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Part I: Kate
1
It's2amandhe’s pacing.
Even through the phone I can hear it. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. His foot falls weigh heavily on the squeaky hardwood of his apartment, and when I close my eyes my mind wanders to what he might look like. Dark hair tousled from too many frustrated passes of his fingers pulling at the roots. A light scruff creeping up his cheeks because he hasn’t shaved in a week. A t-shirt maybe. Or maybe not. And barefoot, likely. He's never loved having his feet covered.
My voice comes out as a sigh. "James," I say, trying to pull him back, back to me and this conversation, back to calm. But like always, he's restless. Like always, he’s trying to understand things he can never find the answers to, things that will explain why he's feeling the way he's feeling.
James is… James. Dark and moody, a glass half-empty type. When he’s good, he’s really good. When he’s good, he’s got a smile that could light up a room and a laugh that could stop a heart. I can’t count how many times it’s stopped mine. Just for a second. A little pause in my chest before it starts to thunder again. And it thunders. James does that—he makes funny things happen in my chest. And to my skin. And to my stomach. And between my legs. Everywhere, really. It’s overwhelming.
But when he’s not good, when he lets in a little too much of that dark, when he lets gravity pull him down a little too hard, that’s when James is… James. Stormy. Caught in a blizzard of white and cold and snow so thick he can’t see even a foot in front of him. It’s heavy. It’s violent. It’s a chaotic mix of dark and cold and rain and sleet and snow. And I can’t help but jump right in there with him. Every goddamn time.
“When did things get so complicated, Kate? When did I get like this? Why can't it... why can't it just be like it was? Simple, you know? Easy.”
I don't remember things ever being easy. Since we were kids, it’s like he's had this cloud of darkness casting a shadow over his sunlight. Like an endless winter it blocks out the warmth, shading him from the good and the happy and leaving dark in its place.
It’s a feeling I know. All too well. One I experience every time he comes in and out of my life. Another winter storm I have to endure. Hurricane James.
After I saw the fifth text come in I’d called. Just to check up on him. Just to make sure he's not about to teeter over an edge into a hole that I can't pull him out of.
And usually, I can pull him out. Usually. Or I guess he pulls himself out, and I'm just there to help him up and dust off his pants before he goes on his way.
“James,” I say again.
“Do you ever wonder what the point of it all is?”
I pause. “The point of what?”
“I don't know Kate. This. Life. What the fuck is the point?”
God I hate when he talks like this. Not because it’s the same conversation we had the last time he barreled back into my life, or the time before that, or the one before that. I hate it because it scares me. Terrifies me, actually. That one day he’s going to think too hard about that—that there’s no point to life. What then?
“James, please. Please don’t say things like that.” It’s a plea. Something I find myself doing much too often with him—pleading, begging. Begging him to see himself how I see him. Begging him to let in a little light. Begging him not to go. Begging him to stay away. “It’ll… get better. I’m sure it will. Did you try talking to someone? The last time—”
“This isn’t like last time.” His voice is short and curt, but then I hear a small sigh. A sigh of apology. A sigh telling me he knows he’s being unfair. “I just… I need something more. I feel… empty. And don’t say this is a fucking phase, Kate, okay? It’s not.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
Except I was definitely going to say that.
His whole life has felt like some kind of phase. James can’t be idle; he can’t stay in one spot. Every couple months, it’s a new job or a new city or a new country. He’s always leaving. Always changing something because he’s grown too bored with the life he’s built and needs to move on to the next thing. Every commitment he makes is temporary. Every visit back home is nothing but a pit stop.
The mind of an artist—passionate, obsessive, melancholic. Forever restless, forever searching for that next thing that’s going to propel him into greatness.
He says he’s nomadic, a wayfarer of sorts, and that was something I deeply romanticized before I was old enough to know better. My James the drifter. My James the free spirit. My James the adventurer. But then he stopped coming home, he stopped beingmyJames. He left me behind. And I was left with fleeting moments, daydreams, fantasies about a future I knew he’d never be able give me.
We were friends once, briefly, and then we were much more than that but then not enough.
“Come see me.”
My heart jumps the same moment my stomach drops because I know how this ends. The same way it always does. After a few weeks, or if I’m lucky, months, of texts and calls and weekend visits, I’ll let myself get caught up in those daydreams again, those fantasies. And then he’ll rip it all away, on to the next adventure after some R&R with the girl who’s always around, who’s always waiting, who’s always fixing him.
I sigh. “James…”
“Come on, I need you. Things just… sometimes it just feels better when you’re around, you know? Makes things feel like they used to be. Before all the bullshit. Before we got old.”
I snort. “Twenty-five is hardly old.”
