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Cuba
The stench of freshly painted walls fills my nose. I hate the smell. Over the past six months, my therapist feels the need to have his walls painted every month it seems like. I think he does it to bother me, or hell, maybe he needs a therapist himself. I wouldn't be surprised if my shrink needed a shrink.
Oliver. He insisted I call him by his first name since I rarely call him anything at all. I don't want to be here but it's part of the deal with my parents. I owe them this much. The night they found me…
That night I won't forget. My parents laid down the hammer. They demanded that if I wanted to stay in this family I had to go to therapy. I had to go back to school. They knew better than to push basketball at me. And honestly, I don't think they cared if I played or not.
Oliver taps his pen rapidly against his note pad, waiting for me to answer I suppose. I tilt my head and look at him. He's a young guy, looks like he just got his diploma last week. Oliver is what I would call a hipster with his khakis, checkered button up, and black framed Clark Kent glasses. He even has a man bun perched in the middle of his head to top it off.
“So how did the tutoring session go? Being back on campus?” he asks again.
Stormy grey eyes flash at the thought of my tutor, and I smirk. “It's went okay.”
She isn't my biggest fan. Rightfully so, when I knew I would have a female tutor I was thinking a frumpy nerd wearing a turtleneck up to her eyes. I wasn't expecting long, tan legs in a pair of cut off shorts and a tank top low enough to see the swell of her perfect breasts. Her normally pouty, bee stung lips pressed into a hard line, and her grey eyes narrowed in a non-impressive way as I call her a groupie. Also, I wasn't prepared for her to put me on my ass. Bliss was beautiful, smart, and gave no shit who I was nor, did she seem like she would put up with my shit.
It's like someone pushed her into my life to ruin me even more, because Bliss is what my best dreams are made of, and what my nightmares are killed by. She's the worst distraction in the flesh. A distraction I can't dare touch.
For the first time since Jackson's death, I'm not numb.
I made it very clear she would never know me, because if she did, she would look at me with more disgust than she already does. At least I can lust for her over the next four weeks, then she'll probably never see me again. It’s better that way, I just have to make my dick agree.
Oliver nods. “Did he know who you were? I know that was a deal breaker.”
I shake my head. “No, she didn't.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “She?”
I nod. “Yeah, she's cool. She doesn't give two shits who I am,” I pause, “or was.” I give a one shoulder shrug.
“You mean who you are,” Oliver corrects me. Here we go once again.
I usually argue with him about this because I’m not who I use to be, I’m a washed-up version of who I once was. Past tense.
I shrug again as if saying whatever and he sighs. He always sighs at this part. The part where my self-pity kicks in and I refuse to believe that I’m not this fucked up shell of my past. That I’m still struggling to grieve the loss of my best friend, still struggling to let go and accept the fact that my life must go on. Going back to school is supposed to help… step one… getting back into a normal routine.
“Have you answered Cameron back about hanging out?” Oliver switches the subject.
Step two, hang out with friends. Or friend. Cameron wasn’t exactly our third musketeer, but he hung out with Jackson and I more than a handful of times, and he’s pretty cool. He has been texting me asking if I want to hang out, do something, anything to lure me from my apartment. It’s been almost a month and I still haven’t replied. I may have let it slip that I was returning to school fall semester last month in a brief conversation we had. Now he wants to hang out.
I shake my head. “Nah.” I pause. “But maybe I will. We’ll see.”
He smiles brightly as if we made some breakthrough. Maybe for him, but a breakthrough for me is for me to pick up a basketball again. That will be a huge breakthrough, one that I don’t see happening.
Jackson-
I met this girl, well, there’s this girl who is my tutor. You know the one my parents made me get. She has no idea who I am or even cares. How crazy is that right? She even called me an asshole to my face. Her name is Bliss, she is crazy smart and beautiful, man. Hopefully next session I’m not too much of an asshole. Therapy is going okay, Oliver is desperate to get me back where I was, you know, before everything happened. I want to make our dreams come true, Jack. I really do, I know you would want that for me but it’s hard. I’m still coming to terms with everything. I just need to start living again, Oliver says, maybe he’s right. We’ll see. I miss you, man.
Always.
-Cuba
I stare at the letter before I fold it up and lay it in the box with the rest of them. Oliver had me start writing to Jackson after our first session, and I hate to admit, he was right about something. Writing my daily letters made it easier. No, it doesn’t make me feel he’s here with me, but it makes me feel closer to him in a sense. Closing the lid on the box, I slide it under my bed. I don’t know why I hide it, because no one ever comes over and no one, for damn sure, comes in my room.
I seek out a random girl every now and then, let her suck me off on the couch and send her on her way, no strings attached, just a physical release. I spent most of the last year either too drunk or too damaged to want sex… anything more than a random blow job was more intimacy than I could handle.
Now there is Bliss, the feisty little thing is the only woman that has made my dick twitch in the last year. I need to be very careful with her, I can tell she’s not a no-strings attached kind of girl.
Pulling my phone out, I send Cameron a quick text.
