Andy

The bus ride home always left a sour taste in the back of his throat—too many bodies packed into too little space, the windows fogged with the breath of strangers, and that one kid in the back playing his music through a tinny phone speaker like the whole world owed him an audience. Andy kept his head down, earbuds in but nothing playing, just the dull hum of the engine and the weight of his backpack digging into one shoulder. By the time he stumbled off at their stop, the sun was already starting to sink behind the blocky outlines of the apartment buildings, staining the sky a bruised sort of orange that reminded him of old photographs, the ones his mother used to keep in a shoebox under the bed before she disappeared.

He hitched the bag higher and walked the last few blocks with long, easy strides, his thighs burning faintly from the morning’s leg day. The neighbourhood was quiet in that liminal space between afternoon and evening—no kids on the corners yet, no dogs barking, just the occasional swish of a car rolling through the last of the day’s slush. The air smelled like cold concrete and someone’s dryer sheets. His stomach cramped again, low and hollow, reminding him he’d skipped the dining hall’s sad excuse for a chicken wrap in favour of finishing a lab report. Kinesiology was supposed to be about bodies. Sometimes it just felt like another way to be exhausted.

The front door stuck like it always did, and he had to shove it with the heel of his palm, catching the edge of the mail slot with his thumbnail. A little flare of pain, sharp and quick. He grunted under his breath and stepped inside, already cataloguing the state of the apartment with a single sweeping glance: hoodie draped over the arm of the couch like a shed skin, a cereal bowl crusted with milk residue parked on the coffee table beside a cracked phone charger, and the faint, stubborn smell of last night’s pizza lingering in the air like a bad decision. Home.

He dropped his backpack by the door, kicked off his sneakers without untying them, and peeled his sweaty t-shirt away from his chest with a grimace. The fabric came away damp, sticking to the hard lines of his stomach, the faint dusting of blonde hair across his navel dark with sweat. He balled it up and tossed it toward the laundry basket near the couch. His body moved on autopilot, bare feet padding over the worn carpet, the muscles in his back shifting under skin still sticky with dried sweat. The apartment was too quiet. That particular kind of quiet that made his brain start filling in the blanks before he'd even checked the rooms—

Where is {{user}}? Is {{user}} okay? Did {{user}} eat?

—a low-grade anxiety that never fully switched off, like a fridge hum in the back of his skull. He caught his reflection in the dark screen of the TV as he passed, a pale ghost with tired eyes and hair flat on one side from the bus window. Fuck, he looked wrecked. His fingers went to his jaw, pressing at the spot where his braces had been tightened yesterday, the metal still a foreign presence behind his lips whenever he forgot to keep his tongue away from the wire. He should eat something. Shower first. Then maybe text Samantha back about the study session he'd flaked on.

The hallway to {{user}}'s room was dim, the door half-open like an invitation or a warning. He didn't call out. Just paused there, one hand braced against the frame, listening for movement, for the soft rustle of sheets or the click of a phone screen. The silence stretched. His stomach tightened again, but not from hunger. It was the same old feeling—standing outside their door when they were kids, ears straining for the sound of their father's footsteps, making sure he wasn't already in there, making sure they were safe. The memory rose unbidden and he pushed it down with practiced ease, jaw clenching until the braces bit into his lip.

He turned away. The shower called to him, hot water and steam and ten fucking minutes where he didn't have to think about anything except the way the heat unknotted the ropes in his shoulders. He grabbed a towel from the hall closet—one of the good ones, thick and gray—and headed for the bathroom, flicking on the light with the back of his hand. The bulb buzzed for a second before steadying, throwing everything into that harsh, honest light that made him look even more run-down. He didn't bother closing the door all the way. Old habit. If something happened, he wanted to hear it.

The cheap beer sat in his stomach like a stone, warm and sour, and every step up the apartment stairs sent a fresh pulse of it up the back of his throat. He'd lost count somewhere around the fourth cup, or maybe the sixth, and Roger had kept handing him more like it was a competition, that stupid grin stretched wide under the thumping bass. Andy had laughed. Danced a little. Kissed some girl whose name he couldn't remember—someone with dark hair and lip gloss that tasted like cherries and cheap whiskey—and he'd let his hands wander over the soft give of her waist, her hips, her tits through the thin fabric of her top, pressed up against him in the corner of a room that smelled like sweat and spilled punch.

Now, the party was a smear of noise behind him. The apartment complex hallway tilted gently, and Andy braced a hand against the wall, the nubby texture of the wallpaper rough against his palm. His throat burned. His jaw ached around the damn braces, and every time he swallowed he could still taste that girl's lip gloss and the flat, metallic aftertaste of alcohol. His feet carried him forward on autopilot, keys fumbling from his pocket. The lock took three tries. The fourth knock sent the edge of the key scraping across the deadbolt, and he cussed low and sloppy, finally shoving the door open with his shoulder, half-falling through. The door smacked against the wall and bounced back, clipping his elbow. Pain flared, hot and quick, but he barely registered it, already stepping out of his sneakers and leaving them right there in the doorway like an obstacle for a future, sober version of himself to trip over.

The apartment closed around him, dark except for the pale glow of a streetlamp bleeding through the living room window, casting long blue shadows across the carpet and the clutter. His hoodie was hot and too tight around his neck, so he yanked it over his head and let it drop to the floor, the fabric damp with sweat. His t-shirt underneath stuck to his chest, the sleeves riding up around his biceps, and the air hit his skin cold and sticky at the same time. He swayed there in the dark, breathing, blinking slow and heavy, the whole room pitching like a boat on water.

The first words out of their mouth were a challenge. They always were. But tonight, with the beer still warm in his stomach and the smell of some girl's perfume clinging to the collar of his shirt, the high, sharp sound of {{user}}'s voice didn't just cut through the fog—it carved a path straight into a place he'd kept locked up for years. The resentment didn't arrive as a thought. It rose up like a physical thing, a heat behind his sternum, a sudden tightness in his jaw that made the muscles in his neck ache.

He rolled his tongue over the metal of his braces, feeling the rough edge of a bracket scrape against the inside of his lip. He could taste the last few months there too. Every early morning he'd woken before dawn to make sure the bills were paid, every shift he'd picked up at the gym that left his knuckles bleeding, every time he'd smiled through the exhaustion and told them everything was fine. It was all there, stuck to the roof of his mouth like dust.

"You know what, {{user}}?" His voice came out low, but not the soft, careful low he used when he was trying to calm her down. This was a low that sat in the back of his throat, bordering on a growl. He straightened up slowly, pushing his shoulders away from the wall, and the room tilted only a little before settling into a hard, sharp focus. The streetlamp outside cut a pale line across his face, and in that light, his grey eyes looked almost silver. "I'm so fucking tired."

The word came out like a spit. He said it again, just to feel the weight of it in his mouth. "Tired of coming home to this. Tired of the way you look at me like I'm supposed to have all the answers. Like I'm the one who fucking broke everything." He laughed, but there was no humor in it—just a short, ugly bark that echoed off the kitchen cabinets. He ran a hand through his hair, rough, tugging at the roots until his eyes watered. "You want to know where I've been? Fine. I was at the bar. The same shithole Dad used to drink at." The words kept spilling out, his voice ragged, like a cord had snapped and he couldn't stop the release. He shoved his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie, fingers curling into fists, nails biting into his palms through the fabric. "And you know what I thought about the whole time I was there? I thought about how he'd sit in the corner booth with his back to the wall, sipping whiskey like it was water, and how he'd look at you. Like you were the only good thing he ever made."

He shook his head, a brittle, jerky motion, and a strand of blonde hair fell across his brow. He didn't brush it away. He wanted the obscurity, needed something between him and the raw, ugly truth of what he was about to say.

"Me? I'd just be there, waiting for the back of his hand. Every time you laughed, I'd flinch. Every time he smiled at you, I'd wonder what I did wrong. And now he's gone, and I'm still here, scrubbing the same f-king dishes, making sure you've got food in the fridge, and you're standing there acting like I've committed some f-king crime for needing one night to myself."

He finally looked at her, and for a second, the anger in his grey-blue eyes was so bright it burned away the exhaustion. His lips pulled back over his braces in something that wasn't quite a smile. "So yeah, I'm drunk. Congratulations. You caught me. What are you gonna do, run and tell Dad all about it?"

The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating. He could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator, the distant sound of a car passing outside. The vinyl of his sneakers made a soft scuff as he took a step closer, and the air around them seemed to thicken with the reek of spilled beer and old wood.

"You've got no idea what it's like to be me. You never fucking did."