I Love You to Death

by Natalie Ward

  "Ash, are you okay?" Luke asks me again, for what feels like the hundredth time.

  I can’t answer him. I spit out the remnants of my stomach and hold my mouth under the water. I have to rinse a couple of times to clean it out and it’s only when I finally lift my head, do I realise that Luke is holding my hair back. That he’s been holding my hair back while I throw up. His other hand clutches the towel again, but I can’t see any more blood. I finally lift my eyes to his face and look at him. I must look like shit.

  "Ash," he says gently, still holding my hair.

  I hold a hand to my mouth, my breath must be awful. "Sorry," I mumble.

  His hand releases my hair, lightly brushing it down my back as he does. "It’s alright," he says. "Come and sit down."

  I yank some paper towel from the dispenser and wipe my mouth. "I’ll get you another coffee," I say as I move away from him.

  "It’s alright Ash, don’t worry about the coffee, just sit down for a second," he says, reaching for my arm.

  I quickly back away from him and go out the front to make us more coffee. My heart is pounding, pounding at the sight of all that blood, at the closeness of Luke, at touching his hands, at him touching me. There’s never been blood before; I’ve never had to see that. But he is okay, I tell myself. It doesn’t happen like this, it never has. I shake my head, trying to clear it and walk back out to the kitchen with fresh cups of coffee for both of us. My hands are gripping the hot mugs to stop them from shaking.

  When I walk in, I see Luke trying to bandage his hand. The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. "Do you need help?"

  He smiles at me then, gesturing with his other hand and saying, "It’s all good Ash, really, just sit down for a second."

  I walk toward him, putting our coffees on the counter this time and take the bandage from his hand. "Ash…" he says. He’s standing close to me again, watching as I now bandage up his hand, completely oblivious to the fact that I don’t want to be anywhere near him. I have to force myself to stand here and try to still my hands as they gently wrap the bandage around his. Why am I doing this?

  "Do you think you need stitches?" I ask him quietly.

  He laughs softly and I feel his breath across my face. It sends a shiver through me and my stomach clenches.

  "No, it’s fine. Are you sure you’re alright though?" he asks gently.

  I finally answer without looking at him. "Yeah, it’s just the blood, too much blood."

  "I can get it," he says quietly, and I hear the concern in his voice.

  "I’m almost done," I say quickly. When I finally tie off the bandage, I step back immediately. My hip bangs into the counter and I reach for my coffee, inadvertently picking up his.

  "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.

  "What, so you can have them all but I can’t?" he’d always ask me, a smile on his face.

  "No, that’s not what I meant and you know it," I’d say, throwing something at him. "What I meant is all gay men are pretty and hardly any straight men are, so why do you get them all and I don’t?"

  He would just laugh again and say to me, "Trust me Ash, there’s someone out there for you and he’ll be the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen in your life!"

  I’d hoped he was right, but when I first
saw Sam at the funeral, the only thing I thought was he had to be gay, because he was just so good looking.

  Afterwards, there’d been a wake at Nate’s parent’s house. I didn’t really want to go because I didn’t know many of the people; Nate had left Providence and made so many friends. So instead, I sat on my own front porch and watched them all come and pay their respects to his family.

  I was watching them when Sam came up to me.

  "You don’t want to come and join us?" he’d asked, standing at the bottom of the steps in a black suit and tie, which he’d loosened along with undoing the top button of his shirt.

  I looked up at him and felt something catch in my throat. "I don’t know, I don’t really know anyone," I somehow managed to get out.

  He walked straight up my steps, stuck his hand out to me and said, "I’m Sam."

  I reached out my arm and he took my hand in his soft, warm one. It was bigger than mine and I felt his fingers wrap all the way around, holding my hand completely in his. "Ash," I replied shyly.

  "Now you know me, so come on over," he said smiling and still holding onto me as he pulled me up off the step.

  I tried to protest but he ignored it, continuing to hold onto me as though he thought I might try and escape. We went into the house and Sam took us straight into the kitchen where he grabbed a couple of beers. He popped the tops off, handed me one and leant back against the counter waiting for me to do the same thing. I took a sip of the beer, tried not to choke on it and stood there staring at the floor and wondering why he was being so nice to me.

  "So ah, how did you know Nate?" I finally asked him, after we stood there in silence for what felt like hours, but couldn’t have been more than seconds.

  "We went to school together," Sam answered. "He and I both studied computer science."

  "Oh so you’re a computer nerd too then?" I responded without really thinking.

  Sam laughed. He had a great laugh that was deep and genuine. "I don’t know about nerd, that was pretty much Nate’s game. I battled through and was just glad he was there to help me out all the time."

  "Yeah," I smiled. "He used to help me with my math homework in high school. I pretty much pretended to understand what he was talking about most of the time." I confessed, taking a sip of beer as I snuck another look at Sam.

  He was looking back at me, watching me with an amused look on his face. "Yeah me too," he answered quietly. We both continued drinking our beers, neither of us saying anything more as we each remembered Nate. Suddenly Sam took one last swig, put the bottle down and stepped towards me. "Wanna get out of here?" he asked, his brown eyes taking on an intensity I hadn’t seen earlier.

  "Sure," I said without thinking, quickly finishing my own beer.

  I followed Sam out of the house and down the street to his car. He unlocked the door for me and we both slid in. As he turned the key, music came softly from the radio, one of my favourite bands. I recognised it instantly and leant over to turn the volume up without thinking. Sam just smiled at me and pulled out onto the street.

  We drove for a while, neither of us saying anything, just enjoying the music and the comfortable silence between us. Eventually when Sam approached the Pell Bridge I asked him, "We’re going to Newport?"

  "I don’t know," he said turning to look at me. "I didn’t know if you wanted to stop driving yet?"

  I remember being struck then by how easy it was to be with him. How he somehow understood I didn’t want to talk about Nate and what’d happened. That I was happy to just drive along, listening to music. But my stomach betrayed me, so I answered, "Yeah, let’s go into Newport, I’m starving."

  He eventually found a parking spot outside a pub. It was a pub I’d been to before, popular but not too busy. The kind of place you could have a drink and a conversation. After we’d sat in a booth and ordered some food and drinks, I decided now would be a good time to work out which team Sam batted for.

  "So, are you from around here?" I asked him.

  "Nah, I’m from Seattle originally, but school up in Boston," he answered.

  "And you still go to school there?" I asked. Nate had been in his second year at BU and I was assuming Sam was too.

  "Yep, over half way through, another year then I’m outta there," he answered.

  "Where to next then?"

  Sam took a sip of his coke, giving me that strangely intense look again. "You know, Nate told me a lot about you," he said, not answering my question.

  "What?" I asked, shocked, half spitting some of my drink back into the glass in surprise.

  Sam smiled at me. "He told me a lot about you. At first I wondered if you were his girlfriend, but he cleared that up for me pretty quick."

  "So you ah, you and Nate were…?" I couldn’t quite get it out, but Sam just laughed and said, "No, no we played on opposite teams."

  Bingo I thought to myself. "So just friends then?" I said out loud to Sam.

  "Just friends," he confirmed, smiling as he ran a hand through his blonde hair.

  We sat in silence until our food arrived. I didn’t know what Sam was thinking about, but I was suddenly thinking things were definitely looking up. I silently thanked Nate for whatever it was he’d told Sam that had made him come and talk to me.

  After our food arrived, I finally got up the nerve to ask him. "So, are you going to tell me what it is that Nate said about me?"

  Sam looked up at me and smiled. "Maybe," he answered teasingly.

  "Come on, you can’t drop a bomb like that and then not tell me anything," I protested, taking a bite out of my burger.

  He laughed, holding his hands up in surrender. "Okay, okay," he said, "I’ll tell you."

  I waited for him to go on.

  "He thought I should come back to Providence with him some time. That he should introduce us and I should take you out. Thought you and I would be a good match for each other," he finally said, his eyes never leaving mine.

  I sat there with my burger halfway between my plate and my mouth. Wow I thought to myself, Nate really said that? Swallowing, I took a deep breath and asked, "And…..what do you think?"

  Smiling Sam looked right at me and said, "I think like always, Nate was right."

  And that was it. That was how Sam and I got together.

  We spent the rest of the night with each other. After we finished dinner, we played some pool. Sam taught me how to hold the pool cue straight so I could actually hit the ball where I wanted to. I remember being surrounded by him, standing over me in that cheesy way you see in the movies, holding my hands in the right position, his body encircling mine. It felt so good. I felt so good wrapped up in him.

  After the pub closed, Sam drove us to the beach and we took a blanket down to the sand and lay there talking and talking until the sun came up. Sam had to go back to Boston that day, but we’d had no sleep, so we went back to my place and crashed for a few hours. Lying on my bed together, Sam wrapped me in his arms and pressed what would be the first of so many kisses against the back of my neck, whispering, "Goodnight Ash," even though it was already morning.

  I remember feeling so happy.

  A couple of days later, after Sam was back in Boston, an envelope arrived in the post, addressed to me. Inside was a flyer for a show in Boston. A bunch of bands were playing at some theatre that night and one of them was my favourite, the one that had been playing on the radio when I first got in Sam’s car. I smiled, knowing who it was from. There was nothing else inside, but when I turned the flyer over, Sam’s address was written on the back.

  I went to Boston that afternoon and never really came back.

  ∞

  Saturday night. I’m home and doing nothing. After work, I thought about going to a movie, but the rain is back and in the end I come home and do what I normally do on a Saturday night. Drink, feel sorry for myself, listen to depressing music and generally try to put off falling asleep so I don’t have to face the same nightmare again.

  In other words, a great nigh
t in.

  But like yesterday, today something different happens. Tonight when I pointlessly check my email, this is there;

  To: asha@eatdrinkread.com

  From: luke@eatdrinkread.com

  Subject: Thanks

  Ash – hey I just wanted to say thanks for yesterday.

  Sorry, I know it made you uncomfortable, but well, thanks for your help.

  Luke

  To which I automatically and without thinking, reply.

  To: luke@eatdrinkread.com

  From: asha@eatdrinkread.com

  Subject: RE:Thanks

  How did you get this email address?

  To: asha@eatdrinkread.com

  From: luke@eatdrinkread.com

  Subject: RE:RE: Thanks

  From work? We all have them. I took a chance you actually checked yours

  To: luke@eatdrinkread.com

  From: asha@eatdrinkread.com

  Subject: RE:RE:RE:Thanks

  But it uses my real name? I never told you my real name?

  I hardly ever go by Asha. It’s not that I don’t like it; it’s just pretty much everyone shortens it. I’ve always just been Ash and it’s what everyone calls me at work. It kinda surprises me he would even know it’s short for Asha, most people don’t.

  To: asha@eatdrinkread.com

  From: luke@eatdrinkread.com

  Subject: RE:RE:RE:RE: Thanks

  Yeah about that, I tried a few different variations – and this was the only one that didn’t bounce back, so…now I guess I know your real name.

  Anyway, seeing as I never got much of a chance to talk to you, I wanted to say thanks for the help yesterday with my hand. It’s feeling a lot better.

  Okay, weird he worked it out; that he would even think it could be Asha. Weird he is emailing me at all.