A HOMELESS MAN’S COAT

LEVI

I wake to squeals and sit bolt upright in bed. I check the clock and decide I officially hate Prague as I try to make sense of the bright green digits telling me it’s just past six and way too early to be woken by people fucking on the other side of the wall. I throw the pillow over my head and groan. My brain aches. I attempt to get up, but realise I’m still drunk so standing isn’t really an option right now.

“Yes!” Ali shouts. “Yes.”

She doesn’t sound like she’s in the throes of ecstasy. That’s a sound I know well, so I know this isn’t that. And then it dawns on me, yesterday, when Coop and I went on our little errand. Today is Christmas. He just asked her to marry him, and those screams of “yes” aren’t her crying out with orgasm, they’re the woman I love, saying yes to being another man’s wife.

Fuck!

I scream this inside my head, because I can’t very well do it out loud, not with them just a few feet away behind a thin sheet of drywall. I grab the half-empty bottle from the nightstand and unscrew the cap, downing a huge gulp. My throat burns with the booze and my eyes burn with tears, and then as if on autopilot, I throw the bottle against the dresser and watch as clear liquid runs down the furniture to drip on the plush carpet. A hush falls over the room next door, but it’s short lived because a few seconds later, their quiet murmurs turn into the rhythmic beat of the headboard hitting the wall. Fuck me. I glance at the mess. I’ll probably cut my feet when I try to get up, but who really gives a shit? Not Ali, certainly not Coop, and me? I don’t give a fuck what happens to me anymore. I don’t give a single shit. Except that now I have no booze, and as I lay back on the bed, I wish I hadn’t wasted it on the dresser.

Later, I’ll venture out into the apartment and raid whatever stash of liquor we have left, but right now, I can’t stomach seeing either one, maybe not at all today.

Merry fucking Christmas.

***

Well if this isn’t awkward as fuck, I don’t know what is. I would have been content to just lie in bed all day, but everyone insisted I join them for Christmas lunch, and here we are.

Ali sits across the table from me, beside Cooper. Ash has the seat next to me, and Zed sits across from him alongside Deb. It’s just one big happy fucking family. Try as I might, I can’t help staring at the ring on Ali’s finger. The way the black diamond catches the light and the smaller diamonds twinkle around it, mocking me. There’s takeout from room service on the table, and wine. As if we’re people who drink wine. As if I haven’t been in a state of perma-drunk since she left. I raise my glass and down half in one go. It tastes like shit. Zed probably ordered it. I wish I could just crawl back to my room, but in the spirit of giving, I’m trying to give a fuck.

I can’t tell if it’s working or not.

“Levi, can you pass the wine, please?” Ali asks. It’s a fair question to ask of me, because even though it tastes like shit, I’m hoarding it.

“Sure,” I grab the neck of the bottle and hand it to her. It sloshes on the pristine white tablecloth. Ali attempts to mop it up and that big shiny rock winks in the light as if it’s taunting me.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?”

I laugh without humour. “I don’t know, Ryan. Whatever could be the matter?”

I stare at the ring on her finger. Ali’s hand disappears inside her sleeve, hiding from the world. From me. Did she think I wouldn’t notice? “I guess congratulations are in order, huh?” I grab my glass and raise it in a toast to the happy couple. “To Red and Ryan, may you never know the absolute fucking torture of losing one another.”

I gulp down my wine and throw the glass as I walk out. My coat is nowhere to be found. I don’t have time to look for it, I don't even know where I’m going, and I don’t care.

“Levi,” Ali calls, but the door slams behind me, effectively cutting off her words. I don’t come across a single soul as I make my way past the bar and through the lobby. A woman is working the front desk, but she appears too flustered to even look up from the phones that are ringing off the hook. Cold air howls past the entrance to the hotel and the bellman opens the door. He says something in Czech, but I’ll be damned if I know what the fuck it is. Icy air blasts my face, and for a bit, I think about staying within the warmth of the hotel and parking my arse on a stool by the bar, but if I stay here, sure enough, Ali or Zed, Ash or even Coop will come looking. Okay, maybe not Cooper, but someone is bound to come looking, and right now, I don’t want to be found. So I push out onto the street and bunch my hands into fists as the air is stolen from my lungs by the cold.

***

An hour later, I’m holding a little baggy of E, and shivering under a bridge in a homeless man’s coat. I paid him three hundred dollars in cash. I’m a shitty fucking person. I’m the worst, and it’s no wonder Ali is marrying Cooper fucking Ryan, the golden boy of rock. I stare at the packet for so long I’m not sure I’m going to even take it. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. It’s not like any of this is a surprise. Wasn’t it me who just yesterday told Ryan that it was a given Red would say yes? Even so, I can’t breathe knowing that I was right.

She said yes.

I knew there was no chance for us. I knew that from the second she left us, but I guess a part of me still held out hope ... right up until the moment I saw that shiny rock on her finger. A part of me was still secretly hoping she would tell him no, and tell me that she’d made a mistake. Stupid. So fucking stupid. I stare at the cellophane packet and open it, shaking one of the little pills out into the palm of my hand. And then I swallow it down with a sip of whisky, and ten minutes later, I forget all about how Ali Jones is soon to become Ryan’s girl forever.