You won't make a smooth landing
The day you will fall from grace
Keep hoping for understanding
Where there is no safe place

When I woke up, it was raining. I was still in the back alley, lying against the wall. My bike which I guessed by its vague dark shape, was apparently back on its kickstand and waiting in front of me. My glasses however were nowhere around and for all I knew, it didn’t really matter that I couldn’t see. The world at that moment was on hold, silenced by the summer rainfall.

Strangely I was calm. Completely empty and relaxed. The water drops were rolling on my face, sliding on my bruises, leaking in my mouth and cooling mind. I didn’t care if I was drenched and if my pants were covered in mud. I was in pain, my body sore, one of my ribs might have broken again, but my head was only listening the nature whisper, the gutter leaking next to me, the puddles rippling louder and louder. Casually, some footsteps broke my looping soundtrack. “So… Did you chill down?”

I turned my eyes to where I assumed the guy was standing. But all I got was a blur black shape holding what, from the sound, seemed to be an umbrella. I frowned a little, trying to clear my vision, but it was getting darker and darker. At last, my interlocutor came closer and the rain stopped dropping on me, replaced by a muffled sound of water. I could have listened to that noise forever. In front of me, the guy knelt, rustling something on the floor and lightly put my glasses back on my broken nose.

Dorothy’s boyfriend appeared again in front of me and even though I knew who he was, his face seemed new and unknown. He might have hit harder than I thought.

He was a tall guy with broad shoulders and slender legs. Someone who had boxed for several years. A dark skin young man with square jaw, round nose, curly black hair and a pair of striking golden eyes.

Nonchalantly, he readjusted my collar and smiled offering his hand. “Well then, the name is Oracio.”

I stared at him silently. Probably a bit too intensively because he added softly, wiggling his fingers: “That’s your cue to shake my hand, you know?”

Why, on earth, was this guy smiling so easily? As if everything was funny? Moreover, why did it affect me to such an extent that my body moved by itself and grabbed his hand?

“Yay, progress!” he cheered with a bigger smile. That jackass! He sat on my right, blocking the umbrella between his shoulder and mine, and took out a cigarette.

I could feel his heat through my shirt. Spreading on my skin to the core of my bones, as if my cells had been asleep all this time. I didn’t know that humans could be that warm.

“Mind if I smoke?” he asked while lighting up a cigarette. I gazed at him, thinking: “Why do you ask if you’re already on it, asshole?” But I kept that for me. I guessed he read my mind again because he gave me another funny smile full of teeth. God, this guys pissed me off.

“So,” he said, puffing, “Why were you mad?”

“I wasn’t mad,” I instinctively replied. He blew out his smoke to my face in retaliation.

“Sorry. I couldn’t hear ya. What did ya say?” he asked again, ignoring my coughing.

He waited patiently that I finished to die and gazed at me, his plump lips biting on his cigarette, ready to shoot a second load in case I lied again. My throat all sore, I glared at him, fiercely. No way would I let this guy win. I looked the other way, to the end of the street, asking myself how fast I was able to stand up and run. I could, leaving the bike behind. Why would I care anyway? It belonged to the center. My heart racing, I contemplated my escape, my feet ready to jump the moment my brain gave the green light. Oracio sighted.

He tossed some of his ashes on the floor and leaned wearily his head against the wall. “You know,” he muttered looking at the sky, “it’s gonna rain for a while…”

His voice was calm and gentle. His face was painfully friendly. But his words fell on me like a ton of bricks, finishing to break the rest of my bones. I looked at him, playing carelessly with the rain and felt something roaring in me, like an alarm. This man, he was dangerous.

There was a thing about him that I couldn’t manage to grasp. Something elusive. Out of my control. Something I had never encounter before. He was there and away at the same time. His presence was all over the air, with his warmth and his smug, and his stupid cigarettes. I was searching for falseness, but couldn’t find any. So real and impossible. So altogether human, it was scary.

What was it? This attitude. Kindness? Why was he like that? What does he want? Wasn’t he ready to destroy me just a moment before? His punches, I understood them. His anger, I could take it. That was just routine. The normality in Magdad City. Put me down, tear me apart, crush me to dust, I would know how to respond and riposte. But I was now forced in an uncharted territory.

I couldn’t stand it, nor could I accept it; because even if I reached my hand to slap him, with all my will, I wouldn’t have been able to touch him. He was something I didn’t understand.

But he was standing there, staring into space. Like nothing had happened. And it was raining. No sound was piercing the town fog, as if there was no one else left, but us. For that and plenty other reasons that made me reach my limit, I suddenly felt cold, tired, and which was more, I felt extremely and desperately… alone.

“My grandmother died.”

The words came out on their own. I don’t know what surprised me the most: that she was the first thing I talked about or the lump growing in my throat the moment I did. He turned his sharp eyes on me. I shivered and I laid everything down. How shamefully easy it was, in the end, to let him win.

I spoke like I never had before. And he just stayed next to me, listening and smoking, not even judging. I vomited all my hostility, all my rage. About my grandmother; about how she “forgot” to leave anything for me and how the care center was about to kick me out. The hardest part was to put words on my feelings. I wasn’t used to it. Real talk. Aside reading things someone else wrote, my social interactions only occurred when I was provoked. Like a defense mechanism. But my conversation were like the rest of my life, designed to fit in the background, unnoticeable. I didn’t like talking. It was gross, invasive and too intimate. Yet, at this instant, I was sickly craving for it.

And the more I emptied my bag, the more I felt like shit. And the more I felt like I was leaving my body and looking at me like a total stranger.

“I don’t understand…” finally asked Oracio lighting on another cigarette. “Why do they want to kick you out?”

Landing back inside my skin asked me a moment to readjust and gather my thoughts.

“Because I’m… a blot on their landscape,” I tried to sum up, not wanting to enter in the details. Oracio frowned, obviously sensing there was more. I bit my lip. “And I crushed someone’s head on a table… edge…”

Oracio opened his incredulous eyes wide. “Why?” His deep voice resonated like a scolding.

Why indeed? Because he throw a condom at my feet? Because he and his friends assaulted me? No. That was too simple. I wasn’t running away from them, I didn’t hate them. I didn’t even know they exited until they dragged me out of my bed. So why did I entered their game? What did I felt I had to defend? My life? My honor? Strangely, I could tell it wasn’t anything like that. A karmic response then?

I dodged Oracio’s chasing eyes, as I was feeling them scanning my body, in quest of another answer. “Well…” I muttered, passing my hand on my shaved head to play with my growing hair.

Oracio’s gaze followed my fingers then ran on the rest of my old wounds. My shiners, the bump on my nose, the cuts and other marks that weren’t from our previous fight. “Oh…” He suddenly let out, apparently getting the picture. He took a deep drag of his smoke. “Fuck.” I heard him muttering.

He remained silent, lost in thought, until he had smoked half of his cigarette.

“You can come to my place if you want…” he suddenly said.

My mind went blank for a second. Trying to see if I could retract my eyelids behind my eyeballs, I stared at the man sensing a form of panic raising in me. “Wh… do you… What?!” I mumbled baffled before putting my brain back in track. “Why do you want to help… me?” I managed to articulate, frowning to his suspicious offer. This is definitely fishy.

“I dunno…” He scratched his chin, negligently. “Cause you have nowhere to go?” He paused. I frowned even more. “Or maybe because you saved my girlfriend’s life…”

I saved her? Was it really what I did? “I am kinda in your debt, when you think of it.” He continued and grinned. “Also, I can’t imagine what she would do to me if she learns that I let you end in the street. Dorothy can be really scary.” I snorted honestly.

I looked at him, stunned and… I’m not even sure there is actually a word to describe how confused I was. He got that too. I think this guy had pulverized my poker face. “I am living with her now,” he said, “so my room is empty and free. It’s cramped but it’s better than the street. And I don’t mind someone crashing there… Especially if I’m not around…”

“What about your parents? Won’t they mind?” I attempted to regain my cool.

“Ah! Don’t h…” He corrected. “I am living on my own.”

“You have your own place?” I asked incredulous. He was what? Eighteen? How was it even possible?

“It is a long story” He finished his smoke and put the stub in a little pocket ashtray. “See that as a form of house sitting if that make you more comfortable.”

I hesitated. It couldn’t be that simple. “What if you break up with you chick?” I said without thinking.

“Nah that will never happen. I gonna marry her,” he replied, high spirited. “She wants tons of kids!” he opened his arms wide, beaming. “They are going to be stupidly cute like her, and cutely stupid like me. It’s going to be awesome, I can’t wait!”

Strangely, his puppy-love attitude surprised me so much that I started to cackle. “So you CAN laugh too. Good! That made two things that I discovered about you, today,” he said proudly before guffawing too.

And while I got caught up by his enthusiasm, I realized that it was, indeed, my first real laugh ever. We remained this way, giggling under the umbrella, until the rain stopped.