Broke and beautiful Cian Doyle Broke and Beautiful Cian Doyle Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Broke and beautiful Broke and beautiful Cian Doyle Cian Doyle An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Broke and beautiful T he apartment stank of cheap whiskey, burnt coffee, and regret. The kind of regret that clings to your skin like the smell of some- thing that should have been cleaned up years ago but was left to rot instead. Mike and Jerry sat in the dim haze, their apartment a mausoleum for the lives they hadn’t lived. The walls were yellow, peeling like old skin, covered in dust and a quiet kind of neglect. The furniture, what little of it remained, was a collection of mismatched pieces that once held hope but now just supported the weight of failure. The city outside was alive, like a heart pumping blood through the veins of the concrete jungle. Car horns, sirens, people shouting, living their lives in a race they didn’t understand. But inside, the apart- ment was silent except for the faint clink of glass and the shuffle of feet. Time moved differently here, Cian Doyle slower, weighted down by the smell of stale beer and the noise of clocks that ticked just a little too loudly in the background. Mike slouched on the couch; legs spread out in that lazy way that people who’ve given up on trying sit. His hair was wild and unkempt, the stubble on his face a two-day reminder of how little he cared. His eyes though, they were tired. Like he’d stared at the same empty street outside for so long, he couldn’t remember what it was like to look at something and feel anything. Jerry leaned against the wall, shirt tight across his gut, pants barely hanging on by a thread, his hands shoved deep in his pockets like they were trying to find something to hold onto. The air was thick with something unsaid, and even though they had shared the same apartment for too many years, the distance between them was as wide as the gap between their dreams and their reality. Mike broke the silence, his voice rasping like it hadn’t been used in weeks. “I used to dream about something better.” “You used to dream?” Jerry’s voice was a half- laugh, a bitterness hanging on the edge of it. “Hell, I Broke and beautiful still dream. I dream about a life where I don’t have to worry about scraping up enough change just to buy a pack of smokes.” Mike took a long sip from his glass, grimacing as the cheap whiskey burned down his throat. “Yeah, but it’s... you know, I had all this crap I wanted to do. Write a book. Paint something. Find something that meant something.” Jerry snorted. “A novel? You can’t even finish a fucking bowl of cereal in the morning, Mike. What the hell makes you think you could finish a book?” Mike’s hand tightened around his glass. “Shut up, I could. I just... didn’t. Now I’m sitting here, wasting away, drinking myself into oblivion. Looking at you.” He dragged a hand over his face, like he was trying to wipe away all the years of decisions he regretted but couldn’t take back. “Fucking dreams, man. Just... gone.” “Dreams are for kids,” Jerry muttered, his feet kicked up on the table, his eyes darting around the room like he was expecting someone to show up and tell him it was time to wake up. “And we’re not kids anymore.” Cian Doyle The silence that followed wasn’t the quiet kind. It was thick. It was full of all the things they hadn’t said, all the years they’d spent pretending to be okay with the mess they’d made of their lives. The world didn’t give a shit about them. They knew that. The world was too busy trying to survive itself. Mike cleared his throat, his voice quieter, more vulnerable now. “You ever think about what it’d be like if we actually did something? Like really did something?” Jerry took a long pull from his glass, eyes fixed on the amber liquid like it held all the answers. “I used to think about it. But then I realized, Mike, nobody gives a damn about a couple of drunks talking shit about what could’ve been.” Mike chuckled, a hollow, tired sound. “Yeah. But we still talk about it. Every damn day. ” “Talking’s easy,” Jerry said, looking at him for the first time like he was seeing the man sitting across from him. “It’s easier than doing anything about it. Easier than trying. I don’t know, Mike. Maybe we’re just too fucking lazy to try.” The words hung in the air like smoke, curling Broke and beautiful around them, getting into their lungs. Neither of them moved, neither of them made a sound. It was the kind of silence that left you wondering if you could ever scream loud enough to drown it out. Mike’s hands tightened around his glass, and for a second, Jerry thought he might throw it. Instead, Mike let out a long, slow breath, his voice coming out raw. “What if we just... went? Just packed up, left this place, and did something else? Something different. Something real.” Jerry’s lips curled into a bitter grin, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re talking about running away, Mike. You can’t outrun your own life. Can’t outrun the fact that we’ve wasted it all. All this talk, all these dreams we never tried to chase. You know what we are, right?” Mike leaned back, staring at the ceiling as though it held the answers to everything. “Yeah, I know. We’re nothing. A couple of losers who drink away their chances until they don’t have any left. But what if we’re not too fucking old for it? What if we could just... make a change, for once?” Jerry shook his head slowly, his face blank. “That’s the worst part. You’re right . We could. But we won’t. Cian Doyle Because we’re too afraid. Afraid of failing, afraid of doing something, afraid that the world will look at us and laugh. So we drink. We talk. We let the time slip through our hands like sand.” Mike stared down at his glass, his eyes tired, but the words slipping out anyway. “You ever think about just... trying, Jerry? Even if we fail, at least we’d know we tried.” Jerry’s voice was rough, like the air around them had thickened. “Yeah, I think about it. But trying takes guts. And we’ve already lost ours somewhere.” The silence filled the room again, heavy and suf- focating. Outside, the city continued its endless dance, oblivious to the two men inside who had once dreamed of something more, but were now too tired to move. Too tired to fight. The whiskey was gone now, and neither of them made a move to get more. They didn’t need it. The truth was already in the air, already swirling around them, just waiting for someone to say it. But they wouldn’t. Because that would require trying Broke and beautiful And that was the one thing they were too fucking afraid to do. * * * * * The apartment wasn’t much, but it was theirs. A dimly lit, cluttered space that felt more like a tomb than a home. The air was thick with dust, and the floorboards creaked like they’d had enough of hold- ing up the weight of two men who no longer both- ered to pretend they had plans. The clock on the wall ticked, each second a reminder of the hours slipping away. The ticking was maddening repetitive, steady, like a metronome counting down to some inevitable end, and neither of them had the nerve to turn it off. Mike sat on the couch, his eyes glazed over, star- ing at the TV that wasn’t really showing anything. A game of some kind was on, but he couldn’t care less about it. His hand held a glass of whiskey, cheap shit, the kind you didn’t buy to impress anyone, just to forget for a while. The amber liquid swirled in the glass, hypnotic, almost mocking, as he took another sip. It burned, but it didn’t matter. It never did any- more. Jerry was sprawled in the armchair across from him, legs stretched out, his shoes kicked off like the Cian Doyle floor was his throne. He wasn’t watching the TV ei- ther, but he wasn’t as good at pretending as Mike. He was fidgeting, tapping his fingers on the armrest, eyes darting around the room like there was some- thing worth looking at. Something to remind him that there was still time to turn this shit around. But there wasn’t. They both knew that. “So,” Jerry said, his voice slicing through the si- lence. “How come you never tried to do anything with your life?” Mike didn’t flinch. He took another sip, the glass emptying faster than he meant. “I don’t know, man. Fear? Laziness? All that shit they tell you when you’re younger... ‘just follow your dreams,’ right? I thought I could do that.” Jerry’s lips twisted into a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, look where we are now.” Mike paused, eyes flickering over to him. There was no anger in his voice, just the kind of tiredness that comes with realizing the punchline of your own pathetic joke. “Yeah. Look where we are. But what if...” He stopped himself, like he was scared of what the next words might feel like. He rubbed his tem- ples. “What if we just... did it, Jerry? You know, like... Broke and beautiful did something crazy. Something real. Maybe I’m too old for it now. But what if I’m not?” Jerry didn’t respond right away. He just let out a harsh laugh, the kind of laugh that only comes from a person who’s been drowning in the same ugly thoughts for too long. “You’re not getting any young- er, Mike. Neither of us are.” Mike let the words hang in the air like smoke, the weight of them pulling at his chest. “Yeah, but we’re still here,” he muttered. His eyes sharpened as if a flicker of something was trying to catch fire. “Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe we could do something.” “Something?” Jerry raised an eyebrow. “You think this,” he waved his hand around the room, “this is something? Hell, I’ll show you my bank account, Mike. You won’t even believe it. But you wanna talk about doing something? What the hell is that?” Mike’s gaze fell to the empty whiskey bottle between them, the label faded from years of being in the same position. He watched it, thinking about how he could break it into pieces and let it cut his skin just to feel something different. Anything. “What if we just left all this behind?” he said suddenly, his voice rougher now. “What if we walked out tomorrow? Did some- Cian Doyle thing different? Maybe it’s all bullshit, but hell, I’m tired of sitting here pretending like it’s not. Like we don’t matter. What if I’m not too late, Jerry?” Jerry shifted in his chair, the silence between them thicker now, like it had become a tangible thing. His eyes turned hard, like a boulder being dragged out of a river. “You’re talking about running away, Mike. You think we can just walk out of here and be some- one else? You think that’s gonna fix what’s fucked up in our heads?” His voice dropped to a low growl, and for a second, Mike wasn’t sure if Jerry was angry or scared. Maybe both. Mike stared back at him, the fire in his gut burning a little brighter now. “I don’t know, man. Sometimes I think about it. Just grabbing whatever I’ve got, walk- ing out, and getting the hell outta here. Just... live for once. For real.” Jerry laughed again, but it was sharp, brittle. “Live? We’re already living, Mike. You just don’t get it, do you? This is it. You can’t outrun this life. You can’t outrun the fact that we’re too old to even care about dreams anymore. I’ll tell you something, ain’t no amount of whiskey or running away gonna change that.” Broke and beautiful Mike ran his hand through his hair, frustration building behind his eyes. “But what if we’re not too old? What if I’m wrong, Jerry? What if we could still make something of this... mess?” Jerry’s expression turned wry, and his eyes flick- ered over to the cluttered, dimly lit room. He took a slow drag off his cigarette, watching the smoke curl toward the ceiling. “Mess?” He grinned. “This? You think this is a mess? Hell, I’ll show you my finances. You want to talk about mess? This is just a fucking pit of lost dreams and spilled whiskey. Ain’t nothing to fix here.” The silence that followed was thick. It wasn’t com- fortable. It was the kind of silence that makes you feel like something’s about to break, something you can’t hold together anymore. The kind of silence that makes you realize the time for change is running out and so are you. “So,” Jerry finally said, breaking the tension, his voice laced with a trace of irony, “what’s stopping us? Hell, let’s get drunk, take a bus to somewhere new, and pretend we’re not failures for one night.” Mike leaned back against the couch, staring at the TV, though he wasn’t seeing it. His fingers tapped on Cian Doyle the armrest, the faint tremor in his hand betraying the restless thoughts running through his head. “We could,” he muttered, almost to himself. “But what if we get there and realize we’re exactly the same? That we’re just two guys on a bus, running away from our own reflections?” Jerry didn’t miss a beat. “Then we’d have one hell of a story to tell.” Mike smirked, the corner of his mouth curling up- ward. “Yeah, a terrible story.” Jerry grinned back. “Hell, they’ll write a book about it someday. ‘Two washed-up drunks on a bus to nowhere,’ a real bestseller.” Mike let out a laugh, but it wasn’t real. It was just the noise he made when the weight of the truth set- tled on him too heavily. “Yeah. And we’d both be dead by the time they figure it out.” The apartment seemed to close in around them, the walls pressing closer like they were running out of space to hold the truth they couldn’t face. The clock ticked on, and they sat there, two men locked in a game they never knew how to play. All the whis- key in the world couldn’t drown the voices in their Broke and beautiful heads. And the more they drank, the louder those voices seemed to get. Neither of them moved for a while. They were stuck in that silence, in that endless, unspoken truth that there was nowhere to go, nothing left to do. Time was slipping away, and they were still sitting in the same damn spot, pretending it wasn’t happening. * * * * * The old apartment was gone, but not the smell of it. It lingered in the deep creases of their minds, in the pit of their stomachs, like the ghost of some- thing dead, rotting away. Mike and Jerry had been gone from it for years, but in a way, they never really left. The walls had absorbed their complaints, their dreams, their whiskey-soaked rants, and those things had seeped into their bones. Now, they were scattered across the city, two men still trudging through the world they had never be- longed to, still talking like it was possible to pick up the pieces. They’d found new places, new routines. But there was no real escape. No real change. The old places didn’t matter, and the new ones were just dif- ferent shades of the same color. Cian Doyle Mike sat at the bar of a dive in some part of town he couldn’t name, staring at the half-empty glass in front of him like it might give him the answers he’d stopped asking for years ago. He hadn’t bothered to drink much anymore, his liver wasn’t what it used to be, but the bitterness still filled him up, deep in his chest. It tasted different now. Not as sharp, more like a slow, suffocating burn. He hadn’t been able to let go of it, and he probably never would. Jerry walked in, slow as always. His shoulders slumped, but his eyes still had that glint, that stub- born fire of someone who had given up on every- thing but holding on. He took a seat next to Mike, the old sound of his boots on the floor somehow more familiar than it should have been after all this time. “You still doin’ this?” Jerry asked, nodding toward the glass. Mike didn’t answer. He just tilted it back and let the liquid burn its way down, letting it do what it did best, make him forget, even if it was just for a few seconds. Jerry leaned back, his fingers drumming the top of the bar, like it was some kind of rhythm that might save them both if he just kept doing it long enough. Broke and beautiful “Mike,” Jerry said, his voice quieter now, almost unsure of itself. “You ever think about it? About what we were gonna do? About... about anything ?” Mike let the question hang in the air for a while, like it had no real weight. He picked up the glass again, swirled it a little, watching the amber liquid churn inside, like it was some kind of lost treasure. “I don’t know,” Mike muttered finally. “Maybe. But it’s too late now, man. I don’t even know if I care any- more.” Jerry’s laugh was hollow, a brief sound that died almost immediately. “You care. You just don’t know how to care about anything that matters anymore.” Mike glanced over at Jerry, his face unreadable. “Yeah. Maybe that’s the real problem.” They both sat there for a long time, the silence be- tween them thick with everything they’d never said. The sound of the bar faded into the background— people talking, glasses clinking, the low hum of a jukebox playing something from a time when they still thought they had a chance. Mike reached for the glass again, but his hand hes- itated just above it. He looked at it for a second, his Cian Doyle mind tracing back to all the times he’d told himself he could walk away from it. Could start fresh. Could do something. But he never did. He picked the glass up anyway, tipping it toward Jerry like a weak toast. “What if we could’ve made it, man?” Mike said, his voice softer than usual, almost as if he was speaking to someone who wasn’t there. Jerry didn’t respond immediately. He looked at the glass in front of him, his eyes narrowing like he was trying to solve a problem he knew had no solution. “Maybe we could’ve,” he said finally, his voice thick with something that could have been regret or may- be just the residue of a life they’d left behind. “But maybe the real tragedy is that we never wanted to.” Mike didn’t say anything after that. He couldn’t. The truth of it hit him like a punch in the gut. All those years of talking about dreams, about things that could be if they just made the right move, the right decision, maybe it was all just a way to fill the space between the failures they were too scared to admit. Maybe they never really wanted to be anything more than what they were—two guys sitting in the dark,