And I was there, when you grew restless,
Left in the dead of night.
And I was there, when three months later,
You were standing in the door all beat and tired,
And I stepped aside.
The morning starts out as usual. Open your eyes, roll off the futon in the living room, saunter into the kitchen. Take the apple juice out of the fridge, set it on the kitchen island for Dave. Start pouring some pancake batter into a pan. Wait a minute. Flip the pancake. Rub the fuck out of your eyes which are constantly under your ironic shades. Goddamn you were tired.
Dave should be here any second. He'll be doing the same, except he's coming from his room and not from the couch. Your little man, all grown up and thirteen now. Shit, was he really thirteen? It's been thirteen years since he showed up. You've given your all to the little dude. You were going places. College, maybe even a wife or some shit. None of that matters now, though. You're glad things turned out the way they did.
The two of you are practically attached at the hip. You taught him how to strife, you homeschooled him most of the time- ain't no way you were going to let some fucked up establishment ruin him five days a week, maybe two was okay because the kid needed a social life, you know? Can't let him sit in his room all day. You even let him take up rapping and laying down some sick tracks. He's always looked up to you, and you know that. Shit, you don't know what you'd do without him. All those dreams you had once upon a lifetime don't mean jack.
And then Dave stumbles in. "Am I going to school today, Bro?" His voice is tired, still lagging.
"Did you spike your apple juice again?" you reply. You let him drink. As long as he's at home, he can do whatever he wants. He's getting smarter about drinking, but he still winds up with a headache a lot of the time. It's still better than what it could be. You can't help but think about an old friend from another life.
"Yeah," Dave sighs. His voice pulls you back to the present.
"Naw, lil' man. You stay here and rest up. I've got some flapjacks coming your way."
You can almost hear him smile as he pulls a barstool up to the island. He sees the bottle and jumps down from his chair to get a glass. He's not tired anymore. He's too excited.
Thirty seconds flat and he poured himself a glass and drank the thing, too. You're proud. You stop flipping pancakes and slide the fourth or fifth one into a plate by the stove. You go to the cupboard and throw Dave a plate and utensils. "Nice catch, lil' man." It's taken him a while to get that one down. You guess catching swords helped a bit.
He shovels some pancakes into his plate and drowns them with syrup. Good kid, you think. You are nothing but proud of him. You make a couple more pancakes and stack 'em three high on your plate before setting it on the counter on the island. You swipe the syrup from Dave's side of the island and pour it on your plate before inhaling the pancakes. As Dave's helping himself to seconds, you make yourself a cup of coffee.
He speaks up when he sits back down. "Bro, what's New York like?"
You smile. "New York..." you begin. "I've been there once. You remember Smitty, yeah?"
Dave nods. He's always interested in stories involving your friends.
"He asked me if I wanted to go on vacation with him when I was in my senior year of high school. I said yeah, why not, and we left the next day. It was a two day trip, and we didn't sleep at all on the ride. We might've been too excited, or the ride might've been too bumpy, but we crashed for an entire day when we got to the hotel. After that, we hit up Times Square. We were gonna paint the town, let 'em know we're here, but we just kind of... moseyed around. It was too nice-lookin'. Smitty wanted to put up some street art, and he brought a backpack full of spray paint, too. I stopped him, though. We could do that back home. So we wandered. And we did that for days. Then Christmas happened.
"Let me tell you, Christmas in Times Square is one of the most magical-looking things in the world. You see, there's this white stuff that comes down from the sky like rain, and they call it snow up there. I've maybe seen it one or two other times in my life down here. Shit's rare as fuck in Texas. But it stuck to all the trees and buildings and roads, and one day when we went out, there were no cars and almost no people on account of all the snow.
"We stayed up all night and we drank to the Christmas spirit. We had just enough money to eat and buy booze for the week and a half we were there, so we didn't worry about Christmas presents too much. The next few days were a blur, but we visited Central Park and shit, and it was cool. More snow, metric fucktons of the stuff. Then we rode home and winter break was over. Back to high school."
You look at Dave after you finish the story. He's enthralled.
"I want to go to New York sometime, Bro."
"I'd love to go again, too, lil' man. We'll see how it goes."
He sighed and shoved off, back to his room. You're both constantly busy. New York seems like a distant dream for now. After all, you've got to get him all educated and shit. You should probably get on that sometime today, but your site needs maintenance and that'll eat up a good few hours of time. Last night was coding night, and you've got to put up some new content, so there goes your day. You'll send Dave out for grocery shopping.