I'm Dying To Live (Rewriting)

Chapter 5

Alex's POV

I sat on my bed, cuddling up a cushion and smirking as Jack got undressed in front of me and rambled about blink as usual. That guy's always getting naked and talking about blink, I swear he didn't do anything else.

"Sexy," I muttered, winking.

He stuck his ass out and winked at me before sloping out of my bedroom without a top on. "I'm going to take a shower."

I watched him go, his shoulder blades sticking out and his ribs casting ghostly shapes underneath the bruised and scarred skin. They were almost too visible for my liking. He'd always been slim, but I'm sure this was too far. He looked unhealthy, and there was no way he could blame that on being anemic. I was worried that he wasn't eating, if I was being honest. He had never been a fierce eater, he'd go through phases of eating the world but they were few and far between and when he wasn't like that, he'd barely eat the required amount of food deemed substantial, seemingly getting all the calories he needed from his endless cups of coffee and alcohol, but the amount of food he'd been eating had been getting smaller with each day I knew him. That wasn't right, he should be eating more than a year ago technically, not less.

When I first met him, I was convinced he was anorexic, but he assured me he wasn't, that he just didn't enjoy his food and that he ate to stay alive and not for enjoyment like many people did. I never brought it, he always had such a look of distaste when looking at a meal in front of him that it was obvious, somewhere in his mind had a negative outlook on food. That negative outlook appeared to have gotten worse.

I made a mental note to question him again on both his eating habits and his colourful skin when he got back from his shower. I'd already cleaned and was cozying down in a Pikachu onesie, running my hand over my knee repeatedly and smiling slightly at the fluffiness of it. It was the perfect gift for someone like me, who always had that desperate need to feel warmth against me; whether that was from comfy clothing or another body.

I buried my head in my pillow. I was trying so hard to lighten my mood, but I felt like utter shit inside. Everything I thought of, my mind automatically linked it to Tom in some way. I looked around my room. The walls were a light grey, though you could hardly tell as they'd been smothered in perfectly placed posters and magazine cuttings and lyrics. In the spaces me and Tom doodled random things with sharpie, or wrote little notes. Just above my bed he'd written a message to me, that he loves me, that I'm worth it, that I should always focus on staying afloat and not ways to drown myself. He probably knew I was going to turn into a wreck in the future.

I bit my lip and stuffed my earphones in, putting my phone on shuffle and closing my eyes in an attempt to soothe my racing heart. Obviously, like everything else, my shuffle hates me, and terrible things started playing. I bit my lip harder, my nails digging into the cushion my head was resting on as I stared at one side of my room, where all the pictures of me and Tom hung from the ceiling from pieces of string. One where he was teaching me how to swim. One where we went camping together, just the two of us. One where he was sneakily teaching me how to drive. I nearly got us killed on that day, if Tom hadn't yanked at the steering wheel to change the direction we were going in, we would've gone straight into a wall. That was the day of my first panic attack, just mere weeks before Tom's death. That was the day I realised I wouldn't be able to survive without him.

Life can do terrible things

Tom had brought me this onesie. I had been begging and begging for something with Pikachu on it, as my intense love for Pokémon was so strong I didn't think I'd be able to deal with not having one Pokémon related item in my room. It made me feel physically uncomfortable, knowing that I loved Pokémon so much, yet I didn't have anything related to it in the slightest in my possession. So Tom got me this onesie, one day after school I got home and saw it lying on my bed with a note and the receipt. It had cost $55, and Tom wasn't even asking for the money back, because he was the best brother ever and he didn't mind treating me. I didn't treat him enough when he was here, he must've thought me ungrateful. The note was still on the shelf. I haven't looked at it since that day.