I breathe in warm recycled air. A comforting sentiment hangs there as the music ambles rhythmically past me, tasting of sugar.
The sight is striking, in a sad sort of way. It feels like a loss, but an opportunity in a way.
"Are you coming back?" I ask. "In the fall?"
I look over at Jeanie, who sits with bare feet hanging out the window, sucking on what remains of a joint. Xe blow the smoke out into the cold night, mixing breathy steam with thick white clouds of smoke.
"Maybe." Xe mutter. "I was thinking about going abroad. Maybe Italy."
"Italy is beautiful." I agree, taking the joint as xe hand it to me. "But why Italy?"
"My entire extended family moved here from Italy in 2006." Xe explain. "And I've been really fucked in the head since I went no contact with my mom. Feel like going to Italy would give me some sense of..."
Xe sigh, waving xyr hands through the air in fluid patterns, as though conjuring the word from thin air.
Soon the hands drop, fingers twiddling against xyr stomach.
"Connection?" I attempt to supply xem with a word.
"Connection. To myself. When I think about me, Arthur. When I think about me, I don't know who I am or what I want. I don't remember what I was, at my core. I feel like it's not there anymore. Whatever it was, that made me, it feels like the space is empty, now. Just..."
Xe throw their hands into the air, imitating a firework.
"Gone."
I nod.
It's hard not to feel empty sometimes. Empty means nothingness. No motivation, no feelings, no... nothing. Just memories of the recent days when I could pretend like I felt okay. Empty means calling in sick because the effort and strength it takes to force a smile is just too much to even think about.
Empty is heavy, like a lead blanket, laying over old bones and aching muscles. Empty is silence, clutching at your throat like a vice, forcing your lips shut tight, not to open for anything. To talk, to breathe, to eat.
Empty is persistent. Empty is patient. Empty feels like it's always looming, looming, like death, like life, like nothing else does, right at the back of your throat, whispering, whispering.
Or maybe it isn't just empty.
But I don't tell Jeanie it all in detail like that. I don't tell xem that in the last year, I've felt more and more empty. I don't tell them how I can't help but imagine how all pointless everything is. How no matter how hard I work, or how much I succeed, or how much fucking money I throw away,
I won't ever figure out how to be happy.
Because all I've ever wanted is to be happy. But I don't know how.
I don't tell xem that.
I just murmur, "Me, too."
And finish off the joint.