"Shit!" I breathe out. "How do you drink this stuff, it tastes disgusting?" I like my coffee with a lot of milk.
He laughs at me now, his face softening. "You need to put sugar in it, one big one should do." He moves away from me and I watch as he flexes his bandaged hand, testing it and then stirs in some sugar before handing the cup back to me. We watch each other across the top of the mug and I see his eyes drop to my mouth as I take a sip. I don’t want to be this close to him.
"Better?" he asks.
"Better yes, still not sure how you drink it though." I hand the cup back to him.
"Finish it," he says softly, "you’ll like it by the end." Luke picks up my mug with his other hand, the one that isn’t cut and takes a sip of my coffee now.
And just like that, we’ve shared something.
Just like that, I know something personal about him and he knows something personal about me. Okay, it’s only coffee, it’s not deeply personal, but I still shouldn’t be doing this. I should turn and walk away. I have work to do and so does Luke, although really, I know it’s more than that. But in silent agreement, we both stand there finishing each other’s coffees. Luke is now drinking my coffee as he watches me and I’m leaning against the counter trying to work out why I can’t just walk away.
∞
I first met Sam at a funeral. I know, a bad omen, but like I said, back then I wasn’t as clued in to my little issue as I am now. It was my neighbour and best friend Nate’s funeral. He wasn’t the first death I caused, but like all of them, his death was caused by me. The strange thing is how much his death changed other things, but in ways I never expected.
Nate and I had become really close over the last few years, bonding over a shared admiration for my older brother’s friends, which led to Nate admitting to me that he liked boys better than girls. I think I was the first person he told and it somehow allowed us to connect and become good friends. I was glad to have him to talk to; happy he was someone I could be myself with. He was just relieved to have someone who accepted him for who he was. Plus, there was none of that, I like you, but you don’t like me shit between us. We were just friends.
We hung out a lot, even though we didn’t go to school together. Nate was hoping to go to college after school and I wasn’t entirely sure what I planned to do. He was really smart and would occasionally help me with my school work. So we spent a lot of time together, him helping me and me usually pretending I understood what he was talking about. In amongst all that, he eventually told me he was gay and confessed to wanting to get to know me after he saw my brother’s friends coming around.
I laughed at first, explaining that I was pretty sure they were all straight. In the end it didn’t really matter whether they were or not, what mattered was that Nate and I became friends.
The night Nate died, was because of me. He’d come home for the weekend, bringing his latest boyfriend with him and they’d taken me out dancing to a new club in town. I’d been the one to suggest it. I’d been bugging Nate to take me there ever since it opened. As always he’d obliged, neither Nate nor Alex minding if I tagged along. In the end it had been a disaster.
When we left the club sometime after 1am, we were all drunk. We shouldn’t have been, given we were only nineteen, but we all had fake IDs. What it meant was when we ran into a bunch of rednecks who seemed intent on yelling obscenities at me, Nate felt the need to step in and protect me. Of course people like that seem to have this inbuilt detector for someone who is different to them and they immediately recognised that Nate was gay and therefore in their eyes, likely to try and molest them in some way.
That was when their attention turned from me to him.
We tried to stop it, we really did. Alex and I tried everything, but there were just too many of them. And they all went after Nate. By the time I ran to find someone, Nate had probably already suffered the cerebral haemorrhage that killed him. One day later they turned off his life support and he was pronounced dead.
I struggled to face both Alex and Nate’s family after that. I felt so responsible for what had happened. If I’d never asked him to take me out, if we’d never left when I suggested we go somewhere else, if I’d never worn that outfit, maybe those assholes would’ve missed us. Maybe they would’ve walked by if I wasn’t there and Nate would still be alive.
I missed my best friend so badly, but the guilt I felt for what had happened, was overwhelming.
Nate’s funeral was a pretty big event in the end. At college he was very popular, out and proud and had a lot of friends. I remember noticing how good they all looked, even in mourning they managed to look good. I also remember thinking how funny Nate would find it, that even now I was getting annoyed at how many good looking guys were gay.