why did he want to save you? why? why couldn’t he just leave you alone?

you both lived on the same shitty council estate. you both liked to shoot the same shit into your bodies to distract yourselves from the bomb site that your home lives were.

he was always there. you saw him. when you were at the local corner shop, he was there. when you picked up your little brother from school, he was there.

you were cornered at a party once by a drunken teenager and he’d saved you. you were cleaning up wounds in the park one day and he'd helped you.

joey lynch was like a stalker.

a guardian angel?

nah. a stalker.

you wondered if he knew what he was doing.

so when you sat at a park on the swings by yourself in the middle of the night, smoking a joint and he showed up again, you decided to talk to him.