest, but there should have been more. I scrolled through the recent transactions, letting out a frustrated scream when everything added up. Except, apparently, my ability to do simple math.
I shoved away from the rickety dining room table, kicking an empty beer can on my way to the thermostat. Turning it down a few more degrees wasn’t likely to do much, other than possibly land me in the emergency room with pneumonia, but I would pretend, at least for a little while, that I was being all adulty and responsible.
Yeah right, the little voice inside my head scoffed.If you were responsible, you would grow the hell up and get a real job.
Oddly enough, my conscience sounded almost identical to my dad. He’d be so pissed if he realized I was living like this. Not as upset as he’d be about the fact that I had completely blown my inheritance in less than four years, but he definitely wouldn’t be happy.
I took a detour to the bedroom on my way back to the kitchen/dining room combo in my apartment. Who in the hell was I kidding? Pretending like this shit hole was sophisticated enough for separate rooms. Hell, one drunken stumble the wrong way and I would probably crash through the few walls I did have.
If you weren’t such an idiot, you wouldn’t have to stay in this dump,that damn voice scolded me.
“Well no shit,” I responded out loud. Yes, I was talking to myself. Probably made me less than mentally stable, but at least when I was holding conversations with myself, I didn’t have to look at the faces of the few friends I’d managed to hang onto. I didn’t want to see their pity or their disappointment, or whatever the fuck else they couldn’t school in their features.
The front of one of my dresser drawers fell off in my hand when I tried getting a sweatshirt. I threw the broken piece of wood at the wall. “Fuck!”
This was it. The end. This was one of those turning-point moments I’d heard on the psychobabble talk shows my mom used to watch all the time. I had reached a crossroads, and I could either make a choice or one would be made for me.
As I sat there wallowing in self-pity, I heard my phone ringing from somewhere out in the main area of the apartment. If I didn’t come up with some cash, my service would get shut off in a couple of weeks. Then what the fuck was I supposed to do? Not many places were eager to hire a dude who couldn’t even keep his phone bill paid so they could call him back for an interview.
I let the damn thing ring. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to come up with a believable lie when the two guys I still talked to from the band called, asking me if I wanted to head out and grab drinks with them. Did I want to? Fuck yes. Unfortunately, little things like eating and drinking cost money. Money I apparently didn’t fucking have.
The phone stopped ringing.
And then it started again.
I fell back on the bed, covering my head with a pillow. I didn’t give a shit who it was. Eventually, they’d give up. Everyone always did. Now that the band had split, there was no reason for people to push me to be sociable. No one wanted to hang out with the emo-rock-star-wannabe with a serious case of Peter Pan syndrome. They all had their own lives. Obviously, since that was one of the main reasons After Effect split up. We had never been the type of band who could rake in the dough, but at least when we were playing gigs regularly, I didn’t have to sit around the apartment trying to figure out how low I could turn thermostat before getting sick or how many times it was actually necessary to eat in a given day.
I missed it. I hated them for moving on and leaving me in their dust. And most of all, I hated the fact that my dad was right.
He always told me I’d never get anywhere with music, but I had been determined to prove him wrong. He was one of those pretentious assholes who thought you were only worth as much as the college degrees hanging on your wall. I thought he was about to have a coronary when I told him I wasn’t going to college. He’d tried guilting me, reminding me that I wouldn’t see a penny of the inheritance my grandfather left me until I turned twenty-one if I chose to forfeit college. At the time, I’d been young and oh so naïve. Three years hadn’t seemed like that long to eventually have freedom. Freedom to chase that lottery known as a lucky break.
Lucky breaks didn’t happen for people like me. Once the money came in, I was able to hang on a few more years, but now I was quickly coming to the end of that money, and it was time to figure out who in the hell I was without music.
The fucking phone started ringing again. Whoever it was, wasn’t going to stop trying to annoy me enough that I picked up. I stomped out of the bedroom, tripping over a hamper full of laundry in the hall. Clean? Dirty? Who the fuck knew anymore. I had become a huge fan of the sniff test, because dragging all my shit to the laundromat was both a pain and another added expense.
“What?” I answered without bothering to look at the caller ID. If they wanted to annoy the fuck out of me by calling repeatedly, then they didn’t deserve a pleasant greeting. Whoever the fuck they were.
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” Jordan teased. Of course, it was Jordan. He’d been my best friend since we were kids and he was the only person I trusted to never turn their back on me. But if he knew what was going on, he would try to fix my problems because that was the type of guy he was. He was the one who caught a lucky break. When he hit what he thought was his rock bottom, the love of his boss’s life literally picked him up and carried him to a whole new world. Now, he had two men who’d kill for him. He’d found his happy little life with Doug and Eli, and he wanted everyone he knew to be as stupidly happy as he was.
Well, I had bad news for him. Sometimes, life sucked.
You’re not being fair,the voice lectured me.You know damn well how much Jordan suffered to get to where he is now.
I did. And that’s why I had sworn off relationships. No amount of dick on hand was worth the pain he had gone through with all the men he swore were the one before realizing that he wasn’t looking for one, he needed two. That was Jordan; my lovable, sometimes high maintenance, best friend.
“Sorry. I was trying to get some shit done,” I lied. To assuage my guilt, I started straightening the kitchen counter. I flipped open the lid on the garbage can and shoveled all the junk mail into it. Jordan wouldn’t have believed me if I told him I was cleaning. He always gave me a hard time about being such a slob. I wasn’t. Not really. But looking around this place, I seriously thought the clutter gave it some much-needed character.
“What are you doing next Tuesday night?”
I paused, debating how to answer. If it was anyone else, I would’ve made a sarcastic quip about needing to check my jam-packed social calendar, but this was Jordan. I didn’t want to piss him off. “Same thing I do every night. Sit around the house trying to figure out where in the fuck my life went wrong.”
“Is everything okay?” Ugh. He had that super sweet, worried tone in his voice.
“Yup,” I responded with a pop of my lips for emphasis. “Life’s just peachy.”
Jordan knew better but he didn’t call me out on the lie. I’d been a mess since the band split up and I knew Jordan was genuinely worried about me.
