His phone lights up. It's been weeks since this number last called and he thinks it's about time to hear what the caller has to say.
"Hi. Since you've picked up, you know who this is."
"Dan," he says, raising his water to his mouth and taking a drink. "Why?" He asks, bored and tired of hearing the voice on the other end. He's listened to it for all of six years, three or four too long as far as he's concerned.
"I'm calling to tell you that I've decided to end this. All of it. It's over for me. It's been over and I just haven't had the courage to admit it. It's ending today… I'm ending today."
The water glass that he is holding falls to the ground and shatters on the kitchen floor of an apartment that's not his. He's stayintg in a friend's flat for the week for some space.
"I'm standing here in a cheap hotel room on the other side of London. You should see it. Shitty wallpaper, old carpets, completely flat pillows and the worst mattress that I've ever layed down on. The works, you know? I'm looking out the window at some London street, full of cars and people and noise. That's one thing I'm going to miss it here: the noise. It always made me feel like home."
"No, no, no, Dan. Please just come back, we can fix this. This can't be happening to you!" When the voice doesn't respond, he knows that he isn't being heard by the person on the other end. He's probably pacing around, talking to the phone that's sitting on his bed. He puts the call on speaker and continues to listen while he pulls the phone away from his ear.
"You know what I'm also going to miss? The people. They fill the streets with words and laughter. They're the ones that made you are and what I was. They gave us all of this. All of the internet fame, all of the income, all of the opportunities that we had together."
"What you were? What you're still going to be!" He yells into the phone as he opens up the "Find My Friends" app. He searches "Dan" and sees that he's not too far away. If he runs, he could be there in ten minutes. Sprinting from the kitchen to the flat door, he doesn't grab his jacket. It's too urgent for a coat. Stepping outside the door, he puts the phone back up to his ear and runs down the stairs.
"Remember Japan? When we met Duncan and Mimei at our hotel? They were so happy and all I thought about was how I could be as happy as they were and still are." He throws open the front door and strides outside. "It took over my mind. I wanted to have as much fun as I could possibly have had in the week that we were there. I wanted to see all of the places that they loved to see if it could make me feel the same way." He knows the route to the hotel well; it was his hiding spot when he needed a break from everything. His pace starts as a walk, then quickens to a near-run when he reaches the first turn between where he is and where he needs to be. "The park, the temple, the arcade, Studio Ghibli, Harajuku, that fancy-ass Starbucks where we drank on the roof. It made me realize something. As much as I loved Japan and being there with Duncan and Mimei and you, it was never going to be the same. I mean, if we went back, the excitement of going to a new and foreign place wouldn't be there. That's when I knew that it was all ending for me: I wasn't finding new things to be excited about anymore. Of course, I loved making YouTube videos and livestreaming every week and doing the radio show and living with you. None of that changed. I just didn't want to go do anything else. And soon, all I wanted to do was sleep because that was the only thing that I could do without screwing up."
Tears have started escaping from the corners of the running man's eyes. "You never screwed anything up. You were perfect, you still are perfect."
"I mean, why else would I have done that to you? I drove you away. I made it so that you could never love me. Well, I thought you did. That's why I said it. 'I love you.' Three words. I told you three little words and that was the end of us. Eight letters that, if I had never said them, I would still be there with you. Instead, I verbalized them and sent us overboard. 'Dan, I can't.' Three more words that broke me. Eight more letters that crushed everything that I had ever dreamed of. What did I do next? Was it punching the wall or throwing the mug? It doesn't really matter, now does it. I screamed at the top of my lungs that you were just stringing me along until you dropped me and that this was your plan all along and that I hated you and that I wished that we had never met. Then, I grabbed you my the shoulders and kissed you, hoping, just hoping, that it would change something. It didn't. When you started to cry, I knew that it was all over. Then you left. Walked right out of my life and threw me out of yours."
"I still want you. I still need you."
"But, you know all of that because you were there. After a day, I stopped hoping that everything was going to be okay. After two, I started going out every night and drowning my pain in shots. After a week, I stopped calling you because you never answered. After ten days, I stopped YouTube. My channel's still there, but nothing's ever going to be uploaded again. Today, two weeks have passed and I bought two bottles of vodka, a bottle of painkillers, and a hotel room. And that's where we're at."
"No, this isn't happening." Going as fast as he can, the man still holds on to the phone with a death grip. He's nearly blind from all the tears, but he knows the way like the back of his hand. Two minutes. All he needed was two minutes and he could be there.
"Well, that's where I'm at. You've probably moved on by now and realized that your life would have been so much easier if I had never been in it. You're going to be fine. You're going to find another person who makes you happy and fall in love with them. You're going to do great things and now you can without me weighing you down. And you're going to be happier than you ever were with me. You don't need me anymore." The voice breaks and stops for a few seconds. "You don't need me, but I need you more than anything. More than food, more than water, more than WiFi." He can hear the tears in the voice coming through the phone. They stick in the back of his throat, making it harder to form words. "More than I need to breathe. I need you to keep my heart beating. It was waking up every morning and having coffee with you that kept me waking up. It was knowing that you were right there to support me that made me keep doing YouTube."
He turns one last corner and ends up at the front door of the hotel. He wipes his eyes with the bottom of his shirt. Yanking the door nearly off its hinges, he runs up to the man at the counter. "Please tell me what room Dan Howell is in. I'm staying with him and don't have a key."
"35, down the hall. To the left."
It's the same room that he always stayed in when he was running away from his own life. He doesn't need another key because there's one that unlocks that door in his pocket. He thanks the man at the desk and walks to the hallway, trying to seem calm. He realizes that he doesn't have time to make people think he's okay.
"And, I'm not going to have any of that again because I fucked us up. I fucked everything up and it's never going to be able to be like the way that it was and it's all my fault. And if I don't have you to keep me waking up and to keep uploading to YouTube and to keep my heart beating, what's the point? I'm never going to be happy again. Not ever. Not after what you did to me. You tore my heart out and stomped on it with stilettos. It's broken beyond repair. Don't even try to tell me that everything's going to be okay. BECAUSE IT'S NOT!" The man on the other end starts yelling. "NOTHING WILL EVER BE OKAY EVER AGAIN! I'M NOT GOING TO HAVE YOU TO MAKE IT OKAY! YOU MADE EVERYTHING RIGHT FOR ME AND NOW THAT YOU LEFT ME…" The voice stops and the sound of the cap of a pill bottle being removed echoes through the phone.
He's three doors away. "Just hold on, Dan, I'm right here, please hear me." His lungs burn from all the running he's just done, but that pales in comparison to the pain he feels in his chest. If he dies, it's all my fault.
The voice returns, but it sounds broken and quiet. "I have nothing. I have nothing to keep living for. You were my everything and not that I don't have you, it's all gone." Running water starts in the background. "But, you still have everything. You're not broken like I am. You still have the rest of your life in front of you. More people to meet, more videos to make, more places to go, more love to fall into." Every word is like a knife to the heart of the listener.
He gets to the door and knocks. Once. Twice. Three times. He can hear the knocks as the sound waves hit the phone on the inside. "Dan?" When there's no answer, his heart starts hammering inside his chest, threatening to break every last one of his ribs. He pulls out the key and inserts it into the lock on the doorknob. It opens, but hits something on the other side. He's thought of everything.
"If you're outside, please know this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I weighed you down all these years. I'm sorry that I was stupid to catch a crush on you when you were my best friend. I'm sorry that you'll have to live with this over your head for the rest of your life. I'm sorry that you'll think of me when you see little things that remind you of the time we were together."
He smashes his fist against the door. "DAN, OPEN THE DOOR!"
"I'm sorry that I was too weak to talk to you about all of this. I'm sorry that you're going to have to go to a little church and see me laying in a coffin. I'm sorry that you're going to live a full and happy life without me."
"DAN, PLEASE JUST OPEN THE GODDAMN DOOR!" A tsunami of tears and sobs crashes over him as he claws at door 35.
"And I'm sorry for loving you. I love you, present tense. I have loved you and I will always love you. I fucking love you, Phil Lester, and I'm sorry that you couldn't see that." The running water stops and the man outside the door, still holding the phone up to his ear, can hear pills being shaken out of their bottle. Then, nothing. The call continues, but no noise is heard.
"DAN! DAN! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME! YOU CAN'T FUCKING DO THIS TO ME!" He throws his entire weight against the door, desperately trying to move whatever is blocking the way. "YOU! CAN'T! DO! THIS! TO! US! NOT! AFTER! EVERYTHING! WE'VE! BEEN! THROUGH!" Between every word, he smashes against the door with his hip.
"NOT! FUCKING! TODAY!" On his last word, something on the other side of the door falls with a smash and allows him to open the door a little bit wider. Just wide enough so that he can squeeze through the gap and finally enter the room. The first thing he sees is a pair of shoes sticking out of the doorway to the bathroom. "No."
The shoes lead to a pair of legs.
"No."
The legs lead to a torso, which leads to a neck, which leads to a head. All he can see is hair. Chocolate brown, shaggy, unkempt. The entire body is laying down on the bathroom floor, facedown.
"No."
There are white pills scattered around the body and an orange bottle lays, discarded, under the counter. One hand still holds a glass, once filled with water, but empty
now. An empty bottle of vodka sits in the bathtub.
Phil, scared shitless at the implications of all of this, runs into the bathroom and kneels by the head of the body. It is turned to the side, resting on its right look at the face and he knows. Eyes shut, mouth open slightly, eyebrows relaxed. It's Dan. There's no doubt in his mind that his former best friend is now lying, face down, on the floor of a shitty hotel room bathroom.
No signs of movement or life. No breaths, no twitches, no nothing. "Dan?" Still crying, he takes the lifeless body in his hands and shakes it, seeing if he can get something, ANYTHING.
Nothing.
"DAN! DAN PLEASE COME BACK I'M SORRY I NEVER MEANT TO WRECK EVERYTHING IT'S ALL MY FAULT PLEASE COME BACK I NEED YOU!" He howls hysterically as he presses his index and middle fingers into the space right under the unmoving Dan's jaw, checking for a pulse.
He feels something. It's very faint and pretty slow, but there's something there. With it comes the shallowest breath he's ever heard. He's still alive!
He picks up his cell phone from its place on the floor where it fell out of his pocket. He finds the emergency call option and presses it. 999. When the operator picks up, he sobs into the cell phone, "Please send help my friend overdosed on painkillers and vodka and he's laying here in a hotel room and he's barely breathing and he doesn't really have a pulse and it's all my fault and we really need an ambulance now!"
Time is just a blur until the paramedics come. They push Phil out of the way and take over.
It's all my fault. It's all my fault. It's all my fault. It's all my fault. It's all my fault. It's all my fault. It's all my fault. It's all my fault. It's all my fault.