Only If She Stayed

01. Fuckboy In Training

AT LEAST ONCE, we think about it. We wonder how we'll die or maybe even when it will happen. You can deny it if you want and even call me morbid for talking about it openly. Either way, I believe every single one of us think about how we'll leave this world. A lot of people, I'd imagine, hoped they died in their sleep at the age of eighty.

That's not the case for my best friend, though.

When I asked my friend Michael for an interesting way he thought he would die, he answered in a weird way. He said he wanted to be in the twenty-seven club. When I asked him what that meant, he explained to me it was when a musician died at the ripe age of twenty-seven. The reason to why he'd want to be associated with such a club is beyond me.

We were in the cafeteria, so I had to strain to listen to everything he said because of all the noise around us. But I was positive that I had heard him wrong after he first explained it to me.

Unfortunately, he was dead serious.

He brought up his hand and started counting off artists. "Kurt Cobain, Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and many others died at the age of twenty-seven."

I scoffed. "Yes, you totally belong on that list."

"Thank y-" He stopped himself, taking note of my obvious sarcasm. "Fuck off."

The chuckle that followed his statement assured me that he hadn't taken my comment too serious. "Why the hell would you want to join that club though?"

"I'd be among legends. Duh."

I squinted at him with a frown slowly making its way on to my face. "None of those people deliberately wanted to be in it. You understand that, right? Wanting to join sounds silly, Michael."

"Alright." He puffed loudly and closed the textbook he had in front of him. "And dying in space isn't a little farfetched?"

I sulked in my seat, sinking deeper. It wasn't helping my case though. He had made a good point and I couldn't lie. The likelihood of me dying in space was slim. But that didn't mean the idea hadn't crossed my thought more than once. "It's not that farfetched."

"I read once that there's more of a chance you'll die in a car crash than from a snake bite. Yet snake bites are more feared than car crashes. By going with that logic, I think there's a zero chance that you'll die in space. There's more of a chance you'll die from heart disease or some other life-threatening sickness."

I started to say something, but I stopped myself. I felt a presence behind me, gradually getting closer. When a hand settled down on my waist, I jerked my head to the side and saw my boyfriend, Edgar, take the open seat beside me. His other friends were close by and took the other remaining seats at the lunch table.

The grin that was on Michael's face instantly disappeared when two guys crashed into him and made him fly off the lunch bench. Another one of his friends pushed Michael's binder and textbook, causing them to flop to the ground.

Papers flew out of his binder and scattered all over the floor. A few pieces fell into a small puddle of milk that was underneath a table next to ours.

Michael swore softly, reaching for the milk-soaked paper. "Well there goes my homework." There wasn't an ounce of humor in his remark, but the entire table had started to find amusement in his misfortunes.

"Looks like there's no more room, Mikey," one of Edgar's friend said. His name was Tyler, last time I had checked.

Even though we knew his name, Michael and I referred to him as Fuckboy in Training. He had all of the attributes that made up a fuckboy. With a long list of unhappy ex-girlfriends and a bad reputation of demanding nudes, Michael and I saw him as perfect fuckboy material.