~CC’s POV~
So I’m looking for Andy’s apartment and driving around a city that I know nothing about, I’ve passed a lot of liquor stores and wonder how he doesn’t have a drinking problem. The radio stations in this city suck, so does the scenery.

After 45 minutes of absolutely rocking out to happy mindless radio pop songs and drumming my fingers on the steering wheel I found his place. It was pretty decent looking on the outside but the absolute silence in the hallways isn’t my thing. I mean it’s so quiet you can hear the buzzing of the electricity in the lights as you walk past them, and this is 10 at night when people should be coming to life. I expected somebody to pop their head out their door when I opened Andy’s suite but it seems like nobody else lives in the building, I bet he’s never blazed it with his neighbors.

I’m not really a feelings guy, I prefer to stay positive…but walking into Andy’s place made me feel depressed as hell. I started out by sweeping the pain relievers off of the floor and ended up finding a collection of empty vodka bottles in the process, maybe he does have a drinking problem.

The place wasn’t too bad, it’s not like dirty laundry and dishes were strewn about like at my house. Everything was pretty much in order and I was about to crash on his couch for the night when I went to take a piss and saw the bloody murder scene in the bathroom. My hand actually covered my mouth the second I turned the light on and noticed a bloody shirt on the floor, a half empty bath tub with bloody water, a bloody hand print on the wall and on the sides of the tub, his cell phone laying on the floor with smeared blood on it. It was like one of those ketchup laced horror movies we’d make when we were kids but this was real. When I'd called for an ambulance I didn’t fathom that things on this end of the phone would look like this. When my head hit the pillow I tried not to think of the blood but I couldn’t sleep so I went on his computer.

The password was, of course, Olivia. I looked through his pictures folder and found a lot of summertime selfies of him and Olivia. There were a lot of college folders; he has over a dozen assignments overdue. He had a bunch of music files, some chords to songs he’d written, and an old file called MYLIfE that was password protected.

I looked around his apartment and tried to guess the password twice, not Olivia and not Andy. What a stupid guess, who uses their own name as a password? I stared at the way the file was spelled. My life, all one word with only the letter 'F' in lowercase.

“Emily.” I guessed the password right on the third try and smiled. When the folder opened I saw a side of Andy that I knew nothing about. She’d sent him videos of her playing songs like Hey There Delilah on acoustic guitar. They’d posed on their webcams making half hearts with their hands and put the pictures together to make it look like they’d taken a selfie. He’d written a bunch of love songs for her and left a sketch she’d drawn of him singing next to the computer. How long has he been in love with her? There are files in this folder from four years ago. Why didn’t he just go out with her? This whole Olivia crisis and everything leading up to it could’ve been avoided.

Speaking of…

“Heyyyy.” Jinxx answered.

“You sound busy.” I smirked.

“Hold on a sec.” He said happily. It sounded like he stepped outside. “Okay we’re alone. What’s up.”

“You tell me.” I rolled my eyes.

“I don’t know what to tell you. Things got out of hand with Olivia, we got drunk and kind of...” Jinxx started to say.

“No kidding.” I laughed.

“I didn’t plan to sleep with her swear to God.” Jinxx said quietly.

“Bro it’s fine. I’ll pay you when I get back.” I picked up Emily’s drawing of Andy.

“No.” He sighed. “You don’t have to pay me. I didn’t want things to end up like this.” He was talking to convince himself. I stayed silent. “I mean I didn’t want to sleep with her. I wanted to, don’t get me wrong, I’ve wanted her for years. But I didn’t know she wasn't single.” He sighed again. “I think I’m in love with Olivia.”

“Dude. You’re not in love.” I shook my head. What’s with this chick? She’s like Cleopatra.

“Seriously Ceese. She’s amazing. We have so much in common. We love the same music. Did you know she plays piano?” He sounded like he was serious.

You can’t fall in love that fast. “She plays piano, she dances, she’s a master manipulator. I guarantee she’s messing with your head.”

“You don’t know her like I do.” He retaliated.

I laughed. “Andy said the same thing to me.”

“Andy.” He said quietly. “How is he?”

This made me slightly irritated. He can have hurricane Olivia and all of the wreckage that comes with her, but Andy is none of his concern. “He’s good.” I lied. “We’re playing some Misfits, knockin’ back a few, you know how it is.”

“Awesome.” He sounded like his guilt had been alleviated. “I’ll tell Olivia.”

This made me angrier. I’m not a messenger between Andy and hurricane Olivia. “Oh yeah?” I challenged. “How do you think that’ll go over?”

He sighed again. “She keeps mentioning him.”

“She just broke up with him.” I was mad now. “You’re nothing but a rebound Jinxx, don’t get yourself caught up in this.”

“We love each other.” His voice raised. “We don’t care what anybody thinks.”

“We?” I laughed again. “Really Jinxx?”

“Screw you.” He hung up.

I smirked at the phone. I’d barely let go of it when it rang again.

“You mad bro?” I answered angrily.

“Ooooohkay um, hi there.” Emily stammered.

I felt the immediate ease of a huge argument lifting off my chest. “Sorry.” I looked around for a smoke and found a pack by the computer. Since when does Andy smoke? Does he smoke in his apartment? “I was on an intense call.” I laughed nervously and searched for a lighter. Still unsure about his smoking situation, I turned on the bathroom fan and smoked in there.

“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this.” She said.

“No kidding.” I took a long drag and laughed the smoke into the air.

“It sounds quieter.” She observed.

“I left the Hospital." I paused. She gasped and I realized how that must have sounded to her. "He's okay," I quickly added. "He sent me to his place to get some rest.”

“Oooh, how did his place look?” She seemed to sense the extent of mess I’d walked into earlier.

“It was bad.” I took a long drag and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. “There was blood everywhere.” I felt horrible when the words came out of my mouth but I knew she’d understand.

“’I’m sorry Chris.” She sighed.

“It’s all cleaned up now.” I pressed my eyes shut, tried not to think about it. “I thought that cleaning up the mess might make it easier for him to forget about what happened.”

“You should get him drunk when he gets out.” She convinced.

I smiled. “I think drinking might be part of the problem.” I flushed the cigarette down the toilet and left the fan on, it seemed like it was the only sound in the building. “There were empties all over the place.”

“That might be my fault. I told him to drink every time Olivia made him feel like crap. I thought if he woke up hungover and feeling like Hell at least he’d wake up at all.” Her voice cracked.

“I’m sorry Emily.” I whispered.

She was quiet. I was silent.

Moments passed. I sat on the couch, turned the TV on for background noise and lay down again.

“I miss him so much. I know it hasn’t been that long but.” She sighed.

“I know the feeling.” I thought of Amelia. “I miss him too.” I joked.

She laughed. I smiled. “Thanks Chris.” She said. “You’re an awesome friend, you know that?”

“I wish I could do something more to help him.” At that moment I knew what I had to do.

“You’re helping him more than anybody else is.” She went silent. “You’re there, I’m not.”

“You don't have to be here, you’re in school. How is school, did you go today?” I teased.

“Don’t remind me. We had this presentation that I messed up pretty bad. I couldn’t stop thinking about Andy.” Her voice trailed off. I knew she wouldn’t take the time off from school to meet him. I knew he’d never get around to meeting her. I also knew that they had to at least meet each other after snooping around his encrypted MYLIfE folder.

I wanted another smoke. “I’ll get him to call you tomorrow.” Talking to her felt like I was betraying him.

“Thank you Chris.” She said quietly.

“No worries.” I sighed. I miss Amelia.

“Sweet dreams.” She whispered.

“Stop worrying.” I said sharply. She giggled. “And have a good sleep.” I added and hung up.

I was ready to sleep off some interstate jet lag when Amelia answered the phone. She was blasting music and offered a glimmer of hope that somebody was alive in this world at this hour. “Soul mate!” I yelled when she answered.

“Soul mate!” She yelled at almost the same time.

We didn’t have to say the same thing at the same time, I already knew she was the one for me.

Notes