Boston

There's a knock on the apartment door, so I get up from the bed where I was doing nothing but scrolling on my phone and walk towards it. When I open the door, there's a girl there. She looks as confused as I feel.

  She's obviously a teenager but she's small, thin, almost unhealthy looking. Her light colored hair is long and doesn't really look like it's well taken care of. I can't help but wonder why she's at my door.

  She looks at me with her brown eyes, confused. "Is... Julianna here?"

  She must have the wrong apartment if she's looking for a friend of hers. I moved into this building about a week ago.

  "Sorry... who?" I ask her, but I'm still thinking about my shitty day at work.

  "Julianna..." she repeats, and lets her voice trail off. "She lives here."

  "No. I just moved in about a week ago," I say quickly, and immediately see the look on her face.

  "What?" She looks unbelievably confused.

  "Uh, yeah," I say slowly.

  "Julianna lives here," she girl repeats, and then blinks a few times.

  "Oh... the woman who moved out?" I ask, but I can see I'm already losing the girl's attention. "I only saw her in passing, once. I didn't know her name."

  "Moved out?" she wants to know.

  "Yeah. I was on the list to get into this building and..." Why am I telling a teenager this? I clear my throat before going on. "The building manager called me and said the unit had just opened up."

  The girl thinks about this for a moment and then gives me a quick nod. "Okay. Thanks." She has tears in her eyes.

  "Sorry about that," I say quickly.

  Her friend must not have even told her she was moving.

  "Yeah... okay." A tear falls from her eye and she wipes it quickly.

  I don't know what to say or do. Closing the door in her faces feels all sorts of wrong. But I'm nineteen. She's a kid, at least she seems like one.

  She steps back and half turns away, so I swallow hard. "If I hear from her, I'll let you know?"

  I won't hear from her, this Julianna lady that I don't know. And how would I ever let this girl know if I did hear from her? But she looks back and knocks, so I feel a bit better about the situation.

  But something about it still makes my stomach feel funny.

  Back in the apartment - my new apartment -  I look all around the main room. There's still boxes lining the wall of the living room. My old futon is there, and my TV. It's been six weeks, almost seven actually, since I left my mom's house in New Jersey. I stayed with my uncle for a couple weeks and then got the keys to this place. I haven't put in much effort to move in. It's an old building in Manhattan and I'm not a big city boy. I've been working my ass off, though, and trying to forget why I'm here in the first place.

  Fucking Alexander.

  It's my one day off from the restaurant that I now work at. That's the only reason I was even here to answer the door at 330P.M. on a Wednesday. My shift is 2PM  to 10pm and I pretty much work all the time. I run the kitchen at Swirlies. I know it sounds like an ice cream shop and yes we told my dumb ass brother that a hundred times when he was opening the restaurant. But he wouldn't budge. Alexander is stubborn as hell. I mean, he was. But I run the kitchen, which was my brother's job. I also had to take over the payroll and the financial stuff, which is a lot to put on a nineteen year old.

  I walk the rest of the way into the apartment and go into the small kitchen. It's bare. I eat at work most of the time, so I barely buy groceries, but I have beer and water now. I choose a beer and go sit on the futon, to think. I haven't had much time to think since moving to the city. I try not to think too much about what happened to my brother and what I'm dealing with now. Or what I left behind.

  Having an unexpected visitor at the door has distracted me, at least. I'm still seeing that girl's sad brown eyes in my head when my phone rings. Huffing, I reach for it from the table beside me and glance at the caller ID.

  Mom.
 

  Shit.

  She's been calling me daily since I moved here, but I rarely answer. I'm usually working, trying to clean up the mess my stupid brother made.

  "Hey mom."

  "B, wow, you're alive," she says quickly.

  Bad choice of words considering my brother is in a hospital bed fighting for his life right now. But our mother is not one to really think before she talks.

  "Yeah. I've been busy. I'm sure you can imagine," I tell her.

  She lets out a sigh and I hear some noise in the background. "I'm sorry to hear that," she says, but she doesn't sound sorry. "But you didn't have to move there."

  Almost two months ago, she was here, in Manhattan, in the hospital room with us. We were all together - Mom, Dad and I.  She stayed for a week and she was worried, sad, scared - just like me. But something changed around the one week mark, following Alexander's accident.  We found out that the driver of the car that hit Alexander on his motorcycle - who crashed into a guard rail after hitting him - died in the hospital. We found out that Alexander was riding like a maniac down a busy road, from the dash cam of another car. 

  That was when Mom gave up on my brother. Dad stayed a few more days but had to get back to his big, fancy job in L.A.  But I stayed. I didn't give up on him. I stayed in his apartment, with Jackson, his best friend.  I abandoned my life in New Jersey. Two weeks after the accident, all this stuff came out about the restaurant.

  "He's not responding to any of the things they've tried," I tell my mom anyway.

  She doesn't say anything to this, but she clears her throat and sighs again. "I just don't feel like you need to be there under all that stress. You're young, and you're no restaurant manager-"

  "I kind of am, now," I say, even though I know she doesn't want to hear it.

  In just over a month, I've talked to her maybe three times. She's told me this each time. She doesn't think I should have dropped everything in Hoboken and moved to the city to help Lauren and Jackson. But I felt like it was my obligation, even though my brother wouldn't do the same for me.  Lauren I've only know for a year, when she started dating Alexander. My brother was twenty-one when he moved to the city three years ago, and somehow borrowed money to open his own restaurant. His best friend, Jackson, moved with him and they started the business together, but Jackson was overwhelmed from the start. Every time I talked to my brother, or visited the city, he put on a good show. It seemed like the restaurant was thriving. Everyone seemed happy.

  But I found out the truth since coming here and trying to help out. Alexander borrowed money from anywhere he could and he hasn't paid back a dime. Lauren borrowed money from her parents. Jackson gave him half of his savings. And Swirlies is not thriving. Every day feels like an uphill battle, like I'm slowly drowning.

  "I didn't have to stay and do this, I know that. But -"

  "You shouldn't be complaining about how hard it is, since you could have just stayed out of it. You should have," my mother goes on.

  "Alexander is not any better," I say again, knowing this subject makes her uncomfortable.

  "I've spoken to his doctor," she says plainly.

  At least she's not acting like he doesn't even exist.

  "The restaurant was his life, for three years. Yes, he's done some things that weren't all that smart, but -"

  "His reckless behaviour killed someone. It's unforgivable."

  And that's it. She told me the same thing after she left the city a few weeks ago. But now, it's obvious she means it. She's never going to talk to her oldest son again. Even though he's in a coma and may never wake up anyway.

  And here I am, living in the city, trying to keep his restaurant alive because I know it's important to him.

  Alexander and I were best friends growing up. Well, he was mine. I'm sure he thought I was his annoying little brother, being five years younger than him. I was still in middle school when he graduated high school and went to culinary school in France. Our father paid for that, knowing it was his passion. I was in tenth grade when he announced he was moving to the New York City upon his arrival back to the states, so I didn't see him much. But we talked on the phone a lot and once Swirlies was open, my mom and I went to the grand opening night. Everything felt good and exciting.

  I was proud of him.

  I spent a lot of random weekends in the city with my brother over the next two years, but then he started inviting me less and less. Now I know he didn't want me to find out that he was struggling. I graduated high school and took a gap year to figure out what I wanted to do, and I met Sarah. We hit it off right away and got close, fast. We dated an entire year and she came with me and mom to the hospital in the city, after we got the call about Alexander's accident. But I broke it off with her upon finding out I was needed in the city. It felt like I had no choice.

  It's been a almost two months and a still can't open my photos on my phone because seeing a photo of Sarah breaks my heart. I'm a mess and it's all Alexander's fault.