He was living in my house, then. We were all of nineteen, sharing a single bed in my childhood bedroom. His Mum ended up on our front doorstep one day, tears in her eyes, begging for him to please come downstairs and talk to her. I don't know who let her in, exactly. Maybe my sister. He did finally come downstairs. They sat on the stairs for a long time. Talking, crying. My poor sister spent the entire time trying to hold the family dog back from them. I hid in my bedroom. I didn't listen in, I didn't really want to know. All I know is that once I heard the front door click shut, and heard the sound of the dog's nails as she pattered her way across the floorboards, and he returned to my room, he told me that he and his Mum were going to take some time apart for a while. And that was that.
Eventually, things started to feel a little, for lack of a better word - off. He stopped coming home after work. First he started missing dinner, then he was home after 10pm, then 11pm... I knew where he was. Oh, I knew exactly where he was. I was always welcome, he said. But I didn't want to go. I guess that was his justification in the start - that if I wanted to come along, I always could. So if I was choosing not to go, then that was on me and not him.
I definitely saw it coming, when he finally did agree to spend an evening with me, and things just weren't the same anymore. There was an awkwardness in the air that I hadn't really ever felt with him before. He told me how he felt, but I don't remember any of it. Because what he said to me wasn't what really mattered. What mattered, was that he was telling me that he was choosing the dark, smoky back room over me. He was choosing his friends. He was choosing recklessness without my judgement. He was choosing his drugs. But he didn't say that though, of course.
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