“Damn, you're still crying,” Tommy says as he walks through my bedroom door. He doesn’t understand my pain. He doesn’t understand the loss that we have had in this bleak world. 

“Of course I am still crying, you overgrown labrador,” I say back before getting up from my desk and throwing myself head first onto my bed. Tommy does look like a giant lab with his shaggy blonde hair. He acts like one too. Friendly to a fault and the only thoughts in his big head are of balls… of the foot kind and girls.  Being big and dumb is kind of his vibe though and I love him for it.

Tommy just lets out a sigh before continuing, “look Wil, I know it sucks and everything but come on dude! You look horrible. How long have you been crying?”

I absolutely look horrible. My eyes are the size and shade of a small plume due to the fact that I have been crying for the past two days. My throat is so sore that it feels like shoved a lit candle down it. My hair is a mess and hasn’t been washed in days. I also kind of smell like a foot.

“Since I found out…” I whisper in response, still face-planted into the sheets of my bed. I suddenly let out a groan as I thrash my body around in frustration. I had spent the last two days crying and talking to my online friends who were also heartbroken about the news. How could AppleCidarWrites do this to us? We spent the whole time strategizing on how we could possibly get her to change her mind. I have at least twenty letters drafted to the author pleading with her to not stop writing her books.

I was probably the most vocal fan of hers. I commented on each and every chapter she posted multiple times. I even live streamed reviews of her chapters every time there was an update. I was her biggest fan and I also hand-held many others into the fandom. I made a community out of loving her books and now she is gone.

“Come on now… You have to get up and at least eat something! I am worried about you. Also, maybe now you can focus more on real life and school. We are in college dude! Go to parties. Get laid.”

I lifted my head up and glared at Tommy who was standing in my doorway. He knew I was a virgin and he also knew that I had my sights set on only one person. My soulmate. 

“You go get laid.” 

He just laughed at me and flipped me the bird before leaving my room. However, he didn’t close the door silently indicating that he wanted me to follow him. I sighed before getting up and walking back over to my desk. I put on my pink large frame glasses. 

Yes, I have pink large frame glasses. They are cool alright! Actually they were supposed to be a joke, but honestly I like them. Looking in the mirror, I run my hand through my brown messy hair. If Tommy is a lab, then I guess I could be described as a mouse. Small and nerdy. Even my voice often came out a little squeaky. Don’t get me wrong, I am not as timid as a mouse. In fact I probably could take Tommy down with my words alone, but looks are looks and I was a mousy fellow.

Tommy should be more supportive of me to be honest. We have been living together for two years now and he usually is fiercely protective over me. Almost to the point where he babies me a little. It's to be expected as he is my Big and all.

Yes, Big as in Big Brother. Not in the family sense but in the fraternity sense. I might not look or act like it but I am a bona fide frat boy. Although that was all Tommy’s doing. We started living together when I first came to this university and on the first night we met he dragged me along to one of his fraternities pledge events. The rest was history. 

Actually I am kind of surprised I even made it to brotherhood. Chi Chi Nu was your typical social fraternity where the majority of the guys only think about two things. Parties and girls. They probably only let me in so that I could raise their GPA average. Jokes on them though… I have a C average. I’m a nerd, but I am not book smart. Never have been and probably never will be.

Maybe I was a diversity pledge, considering I was openly gay when I pledged. Well less open and more obvious and I never made an attempt to hide it from anybody. I am just a small mousy gay boy. I can’t help it. 

“Seriously Wil, come and eat now before I have to get physical,” Tommy yelled from the living room.

I just groan and walk out into the kitchen. Tommy is sitting at the small dining room table about to eat what looks like dead roadkill on a plate. It smells even worse.

“What the hell is that???”

“What? It’s sausage, bacon, and eggs,” he responds innocently. His large blue eyes wide as he gives his best puppy-dog face. I walk over and slap the back of his head before picking up the plate and throwing the whole thing, dish and all into the trash.

“I swear to god Tommy I don’t even know how you are still alive,” I say before going into the kitchen to start cooking actual edible food. I am surprisingly a good cook considering I am a homebody that eats nothing but pre-packaged processed foods. I know why I am a good cook but I don’t want to think about that right now. Life is already too sad.

Luckily, cooking breakfast will take my mind off of the whole AppleCidar situation. At least for now. It isn’t until I am done cooking and eating that my mind wanders back to fantasy. I can’t stop thinking about my favorite characters from Love Bites and how I will never get to read about their future adventures again. 

Love Bites was a story the AppleCidar wrote about a vampire who fell in love with a werewolf. It was an unorthodox love story about how enemies can become lovers. My absolute favorite trope next to childhood friends to lovers. Vlad, the vampire, reminded me of myself. A recluse who somehow found himself in a world full of outgoing werewolves. He didn’t fit in and yet he was still able to find his soulmate.

He was also fierce like me. Small and fierce and not like other gays. 

Vlad was my favorite character. Him and his love Charlie, a werewolf prince who is set to take over the kingdom, are my OTP. It was just fantasy, but I couldn’t help but place myself in Vlad’s shoes and think about all the possibilities there could be if I was in that fantasy world.

“So, Jessica is coming here in a little bit,” Tommy said, interrupting my thoughts. He was shoveling eggs into his mouth as he was speaking.

“Thanks for the warning and please for the love of baby Jesus could you close your mouth when you eat!”

Tommy just let out a mn in response as he continued to eat like a pig. If he wasn’t so cute I would have smacked him again. Jessica on the other hand, I wish I could smack the living crap out of. She was a horrendous woman. Thin, blonde, with huge fake tits with a vile personality. She didn’t deserve a man like Tommy, who was a sweet guy.

It was then that I heard the front door open and in came the witch herself wearing a mini skirt that barely covered her lady parts and a tube top that barely covered her upper lady parts. She is also wearing those ugly cork wedges that are six inches too tall. I know, I know I am being misogynistic! The she-devil can wear what she wants and to be honest she is hot but I still don’t like her. She is obsessed with Y2K fashion and that is so 20 years ago.

The fact that she just lets herself in now signifies that she is way too comfortable for her own good. This is my home, not hers. This is my kitchen, not hers. 

She wasn’t alone though. With her was her twin sister, Rebecca who was wearing matching clothes. Rebecca is even worse than her sister and she so happened to be the President of our sister sorority so I had to deal with her quite a bit being around not only my apartment but also the frat house and at frat events. The Chi Chi Mu’s were the bane of my existence mostly in part because of this witch who took every opportunity to make sure I knew I was just a small mousy gay boy.

Jessica ran straight for Tommy and immediately sat on his lap and started making out with him. I almost barfed just watching as the two shared the breakfast I had just made. I couldn’t stop staring in horror as their tongues wrestled over a piece of bacon like it was the last thing on earth to eat.

Rebecca on the other hand looked me up and down before saying, “damn Willy, what happened? Your vibrator stopped working?”

I just rolled my eyes before getting up and walking back to my room, flicking Rebecca off on my way. Before I could get to my door however, Tommy accepted defeat to the couple's tongue-of-war long enough to remind me that we had a fraternity meeting tomorrow.

“Yeah, yeah. I wouldn’t miss it,” I said before slamming my door shut behind me.

Tommy was one of my favorite people when we were alone. He was a giant goof-ball and was the big brother that I never had but always wanted. We would talk for hours about stupid crap like what super powers we wanted (mine is invisibility and his is super strength) or what our favorite monkeys are (mine is the pygmy marmoset and his is a gorilla even though I told him gorillas aren’t monkeys). We watched stupid horror movies together and played video games together. 

But, it seemed like he started to change when he started dating Jessica. He went from a big brother to someone who was obsessed with how they looked and who they hung out with. Our time together started to grow shorter and shorter as he hung out with Jessica and her friends more and more. Honestly, that is probably why I hated Jessica so much. She was nice in the beginning but as she dug her claws into Tommy she became meaner and meaner to me. What stung the most was that Tommy never stood up to Jessica or her sister when they called me names or degraded me, claiming that they were just joking around.

It was around the time that Tommy and Jessica started dating that I began really getting into AppleCidar and her works. My life was shit, but at least I had her fantasy worlds to keep me occupied. Now I didn’t even have that. I walked over to my bed and face-planted again. A fresh new set of tears started flooding out of me. Only this time I didn’t know if I was crying over my fantasy world or my crappy reality.