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When I got back out to the living room, Nick was on his phone. He looked up at me and grinned.
“You ready to head out of here, sleeping beauty?” he asked.
“You got coffee in the rig?” I answered his question with a question.
“Always,” he said with a nod. “Come on, I’m sure you could use something to wake you up a bit.”
“You know it,” I told him.
“I love what you’ve done with your place.” Nick looked around the living room with wide eyes, but I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic. He wasn’t over to my place nearly as much as he could be, and he teased me often over that fact. He was my best friend, I never denied that, but the fact that we didn’t hang out nearly enough gave him plenty of fuel to use against me.
He was a doctor, too, and he was able to find the time to hang out with friends and have a life outside the hospital, but he was different toward work than I was. I had long wanted saving lives to be my calling. I grew up with the intention of spending my time doing what I could to save another person from dying.
There was a part of me that knew I sacrificed a lot to live that life, but another part of me felt like I wasn’t working too much. I liked being out there and saving lives, so there wasn’t much work to be done since I loved what I did. But, that didn’t change the fact Nick was going to take every chance he could to tease me over the harsh reality I never did a thing around my place.
There were still boxes I hadn’t unpacked since I moved into the apartment years ago. And they probably never would be, either. I didn’t see much point to doing it when I wasn’t living here forever, and I never got anything out of those boxes, either. It seemed funny to me to want to unpack them if I hadn’t yet missed them.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you come over to admire my décor, or did you come to pick me up so we can fish?” I asked.
“Not gonna lie. I halfway hoped that I would catch you in bed with some pretty girl,” he said with a wink. “I thought for sure when I pulled up and there wasn’t any sign of life inside, you were in bed with someone cute.”
“Since when do I do that?” I asked. “Don’t have time to get tangled up in a web like that.”
“Everyone needs to cut loose every once in a while,” Nick argued. “Besides, you find someone you can settle down with, and it’s not really a web.”
“But you have to have the time to make it through all the ones you don’t get along with to find the one you do,” I replied. “I don’t have the desire to deal with all that drama that comes with dating, you know?”
“You miss out on some good pussy, though.” He shook his head.
I didn’t argue. He was right, and there would be no changing that. But, I didn’t like to just hookup with a girl and cut her loose. I wanted sex to mean more to me than just something that felt good. Not to mention the fact that I didn’t want to deal with a messy breakup when the time came.
It might be pessimistic, but I didn’t see myself having the time for a relationship, so any girl who showed any kind of interest in me outside of sleeping together, I was quick to dump. I would tell her up front I wasn’t looking for a real relationship, and if she didn’t abide by that, then so be it. I did what I had to do.
“Enough of that,” Nick said, being the one to end the conversation he’d started. “Let’s get out of here and get some fish!”
“There’s plenty of them out there,” I said. “And when it comes to that saying, I would way rather be on my way out to catch some fish than trying to catch a woman.”
Nick laughed. “I don’t have much trouble catching, it’s the releasing part I have issues with.”
I just shook my head.
I felt like my luck was fading. In more than one aspect of my life, too. It seemed things didn’t excite me as they once did, and I felt depressed more and more during my off time. I didn’t have a lot of time to myself, so that wasn’t very often, but it was important for me to take note that part of the reason why I did work as much as I was, was so that I didn’t have the time to get upset over the way my life was going.
Even as Nick and I settled in to fish, he was the one who brought in any while my line went untouched. I did exactly the same thing Nick was doing, wondering if perhaps he just happened to have the right lure for what the fish wanted that morning.
But, even putting on a different lure for my pole, nothing changed.
Time after time I pulled in nothing. I was putting in all the effort I could and doing everything right, but it was still fighting against me the entire time, and I couldn’t change it.
I tried not to think about how that was a perfect imagery for my life at the present moment.
I was spinning my tires. I knew I was.
And I was starting to feel trapped.
I didn’t say anything to Nick over it. I didn’t know what to say. I just felt like something had to change. At least, I wanted something to change. But I had no idea what. Perhaps a companion in my life would be a good idea, not that I would have the time to really go out and do anything with her. Still, I didn’t like feeling this way, and I wasn’t entirely sold on how I was going to pull out of it.
But, I was a man who made his own luck.
