Suddenly everything felt wrong. My leg where Liam’s head lay felt too warm, the hoodie I was wearing too tight, my throat was itchy and my eyes burned. The happiness that had been building up inside of me since our kiss in the nurse’s office was gone now leaving me feeling like a deflated balloon.
My mind kicked into overdrive as it began offering up possibilities for what I should do next. Pretending I never heard Liam say that name and just falling asleep was my favorite option. Waking him up so that we could talk about this messed up situation that we found ourselves in was the responsible path.
In the end, the overwhelming feeling of wrongness helped me decide that it was time to leave. I told myself that distance from the situation was going to help me clear my head and think about everything rationally, deep down though I knew this was just me running away.
Liam was apparently a heavy sleeper so swapping my leg out for a pillow ended up being much easier then I expected it to be. Once I was standing beside the bed I watched as he maneuvered around in his sleep until he was curled up where I had been sitting.
Watching him sleep didn’t bring back the same happiness it did earlier, instead, my body just felt heavy and cold. I pulled a blanket up over his sleeping form before turning off the TV and lights on my way out.
Going home didn’t feel right so I just began walking the empty streets not paying much attention to where my steps took me.
While I was walking my thoughts focused around the name that had sent me fleeing from Liam’s house. Kyle had been at the center of everything for a while now, even before he killed himself. It made sense that Liam was still broken up about it all, especially since he had been the one to find him. Thinking about that just made me angry again.
It was then that I started to realize that this anger was the only thing I felt towards Kyle anymore. The sadness over losing him had been overridden by the all-consuming rage and even thinking about what he had been to me before taking his life no longer brought back any emotions. My lack of positive feelings for someone I had been so close to probably wasn’t normal.
Maybe Liam had the right idea when he decided to talk to me about Kyle. It probably helped a lot and it might be what I needed as well. The problem I had though was that there was not an obvious option of someone for me to talk to.
Liam was far to nice and most likely wouldn’t understand my feeling angry, plus he was obviously dealing with his own side of things still. Brian or Jeremy might work but they would also have their own feelings in regards to Kyle so they probably weren’t the best options either. Cameron was definitely a bad idea since there was so much he still didn’t know and I don’t think I was ready to open that can of worms. Since my circle of cohorts had always been relatively small I was left with Sam or turning to my family.
While the thought of shocking my parents or sister with the illicit details of my fucked up life was appealing Sam seemed to be the safest option. She might hate me for the craptastic way I treated Cameron but hopefully, her offer of being there for me would overpower that.
I slipped my phone from my hoodie pocket and sent her a quick message asking if we could meet before looking up and noticing where my random meandering had led me. The imposing structure that was the city hospital pierced the night sky in front of me with its lights reflecting down on the pond that separated us.
A smile spread across my lips as I realized that my feet had managed to bring me to one of the few places in town that I actually enjoyed visiting. Usually, I would only go during the day while the ducks were out in full force and the two llamas that for some reason had an enclosure near the parking lot were also awake. Still, the area was serene even though it was approaching midnight and I found myself drawn to the spot where I usually sat along the water’s edge.
Sam’s reply came a few minutes later stating that she was free if I wanted to talk now as well as offering the next day if that wouldn’t work.
Two more texts exchanges and twenty minutes later, Sam joined me on the pond’s edge. I took a deep breath before looking down at my phone as I readied myself for however this conversation was going to go.
‘I wanted to talk to someone about Kyle’ I wrote out sending the message to Sam before turning to look at her. As she read the short message her eyebrows rose sharply as a look of surprise overtook her features.
“I had assumed this would be about Liam” she started her surprise morphing into a soft smile. “I kind of suspected that there was something with Kyle as well but never thought you would talk to me about it since the whole thing seemed like a super-secret boys club”
Her words somehow felt like a refreshing slap to the face. It was jarring to hear that she had caught on the fact that something was going on but it was also a relief that she suspected it but didn’t seem angry. This gave me hope that maybe she wouldn’t end up hating me by the end of the night.
‘This might be easier if you just tell me what you think was going on and I can just go from there’ I text her in an attempt to both avoid talking about it myself but to also see how much she was willing to let me get away with.
“Well before you moved here it was kind of obvious that something was going on between Liam and Kyle, the two were inseparable since kindergarten. Somewhere along the way though I think that Brian and maybe Jeremy got involved as well. You guys kind of made it a little obvious with the color coated hoodie thing” Sam explained poking me in the shoulder at the end as if I was somehow unaware of what I was currently wearing. “The fact that you all took Kyle’s death way harder than almost everyone made me think that something was there as well.”
Listening to her made me realize just how much Sam had to have watched me for her to figure all of this stuff out. It was endearing but at the same time heartbreaking since it was obvious just how much of a better friend she was even when we weren’t actually talking. If she still wanted to be my friend after I told her everything then I needed to try my hardest to be the kind of friend she deserved.
‘We were dating’ I typed out slowly on my phone. My thumb hovered above the send button as I reread the message back to myself. Straight forward and to the point, it was what she deserved. Taking a deep breath I hit send and waited for what would come next.
Sam was looking at her phone by the time I turned to her though her face didn’t give anything away. Her eyes remained on the screen for much longer then it would have taken her to read the short message giving me ample time to regret sending it.
“Who were you dating?” she asked finally not looking up from her phone as she spoke.
‘Kyle, though maybe kind of all of them. It was a bit of a mess.’ I messaged her back following her earlier example and not looking up from my phone.
“What about Cameron?”
Shit, shit, shit, shit. I knew this was coming, I had known it even before asking her to talk but somehow I still wasn’t ready to deal with it. No matter how many things she might have said about Cameron he was still one of her best friends, probably a better friend then I was. Sitting there trying to figure out how to best explain the situation made me realize more and more what an enormous mistake this had been.
Straight forward and to the point, it’s what she deserved.
‘After I was outed to the school Kyle started to worry about people suspecting something was up since we all spent a lot of time together. I either had to find a boyfriend to throw people off or break off whatever I had with them’ I sent before dropping the phone into my lap and staring out at the water trying to steel myself for the inevitable fall out.
“I should have known something was up when you suddenly changed your mind about dating him. You had been so against it before and didn’t seem happy when you guys started dating, so least that makes a bit more sense now. It was a shitty thing for you to do but at least you had a reason” she said softly each word threatening to cause me to break down.
When Sam finished I risked looking over at her and saw that she didn’t look angry or even upset. Instead, she just looked sad as she watched me. Seeing this pushed me over the edge and I began crying though I wasn’t sure the exact reason for the tears since I felt relieved more than anything else. To make it even more confusing for me I noticed that along with crying I was also smiling which probably made me look like a complete lunatic.
Sam just inched closer before pulling me into a tight hug as I continued to have some kind of breakdown. Even though she didn’t know all of the details just having someone that knew even the bare minimum of what had been going on in my life was a massive relief.
“I do have one question though,” she said once I was able to get my crying under control again.
At that point, Sam could ask me anything and I would happily tell her, there was nothing I was afraid of hiding from her anymore plus she deserved the honesty along. My resolve to be a better friend for her was going to start right there and then.
Of course, nothing was going to prepare me for what she was going to ask.
“What about the girls?”
I pulled back from the hug before fumbling around with my phone trying to quickly respond to her.
‘What girls?’
“Wasn’t there also some girls involved? I know that your gay so was just curious as to how that worked out”
‘What girls?’ I asked again my grip on the phone tightening to the point that it felt like it might just snap in half.
“There were a few girls that Kyle hung out with a lot,” she said softly, her voice sounding like she was trying to soothe a scared animal. “It was probably nothing, he was a really popular guy so they were probably just friends and I was just reading to much into it.
I wanted to believe her, for both of us to believe what she was saying. Kyle though had proven that there were still things I didn’t know about him, things that I wasn’t sure any of us who had been closest to him had known. So many secrets that he kept hidden from the world for so long and now that he was gone they all seemed to be unraveling one after another.
Comments (0)
See all