I don’t know what I could have done differently. To be fair I used Nathaniel in much the same way he used me: to fill a void. In my case I missed my brother; in his case he “loathed being bored.”

Nathaniel was so egocentric, yet his decision to leave the night he met Billy lambasted my heart in ways even my mother couldn’t have dreamed up. I slept alone that night, wearing one of Nathaniel’s sweaters with cigarette holes in the sleeves. I missed the way Nathaniel would use his thumb to wipe the sweat from my hairline after we’d finished fucking. His rebellious attitude—and liberation from the monotony of being alone—now eluded me like a shadow.

“There’s always tomorrow,” was Nathaniel’s answer for everything. Tomorrow looked empty as shit, even as my brother slept upstairs. Tomorrow was one day closer to Billy leaving. Tomorrow was more of the realization that I couldn’t be a drifter. It was like a rich kid pretending to be poor in order to see the other side. I didn’t have it in me. I couldn’t take advantage of everyone when I had a bed and didn’t have to beg. I just wanted to be near Nathaniel, so I followed him, though it completely weakened me as a human being.

I knew when we met he’d be problematic.

I met Nathaniel at a coffee house what feels like years ago, but the reality is much shorter. I’ve stopped trying to cut things off into little spoonfuls with him. It just is, or it was, but not anymore. I was sitting with my laptop, wearing one of Billy’s old t-shirts, trying to break the crazy lonely cycle of staying at home. I overheard Nathaniel convince the barista to buy him a drink, as he sat watching a lone guitarist play mediocre Pink Floyd covers. He was wearing a clear plastic raincoat, even though it was pushing 90 degrees and perfectly clear outside. I asked him if he’d ever read American Psycho. He grinned a little boy grin of acknowledgement and I was hooked.

When he hugged me, his well-seasoned scent nearly made my eyes water. It was as if his last bath happened in a slimy fountain, after swimming along the bottom to pick up change. But that scent was in fierce competition with the schizophrenic aroma of someone who’d gone into a department store and used every tester available in the perfume aisle. Physically he was a little on the skinny side, but managed a thick ass and calves. His arms were toned and, as I would find out later, deceptively strong. But it was his face that got me. His nose was a little too big, and one brown eye was slightly misaligned.

That night I took him back to the house and scrubbed him down. I made him hold on to the shower curtain rod while I worked, cleaning every part I could reach. He wore nothing, but a towel while we ate dinner. I rarely had visitors so I made it a mini-celebration. We had Italian. That night we ended up in my brother’s bed and he kissed as many parts on my body as I’d cleaned on his. I felt alive and worthwhile for the first time since my brother left.

The next morning he was gone before I could get dressed.

He was a boy who loved being a vagrant—a life without responsibility. As time went on, we’d lock up my mother’s house and foray into the streets, animals in the wild. He’d made so many contacts along the way, he rarely slept alone. Men and women alike fell in his wake, offering couches, floors, beds, food, drugs and clothes. I’d met his friends and a few of his enemies. I wasn’t sure which were girlfriends, boyfriends, siblings or all of the above.

Looking back, my move to Corpus was an effort to be like him as much as it was to escape the absence of my brother. It just went horrendously wrong. Nathaniel would exhaust people, deplete their stores of hospitality, to which he’d travel elsewhere to recharge. People could only take so much of him before he’d completely drain them. When he ended up down by the Gulf it wasn’t a surprise. He knew I’d be there, freshly recharged with an inability to tell him “no.”

But I couldn’t keep up. He’d drag me to all of the clubs on Chaparral Street and the beaches off Shoreline Drive. He slept minutes at a time. I’d awaken to the lock lying open and his body departed. I’d never know if he was alive or dead. When this happened, sometimes I’d search for him, but I never searched for long. I was a bloodhound; I knew his scent, but at times I didn’t want to find him. If I did it would kill me. I was spent within the week.

He didn’t notice, of course, as one by one the blips around him dropped off his radar. He’d seen more of the world than I ever had, much like my brother. I only wished to be so free. The chance to leave, to be anything other than what I had been was a welcome addition to my mindset.

Billy. He was the key. He always is. I’d spent so long talking about one to the other that, when they finally met, it wasn’t mutual. Nathaniel didn’t care and Billy cared too much.

Nathaniel was my sweet, dragon prince whom I chased across the Midwest. I was tired of chasing. I couldn’t let Billy leave me too. You can’t just break someone’s heart and not help them pick up the pieces.