Page 53 of Open Water

TOM: You fell asleep and I carried you back to Eva’s car, because I couldn’t just leave you there. I wish I had stayed. I wish I had woken up and found you still in my arms. I didn’t. I was just shit scared you would reject me. Laugh at me and my pathetic crush on you.

TOM: I have regrets Lukas, so many regrets.

TOM: I will stop pushing, because I know you don’t feel the same way about me, but I had to tell you. I have to finally stop lying. I loved you. I still love you. I love the idea of us. But that is just me.

TOM: I hope you are happy, and I wish you nothing but happiness and laughter. Believe me Lukas. If I could I would spend the rest of my life making you smile. But it’s not what you want, and I respect that.

Be happy.

Love Tom.

LUKAS

Lukas has endured bad weeks. Terrible months. Horrid days when he has seriously thought about just hiding his pathetic self under the duvet and never seeing the light of day again. But this week?Fuck. It’s not even him.

He’s not heartbroken. It’s nothing he’s done. He should be fine. He should be sitting at home eating another bar of damn chocolate and laughing. Laughing straight in Tom’s face. Not walking the streets of Stockholm in the morning sun feeling like he is about to explode.

Yes, that’s the problem.

Because it’s fucking tempting just to admit it. Even though he knows what an incredibly stupid idea the whole pathetic fucking head-canon of giving in to the crazy ideas that come out of Tom Andersson Björklund’s mouth is. That he likes it. That he can kind of imagine it. Which makes him want to roll himself into a ball on the ground and just scream. Hurl abuse at himself, and well, let’s just say that the short walk down to the liquor shop is really tempting. A few bottles of beer and some matching shots of something stronger later, and Lukas’s head would be a nice and fuzzy place to lounge around in. Then, maybe, he wouldn’t be so damn confused.

But then Lukas knows. He knows the stupid shit his head comes up with when he’s had a few. And he wouldn’t just be drunk this time. He would be fucking drunk on Tom. And his phone would be a damn liability.

Which is why he doesn’t understand what he is doing. He hasn’t understood shit all week, being pathetically depressed and moody. Like he should be hanging his head over the fact that some idiot from way back has a crush on him. Yeah. Right. Pathetic juvenile shite.

It means nothing. Everyone has crushes. Lukas has had a few. And it’s not like he lies in bed at night thinking about that Peder, even though he was kind of cute. Fuck. He doesn’t even know what has happened to him. Maybe he should google. Check out Facebook?

No. Lukas is pretty much fucked. His lessons have been pathetic. He has chickened out of Max’s tutoring both days and let Miriam do her thing. Apparently, Max has aced it, and Miriam has looked at Lukas and kind of questioned what they have actually been doing. The kid is smart. Bright. He should just sit a few backdated exams and get on with it.

Yet, Lukas kind of knows that doing this would just rile up a storm of anxiety in the kid and undo what they are trying to achieve here. Small steps. A little at a time. Day by day. No pressure. Just work through the coursework and get him passed. It’s how he functions, and they can do this. It’s fine.

It’s just that sitting there staring at the kid, when all he can see is Tom, is the worst kind of mind fuck.

And he knows what he needs to do. He should ring up his therapist, the middle-aged lady he crawls back to, with his head in his hands, every time he fucks up his life. She knows him. She’s known him since he was nineteen and was terrified of his own shadow despite his cocky confident appearance. She has heard all his inner bullshit, yet she never judges, just sits down and listens, as he spills the verbal diarrhoea of the catastrophic clusterfuck he has made of his life again. They have agreed to carefully lay out strategies of how Lukas should manage his insecurities. They have agreed that he needs to remember that he is strong. That he has no reason to fail at anything.

He is a good person. He just needs to make the right choices. Not fall for the rash decisions that cause his life to crumble.

He had met Peder during the first week of Uni, both of them irresponsible and clueless, hanging out and exploring their new-found freedom of living away from home. Peder had a girlfriend back in Stavanger. Peder was straight. Peder also lost all his inhibitions after a few beers and the two of them had developed a stupid thing of pretty much shagging each other senseless on a Friday night, only to wake up on the Saturday morning pretending the other person didn't exist. It was the unhealthiest of relationships.

Lukas can see it now, but at the time, he had pretty much fallen apart when Peder’s girlfriend moved in and Lukas was pushed out like a disease. He rebounded straight into Stuart, the new exchange student, who Lukas then basically broke up with during a few weeks of complete and utter madness. It went on. On and on. Simon trying to pick up the pieces and Lukas’s life just spinning out of control until he lost it.

Because Lukas just keeps making the same mistake, over and over again. Falling for unsuitable arse-butts of men who have no intention of loving Lukas until the day they die. And that line is firmly stuck in Lukas’s head like a broken record. It’s not even real. It’s just some lame joke that Tom threw in there to lighten the mood, yet Lukas clings on to it like a lifeline.

He spent the second year of Uni battling glandular fever caused by exhaustion. Well, that was the official take, but Lukas knows he just lived his life too fast. Irresponsibly and recklessly not stopping long enough to mend his broken heart. Just putting a plaster on it and moving on when his body was screaming for a break. He studied. Shagged around. Cried himself to sleep in his dorm room. Promised himself, in therapy, that he needed to be kind to himself. Love himself. Let himself heal.

Which is why Lukas doesn’t understand why his fingers google Dr Tom Andersson.

Dr Tom Andersson, who has published umpteen papers on emergency medicine, is an outspoken champion on reforming the Care in the Community system and is apparently a bit famous as part of a group called the Street Medics. There are photos. Interviews. Press pieces that look almost staged of Tom, hunched in monochrome tones under a streetlight with his stethoscope out, listening to the heartbeat of some guy who is obviously homeless, wrapped up in dirty blankets with a resigned look on his face.

Yeah, and he was right there on Eniro.se. Mobile number and address. Staring him right in the face, and now he can’t undo what he saw. Alvastravägen 7, Aspudden. Stockholm.

He even knows where it is. He has passed the turnoff to that road before. Shit.

And now his feet are walking like they have a life of their own. He doesn’t even understand what he is doing. He doesn’t understand himself. Not at all.

This is going to end so badly that he can’t even grasp why he has done it this morning.

Phoned in sick.

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