Well hello to the patient and not so patient ones out there hahaha jk. Here's the next chapter. It's a smaller chapter and is once again from Hunter's point of view. The last chapter was too long and I didn't want to add it on to the last chapter and make you wait but at the same time, it's an important chapter. In personal news, I AM OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!!! I'm back at college and life has become infinitely better. Classes start tomorrow but I don't care because I'm with friends! Anywho, here is the next chapter.
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DEFINE LOVE - CHAPTER 10
We continued our talk about Buckeye basketball and football all the way back to my dorm. The conversation flowed nicely as it always did and it was obvious neither one of us wanted to end the conversation. We both knew that when I went back to my room and he went to go watch basketball we would stepping back into a world that no longer compared to the one we had come to know as our relationship. Unfortunately, we both wanted different things from that relationship. If it wasn’t for me and my stupid crush then I would be living in paradise…
“So I’ll see you for dinner later?” he asked.
“Yeah, definitely. Have any idea where you want to eat?”
“Main caf is always good with me. Do you know how long your paper will take you?”
“I never know with those papers,” I said with a disheartened chuckle. “But I’m not going to be too late. It’s only 2 now and I really want to hang out with you…so you can stay away from people…so, yeah, I’m going to try and finish up as early as possible. I’ll call you when I’m finished and we’ll meet outside?”
“Yeah sounds good, Hunter.” The conversation had come to a definite end and yet we were not doing talking. We both were going to be honest with one another but neither one of us could speak because we didn’t know how to put it into words. Daniel and I had been brought together randomly by Professor Swick and we found a lot more than either of us had bargained for. He was on a new path towards a new, unknown destination and I became Superman trying to save my kryptonite prince, Daniel. I stared into his blue eyes, knowing that no matter how difficult life would get for me because of my feelings towards Daniel, it was all worth seeing the pure innocent jubilation that lit up his face and knowing that I could make a man such as Daniel feel that way.
“I’ll see you then, I guess,” I said to break the silence.
“Yeah,” he responded, his body language clearly indicating he was not about to go.
“Yeah.” It took every ounce of my body from not stepping towards Daniel and kissing him.
“I don’t want to leave.”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
That was it. There was nothing left to say. We stared back at each other for a moment and then intrinsically moved together to embrace, each of us acknowledging our emotions but letting the hindrance of reality take its rightful course.
I knew I had to be the one to pull away because Daniel wasn’t about to stop. I tried backing away but his arms kept me close. I gave it another ten seconds and tried again to no avail. With my head resting on his shoulder and his head against mine, I nuzzled more closely next to him putting the front of my face into his neck and kissed him gently. His grip eased in his surprise and it gave me the opportunity to do the only thing I found appropriate, move up further and kiss him on the cheek. I stepped back, my hands slipping down to his waist and stood a foot from him. “We’ll be ok.”
The glee returned to Daniel’s face and I had to hug him again but after a few seconds we were able to separate. “I’ll see you then.”
“Yeah. Bye, Daniel.”
“Bye, Hunter.” He took the first few steps backwards and then turned around and walked away. I wanted to stay and watch him walk away a little longer but a voice from the door stopped me.
“You coming in?” the random girl leaving the dorm asked.
“What?...Oh…yeah. Thanks.” I walked into the dorm and stepped into a different world. The television in the main lobby was on with a group of people watching the game, a few people clustered around a nearby table with half a dozen books open and one girl sitting in the window bay reading a book with her iPod. “
Will any of these people experience something remotely close to what just happened to me?” I seriously doubted it but I never thought it would happen to me either. And yet it just did.
I was still dazed as I walked up the stairs and into the study lounge where I saw all my friends working. Upon my entrance, Sarah got up and walked purposefully over to me. She had something to say but she saw I needed to talk first. “Thank you.”
It was clearly nothing close to what she had expected. “You’re not angry about the texts? Everything is ok, right?”
“Everything is great. Please don’t do that again but thank you for everything else.” I fell into her and squeezed her firmly. It took her a moment to process my emotions but she eventually returned my hug. My eyes had been closed the entire time but when I opened them I saw Caroline staring intently at me with the others around the table trying to ignore me and Sarah but failing miserably at it. I couldn’t help but smile and crack a small laugh. “Can you guys be any nosier? Caroline is expected but the rest of you I’m disappointed in,” I said sarcastically as I backed off of Sarah.
My comment had lightened the uneasy air. “Oh come on,” Caroline retorted exasperatedly. “It’s right in front of me and it took me WAY off guard. Cut me a little slack here.”
“Alright, maybe just this once.”
Sarah took my hand in hers. “We need to talk.” She led me out of the lounge with composed urgency. My room was only a few away from the lounge and she barged in knowing my roommate wouldn’t be there and I never locked my door. “WOAH,” she turned and said as soon as we both were in the room and I had shut the door. “What the fuck happened to you? Why are you thanking me when I did something really, really stupid?”
“Because I was with Daniel all day. I don’t know whether or not it was only because you texted him yesterday but the only thing that matters is that we did. Sarah…he’s special.”
“Apparently! Sit and tell me everything!”
Her jubilance was infectious. “Yeah, I will. Well…I can’t tell you everything. Not specific details and stuff but I’ll give you the general outline.”
“No…I understand.” I didn’t expect her to understand but she looked serious. “
Maybe I actually got to her?”
“I’m going to do this quickly and vaguely so pay attention. He texts me and says we should meet up. I could tell something was really wrong and it was…I kinda changed his life.” Sarah was speechless but her wide eyes spoke volumes. “
If only she knew the entire reason why…” I continued. “He’s always wanted a friend like me and only had it once with his ex-girlfriend who he hates now. All the rest of his friends just don’t seem as adequate anymore and he can’t even think about being with them anymore. I just held him for a while as he cried into me and we sat and talked about it and he is starting this completely new chapter of his life now.”
“Oh my God,” she said shock.
“Yeah. But then we both made this kind of honesty pact. I’m the one person he has and he couldn’t have been more vulnerable so we both decided to tell each other whatever we were thinking.”
“Except for the fact that you like him I’m assuming?”
“Yeah…except for that.” It wasn’t that I had forgotten about those feelings towards Daniel but the relationship we currently shared was better than almost any I had ever seen. It was impossible to not be happy while talking about Daniel but my heart always felt heavy and a point blank reminder of it took me out of the zone. “So yeah…we talked about working out and school and that somehow led me into talking about Chris…and I almost started crying but he needs me to be this big strong guy and his best friend so I held it off. And then…he did the same thing for me…he became my Superman just like I had done for him. He didn’t have to and I don’t know how he got the energy for it because he was so drained from everything but he just…picked me up and carried me without me asking…And then stupid me has to fucking like and shit and I’m going to ruin it all because all I want to do when I look at him is just kiss him and never stop.”
She looked silently at me for a few seconds before continuing. “Hunter, as your best friend I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. The way you feel about Daniel…it’s not going to change unless he suddenly becomes a complete asshole which, based off of what you told me, isn’t happening in the near future. I’m not going to be able to handle you coming to me every time you have a great time together and share something intimate with each other. And I don’t think you can either. At some point, this is going to have to come up.”
“This isn’t about me, this is about him. I’m not worrying about me, I’m worrying about him.”
“Yeah, well I’m worrying about you so I’m telling you it’s going to be a problem.”
I stared back at her menacingly. I knew she had a point but I couldn’t deal with it, or with her. “I don’t care what you have to say about it. This isn’t your decision, it’s mine. You haven’t even met him. So don’t take things into your own hands. The text last night was one thing but that pales in comparison to this.”
“I’m not stupid, Hunter. I still feel terrible for those texts earlier today, I had a major flashback to Blake and I was so upset. I’m not going to do things like that but I will tell you in private what I think you should do and I think that you are going to realize you have to bring up these feelings of yours.”
“No. I won’t.”
“Hunter, things like this don’t just magically disappear. You can’t just turn off a switch on who you like, the world would be perfect if you could. And I’m telling you all of this now because I’ve been thinking about all of this since we were talking and I think it would be better to do it sooner than later.”
“How? How would it be better to tell a straight guy I like him immediately after I helped get his life back on track? I’m all he has and I already feel terrible because I had to tell him not to come over now because people are in the lounge studying. I’m not about to kill him because that’s what it would do.”
“I think that it would be a good time because he doesn’t know what his future will be. He could realize he’s bi or gay or something.”
“Sarah, I have to write a paper on love with him. If for nothing else, I’m not going to make writing that paper the most awkward thing of my life.”
She was not understanding of this at all. “That’s perfect! You can show him what love is and that love has nothing to do with gender with your own personal experience. Maybe he has some attraction towards you he’s scared to admit it because he doesn’t know what to do.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong.” “It’s irrelevant. I’m not…”
She cut me off. “How the fuck is it not relevant? It’s completely relevant! The only thing you are doing here is stopping yourself from being happy. If this Daniel is anything close to the guy your saying he is, he’ll either like you back or understand that he can be friends with you just like he would be if one of his girl friends had a crush on him.”
I could barely hold in my animosity anymore. “Sarah, I came up here to tell you about my amazing day that you helped to start and now I’m about ten seconds away from going ballistic.”
“Really? You’re going to go ballistic? Yes, I fucked up in sending you that text message today and I am sorry for that. I am. But everything else has been good that I did for you.”
“And by everything else you mean send one text message.”
She did not take kindly to this. “No. I’m also talking about all the steps I had to take in order for you to send it. I ran naked through the fucking hallway for you to go hang out with him because I haven’t seen that look in your eyes in years. But there was something even better about this one. I didn’t just do that for fun. I did that for you. So if anyone is going to go ballistic here, it’s going to be the person who broke her own boundaries and comfort zones to get her best friend to hang out with someone all to have it thrown back in her face. You know that’s true.”
We were both breathing heavily from anger and we just looked back at each other, each one of us waiting for the other to speak. But we didn’t have anything else to say. She had told me the way she saw things and I told her the way I saw things and the lines had been drawn. But we were fighting for my best interests and I knew that. “I need to go for a minute,” I said urgently. I needed to get away from her for a minute so I wouldn’t have to deal with losing my best friend as well as Daniel.
“Ok…I understand.” I stormed out of the room in controlled rage leaving Sarah alone in my room trying to recapture her regular breathing pattern. I got halfway down the hall before I even tried to think about any of this. When I did, it did not go well. There were too many things to consider, too many variables and too many things all going on at once to make sense of any single thought in my head and I hated myself for it. I massaged my temples in an effort to make the thoughts come easier but that didn’t help. I began to lightly smack my face to try and stimulate some coherent thought but nothing happened.
There was just too much: me being Daniel’s only lifeline, Sarah telling me I needed to go for it and risk it all, memories of Blake and how terrible that day was and thoughts of Chris getting blown up. And that’s when I broke. The tears flowed in rivers and I whipped my body around and sprinted back to my room. I burst back through the door, stopped briefly in the doorway as Sarah stood up staring back at me, and then I ran to her and collapsed into her just like Daniel had done to me earlier. And also like Daniel, I just laid on her, soaking her shirt with my tears. Sarah kept whispering in my ear. “You’ll be ok…you’ll be ok…just one step at a time…one step at a time.” And then I felt one of Sarah’s tears drop onto my cheek and it made me cry even harder. She quickly wiped away her tears and tried to change the situation. “Come on…it’ll be ok you big fluffball you. Let’s just take a nap, it’s been a long day…for both of us.”
Sarah could tell that I silently agreed and she took my hand and led me over to my bed where she pulled up the covers and ushered me in. After I was settled, she snuggled up against me and placed my arm around her. “Let’s just sleep it off and we can think about things again later, ok?”
“Ok…” And no more than two minutes later, the weight of the world dragged me into slumber.
To be continued…
Hope all's well, and I can't wait for another update! xo
