Things in Common

The parking garage was empty when Isaac arrived in his car. The place was a desolate building, made to create parking for a shopping mall that was never built. Still, it stood miles outside where it could be useful, an ugly concrete and steel monument to failed promises. At this hour, Isaac spotted only five other vehicles amid the hundreds of parking spaces, none of which were on his level.

Twenty minutes passed, then a half-hour.

I got the address right, didn’t I?

Just as he was preparing to leave, another car pulled up next to his, containing the last person in the world he expected to see. Mike.

For a minute, the two of them stared at one another, unsure if they were adversaries or friends. After the DnD session, Mike hadn’t spoken to Isaac once, ignored all his texts and refused to even meet his eyes in the school hallways.

It was Isaac who decided to pierce the veil of animosity. “How did Emma get you to come here?”

“Two hundred dollars can be very motivating, especially since she told me it was your money.” Mike’s voice was cold, laden with a kind of resentment that Isaac had never witnessed in his childhood accomplice.

“Listen, man, I know Sarah and you are probably incredibly pissed with Emma and I because we made you uncomf –”

Mike interrupted whilst shaking his head angrily. “No man, that’s not what happened. She wasn’t made at Emma because she got fucked while everyone was listening, she got mad because Emma scared me away.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“I’m… I am, no… I was… like you Isaac, but with Sarah.” Mike’s voice cracked with every syllable, as if even this small phrase of admittance was inflicting physical pain upon him.

“She, uh… Sarah sent you pictures?”

Mike’s face seemed on the verge of tears, he was trembling like a tree caught in a hurricane, but Isaac couldn’t tell whether it was due to a fit of rage or despair. “Y-Yeah… Videos too. Or she used to. I quit her; told her she could get another date for the prom. I don’t want to end up like you.”

End up like me?

“The fuck you mean, end up like me?”, Isaac had to clamp down on his rising anger, feeling like a pot ready to boil as he lashed out as his former best friend.

Mike matched Isaac’s emotions, as they began to stand glowering head-to-head, pushing at each other menacingly with their torsos like lions fighting in a pride.

“I don’t want to end up listening to my girlfriend get fucked by a bunch of strangers while my friends look at me with disgust! Forgive me if that makes me the weird one!” Mike spat out each word, his finger poking into Isaac’s chest.

“Fuck you.” Isaac pushed Mike, making him stumble backwards, before turning to walk away. Just as he reached the car door, Isaac too was sent sprawling, a glowering Mike towering over his fallen frame. Grappling Mike’s legs, Isaac was able to get Mike on the ground with him. From there, the two boys wildly wrestled on the hard floor, failing to throw punches, and vainly yelling insults not even comprehensible to themselves. After five minutes, they found themselves laying side by side, clutching at sore ribcages, desperately sucking in air and their skin a patchwork of black and purple blotches. Both were too tired to continue fighting, content to merely glower at one another whilst they got their nerves back.

“It’s about boundaries.”

For a while, Mike made no indication that he had heard Isaac, the only sounds in the parking garage their ragged breathing. Then, at last, he turned to face his opponent.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“If you don’t want to do that kind of shit with Sarah, then you don’t have to. Boundaries.”

“I’m sorry, you wanted what happened at the DnD session to happen?” Mike was incredulous.

Another silence took them.

“Yes. I mean, Emma did a bad job of it, you guys should never have been involved, but yes. I wanted it. I like it when stuff like that happens. But you don’t have to do that kind of thing with Sarah if you don’t want to, Emma and I have our boundaries. Sure, sometimes she pushes them, but she knows enough about me that I know she would never hurt me.” Isaac’s tone was clear and assertive, as if what he was describing was the most normal thing in the world.

Mike shook his head slowly, palming his forehead repeatedly as if he was trying to shake some thought out his ears, the tears from earlier renewed. His body made a fetal position against his car, signifying his utter helplessness in the wake of crippling uncertainty, “no, man. I can’t… I’m sick of Sarah’s shit, its not right… It just isn’t right that she makes me feel the way I do, I shouldn’t want it…”

Mike trailed off, still struggling to process everything.

Isaac crawled over to his friend, placing a comforting hand on Mike’s shoulder as he sobbed uncontrollably. “Do you love Sarah?”

“Yes.” Mike was hesitant, but when the affirmation came out, it was a thing of resolution, an unbreakable truth.

“Does she love you?”

“Yes.” This time the unsure boy was quicker.

“Would she hurt you?”

“No.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes. Despite all the stupid shit you have been getting up to, yes.”

“Then trust me now, and call Sarah, the girl whom you mutually love and would never hurt you, you, the boy who a year ago wouldn’t have believed they had shot in the world with someone half as lovely as her and tell her that she is going to prom with you.”

“Okay, man. Okay.”

“We cool?” Isaac questioned, hoping like hell his cracked ribs would get him something in return.

Mike laughed, that warm, familiar sound ricocheting across the concrete walls. “Oh man, you don’t deserve it, but I guess I kicked your ass enough that fair is fair. We’re cool.”

After that, it was as if nothing happened. They regaled to each other stories they both already knew from their past together, but such stories were always somehow more entertaining with each telling. Isaac learned that Mike had a relationship with Sarah not dissimilar to that of his with Emma’s prior to him asking Emma to be his girlfriend. Apparently, Mike and Sarah’s coupling had sparked just a couple months prior, no doubt inspired by Emma on Sarah’s part, although Mike would not realise this until after the events of the previous Friday. After a half-hour of catching up, Isaac’s renewed best friend asked something that sent him reeling.

“Does Emma ever talk about some ‘Favorite’ guy?”

Their eyes connected in shared recognition.

“Guess we have that in common as well.”