For Never

They both knew. From the moment they met, it was so obvious. Billie shook Tre’s hand. Tre held the gesture for just a fraction of a second longer than was platonic. And they felt it, the unexplainable electricity that shot through their bodies. Science would have ground it down to a nerve impulse. Oh it was some kind of impulse all right. It was really something, though neither knew exactly what. They’d find out soon enough.

Tre was fifteen. Billie had just turned sixteen that February. They were too young to understand but too old to ignore the something that kept them up at night.

Tre lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling with a ridiculous grin on his face, understanding but not quite understanding that Billie made him feel something. It was a special sort of something. An irrational, insane, unforgettable something. It made him anxious and happy and felt a little strange; he was not used to feeling this way, much less because of a boy. He was known for his incorrigible girl-chasing ways, after all. But he didn’t chase Billie. He couldn’t quite comprehend it; he never would. He would know, but he would never understand.

Billie understood a little more and hurt a lot more. Meeting Tre, seeing Tre, spending time with Tre all made him happy and sad at the same time. Was that even possible? Oh yes, and it was painful. Billie’s nights weren’t calm and peaceful like Tre’s, though the same thing occupied his mind. His sleep was fitful with the thought of that something. Sometimes he cried, though he would deny it vehemently if anyone ever asked. Not that many people asked; it was only one. Just one person in the world knew Billie occasionally cried at night, with only a hunch as to why.

“Bill, you have to tell me what’s wrong. I can’t help you if you don’t talk!” he fumed one morning after a half hour of questions and coercion got nowhere.

“There’s nothing wrong, Mike! I don’t need your help, okay? I’m just fine!” came the denial, no different from what was already said.

“No you’re not.” It wasn’t a question anymore. It was really more like pointing out the obvious.

Billie didn’t like that. “Fuck you. I’m going to Tre’s.”

Mike never pressed the subject after that. He had a feeling he knew, but he didn’t want to, not really. Billie Joe had always been indisputably his, no matter how the guilt built up inside them because of the secrecy, or how much they fought over nothing. Even when those fights ended with Billie not-so-mysteriously disappearing for several hours and never offering an explanation, Mike knew Billie was his.

And he was Billie’s, completely and forever. Because the one thing that hadn’t changed from their elementary school friendship to the feelings they developed with adolescence and time was that even when they hated each other, they loved each other. Even when Mike despised Billie, loathed him, couldn’t stand the sight of him, he was still a teenager in love and he couldn’t stop being in love even if he wanted to.

So, naturally, when that tiny spark of suspicion began to plague him, he ignored it. He saw the way Tre and Billie glanced at each other, even in passing, but ignored it. He knew they sometimes spent hours together without him, but chose not to care. It must have been an illusion, just a trick of the mind. Tre was a notorious pervert; he wouldn’t see anything in Billie. And Billie wasn’t available either way. Though Mike forced these sugar-coated truths into his subconscious, he knew that Billie cried at night and somewhere in his brain, he knew why. he held on to his ignorant bliss until there was no other reality. Somehow, it became second nature for Mike to ignore Billie’s pain, cloaked but still there, underneath and alive.

Summers passed and the bond they all shared grew inevitably stronger. The elusive something became clearer and clearer to Tre and he knew what he wanted at last. Girls passed in and out of his life, but his enjoyment was only that: enjoyment. Tre wanted Billie Joe. To have him, to love him, to be near and with him for almost every moment of the day. It was rather like a one-sided wedding vow, though he knew always that Billie returned the feeling, somehow. And every time he saw his two best friends holding hands, flirting, laughing together, his stomach burned with envy, with which he had been wholly unfamiliar with until now. Especially when, during one particular lonely afternoon, he leaned in towards his friend, close enough for their lips to meet, but Billie simply got up. He looked at Tre for a single long second, got up and left.

“I have to go,” he said, leaving Tre on the moth-eaten sofa. “I’ll see you around.”

“Ok,” was all Tre could think of. And he spent the rest of that day on that same sofa, staring at the spot where Billie had sat.

If Tre’s life had become difficult as he reached eighteen, it became doubly so for Billie. He was honest to those he loved; he always had been. But he could not tell Michael about Tre, that he and Tre shared something silent but unbreakable that Mike could never offer. He couldn’t hurt Michael. He couldn’t and didn’t want to let go of the rock which had been present for as long as he could remember. Because the truth was, for every ounce of passion he felt for Tre, he loved Mike just as much. Billie even admitted to himself that had Tre not entered their lives, he wouldn’t even realize something was missing. He was incredibly torn, incredibly hurt, but he was also quiet, because silence had its benefits. And he decided to do nothing, because inertia was his only option.

This was blatantly obvious to Tre. He saw Billie every day. Despite his jokes and smiles, there would always be a moment when truth reminded Billie of its existence and he would almost flinch. Tre wanted to do something, hold him, protect him. He restrained himself, but doubt was beginning to gnaw at him and he needed to know for certain that Billie had made his choice. He wanted to make sure that Billie had chosen Mike, so they could both forget. That certainty never came.