All I Ever Wanted - 5. Chapter 5

After our first “date”, Christopher and I still continued being good friends. Our bonding exceeded my expectations. I began to trust him more and more, and he did the same. I began to slowly reject my other friends, in favor of his company. He became my confident.

We would sit on his bedroom for hours and discuss every aspect of our lives.

As days went by, I began to feel more and more detached from my previous feelings toward him, and the friendship I had with him moved to my number one priority list.

Every time he needed my help, I made sure I was there for him. He would sometimes send me random texts telling me how lucky he had been because of finding such an awesome friend in me.

But one day, his texts stopped. We would rarely hang out at school and in the afternoons he always claimed to be busy. I began to slowly miss his company.

He changed to another Math class and dropped the art class we had together. He became more involved in extra-curricular activities, so he barely had free time. Eventually, it became as if he had never existed. No more texts, no more calls, no more hanging out…as if he had never existed.

I would cry myself to sleep every night. Everything I felt about him came back. He wasn’t my friend anymore, but I still loved him. And the pain came back.

I had shared with him so many moments. They were all memories now. Never coming back.

I overwhelmed myself with homeworks. I even did my peers’ homeworks. I did everything to keep me distracted, to not think in him.

His voice became like a myth. As if I had only imagined it. The memory of his smile faded away.

I would rarely leave my room. It was school-bedroom-school; a vicious cycle.

I wondered what had I done. I blamed myself.

It was a November afternoon when I decided that I had done enough mourning. I decided it was time to let it pass, and just forget about it. But the next day, I woke up and just couldn’t do it. I cried and cried. The pain never ceased.

My mood became disastrous. I would yell at home, put up a fake smile at school, and mourn in the safety of my bedroom.

Friends would call me and send me texts, but I just ignored them. Eventually, I isolated so much from the world I became delirious.

And then one day, the texts and the calls came from a different person, from him.

But I wouldn’t take them, or reply to them. He would try to talk to me at school, but this time I was determined to make that impossible.

Even if it killed me. Even if I wanted badly to be friends with him again, to be with him and feel like time stopped. I couldn’t put myself through that. Because, as much as I wanted to push my true feelings toward Christopher aside, at the end of the day, all I ever wanted was to be with him.

We would go out and share intimate moments. Kiss under the rain and hold hands forever. It would be perfect.

But he had pushed me away, and now I was rejecting him. I was gay, and he was straight. My dreamed wishes would never come true.

I was sleeping one afternoon when I heard a knock from behind my door.

“Josiah, someone’s here to see you. He says his name is Christopher!” said the cleaning lady.

My eyes went wide open. I stood up and slowly walked toward the door. But I didn’t open it right away.

“What?”

“It’s me Jo, open the door,” his voice came from behind the door. It had a pleading tone.

There were so many things going around my mind in that moment I still can’t believe I opened the door. At that moment, he was probably the last person I wanted to see. But I needed to see him.

“Hi Josiah,” was all he say.

The voice was no longer a myth. Those two words instantly transported me to another reality. It felt so magical. But I couldn’t let myself wander in my own mind. I wanted to know why he had come over.

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you,”

“You wanted to see me? Really? It’s been almost a month since I last talked to you. You wouldn’t return my calls or my texts. You’d avoid me at school…”

“I’m really sorry, Jo. I know I’ve been shit to you lately,”

He wasn’t looking at me when he said that, but then he looked up and our eyes met.

“I’m really sorry. I have had a lousy…month,” he said. “The stress has been so overwhelming. I just wanted to keep some distance,”

“Wow! I had no idea how much of a stressor I had become to you!” I exclaimed.

“What? NO! It’s just…a mix, of different things. It’s not your fault. It’s just that…”

He was fighting with the words, like choosing very carefully what to say. “It’s hard. For me to talk about this,”

“Talk about what, Christopher?”

“I just can’t,” he whispered closing his eyes and shaking his head.

“You came all the way here, nobody forced you,”

“You don’t understand!” he yelled.

“Because I don’t know what’s going on with you!” I yelled louder.

He paced through my bedroom and sat down on the bedside. I closed the door and sat down beside him. We stayed like that for a while.

His scent was just as I remembered. A sweet, yet manly scent.

When he spoke again, his voice trembled a little.

“I’m sorry, Jo,”

“Yeah, I think you made that clearly,” I said indifferently.

“Well, what else you expect me to say?” he said, still without looking at me.

“I don’t know. I’m not the one with the issues,”

His eyes went wide open as he turned to look at me.

“There’s obviously something going on with you. And I’m your friend Christopher. I can help you,”

“You can’t,”

“I can’t because you won’t let me. Whatever’s going on, you can talk about it with me,” I said putting my arm around him, in a friendly gestured.

He shivered a little. We were still in November, but it wasn’t that cold.

“I shouldn’t have come,” he said.

It was useless. I wanted to help him, but he wouldn’t let me. So, I gave in.

“Then get out! Get out!” I yelled while standing up and walking toward the door. I opened it and turned around to look at him.

“Like I said, nobody forced you. Go home. Or go wherever you want. I don’t care. But you don’t get to come here after all these days, and just mourn over me. Because, I’m going through shit at the moment. You think you are the only one?
So get out! GET OUT!”

He didn’t move. He was just staring at me, with his gorgeous eyes. The ones I had lost myself in so many times.

He stood up and shyly passed me by. He turn into my direction but didn’t bother looking up.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

I still don’t know how I could manage to sleep that night. It was a mix of emotions. It was…my first break up.

Excepting that, it wasn’t a real break up, because we were just friends. But that didn’t make the love I had for him any less, if only it made it more real.

Sometimes things don’t work out, because people rarely give second chances. And that’s exactly what Christopher wanted. He had come to apologize, but I wouldn’t let him. I realized that night that I did wrong. But I needed time to think.

Imagine you love someone. You start spending time with them. You become best friends and the love only gets stronger. And he just shuts you out of his life one day.

How dependant had I become.

But I had to lift my head up and continue with my life. He wasn’t a part of it anymore, not much like he ever was, but still, with or without him, I had to move on. He was the one I loved, but that wasn’t enough of a reason to die on the inside.

Because that’s how I felt; like I was dying inside, slowly dying.

Yet, Christopher had become such an important being in my life. That’s when I realized he outweighed everything.

Deep down I knew I wasn’t ready to let him go. To shut him out of my life.

Exactly two weeks went by after he came to apologize. During those days I didn’t say anything to him. We would occasionally bump into each other at school and he would always smile at me. That amazing, perfect smile and every time I would almost throw myself to him, hug him so hard I’d never let go.

He would text me and I would reply vaguely. He’d also asked me to come over to his place, to “hang out like before”. I knew this was just an excuse so we could talk things out. I still wasn’t ready to talk.

But by the end of that second week, I organized my own thoughts and feelings, and developed the real courage to lift my self up from my bed and went to his house.

“You came,” was all he said when he opened the gate and saw me standing outside.

He stepped aside so I stepped in. We silently walked inside the house, toward his bedroom. As usual.