My Best Friend, Tristan (Part 6)

NOTE: Tristan's favorite song and music is mentioned in this Chapter. I will try not to make a habit out of this but, it will be very beautiful if you listen to the following songs as you read this chapter in this order (Chasing Cars-Snow Patrol, UnGodly Hour-The Fray, Be Still-The Fray). It will completely immerse you into Tristan's person. P.S. Sorry in advance for depressing you two chapters in a row :(.

MY BEST FRIEND, TRISTAN (PART 6)

I push the door open slowly in disbelief of what the nurse had just said to me in the long hall. And to my utter amazement, there Tristan is sitting up on his bed. One foot resting up on the chair I usually sit in, and the other hanging just off the floor. I inch in with wondering eyes.

“Tristan.” I speak. Not exactly to call him, but just to convince myself.

Tristan turns to see me.

“You’re late.” He says sweetly. “Nurse says you visiting every day at 3pm. It’s 3:23 Kyle.” He teases. And I still can’t believe my eyes. I had been hoping that Tristan would wake up, but never imagined he’d be able to move anything past his neck. I’ve never asked the doctor the extent of Tristan’s bodily fractures. I guess I figured once I knew, it’d be put into existence. Not knowing created a hope for me that he’d be able to walk and be the way he was before.

I move in closer to better examine him. Tristan reaches for my hand and takes it in his. He stares down at the way my hand lays innocently in his. He pulls me into him and just holds me there.

“Did you miss me?” He asks as if he had simply been away on a short vacation. I say nothing, just taking in Tristan’s Tristan-ness with a charmed smile. Tristan begins drawing his fingers down my spine.

“I missed you.” He spoke again. He pulls me closer into him and I feel his hard-on against my legs as I stand there between his firm thighs. It amazes me that Tristan has the ability to lift a finer right now, let alone have a boner. Now the thought begins to run through my mind. Would he bend me over and fuck me here in this room? Or lay me down on his bed and make love to me? Would he be aggressive or gentle? Tristan is so spontaneous you’d never know how he’d choose to make love to you in a given moment. Or the sexy things he’d say next.

“All I thought about was when I’d be able to touch you again, Kyle.” Things like that. Tristan’s voice made my entire body trimmer. He starts to kiss my chest near my collar bone. It was only when Tristan was sitting that I had this height advantage. I moan at the way his lips tingled against my skin. I start to lose myself in his touch as he wraps his arms around me and gently makes his way up my neck with his warm breath. I become so lost in his touch that I became unconcerned with who might walk in.

Tristan straightens his spine inching up to my lips. He can move that too? I thought. He begins to kiss me like I was the only one in his world. Slowly he slips one foot to the floor. Then the other as he leans further and further into me. Before I know it, Tristan rises up in our kiss to once again take dominance over me. To my amazement, he can do that too. I begin to shed tears as he continued to kiss me like he’s been wanting to do it all his life. It filled me with complete joy to know that Tristan was okay. Completely okay. He finally finds himself in a rational state when he feels my tears meet his lips. He stops kissing me.

“What’s wrong?” He gently mouths these sweet words just above a whisper. I became overwhelmed with emotions as Tristan stared at me waiting for answers.

“I didn’t know if you’d ever wake up.” I sobbed lowly pulling back from him. He only becomes humored by this. He takes my hand.

“Kyle. You know me. 23 feet is nothing I couldn’t handle.” Tristan says pulling me back into him. He starts kissing my neck up to my ears. Suddenly it hits me, and I become saddened by this moment that I’m realizing Tristan shouldn’t know how far he was ejected from his car. I should.

And suddenly, I force open my eyes. No alarm assistance this time. My heart aches begrudgingly in my chest. These dreams have been taunting me for weeks. It’s 3:23 Kyle, I remember him say to me in the dream. It was three cars that crashed into Tristan’s and ejected him twenty-three feet. I hated how my desire for Tristan to wake up led my mind to play these cruel tricks on me.

I skipped all my classes today. After yet another dream like that I just wanted to spend the entire day with Tristan. For a while I just sat next to his peaceful breathing. His bruises are healing well. Around his arms and face, there are still dark brown traces of bruising that look quite good on him. Tristan manages to make even the half-dying-patent persona look sexy.

I take out my phone and find Tristan’s all-time favorite song. Chasing Cars. Even though The Fray was his all-time addiction, he couldn’t get over this song when he heard it for the first time. We were driving to a campus tour of HAOL. He Shazaamed it to his phone right then and played it the entire rest of our Trip. He’d sing to it joyously and/or obnoxiously while getting ready for a date with Lanae or trying to cheer me up. The best part was that as much as Tristan played this song, he just never could remember the lyrics. And when he butchered the words it always took me to another world.

I search my bag to find my headphone splitter. I know how much Tristan loves to immerse himself in his favorite songs, so he had to get his own pair of earphones. I play the song allowing myself to drift into its musical flow. When I think about it, this song is the very essence of Tristan’s being. So effortless and worry-free. Spirited, but not overly. Fun but not drawn out. Simple. Content.

I start to think about Tristan making love to me to this song. Ramming me into walls because he just can’t wait to get me into the next room. Showing the sweeter side of himself when it mattered. Caressing all my sensitive curves. Pressing his bare skin against mine and setting his chin snug between my neck and shoulder, inhaling my essence. Breathing his hot breath on my skin. And being aggressive when he just can’t help himself. Giving me all of him even when he knows I can’t take it anymore.

As I drift further into the song I start to think about all the ways Tristan has touched my life. All the times I’ve run with firecrackers on summer nights, fell of skateboards, or wrapped myself in blankets on rainy nights to watch horror movies, I owe to Tristan. He forced me to do something other than the nothing that meant wallowing in dark void of my thoughts.

I look at this Tristan that, although he never cared about being popular, could’ve had a much different life. Could’ve easily had so much more than me. I slip my hand under Tristan’s hand hoping he can feel me. I somehow feel safe having his hand resting on mine this way. I rest my head near his shoulder. He feels so good. I will never understand why he cares about me so much. Not when I’ve never had anything to offer in our friendship. I’ve always thought it had something to do with a talk he had with my dad once. My dad always felt sorry for me because I wasn’t like the other kids. I heard him advise Tristan, Kyle isn’t like you. He’s gonna need a lot of attention with this. Please take care of him. Could this be why he’s stuck around so long? Did my father make him promise to be my friend because I would never be capable of making one? This seems possible, but Tristan’s loyalty to our friendship felt like one that was branded by something deeper. Like taking a bullet for him or something to that extreme. But this certainly wasn’t the case. And because Tristan never wanted to tell me what the whole talk with my dad was about, it was the first and only time I felt like he ever kept anything from me. I never held this against him though. Because Tristan was pretty much an open book. So if he felt like he couldn’t tell me, it was probably because he thought I couldn’t handle it.

At the time I was already going through a lot and Tristan was always trying to help me through it. You see, from a very early age, I suffered from social anxiety disorder which didn’t get diagnosed until I was almost thirteen. The reason for this is because I suffered from Dysthymia and was required to take all these anti-depressants that blurred the line between the effects of the medication and my social anxiety. My doctor just assumed I was anxious around others because of the meds. But when my mother finally had me examined by a neurologist, they discovered that my Dysthymia was caused by social anxiety disorder and not the other way around. And so my med requirements began to contradict each other. I needed depressants for my anxiety and anti-depressants for my depression.

Tristan started to hate the way my body was becoming dependent on all the medications. Some night’s he’d be sitting on the floor against the couch watching me try to sleep. I’d sweat profusely and toss around in my sleep. The drugs that were supposed to help my anxiety and depression, were the same drugs giving me nightmares that I was always being cornered and out-numbered. It got so bad that I tried to commit suicide on multiple occasions. Tristan always came to my rescue. Talking me through all the reasons I shouldn’t slit my wrist, or drown myself, or overdose on medication. He’d say he needed me around. And I just never knew if Tristan meant those words or if he was just trying to keep a promise he made to my father.

One night I woke up to Tristan at the foot of the couch. Crying. This is the only time I’ve ever seen him cry. And I could tell it was over me. What the drugs were doing to me. So I decided then that I would take his advice. I would stop taking the meds. Tristan thought going without the meds would mean more of my own control. And as I gradually began missing doses, I stopped having the nightmares that woke me in the middle of the night. I stopped trying to find new ways to kill myself.

After a while, the absence of the drugs started causing other effects. Mainly aggression. I became extremely hostile against Tristan. I’d punch him over and over and over again. My aggression would rise from the smallest things. Like when he refused to tell me what my father made him promise that day. Or when he’d joke about me never kissing a girl. I hated that the most. Looking back now, I know that he was just trying to keep our friendship normal by making those types of jokes. But at the time I’d gratify my anger by lashing out at him and shoving him. Punching him. And cursing at him. Most times he’d be apologizing and begging me to stop. Crying out with piteous eyes, you’re hurting me. Trying to hold me down by holding me closely. I could always see him fighting back tears when he saw the helplessness in my eyes. It got to a point where he’d just stand there and force himself to take it. No matter what happened, Tristan remained determined that he’d never let me take those drugs again. Not if it meant losing me. Sometimes I’d end up being the one crying as I pound at him against my will. Cursing at him and insulting him. And soon these tumbles of our friendship became visible marks on his body. Ones he was happy to bare for me.

Finally it happened. We were like 15 and for the first time in a long while, I was chilling with Tristan. He’s on my computer and I’m on my bed studying for my algebra midterm.

“Kyle.” He calls. “What do you think about being gay?”

“Why do you ask?” Thinking he might be insinuating something.

“Just curious what you think.”

“I think you’re calling me gay.”

“I wasn’t calling you gay.”

“Maybe you’re gay!” I snapped. I didn’t want to but I did. I didn’t really even believe he was calling me gay. But it had been almost a month since I had stopped taking the meds and I lost it. Again. I get out of the bed to start searching around the room rather than start punching at him this time around. He became concerned.

“What are you doing?” He watches me frantically around the room.

“I gotta find it!” I say not specifically to him.

“No!” He jumps up chasing after me. “I’m not gonna let you do that.”

He wraps his arms around me as I am now fighting back tears and the urge to hit him.

“Tristan----!” I shout and cry in agony. He won’t let me go. He starts to fight back his own tears as he hears me whimper. I fling myself out of his grasp. He runs over to my closet shelf and grabs three bottles and holds them behind his back.

“I need them!” I become frantic. I start to punch at his chest.

“No, Kyle. You don’t need them.”

I cry. He couldn’t see my agony to save him from all this misery.

“I don’t want to hurt you anymore.” I shout. Yet I couldn’t control an even greater urge to punch him harder. I start to aim for places that would hurt him the most. His ribs. His stomach.

“Kyle!” He calls. “You’re hurting me.” He cries out. “Please, Kyle, stop!”

I hear his plea, but my body satisfies the urge to shove him into my room door then the wall. Seeing all the pain that Tristan’s in, I try and resist hitting me. The more I tried and greater my urge became to hurt him. He drops the bottles and takes me in his arms tightly. I start straining my hardest out of his hold. But he was much stronger than me and was now using full force to keep me down. I see our struggle in the long leaning mirror near my closet opening. I see Tristan’s desperation met with my own. I didn’t recognize this stubborn brute as myself. I try to meet his force with mine as I could feel blood rushing out of my nose. I continue to strain so loudly that everything goes black. I faint. I don’t know what happened the rest of that night, but everything just changed after that. I was cured somehow. And I never became hostile towards Tristan again. He stuck it out with me and he helped me to overcome a condition that doctors were not really sure was psychological, biological, or neurological. I owe him my life. My sanity. I never understood what he did that changed everything.

I didn’t realize it, but I had drifted off to sleep by Tristan’s bedside. I still here music pouring into my ears as I slowly will my eyes open. This was a huge victory as I am unable to do the same with the rest of my body at the moment. I just lie there looking from Tristan’s stomach to his blanketed feet. This is all I can see of him in this position, besides his hand that is still resting on mine. In the moment I am looking at Tristan’s hand, I feel it gently enclose around mine. Then tighter. I jump back in my seat hoping I hadn’t imagine that. I look over to Tristan and his eyes are open, fixed straight ahead. With very little life.

“Tristan?” I barely sound out trying not to bring him any shock.

He says nothing. He struggles in pain to sit up. I look up at him from where I’m seated. He squeezes my hand.

“We’re going to have to move him.” He says. “Kyle? Kyle, you have to get up.”

I become alarmed by this. And before I could realize it was another dream, I was already up.  Surrounded my doctors and nurses full of chatter, I become concerned. My familiar nurse friend, Brenda assists me away from Tristan’s bedside. Brenda could see in my eyes I had questions. She began answering them without me having to say a word.

“It’s alright, honey.” She spoke. She explained to me that I had been lying on one of Tristan’s essential organ cleansing tubes for about half an hour. His liver I think she said. There Tristan lays fighting for his dear life, and I can’t believe I was about to be the one responsible for his death. The nurses push some buttons and adjusts some tubes around Tristan and red lights stop flashing. The doctor examines him and writes in his notepad. All is well again. One by one the nurses and doctors exit the room. Brenda stays behind. She instructs me that it was okay to sit back in my chair near Tristan. Just as long as I was careful not to lay on him. I watched her as she finishes up in the room and readies to leave. Before she does, she comes up to me. She kneels in front of me and I am now able to look down at her.

“Baby, you know me, right?”

I nod my head reluctantly. She takes my hand.

“I only care about the well-being of anybody that enters this building.” She continues as she pulls out a card and hands it to me. It reads: Abuse Counselor. She begins feeling on my face. This confuses me beyond belief. Was this for me? Did she think I was being abused? I look over at a mirror that hung above a small sink in Tristan’s room trying to see what she was seeing when she looked at me.

“They have group meetings, and anonymous lines to call.” She finished and rise to leave. And I’m left wondering why she thought I needed abuse counseling.