The weekend fell upon me before I was able to see Liam again which brought forth a flood of dark thoughts. It was all I could do to not text him all day Friday but the last thing I wanted to do was seem desperate, especially if he was having second thoughts. Since I wasn’t sure about my feelings the distance might have been best I reasoned.

My biggest issue though was not knowing what to do with myself anymore. What was it I had done on the weekends before? Lately, they had just been spent wallowing in my void, before that I had devoted my weekends to other people. Now I was voidless and alone with no memory of what I had done in previous years.

Friday night was passed following my sister around the house which had amused neither of us. She wasn’t some mute loser and actually had friends so Saturday found me sitting at home alone.

I tried reading, playing video games, napping, watching TV before resorting to cleaning. My boredom was relentless however and every time I started a new task it was abandoned moments later.

As night fell I found myself sitting on the couch with some trashy reality show on in the background as I idly scrolled through the pictures on my phone. Everything that wasn’t scenery was shots of the people I had spent my time with since moving. Sam, Alex, Kyle, Liam, Jeremy, Brian, and Cameron were the most frequent subjects in those photos each bringing forth different emotions.

Looking at them it felt like everything was slowly being tainted, all of the good memories captured in the pictures souring. Alex and Kyle had each brought different kinds of anguish into my life and their poison had seeped into those around them allowing them to ruin so much. My friendship with Sam was in tatters after what Alex had done and the wreckage wrought by Kyle was still slowly being revealed.

While I continued to scroll through my phone a notification flashed across the top letting me know that I had a new text message. Clicking to check it, even though I knew it was probably another message from Cameron, I was rather shocked to see Liam’s contact photo smiling at me.

‘Hey, are you busy?’ he had written and while I probably shouldn’t have texted back immediately as to avoid seeming overly eager, my reply was still sent within the same minute.

‘No, not at all.’

After sending my message I sat there staring at my screen willing his response to come through faster. It seemed like he must have been as eager as me though since his text popped up after only a few seconds.

‘Could you come over? I know it's late so if you can’t don’t worry.’

‘Yeah I can be there in about ten minutes’

‘Great, do you think you could stay the night?’

I had to re-read his last message four times before the words could process and even then I wasn’t able to understand it. Liam had never asked me to stay the night the relationship we had with each other, even though it was weird and messed up, had never included.

Maybe he was just looking for a rebound and this was just some kind of booty call, though that seemed uncharacteristic of him. Plus if it was just about hooking up we wouldn’t need to spend the whole night together. This had to be something different but what that might be eluded me.

‘Sure.’ I replied before I could think about it too much more.

Knowing myself there was only a small window of time that I could act impulsively before my mind caught up and forced me to doubt everything to the point of canceling. Instead of letting that happen I moved quickly grabbing my phone and wallet before pulling on the oversized red hoodie and leaving the house.

Liam only lived a couple of blocks away so my ten-minute estimation would be correct. At least it would have been if I didn’t end up jogging the entire way like some overeager puppy resulting in my getting there in under half that time.

As I approached his house, I noticed that his car was sitting alone in the driveway which meant we would most likely have the place to ourselves for the night. Thinking about all of the things that could entail made my face feel hot.

The front door opened before I even made it to the porch and Liam was standing there looking worse than the last time I had seen him. A bruise had formed on his cheek which stood out against his paler than usual skin. His eyes had lost what little life had been in them while we were in the nurse's office and the bags underneath them were much darker. He wore a black pair of gym shorts and his black hoodie with the hood pulled up and his hands hiding inside the sleeves.

Seeing him like this I couldn’t fathom why he had asked me to come over. It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t interested in hooking up but it also didn’t look like he wanted to do anything else.

When I made it up the stairs and across the small porch he moved aside, motioning me to enter.

Liam had lived in the same house since he and his mom moved to town six years ago and most everything was still packed away in boxes. I knew from the few other times that I had visited that there was only one room that actually looked lived in and that was where Liam led me.

His bedroom seemed almost out of place with the rest of the house with how cozy and inviting it was. While the room showed off a lot of Liam’s interests the most obvious was his love of movies. Framed posters that he had snagged from his job at the movie theater dotted the walls while one side of the room was devoted fully to his entertainment center and massive DVD collection.

Once we were in his room I watched as Liam went about putting a movie in before throwing himself onto his bed which was the only seating in the room. Thankfully the bed was massive and held enough pillows and blankets that I was easily able to join him without getting too close.

“This is my favorite movie” he stated to the room in general instead of directly at me.

While I enjoyed movies I knew that Liam’s taste far exceeded my own and that the movie was sure to be amazing. My attempts to watch though were derailed by his mere existence. He started shifting around in the bed, moving pillows and blankets seemingly searching in vain for a comfortable position while I sat rigid against the headboard trying to not be completely obvious as I watched his every move.

Eventually, he laid down beside me with a stack of pillows behind his head and I forced myself to focus on the TV and not the way his eyelashes moved when he blinked.

My valiant effort to try and watch as the main character's brother died in a fire was brought to a grinding halt when Liam turned over opting to rest his head on my leg instead of the pillows. I froze up at first worried that my earlier assumption about his not being interested in hooking up had somehow been wrong before I realized that his breathing had evened out. Leaning my head forward I saw that he was fast asleep which made my chest feel warm for some reason.

After that my attempt to watch Liam’s favorite movie failed rather spectacularly.

When the main character started hanging out with an inflatable robot Liam moved again in his sleep, this time his arm came up to wrap around my leg with his hand resting on my inner thigh.

A training montage with a fire breathing jumping monster was ignored when Liam turned his head causing his breath to warm the area right above my knee.

Something that seemed like it was the vital background for the villain's motives along with information about his daughter got immediately forgotten as Liam shifted around in his sleep causing the edge of his hoodie to ride up revealing that he wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath.

The remainder of the movie was a vague blur in the background as I learned that Liam talked in his sleep, well he mostly mumbled but every once in a while a full word would escape his lips. Seeing him like this felt almost like an invasion of his privacy but it also was amazing.

“Burrito,” he said as the main characters began some epic fight against the villain.

“Is slippery” came a few minutes later during a scene where the inflatable robot sacrificed himself.

By the time the credits rolled I didn’t know a single character name or ninety-five percent of the plot but it was probably one of my favorite movies now as well. This new memory of watching Liam sleep so peacefully was something I wanted to file away in my mind so that I would be able to forever cherish it. The problem with the poison infecting my life was that nothing managed to live for very long and my new found happiness was no exception.

The killing blow to the warm bubble of emotion that had been welling up inside of me came during an after credit scene while a cartoon version of Stan Lee talked about underwear.

“Kyle” Liam muttered in his sleep and with that the reality that was my life came flooding back.