I remember his face as clearly today as I did years ago. His final expression was seared into my memory.

I remember that deep, hollow feeling coming for the first time when I saw his body lying there in the casket, and the bone-chilling cold I felt when the realization hit me that he was gone.

His handsome face, so serene, lay unmoving in the open casket. His blond hair was perfectly coiffed, and even from afar I could still see his long eyelashes touching the tops of his cheeks. He looked so full of vitality even though he was still and devoid of all life, but maybe that was because of the memories I carried. Maybe it was that part of me that wanted to hold on to him as someone who was strong, and constant, and…alive.

Worst of all, I remember the way his mother and father turned me away as soon as I saw him, telling me I was the reason their son was now gone. I heard their screams—the scene they made when I appeared to pay my final respects to the only man I’d loved, and who’d loved me in return—and I still felt the sting of his mother’s slap on my cheek.

It had been years, but the wounds were still raw inside me, like a scab that refused to heal because it had been picked over and over. When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t help the racked sob that came out of my mouth.

I lay there crying for what felt like forever, trying to force my composure. I relived that day—that moment—over and over. I couldn’t help the tears that flowed freely down my face, and even with how much I tried to wipe them away, they just kept coming. It didn’t take long at all for me to curl into a little ball, wrapped in my blankets. I saw his face, his parents’ faces—hell, I even saw the other guests’ faces as they watched me walk away from the wake.

I watched as the sun slowly rose and its light began to beat against my window blinds. The only sounds I could hear was the bustle of the city as it awoke and the odd shuffling of Theo’s feet just outside my door. My broken arm ached and throbbed. I knew I probably needed to take a pill for it then, but I couldn’t muster the strength to move.

I must have lain there for a long time, unmoving. I kept reliving the same nightmare over and over. My stomach growled and rebelled. My tongue dried. I wanted to will myself from the bed for a long time, but my body wouldn’t respond. I kept thinking about just walking to the kitchen and getting food over and over.

Funny, I thought to myself—I hadn’t had a dream like this in months. Whenever they came back, that was when the hunger really hit me. It was the desire to find something, anything, to fill the emptiness that threatened to settle inside me again.

The sun moved across the horizon, and I knew this because the angle of the light moved from one part of the room to the other ever so slowly.

These were the moments when that deep, hungering darkness took a tight hold of me and threatened not to let go. I felt that telltale pit in my stomach that held on. In spite of every little cell inside my body telling me to get up out of bed, the pit weighed me down and sucked me into its blackness.

It was surprisingly comfortable when the blackness wrapped around me. Closing my eyes, that hollow, empty feeling inside my chest sucked me into a state of unconsciousness for a while—a steady, dreamless sleep—before pulling me back out. Every time it did, time passed. Whenever I awoke, I revisited those memories that brought me so much pain, and I fell back to sleep just to escape the turmoil of my own thoughts.

Finally, I opened my eyes when I heard a knock on the door, and Theo opened it while balancing a large glass of water and a plate with a sandwich on it on one arm.

“Hey,” Theo greeted. “You awake?”

“Yeah,” I said. My voice sounded and felt like gravel in my throat. “Is that for me?” I nodded to the water and the plate.

Theo took the plate off his forearm and offered both the water and the sandwich to me. “I haven’t heard you moving around all day and when I knocked on your door earlier, you didn’t answer. I listened in and you were sobbing. Are you having nightmares again?”

I nodded, taking the proffered items with a soft mumble. “Thanks.” I took a sip of the water.

Theo frowned, bridging the space between us and sitting himself on the bed. His face was scrunched into a worried expression. “I’m sorry they’re back again for you.”

“It is what it is.” At that point, I had normalized my nightmares, my anxieties, and my deepest fears and just made it a part of my day-to-day life. I didn’t have the energy to contend with everything wrong that was happening. Theo could probably see how exhausted I looked, and when he sat close to me and outstretched his arm for me to take so that I could sit myself up, I gave a shrug and finally bit into the sandwich. Cheese and tomato filled my mouth, and because it was the first bite of food I’d had in a day, it made me moan slightly at the very taste.

Theo gave me a small smile, patting me on the shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it a little?” he asked.

I looked up at him and tried to find the right words while I chewed on my sandwich. “I don’t really know what else there is to talk about,” I said. “I’ve told you about the dreams, and what happens after I have them.” I paused for a moment and tried to collect my thoughts. “Huh.”

Theo tilted his head, the question clear in his eyes. “What is it?”

“It feels different somehow,” I admitted. “I don’t know what it is. It just feels…less than it was before. The emptiness feels smaller than before, somehow.”

“Maybe it’s Farid?” Theo suggested.

I thought about it for a moment, about Farid and his steadfast presence. The thought of the man made me smile, and a bit of the weight on my shoulders lifted. Farid. He was the new element in my life, and the one thing that was holding me aloft when I was about to drown in the raging river of my own emotions. “Maybe,” I said softly. “Maybe it’s him. I don’t know for sure.”

Theo nodded. “It’s something to ponder, that’s for sure,” he said. “Don’t tell him I said this, but I didn’t completely agree with what Dan said about Farid yesterday when he brought you home.”

I tilted my head, and took another bite of my sandwich.

“I think that Farid deserves a chance,” Theo explained. “You have a complicated dating history. We all know that, but I think you’re actually as good for him as he is for you.”

I blinked at that. “That’s an interesting take on the situation,”

Theo laughed. “Why? Because I’m a good judge of character?”

“No. It’s because clearly you’re not,” I replied, but offered a smile. “I’m curious, though. Why do you think that?”

Theo sat up. “Call it a hunch, I guess,” he answered. “I can’t really give you a better answer than that. I can just see how he looks at you, and I feel this…energy, I guess you could say.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “That sounds weirdly suspicious. Did you start getting magic powers while I was at the hospital?”

Theo smirked. “No, wiseass. It just seems like maybe he needs you as much as you need him.”

I couldn’t fathom that at the moment. Not really, anyway. I took another bite of my sandwich and sipped my water.

Theo looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Do you want me to call him for you? Maybe you need him.”

I smiled at Theo. He was trying to be helpful, as always. It was a blessing that my roommate was as close to me as he was. There were people out there who weren’t actually friends with the people they lived with, and I found that sad. If Theo and I weren’t as close as we were, I don’t think we’d be able to live together like this. He spent too much time in his room, playing video games, and I spent too much time in mine, crying. Or having sex. Maybe both at the same time.

I shook my head at Theo. “I don’t necessarily need him, but I’ll call him.”

Theo smiled right back at me. “Just bring those back to the kitchen when you’re done with them.” He gestured to the plate and glass. “And for what it’s worth, I’m glad whatever you’re feeling isn’t as bad as it usually is.”

He gave me a pat on the shoulder and left, closing the door behind him.

I swiped my thumb across the screen of my phone and immediately brought it up to my ear. It didn’t take long at all for Farid to answer my call.

“Hello? Noah?” His familiar, sophisticated-sounding accent made the corners of my lips curl upward in a smile. The way my name left his lips sent a tingle up my body and made warmth pool in my stomach.

“Hi,” I replied.

“You sound a bit glum,” Farid said. “Is something the matter?”

“No,” I said, a little too quickly. It was fast enough that I knew Farid wasn’t convinced.

“Please tell me.”

“It’s nothing,” I insisted. “I’m just glad to hear your voice, really.”

“Is that really all?” Farid asked.

Somehow, Farid always knew there was something up. He was gifted with a sense of observation that I clearly didn’t have. I’ve repeated it over and over before, and maybe a part of me doing it was because I didn’t quite believe that someone like Farid could ever exist in my life. He was so…different, in a way I couldn’t quite explain or understand. I just knew that with every moment I spent with him, I wanted more.

Maybe I needed to show him that, too.

So I took a deep breath and opened up.

“Well,” I started. “I had a nightmare.”

“Oh?” Farid answered.

“Yeah. It happens regularly. I often see the same thing, over and over,” I explained.

“You don’t have to share too much if you don’t want to,” Farid said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to listen. But if it proves to be too much—”

“No,” I interrupted him. “It’s fine. I’m okay.”

“All right,” Farid replied. “Go on.”

“I have this dream that I’m at a funeral,” I said. “But it’s not just anyone’s funeral.”

“Yours?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “My first boyfriend’s. I guess let me preface this by saying that this all actually happened in the past. The nightmares started when he actually passed away.”

“Oh.” Farid paused. The word that came from his mouth was…well, inscrutable. There was some kind of emotion there, maybe too many emotions packed into one word. Maybe I was overthinking it, because I was baring my soul to him and all he could really say was “oh.” He continued to speak, though, with a soft “go on.”

I imagined him leaning back in his chair, listening more intently. The quiet between us did seem a bit more pronounced, perhaps a little more dramatic. Again, maybe I was overthinking it.

“I was at his funeral…and I see his open casket. But his parents come at me, and we have an altercation. They never really approved of his sexuality, you see, and they never approved of me. They thought I turned him gay. The last I saw of him alive, we had a fight about his parents. He wanted to cut them out of his life, but I told him not to.”

I paused for a moment, trying to pull my emotions back. It was Farid who spoke first, breaking the tense silence between us. “Why is that?”

I shrugged, forgetting that Farid couldn’t really see me at that moment. “I just didn’t want him to end up like me, alone in a big city while my parents feel like they’re an entire world away.”

I tried to be as light about it as I possibly could be. I didn’t go into deep detail about everything that bothered me—after all, he wasn’t my therapist—just that I was always shaken whenever the nightmares began once more.

Honestly, I didn’t want to push him away. I knew I was dealing with heavy stuff. I didn’t want to chance that this might be a deal breaker.

Funny, because I thought that it was already weird that he was around me. Maybe this was enough to push him away. Was it fucked up that a little part of me kind of wanted him to stay away? It was clear to me that he had so much going for him, and then there was me.

Aside from being a human work in progress, what did I bring to the table?

This tiny, selfish part of me wanted him there, but another part of me knew that he was better off without me.

That selfish part of me won out in the end, because I took a deep breath and decided that maybe, just maybe, instead of thinking about how badly suited I was for him, I would try to be the best version of me I could be.

For him.

I had to at least try.

“How do you feel right now?” Farid asked.

“Honestly? A little lighter now that I’m talking to you,” I admitted. I was speaking the truth, and it was a little surprising how sincere I was being. I had taken to Farid like a moth to flame. “Thank you for listening to me and not judging.”

“No, I should be the one to say that. Thank you for sharing this with me,” Farid said. “I wish I could do more than offer a listening ear. But for what it’s worth, I think you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.”

I scrunched up my face. “I’m not sure I follow,” I replied, the confusion clear as day in my voice.

“A weak man falls prey to his own demons, or so my father used to tell me,” Farid said. “And maybe some time ago, you would have done the exact same thing. But today, you broke the cycle.”

I thought about that. Maybe before I’d met Farid, I would have gone right back to a club, trolling for sex and trying to fill the void left by my nightmares and continuing on in this self-destructive bender I’d been on for years now.

Maybe Farid was right.

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I said. “But what if I fall off the wagon again?”

“That doesn’t matter right now. What’s important is that in this moment, you didn’t succumb. In some small way, that’s worth celebrating,” Farid replied. “You’re stronger than you think you are.”

“If you say so,” I said, completely unconvinced. But I wouldn’t fight with him about it. “Thank you.”

It mattered that he thought that about me.

I had to work on myself to prove it to him.