Wyatt

Chatter surrounded the room when Helena walked in. Birthday balloons surrounded the area, not to mention the big “HAPPY BIRTHDAY WYATT” banner that had been hung from the ceiling. The birthday cake, Helena’s prized possession, stayed hidden still in the refrigerator awaiting its owner.

Her phone buzzed, it was a text from the birthday boy himself; On my way, just clocked out of work.

I’ll be waiting for you here, drive safe, Helena texted her brother back with a grin.

The guests spoke amongst themselves, taking pictures and helping themselves to the buffet that was laid out for everybody.

“Shhh! I think he’s here!” Helena said from her guard spot at the window. “Turn the lights off and hide!” the chitter-chatter silenced, and everybody made their way to their designated hiding spots in the dark, holding their breath as they waited for the door to open.

Keys jingled from outside and Wyatt pushed the door open, quite surprised to be greeted by his close family and friends. Party poppers were blown, party hats were worn, and a birthday boy was celebrating yet another year of being alive.

“Happy birthday big brother,” Helena gave him a hug. “Do you like my surprise?”

“Yes, I love it, thank you,” he chuckled, looking around at the variety of decorations hung up everywhere. “I thought we were just going to have cake.”

“Well you thought wrong,” Stanley, the best friend, jumped on his back in an attempt to hug him from behind. “We needed to have a celebration for your big 30. Now let’s go nuts!”

***

“Cheers!” everybody clinked their glasses together. The party had gone smoothly, and Wyatt had a smashing time as it was with the people he cherished most. He had blown out the candles of the beautiful cake, and drank bottles and bottles of beer.

Now here he was, passed out cold on his couch at 2 in the morning after everybody had left. Helena, Stanley, Peter and Michael had stayed behind to help clean up the mess.

“Gosh look at him,” Helena said as she was throwing polystyrene cups into her trash bag. “He’s grown up now.”

“Funny. That’s what he said on your birthday, and you’re 24.” Peter smirked.

“I know but it seems like yesterday when he had sneaked out of the house to go skating with you guys while ma was sleeping, now look at him, getting his own apartment and getting jobs.”

“Time flies by fast,” Stanley took a seat by the dining table not too far from them. “But the one thing that sticks, is his habit of finding new hobbies and then never living up to them. Remember when he took up badminton?”

“Oh god,” Helena cackled at the memory, taking a seat next to Stanley.

The time was spring break and Wyatt was 15, he had started getting obsessed with watching the badminton tournaments that aired every evening. He would watch it all the time just before dinner was ready, and spend all dinner talking about the players’ talent and his dream to play with them someday.

It started getting worse when Wyatt had come home with a racquet and tube full of shuttlecocks and would spend the entire afternoon outside the house serving to the wall and back. He had even managed to drag out Stanley, Michael and Peter with him to play a few matches. He invested in sports shoes specifically for him to play badminton with. He bought more racquets. He played with a few kids around the neighborhood who had the same interest in badminton as he did.

Two months that had gone on; two months of Helena waking up to the thumping of the shuttlecock against the racket and the wall, and Wyatt’s annoyed grunts when he missed, or when it hit his eye. Two months of agony that had come to a halt one miraculous day.

Helena had come home from book club, surprised to find Wyatt in the kitchen, helping mother with dinner instead of sitting in the living room gawking at the tv. She woke up to blissful silence the morning after, and to Wyatt still in bed, reading a book.

When she had asked him what happened to his minor passion, he had looked at her through the top of his book and shrugged. “Just lost its spark,” he said, turning away from the doorway.

Helena had taken a breath of relief that day. Though it did make him happy and more athletically fit, playing badminton too much had taken a toll on Wyatt; his muscles were sore more often, and he had bruises on the most random spots where shuttlecocks had flown to him.

“One time he made me and Stan play with him for three hours straight,” Michael heaved a sigh. “It was brutal, I almost missed curfew.”

Wyatt had very rarely picked up a badminton racquet after that; even ended up selling all his equipment on eBay, letting the money he had gotten back fuel his next infatuation.

“Fish.” Peter tied up the trash bag. “That one time he came over and saw my dad’s fish tank, and started coming over more often to talk to my dad about the fish.”

Summer 2005, the boys had skated over to Peter’s house to try out the new Nintendo Peter’s father had gotten him for his birthday. Moving to a new neighborhood was hard on Peter, but he felt better after meeting the three of them on the first day of school. They had been in the courtyard trying new tricks on the skateboard, and Michael had slipped, the skateboard making its way to the ongoing street of parents dropping their kids off. Peter, who had just arrived, managed to catch it with his feet, unknowingly making three new friends that day. They had been inseparable since.

And after their first visit to Peter’s house, Wyatt had become interested in the collection of fish his friend’s father had going on around the house. They were everywhere, it awed Wyatt to see so many beautiful aquatic animals under one roof. It was the start of another fixation.

The boys had started coming over a lot more, and Wyatt always found himself bumping into Mr. Sanchez, who was notorious for pacing around the house while he was brainstorming ideas for his work.

“Mind telling me more about these fishes?” Mr. Sanchez looked at the 15-year-old boy, eyes that were filled with curiosity and interest, and he didn’t hesitate to explain every single detail; from what species they were, where he bought them, and how to take care of them.

A week later, the boys stop by Wyatt’s house to play a game of basketball and aren’t that surprised when they see he had bought a fish tank, fully equipped with fishes and their rocks and algae.

“I have a feeling I’ll be a marine biologist when I grow up,” he said proudly. “I’m going to study marine life!” he flexed the new marine life books he had borrowed from the library, knowing fully well that he would finish reading all 5 by the end of the week- and it was a Friday.

Helena on the other hand, was quite surprised when she barged into her brother’s room one day, only to see a school of fish staring at her through their glass house. Glub glub, the guppies puckered their lips at her.

Fortunate for Helena- unfortunate for Wyatt’s savings- the fish infatuation had ended roughly about one month. He had started to neglect the fishes, leaving some of them to die due to lack of nourishment.

“I’m glad he sold the other fishes instead of waiting for them to die in that tank.” Peter sighed. “It was for the best.”

There was a knock on the apartment door, it almost stirred Wyatt awake, making him grumble in his sleep.

Peter walked over to the door, looking through the peephole. “It’s Jada.” He said over his shoulder before opening the door to Wyatt’s girlfriend.

“Jada!” Helena gave the girl a hug.

“Hi, I’m sorry I didn’t get to make it,” she sighed into the hug. “My boss made me work another overtime shift because the other girl got pregnant.”

Michael made a face.

“You didn’t miss much. We’re just talking about the hobbies that Wyatt always picks up but never sticks with.”

“Let me get some of that action then, I got a few stories too.” She laughed, softly kissing a sleeping Wyatt’s temple.

“How he managed to afford every hobby is beyond me,” Stanley sipped his newly opened beer. “You’d think with big obsessions like that he’d be broke, but he hasn’t borrowed a single dime from any of us.”

“God’s luck,”

“I wouldn’t really say God’s luck,” Jada piped in. “More like… stock investment.”

“No way,” Michael and Peter laughed. “This Wyatt? Our Wyatt invested in the stock market?”

“For almost a year, it was when we first met.”

“Jesus. How didn’t we know about this?”

“Because he was always so busy talking to you guys about ‘the girl he met on the subway’ instead of the money he ended up investing,” she laughed. “Even I forgot about it sometimes, until he would call me saying he earned some extra cash.”

Helena eyed him from the table. “He better have put half of those in a bank account or I’m gonna fu- “

“Oh, he did! It’s been growing since forever.”

She released a sigh. “Amen.”

“On the topic of meeting Jada, remember when fell in love with you during his music phase? He wrote so many songs about you; highlight of the year.” Stanley threw his head back.

In 2010, phones were in style, and so were the mp3 players. Making his way to the subway to get to his office, he took the last empty seat left on the carriage, bopping his head to newly released music. Although he was handling a t-shirt printing business at the moment, his new fixation on the production of music had made him a teensy bit distracted at work, where he had started to think of back tracks instead of new designs for t-shirts.

He glanced around the cramped carriage, noticing a lady not too far away from him holding onto the bar; she looked uncomfortable as he could tell from the middle-aged man sitting right behind her. They made eye contact, and Wyatt gestured for her to take his seat, to which she hesitantly accepted after glancing behind her shoulder at the man’s peering eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered a little shakily, immediately seating herself and taking a breather. Wyatt kept an eye on the man from his new spot, making sure to jut out his back so that he would have less space to move around and see anything.

The stop for his train was announced, and Wyatt made his way off, coincidentally running into the girl from just now.

“Hey, thanks for what you did back there.” The heels she had worn that day made her almost the same height as him. They made direct eye contact. “It was very kind.”

“No problem,” he smiled back at her, and they started walking in the same direction. “Do you need any directions…?”

“No, I’m alright. Just making my way to work.”

“You work around here too?”

“Yeah, by the street near the café, you know it?”

“I may or may not be working a few blocks away from that.” He smirked. “Want to get some coffee?”

What a splendid way to start the morning; frolicking and drinking coffee with a stranger before work.

“Scandalous,” Michael oo’ed.

Waking up early in the morning for work had never seemed so amazing as it was after he had met Jada. To him, she was wonderful; she was funny, charming, and witty. Every morning they would take the subway and walk to the café to get breakfast. By that time there would be about twenty minutes to spare before Wyatt had to walk a few blocks to his office. They would wish each other goodbye, before meeting at the subway in the evening on their way home.

By this point, he had gotten into music more than ever. And all he could write about was Jada. Thankful for the guitar hobby he picked up in college, he strummed to a melodramatic beat, humming a tune and imagining creative words to put into a harmonious melody. With every passing week, he came up with songs dedicated to Jada. He talked to Stanley about Jada, he was- quite literally- infatuated with her, and the music he managed to make about her.

It wasn’t until he had asked her to be his girlfriend that he had started to show her the music he composed, all of them recorded in tape and stored in a small box under his bed.

“Okay, to be fair all these hobbies suck ass, but we have to give some applause for the one hobby he picked up that was actually good for a few weeks.” Helena waved her hands. “His photography phase,” she said, to which the boys groaned in agony.

“The one good hobby he had, and it had to last a few weeks.” Michael slapped his knee.

“Isn’t that the one where he managed to submit his photos into a magazine?” Jada asked.

“Not just any magazine; Garden Talk Magazine decided to put his pictures in their catalog. Garden Talk!” another knee slap.

2007, the leaves were falling, people spent mornings on their verandas, and Wyatt had seen an ad in the newspaper for somebody selling an old film camera for just 60$. It was a perfect buy. He bought film after film; the camera was basically glued to his hand. Nothing you did was undocumented by Wyatt, he was always there to capture the moment. Whether it was a family movie night, or the boys fawning over Peter’s new Nintendo, he had caught everything in film.

It wasn’t until two weeks in when he had taken some shots of his backyard, the falling of orange leaves and saturated blue skies coming out stunning when he had gotten them back from developing. On a whim, he decided to send the pictures to a magazine label, one he had chosen at random. He was still quite surprised when he received a reply letter from the magazine saying they were interested in printing his pictures.

Another two weeks passed, and he had felt that the hobby had lost its spark, but the film camera was too valuable to him for it to be sold, which is why he had always kept it on display in his room as a memory of the success he had gained from it.

“Man, that does sound like one of the better hobbies.” Jada sipped her cup of tea that Helena made for her. “Can you believe after all these years, he still hasn’t found one hobby to stick to?”

“Honestly, it’s Wyatt. I expect nothing less.” Peter tried handling a slightly drunk Stanley, who had kicked the leg of the chair, resulting in it making a loud screech. Wyatt rolled off the couch in shock, his dreary eyes slowly opening to look at the bunch by the table.

“Huh?” he hummed with his brows furrowed.

Jada helped pull him up, walking him over to the table and handing him her cup of tea to sober him up. “Happy birthday my love.”

“Thank you mi amor,” he gave her a small peck on the lips.

“Did you sleep well?” Michael raised his brow, to which Wyatt answered with a short mhm.

“I had a weird dream,” he ran his fingers through his hair. “I think I’m gonna take up cartography now.”