Black Star Cross - 16. Lovers' Quarrel, Round Two

Black Star Cross

Chapter 16: Lovers’ Quarrel, Round Two

To say that I was surprised to hear our usual silence would be a lie. To say that I was surprised to hear him start talking after that, and in a subdued manner no less, wouldn’t.

“I didn’t want to see you,” he said, his eyes never leaving an invisible spot on the floor.

“Huh?” I said, taken aback. I didn’t expect THAT to come out of his mouth.

“When I came home this morning, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I still had a couple of hours left before I had to go to school.”

“That reminds me. Why did you go home so early? All your stuff is still in my room.”

“And I kept thinking about your words,” he said, completely ignoring me. “What you said to me, dude. And every time I thought about it, it hurt me. Why?”

Now he looked up at me.

“Why does it hurt? Every time; it hurts no matter what. I know that I don’t want you to be angry with me, but why do I fucking care so much? I just...I just couldn’t handle seeing you today, dude.”

As I looked down at him, writhing in his own mixed up emotions, I couldn’t help but to feel sorry for him. Had I not gone through this self-discovery myself? I remember what it was like, to feel something you know shouldn’t be there. I sat down next to him. He immediately scooted closer to me. I swear I thought I felt his hand beginning to creep behind my back before he withdrew it to his side. His head tilted towards my shoulder before he caught himself again.

“What should I do?” he asked. It was the most innocent thing that I’ve ever heard him say.

“I don’t know. It’s all up to you. I wouldn’t force you to do anything, you know.”

“Yeah. I know, dude.”

We stayed in that position for a few more minutes.

“It still hurts though,” he continued.

“Hmm?”

“What you said. I just can’t get it out of my head, dude. I don’t know whether what you said was true or not. It really scared me, you know, having you yell at me like that. I don’t ever remember you being so pissed. Almost like that day when I crashed at your place. Seems so long ago, dude.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m sorry that I yelled at you. But I meant every word. Anthony, you have to stop doing this, both to me and yourself. Nothing good will come out of you pretending to only like me ‘as a friend.’ Even if we only keep this to ourselves, at least we’ll know what’s real, right?”

Anthony didn’t reply back. I don’t know if I said something wrong or not. I don’t know what to say to make it better. So I played it safe by staying silent. We stayed like that for awhile. It was kind of peaceful.

“I guess I should go back to school tomorrow, huh,” he finally said.

“Yeah. All your friends were worried today when you didn’t show up.”

“You actually talked to them?” he said, surprised, sitting upright now.

“Not really. Keith came up to me this morning and talked to me first. All the others just looked really worried, that’s all.”

“Keith talked to you? What did he say?”

“He thought that I knew where you were today. And apparently, they all know that you’re still friends with me, and that you skipping school is about as common as a meteorite hitting the Earth.”

“Yeah, I don’t skip very often. So, they still think that we’re friends?”

“Think? You’re saying that we’re not?”

“Well, I mean, like, not publicly or anything.”

“I don’t really think that they’d care too much if we were.”

“Trust me, dude. They would. You don’t just include somebody into a group when nobody really knows anything about them.”

“Well, maybe I should start talking to them then...”

“NO!!! Don’t! You can’t do that!”

“And why not?!”

“Because.”

“I’m still waiting for a reason.”

“Look, you just can’t, okay? It wouldn’t go over so good.”

“Lemme guess. It wouldn’t go over so good for you, right? Doesn’t matter about what I think, right? Am I just supposed to go through the rest of the school year having no friends at all? Are you honestly trying to prevent me from having friends?! How twisted are you?! Maybe I want to make friends. Maybe I want to be friends with your friends.”

“Don’t give me that crap! I know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t give my friends the time of day even if they begged for it. You hate my friends, just because they’re all popular. That’s just who you are! You hate anybody that looks like they have it better than you!”

“Shut the fuck up! That’s not true!”

“Yes it is! For some goddamn reason, you hate to see other people happy! What is wrong with you?! Are you so demented in the head that you’d actually wish for nobody else to feel happiness, or any good feelings at all?”

“And how is that any different from what you do in school on a day-to-day basis?! You, along with your fucking friends, constantly roam the halls, making sure that everyone else knows that they aren’t as cool or as good as you guys! You make sure that everyone knows that you’re on top! And just to ensure that image, you pick on people that you know can’t stand up against you. For you in particular, that person was me! But I know that I wasn’t the only one. I wasn’t the only person that you picked on! You never tried to help anybody out. You only caused misery to anybody you laid your eyes on unless they were your friends! So how is that any different from what you said?!”

Halfway through my rant, I could tell that he was getting ready to punch me. His eyes were constantly throwing daggers at me, his nostrils kept flaring, his breathing became ragged, his hands were turning white from gripping on to the side of the bed. But I didn’t care. He needed to here this. I could only wish that his friends were here as well, so I could say this to all of them at once. It’s about time that somebody stood up to them.

So I was ready for his when he finally lunged out of his bed and tried to grab me. And here he was, trying to fake being sick to his mom. I grabbed both his arms and got him into a hold, restraining his movements.

“Too slow, Anthony. You forget that I can read you like a book,” I hissed into his ear.

“Well then,” he hissed back, “here comes a surprising twist!”

And with that, he kicked my legs out from underneath me whilst I thought about how corny that line was (even for him), causing me to fall flat on my back with Anthony landing on top of me. And Anthony was heavy. With the wind knocked out of me, I temporarily loosened my grip on his arms. He took advantage of that moment to free himself AND pin me to the floor as well.

“Shit,” I muttered to myself.

“Yeah. You seem to forget that I’m not as dumb as you think I am.”

I’d like to say that, like the last time that this happened, we both stared into each other’s eyes and then passionately made out, but that wasn’t the case here. With his one hand tightly gripping both of mine and keeping them from moving, and his legs pinning mine down, he proceeded to slam his free fist into my stomach for the next couple of minutes. When he noticed that I was crying out in pain, he took one of his socks that was lying around and stuffed it into my mouth as a makeshift gag. Occasionally, he’d land a blow across my face for good measure. One time, he kneed my balls, hard. I was in tears the entire time, my cries of agony being muffled by the sock. Of course it hurt. I’ve managed never to get beat up before. The pain was unbearable. After awhile, I just stopped trying to struggle, because I knew that there was no way of escaping until Anthony was done with me.

After Anthony had let out all of his steam, he stopped punching me, but he didn’t loosen his grip on me. He stayed hovering over my head, panting heavily. He slowly took the gag out of my mouth, shooting me a warning glare as to not start suddenly scream. With that same warning glare, he quickly released his grip on me and jumped to his feet, ready to go if I decided to try taking him on again. I didn’t, however. I just laid there on the floor, still slightly sobbing from the pain. I don’t think I could move that much without pain shooting all throughout my body. I curled up into the fetal position because the pain in my groin area was so intense. I tried to see if I could taste blood in my mouth, to see if any teeth had gotten knocked out.

I stayed in that position, unmoving, for who knows how long. It felt like an eternity; time seemed to stand still, which only dragged out the pain even longer. I stopped remembering that Anthony was in the room; the pain I was in, both physically and mentally, took precedence over him. I think I started to black out from it all, because I don’t remember him coming over to me and placing his hand on my back, gently rubbing it up and down. I don’t remember what he said to me, only that it was his voice. It was only after he started speaking to me that I truly fainted from the pain.

I was back at the black void. I was starting to get worried again. I didn’t want to come back here. Did this mean that I died again? I tried searching for that dead light, but it was nowhere to be found. The other two lights were absent as well. Why was I here? I didn’t think that Anthony had beaten me that badly. Then I felt the presence of warmth from behind me. I turned around and saw the red light from before. I felt another warmness from behind me and turned around to see, not the white light, but another source of red light. Wait...what? I turned myself around, trying to find the white light, but everywhere I looked, all I saw was the red aura. Where was the white? Why could I only see red? Wait...did this mean that God has made his decision? Was I destined...for Hell? NOOO!!! I don’t want to go there! I don’t belong there! I don’t want to die! Give me another chance! I don’t want to go to Hell! Please!!!

“...Shawn...Shawn...wake up, dude...SHAWN!”

I snapped my eyes open and bolted upright. I was breathing heavily and was still in Anthony’s room. I also realized that I was still in a great deal of pain. So I guess that the fight wasn’t a dream. But that dream...what did it mean? What was that?

“Dude, good, you’re awake.”

I looked up and saw Anthony looking down at me, his right hand lightly stroking my sides, where a good portion of my evident bruises were. They stung every time his hand grazed over them. I couldn’t really move that much, so I was kinda forced to tolerate it for now.

“Does it hurt much?” he asked. I couldn’t tell whether he was being serious or not. Oddly enough, even though he had just gotten done beating me up, I still felt rather safe with him at the moment.

“What do you think?” I spat back. I didn’t even hear myself think or say the words.

“Dude, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you so badly. I totally lost control. It’s just that, you got me so ticked that I couldn’t help myself.”

“So you beat me ‘til the point where I pass out. I actually thought that I died when I was dreaming!”

“What makes you say that?”

I thought back to the dream, and the dream that I had back before Christmas. There was no way that I was going to describe THAT to him.

“It’s nothing. Forget about it.”

“No, I will not forget about it. Tell me.” he said, forcefully.

“Fuck you.”

There it was. I could see the anger forming on his face again. Maybe I’m just a glutton for pain. I don’t know. Maybe I’m a masochist. Who knows. All I know is that I was feeling really uncooperative with Anthony at the moment. I mean, he DID just get done beating me. Just when I thought that his anger had reached a boiling point, and that he was about to finish the job, he seemed to restrain himself.

“I’m just trying to help you here,” he said slowly, through clenched teeth.

Oddly enough, even though he was really pissed off right now, he was still gently rubbing my sores. I still didn’t feel the need to tense up in front of him. Actually, it was just the opposite; I felt myself starting to relax even more under his graceful rubbing. How dare he try to rob me of my anger. But it feels so good...

“You going to fall asleep on me again?” he asked.

I didn’t know that he had been looking at my movements and facial expressions for the past couple of minutes. Could he decipher me as good as I could decipher him?

“If you’re gonna fall asleep, I think that you should at least do it at Aunt Emmy’s. Does she even know that you’re here right now?”

“Yeah. I called her before I came over,” I mumbled, as I could tell that I was slowly drifting off into sleep again. “Don’t think that I can make it home, though.” I felt my eyelids start to get heavy. “Your back rubbing feels really good.”

“Really?” he said, in such a soft, gentle voice. “I didn’t know that I was so good.”

I felt him stop rubbing me and picking me up with relative ease. I don’t know whether it was because he was so strong, or because I was so light. By now I had my eyes closed, but I wasn’t out yet. I felt something soft on my back. I came to the conclusion that he had put me on his bed. I started to curl up in it, making myself comfortable, while I heard his footsteps leaving the room. A few minutes later, I heard them return, and I felt the bed sheets being lifted at the other end of the bed. That was when I felt the mattress move, and I realized that Anthony had climbed into bed with me. His bed wasn’t a very big one; actually, I think it was a single, so space was tight. Not that I minded. It only forced him to press up against me, but he wouldn’t snuggle with me. He made sure that his back was to mine. I didn’t care. As long as he was in bed with me. That’s all that matters.

Just that one thing made me drift faster into sleep. It felt good. Anthony was in bed with me; granted, it was HIS bed, but who cares? We weren’t exactly spooning, but like I said, it didn’t really matter to me.

I wish that this could happen all the time.

That was my last thought before I finally drifted off into sleep. But I was not to have a good night’s rest.