I'm finally back home

I’m finally back home after a long time. But Saturday after-noon, my friend Jack calls me and says he’s coming to town with his girlfriend and he’d like to stay with her in my place if it’s ok. “We’re really looking forward for this trip and it would be nice to stay with you” he tells me. “It will also help us economically. That way we won’t need to take an Airbnb”. Now my friend Jack and his girlfriend earn a lot of money. Way more than I do and they can defenitely afford an Airbnb. He says that if I don’t have a room for them then they would look for another solution (even though he’s been in my place before and he knows that I have an extra room). I hang up the phone and stare at the pile of dirty dishes in the sink, hoping I could find a way to get out of it.

Then finally I sent him a message that I think that it would be more comfortable for everyone if they’d find a place for themselves, but I’m here to help if they need a place for a night or two. He starts typing “sure that sounds fine. We could stay with you for the first two nights and then move to another friend’s house”. Then he sends another message saying that they’re looking forward to see me, but I don’t reply. Jacks girlfriend Lily tried to kill herself a month ago after they had a big fight. He called me from the hospital and explained that one night he went with some friends to a bar and she texted him non stop asking him what he’s doing and at some point he stopped answering her. When he got home he found her in the bathtub surronded by red water.

They’ve been together for almost three years and things have never been working well for them. From the moment they met he would tell me how obsessive she was and that she’s driving him crazy, and I told him that he should stay away from her. That’s how they started, but now they’re on a romantic phase and they’re coming to my town for a romantic trip in my house. “They’ll only be here for two days,” I say to myself. “He’s a good friend of mine and I can’t just tell him no.” But the thought of having them in my house is weighing on me like a big stone pressed against my chest. I know Jack for a long time. When we first met he just broke up with his previous girlfriend and he he was struggling with the breakup. He told me how he would sleep close to the wall to hear his neighbors breath when he felt alone.

“I was having a hard time being all by myself in this new apartment,” Jack said. “I really felt lonely you know? I could hear my heart banging against my ribs when I was lying in bed”. It’s fair to say that I don’t like Lily. For me she’s just another girl that Jack is using to feel the void he has. Ever since I met him he always had some sort of a roman with a girl he didn’t really like and he was agonizing about how confused he is about it and how he wishes he could be single again. I get along with Lily when we find ourselves together. I even think she’s a good person. But I can’t stop thinking about the late night phone calls when Jack tells me he’s afraid she might steal his semen and oblige him to marry her or the one time he told me “she just ate 4 tubs of Ben & Jerry’s and I don’t know what to do. She’s out of her mind.”

Every time I hear her name I see her sitting on the couch piling another spoon with ice cream into her big mouth. Jack shouldn’t have told me that story. I’d be happy to stay with the memory of how the amazing dinner she cooked on the first time I visited them in their new house and how hard she tried to make me feel comfortable. After a while, twenty minutes or so I start making the bed for them. They’ll be coming the day after tomorrow and my apartment is a mess. I choose my least favourite bedding set for them and move my moms framed picture to my room. I look at my apartment and it seems smaller than usual. I notice spiderweb above the bookshelf and I get a feeling of alienation like I’m in somebody else’s house. I picked up my phone and I called Brian.

Brian has been my friend since kindergarten and I call him much more than he calls me. “Hey there, how you doing?” He says. I knew I was probably interrupting him with something, but I wanted to talk. I had to talk. “Nothing much. I wanted to hear what you think about something.” I tell him and then without waiting for his reaction I say “do you know Lily? Jack’s girlfriend?” He answers that he might have met her once and then I go on.

“Well Jack is coming for a visit and he brings her with him. He asked me if they can stay in my place while they are in town.” There’s a silence after I finish that sentence so I keep talking “I don’t like them when they’re together. They make me feel uncomofortable and I don’t want to have them here with me.” He sighs and after some long seconds he says “you’re exaggerating. You’ll be fine. Just hold on for a couple of days. It can’t be that bad”. Then I try to explain him how I can’t even have eye contact with her and how they cringe me with their behaviour, but it doesn’t convince him and eventually he says “well I need to go now. Don’t try to talk about it with Jack.

Just let it be.” Then he hangs up the phone and I turn of the light and go to bed. A day passes by and the day of their arrival comes. I wake up from a dream about me hosting my neighbour and another friend that don’t speak the same language so I have to transalte everything they say to each other. When I take my first steps out of bed I feel overwhelmed by the unforgiving harshness of reality. I notice these sharp angles around me and I wish I could go back to sleep and return to this curved world of my dreams where there are sponges on the walls and I know I can’t be hurt. I was thinking about it until the sound of an accelerating motorcycle brought me back to reality. I like where I live. But I’m not going to stay here for a long time.

I have everything I need and life is quite comfortable here, but I spend too much time alone and I suspect it might not be healthy for me. I’ve noticed that in the last couple of years I’ve been sick every two months or so and I think it might have to do with my loneliness. It wasn’t always the case. Jack used to live here before. We met through a common friend and gradually became good friends. This was a great period, but then he’s decided to move away and from all the places in the world he picked my home town. I couldn’t understand why he’d move away and tried to make him stay, but he did it anyway. Ever since he’s been calling me every now and then to tell me how much he misses the good old days when we were neighbours and that he’ll come back soon enough once he’d made up his mind.

“I just need to figure out a couple of things,” he said once. Then he added, “I think that by the end of the year I’ll move back”; but he didn’t. It’s been almost 4 years since he left and no he’s coming for a visit with Lily. Jack was born in another country and he always tried to live in two countries at the same time. “You can’t have childhood friends in two different countries,” I told him once, but after seeing the sadness on his face I added, “well what do I know. I only lived in one place during my childhood. Maybe I’m wrong.” But I was convinced that I wasn’t wrong. Jack speaks the languages of the two countries and he understands the cultures, but he misunderstand the idea of being a foreigner.

He says he can feel like a local in every country, and I think he might be feeling as a foreigner in every country and maybe he just doesn’t know what it feels like to be at home.

He texts me and says they’ve arrived. I go out to the balcony and see them waving at me from the street. Jack is 35, has brown hair, wears glasses with blue plastic frames, and has alergies all year long. I open the door for them and they come in. Lily hugs me and I notice something weird and dirty on the back of her shirt. I feel her breasts pressed against my chest and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Then comes Jack with his big famous smile and gives me a quick hug too. “I missed you,” he says. We sit down on the couch and I offer them something to drink. It’s around eight in the evening and I guess they haven’t eaten dinner yet.

There’s a spider on the wall behind Lily’s head, but I don’t say anything. “Your apartment is so lovely,” Lily says. “Thank you so much for having us; we really appreciate it”. Her eyes are looking for my eyes while she’s saying these words, but I notice that me eyes are dodging her looks automatically and I think she notices it. I turn to Jack and asks “are you hungry guys? Do you want to grab something to it outside?” While I’m saying it I see the spider slowly climbing Lilys head and it gives me chills. “We’re starving,” Jack answers for both of them. “But we don’t mind cooking something simple here if you don’t mind. The flight already cost us a fortune.”

Lily is looking at Jack and it seems like she’s about to say something, but she doesn’t. “Sure, go ahead I say.” And I notice how I’m starting to lose a battle without even trying. It sent me back to that one time when I was seven and I went to buy a hot dog all by myself. The guy at the hot dog stand didn’t even ask me if I wanted french fries and he just put them inside and my mouth couldn’t help me so I went away with this hot dog I didn’t want to eat and cried for I couldn’t even defend myself.

“Hey, where’s the knife,” Jack asks me and brings me back from the hot dog stand. “It’s in the top drawer,” I say. “Lily, let’s cook something nice for our friend here,” Jack says and winks towards me. “He seems a bit down Lily. Luckily we’re here now to cheer him up and cook him some excellent dinner. He’s gonna love it!” He spanks her ass with excitement and she screams at him in a playful way. “Oh my god, something’s walking on me. Kill it!” Lily says.

Then Jack comes immediately and smacks the spider on her bare shoulder. “Don’t worry my princess. Your knight came to save you from the evil dragon.” The both laughed while I was looking at the dead spider lying on the kitchen ground and the yellowish stain that it left on Lily’s shoulder before falling to the ground. When I raise my eyes from the spider’s body I see them kissing and my eyes go back to the dead insect on the floor. “Come cook with us,” he says, “It’ll be fun. Go get a cutting board and chop some onion. Lily you can set the table meanwhile.” He caresses her face and leaves a little red piece of tomato on her cheek. Neither of them noticed it.

Then he turned towards me “it feels good to be back here, it reminds me of all the good times we had together.” He glances at Lily and then turns back to me “Lily’s back on her medication and she’s constantly talking about having a baby. I don’t know. I don’t know if she’s the one. We have great sex and I can stare at her naked butt all day long, but I’m not ready you know?” He doesn’t wait for me to reply, “This time it’s different. She promissed me she’d stop being jealous. She’s taking her medications and I see how it calms her. She did gain some weight I’m sure you noticed, but hey, no one is perfect and I think I really love her.”

Then I look out of the window while Jack keeps shooting words at me, but I only hear as a background noise. Out at the street I see a middle age guy trying to take his coat off. I notice something’s off. He’s struggling and it takes him a very long time. “Hey are you listening?” Jack says to me and I nod while my eyes are still examining that guy. I notice that he only uses one hand while the other one just hangs in the air without doing anything. Then he finally manages to put the coat in his bag and I see how he uses his right hand to put his left hand in his jeans pocket. I turn my head back to my apartment and see that Jack took his shirt off and he was now sitting on top of Lily. “Hey you’re finally back,” he says and moves away from Lily.

“Let’s sit down to eat. We’re starving!” We sit at the table and I’m about to say something, but I see that Lily and Jack or on their phones so I wait. Then Jack puts his phone on the table with the screen upwards and says “hey Lily, that’s really impolite to use your phone like this at the table.” He looks at me to make sure I’m laughing. I’m not. I want to tell them that I’ve been quite lonely lately and that I’m thinking of moving back. Jack starts to eat the salad with his mouth open. Lily looks at him angrily and says something I can’t understand and I give up one the idea of sharing my thoughts. I think about the paralyzed hand guy again while Jack and Lily start raising their tones.

I’m thinking of how he claps his hands when he goes to a concert or how he washes his hands. Then there’s silence. Lily seems defeated. Then Jack looks at me and says “women. Can’t live with them and can’t live without them.”

Finally I sneak into my bed after a couple of intentions of Jack and Lily to convince to go out with them. I pull the blanket over my head and cry silently. I can hear them in the living room preparing themselves. I realize I have to pee, but I don’t want to run into them so I wait. I hear Lily saying “of course he doesn’t like me. Are you blind?” and then Jack replying “why do you say such a thing? Your parents really ruined your self esteem ha? I mean you always think that everyone hates you. It’s exhausting.”

Then I hear some sobbing, or at least that’s what I think. Then a door slammed, but I can recognize it’s not the entrance door. I stare at the ceiling and thank god for having these 4 walls around me to protect me from the world. I go fast to the bathroom and then fall asleep in my bed.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I see when opening the door is Jack in his underpants. He’s hypnotized to his phone. He raises his eyes and looks at me. “Where’s Lily?” I ask. He lowers his eyes and looks at where the dead spider is. I don’t think he notices it. “She went for a little walk,” he says with an unconvincing smile. “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. Something isn’t working,” he says and I see he’s about to continue, “everybody seems so happy around me.

I see couples walking hand in hand. Groups of young people drinking beers and hanging out. I wish I could have been happier.” There’s a long moment of silence and I know he’s waiting for me to say something. But I don’t. He goes towards my fridge. He opens the door and takes out the blueberries. The blueberries I eat with my yogurt in the mornings. I only eat ten berries with each yogurt. That way it lasts for the whole week.

He takes a handful of them and shoves it into his mouth. I wonder if he’s going to take another one, but then he puts them back in the fridge. I go to the bathroom before he’ll have the chance to continue the conversation. It’s just when I’m already peeing that I see he’s at the bathroom’s door. “Man, I don’t think I can marry that women. Sometimes I look at her and I just can’t imagine this face looking at me for the rest of my life. This lazy eye. ” he says. I flush the toilet and go to the fridge. I can’t find any yogurt and I can’t remember if I there was any yesterday.

“Hey Jack,” I say, but then when he replies I hesitate. Eventually I murmur something about being sorry for his issues with Lily.

It’s only in the late afternoon that Lily comes back. I notice her eyes are red and her shoes are a bit dirty. “Where have you been hone?” , Jack asks and walks towards her. She says nothing. I look at them from my reading chair and then try to continue with my book. “Hey, give me a hug. Don’t be so hard,” Jack says and wraps his hands around her. Eventually she collaborate and hugs him back. “Hey Lily, I’m glad your back,” I say without lifting my eyes from the book.

Then I add, “Can you please take of your shoes?”