I clung to him and he held me as I tried to calm down. I was a teary mess but he didn’t care and let me ride it out. I felt selfish because this was obviously more about me feeling better then him, but I guess in the end he had gotten over it a long time ago unlike me.
When the tears finally stopped I looked up into his face. I realized I needed to ask him one more thing before I could really be satisfied with what had happened between us that night. “Can I ask you a question?”
He nodded his head and pushed my hair out of my eyes. “Yeah go ahead, that’s what I’m here for right now.”
“I just want to understand. This is less about what happened to us and about you.” I paused, unsure if I should really talk more about it. “You used to like me?”
I could feel him tense around me again. “Yeah, I did.” He said hesitantly.
“Then I just wanted to know, are you gay?” the words left my lips as a simple question, no judgment or anger, yet he still seemed scared.
He looked up at the sky as if he was asking for strength before he looked back down at me with worried eyes. “I’m bisexual.”
I nodded my head and my chin brushed into his stomach. “I see. And you said you don’t feel that way for me anymore? You got over me?”
His face was heating up and it was so red I could see it even in the darkness. “Well yeah, I spent five years getting over you.”
“Okay.” I pressed the top of my head into to his chest and took a deep breath before letting it go. “I don’t care at all. I just needed to know where we stand now. You used to like me but you don’t anymore and you have never hated me.” I moved back again to look at him to make sure I saw his face when he answered. “So we are friends again?”
He licked his lips nervously and nodded. “Yeah friends.”
Once we both felt calm and our nerves had settled down we let go of each other and he sat down beside me and we talked. It was awkward at first, but as we got talking we seemed to fall into a familiar rhythm. He told me about high school and his friends and how strange it was to graduate and know that it was all over. I asked him where he had been going for college and he told me he was attending a school in Oregon and I told him that it was close to mine. He seemed to like that. I in return told him about college. About my friends and the dorms and the classes. He asked me if I was dating anyone and I told him no. I didn’t bother to tell him that I didn’t really date. He told me he had dated this one girl in high school for a while but it didn’t turn out well in the end and he hadn’t really tried again.
Soon the conversation turned to other things, like what we did in our free time now and what games we played and what books we read. We talked about experiences we had and places we had been. It soon felt like we had never been apart.
However, the more I talked to him the more I realized I didn’t know him anymore. It was like there was a stranger in front of me who shared the memories of my childhood friend. Sometimes he would do something or say something and I would find the Lucas I knew again. Yet, I didn’t think this was a bad thing. I liked who he had become in our time apart. He was definitely more palatable.
Soon we were quiet. It wasn’t that we had run out of things to say, we were just content with what we had said. We were looking up at the sky and I felt a smile curl up on my face
“You know we have never done this before” I said softly into the silence.
“Done what?” he looked over at me, a small confused smile playing on his face.
“Stargazed on the beach like this” I motioned up to the stars causing him to look up. “We have come to the beach a thousand times. Done everything you can do at the beach. But we never came at night, we were too young.”
“Hmmm.” He looked up, looked around, then looked at me. “I guess you are right. I never really thought about it before. Do you like stars?”
I nodded my head without looking at him. “Yeah, I’ve always liked looking at them, can’t tell you anything about them, but they were always very beautiful to me, in a cold way.”
“Why cold?” He reached over and touched my arm to feel the goosebumps. “Because it gets cold at night?”
My head tilted to the side in thought. “Maybe? That’s probably a part of it. I think it also has to do with how far away they are shinning with pale lights. They don’t care about us or the world around them. They just sit in the sky alone until it’s their time to fall.”
“Did you become a poet when I was gone?” I looked over and he was laughing.
I pursed my lip. “That wasn’t poetry at all.”
“Right, right.” He lightly punched me in the arm playfully. “You are just imaginative.”
I sighed. “Maybe I am, but that wasn’t near the best I can do.”
We fell into comfortable silence for a while and watched the stars. We called out when we saw shooting stars and tried to find constellations. Soon enough we were too cold and we headed back home. We walked side by side, our feet stepping in unison as we trudged up the hill. Our arms swung and sometimes lightly brushed by each other.
How did I end up here? I never thought I would spend time like this with him ever again. At least not on such good terms. For some reason I felt the urge to grab his hand. We had always been very physically close with each other when we were little, it was just how we grew up. However, now there was a new barrier between us. There was the thought that once upon a time he liked me, and we were not as close as we used to be. He was 19 and I was 21 almost 22. We were not kids anymore. We couldn’t hold hands like we used to so I took a step away so there was no chance to be tempted. I guess old habits die hard.
When we got to the houses we said goodnight and parted ways almost as if we had been doing it every night for years. It wasn’t dramatic and no important words were said. We both went to bed knowing we would see each other tomorrow for the start of our last summer.
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