Christian

18

The sun rose and everything fell. Everything. Every single god damn thing on that shelf. I told Alex that the shelf he built wouldn’t last a day, and look. 6AM right on the dot. Alex never had a good carpentry skills, so I should’ve expected this. But some small bit of optimism inside of me told me that maybe, just maybe it’d stay up. I guess not.
“Alex! I told you this thing was going to fall!” I called up the stairs, setting down my bowl of cereal and walking over to the mess. I bent down, going to work picking up the mess. A picture frame, a plastic flower pot with a plastic flower in it, a glass die Alex won at an arcade...wait, tape? Did he think tape would hold this up? Honestly
“S’not my fault! You just have faulty walls!” Came my roommate’s voice as he stumbled down the stairs, trying to hike his pants up.
“I don’t think the walls are the problem, so much as this tape. I don’t think this tape would even stick to itself, let alone hold a shelf up!” I shot back, picking up the assorted items and putting them back in their original places around the apartment.
“The guy at the craft store said it was strong enough to hold anything up!”
“Was it Jim.” I asked, but I knew it was. Jim was a friend of ours. We’d known him since middle school, and we knew how good of a swindler he was. He’d swindled Alex, and indirectly me, out of many bucks over the years. That was when I stopped letting Alex handle the money. And our economic standing has gone from “awful” to “bad”. What matters is now we can afford decent toilet paper.
“...Nooooooooo…” Alex lied in that way he did, shiftily looking from left to right. I gave him my trademark Vorpal Stare, and I swear he almost cracked like a statue. “...Yeeees…”
“God, Alex. This tape is thinner than my patience, and you thought it’d hold this up.” I said, plonking down onto the couch with cereal in hand. Alex gave me a cheesy grin, sitting down next to me.
“Aaaawh, don’t be such a sourpuss! It was worth a shot!”
“No it wasn’t.” With that, I clicked on the TV. Some news story about some guy dying from an oncoming train. I watched disinterestedly as they played the clip, munching on whatever sugar crunch I’d poured for myself. I let out a chuckle at the moment of impact as the guy crumpled in a satisfying shower of gore. Alex was nowhere near as excited, burying his face into a nearby cushion with a yelp.
“Guh! How can you watch that!?” Alex grunted through the pillow, and I simply reached over and tousled his bedhead.
“S’just some blood. Quite a trainwreck, really.”
“Like our lives?”
“Exactly.” I snickered. The quiet morning continued like this, as Alex and I finally built up the motivation to go get dressed, Alex making himself some toast in the process. It wasn’t long before the two of us stood at the door, all done up in our button-ups and slacks. Alex stood there for a moment, staring at the doorknob.
“...” He stood there in silence, and I leaned forward.
“Well?”
“...I’m scared.” He said suddenly, and if that wasn’t a tonal shift, I don’t know what is.
“Scared? Why?” Alex pointed suddenly at the doorhandle. I looked at the silver ball, leaning in very closely. There, a spider. Not even a dangerous spider. I reached a hand out, letting it crawl onto my hand. “There, there, little guy. Nothing to worry about.” I cooed, before clenching my fist and putting all my high school baseball experience to use as I threw it down the hall at such a speed that I’m pretty sure I almost put a hole in the stairwell. “Better?”
“Better.” Alex let out a sigh of relief, reaching out and putting his hand on the knob. He gasped when I leaned in and placed a kiss on his cheek.
“Come on. If you open it, you can hold my knob later.” I winked, watching Alex’s face turn a solid pink.
“G-Geez, Mike! I don’t need that when I’m trying to prepare myself for work!” He barked at me, before smiling. He leaned forward and placed a kiss on my lips, before turning back to the wooden slat between us and the outside world.
Alex stared at the door handle and slowly turned the knob.