Notes

"Oh, it was fucking crazy, mate! You just had to be there, I swear, Chad was so fucking naked!" Kato is in a perpetual state of shouting. That's what you do when you're excited, and Kato is always excited. Just... excited to be alive.

"Yeah," I say softly, turning my head to look out the picture window in my living room. The rain comes down heavily, and I wonder if it would affect my fall if I were to jump now.

"Oh, and then he fucking swallowed a deodorant cap! The whole fucking thing! Can you believe that? How's he going to shit it out?" Kato shouts.

I wonder why we're friends sometimes, and maybe it's because Kato needs me.

I'd like to pretend that's true.

"Yeah," I say again. It's better to say very little words, that way, I don't have to waste my breath.

"So, what's up with you, man! It's been ages! Can you believe we haven't hung out in, what, a year?" Kato guesses.

"Almost, yeah," I say. My tone doesn't falter even though my mind automatically switches to dark, black-stained memories.

Ten months ago, to be exact. It was raining like it is right now, ironic enough. I can remember the taste of alcohol on his tongue. He was wearing his glasses, and water droplets were dripping down the lenses. Love had coiled it's fingers around every organ in my body, only to rip them straight out with absolutely no mercy or forgiveness.

"Anyway, what's been up with you, man! It's been a couple of weeks since I called you. What's been happening? You still holed up in that apartment?"

I glance out at my room in shame like I've been caught in the act. I stand up, away from the window, and move back down the hall towards my bedroom. I move so silently that you would think I'm nothing but a ghost, but one can only hope and dream.

"Actually," I breathe out. I don't know why I'm telling him this. It seems I'm telling him just to tell him, so that I'm not the pathetic hermit he thinks of me as. "I met someone."

"Whaaaat!" He yells so loudly I have to pull the phone away from my ear. "That's fucking crazy! Joji, you absolute legend! That's insane!"

Because it's so surprising that someone wants to be around me. That's what Kato is implying.

I don't think he realizes the power his words have, because if he did, I'm sure he would be more careful about picking them and arranging them in the orders that he does.

"So who is this mystery girl that you date?" He asks me.

I can feel my body shake at the idea of having to tell him it's a guy. I mean, it's obvious. It's clear. But to confirm his thoughts and suspicions about me... I hate that. I listen to the unsteady pitter-patter of the rain falling outside, resembling my frantic heartbeat.

"He, um, he calls me George," I say. I realize that's a stupid thing to say, because no love story starts with 'he calls me by my legal name.' But then again, no love story starts on the rooftop as you try to kill yourself, either.

"Oh, so he must not be as close to you as I am if he doesn't call you your nickname, huh, Joji?" He giggles. "I'll always be your number one favourite boy, right?"

I smile a little and rest my head against the wall, my eyes closing as I let those words fill me up.

"Yeah," I say. "Of course, Kato. Always you."

He sits and talks to me for awhile longer like what I say to him will actually matter once he hangs up. But it's nice, it's as if he wants me to be involved in his life still. He hasn't made any attempt to come see me in the past ten months, but he usually calls twice a month. He's neglected that lately. I think he feels guilty, but I know the spaces between each call are growing because he's growing. Max is becoming someone now, he has these friends and this life and this personality that is just never-ending, and I'm stuck. Stuck in the same sad, scared shell.

And I will never grow, because I don't have my whole life ahead of me like Kato does.

I wish I didn't hold him back. I know he still only makes the effort because I'm his oldest friend and he doesn't want to abandon me in this city all by myself, but it makes me feel worse every time I see him desperately try to make me feel like I still matter. I know I'm holding him back. If he would just stop calling, or if I weren't around to call anymore, maybe he would really bloom outwards instead of just growing upwards.

Kato says, "Hey, so maybe we can have dinner later in the week so that I can meet your second favourite boy."

I can feel my heart skip a whole set of beats. Not just one, but maybe about ten. If there were doctors monitoring, they would pronounce me temporarily dead.

"Uh," I say. "I don't know. I'm pretty busy."

"Joji, if I come over right now and you're just sitting on your bed with your little ukulele, I swear, I'll slap the shit out of you," he laughs like my life is something worth joking about. As if my behavior is the punchline of some story.

I think about jokes, and I smile to myself when the words potential energy come to mind.

"Hey," I suddenly say.

"Hm?"

"A man is at the top of a building, and he's about to kill himself," I say. I don't tell it the way Yori did, with such flow and poise in his words. My sentence is weak and wobbly, like I'm unsure of the language I'm speaking in.

"...Joji?" Kato's voice goes soft. "Are you okay?"

"No, no, listen," I laugh. This would work better if Kato and I were trying to jump like Yori and I were so eagerly ready to. "A man is at the top of a building- no, wait. I told it wrong, hold on."

"Is everything okay?" Kato asks.

I wish he wouldn't ask me that.

"Okay, a physicist is at the top of a building, and he's about to kill himself. You know what he has?" The deliverance is terrible, and I suddenly can't remember the way Yori smiled when he told it to me. My brain was so focused on just jumping that I didn't have time to remember the emphasis he put on words, mainly because I didn't think words would matter for much longer.

"Joji, are you okay? Have you tried again? You know you can call me when you have these thoughts," Kato says quickly, his words soft but also louder, like he's pressed his mouth closer to the phone. That won't bring us closer together, the gap he's making is one that will never shrink back to the way it used to be after it's stretched so far.

"No, Kato, just listen," I grow a little frustrated. Why won't he ever just listen? He says I can tell him anything, but when I talk, he doesn't even listen. He just fluffs his own ego by saying he'll always be there for me, he'll always be a good friend, he'll always love me. Lies, lies, lies. "A physicist is about to kill himself, and when he's standing on top of the building, he has a lot of potential energy."

Kato is silent on the other end, which makes my chest hurt because Kato laughs at everything. He's always happy, and he's always smiling, and he's always laughing. Except when he talks to me.

This is why I keep my sentences short with him.

So that I don't worry him.

"You are okay, right? Can I trust you?" Kato asks.

"Yeah," I return to saying, knowing that it's always my safest option with Kato.

No matter what he says, 'yeah' will always deflect it.

"Okay, I've gotta run, but I love you! Don't forget it," Kato is suddenly saying all too fast. No, he can't go. He just called me. He can't leave already.

"Kato-" I breathe out, hearing the whine in my voice return. I stop myself, hating the way I cling to him. I hold him back. "Okay. I love you too. I love you too."

I lie there on top of the sheets for what feels like hours, the tears coming out uncontrollably. Why can't I just let him go? It's not the same anymore, but then again, was there ever a time where it was good? My chest hurts with the idea of Kato. Why didn't he laugh? Why didn't he laugh at my joke?

Did I tell it wrong?

I must have. It was a funny joke. I just told it wrong, and that's why he didn't laugh.

I slip my shoes on and leave my apartment, avoiding the elevator but rather taking the stairs down to the twenty seventh floor. I stop in front of my favourite door, and knock rather forcefully next to the numbers 2708.

He answers the door after a moment, and I can feel the tides thrashing around inside of me start to mellow out. The water calms, but maybe that's just the calm before the storm. As I look at him, messy black hair and fluffy fur, I know happiness is only fleeting.

I don't realize I'm still crying until I talk. Pathetic, shaky, trembling, and stuttering all over the place, I say in a choppy voice "C-C-Could you tell me that physicist joke? I forgot h-how it went."

Yori stares at me for a few seconds, and the delay is just long enough for me to learn a brand new way to hate myself. My arms wrap around myself, trying to close in on myself and appear small. Maybe if I wasn't so fucking obnoxious and take up so much space, the world wouldn't mind me being in it.

"Yeah," he says quietly, not loud like Kato at all, and pulls the door open wide enough for me to fit through. He holds his arm out, and without even thinking I take the step and a half forward that it takes to fit myself right into his side.

Yori's paw rubs my back in warm circles, and for a long time, we just lean against the back of his closed door while he lets me cry. He doesn't say anything, doesn't speak, and certainly doesn't laugh. He just rubs my back in every way that he can, and it's the best feeling I've had in a very long time.

"Thanks for not going to the roof," Yori says after awhile. We start to move into the depths of his hollow apartment, the only decor being a single couch, tv, and my plant sitting in the window sill. "Thanks for coming here, and not the roof."

It's a very simple sentence, but to be thanked for a tiny battle that is damn near invisible, it fills me with just... something whole. It's a tiny gesture. One that most people wouldn't appreciate, nor even think about. But the strength it took me to come to his apartment door when I'm crying instead of climbing to the spot we first met, it's something I didn't know I wanted to be thanked for until the words left his mouth.

"Thank you for opening the door," I reply, because it's all I can think of.

"For you," he looks at me fondly. For a second, I forget about Kato. Kato doesn't make me feel like this, and he probably never will. "It's always open."