Homecoming

Nate’s holding my phone.

“What? No,” I respond as I walk back into his room, “What makes you think that?”

He holds up the phone, “Alex.”

I groan, in memory of the wounded kid’s words, “No, he knows. That’s why I punched him.”

He looks exasperated as he keeps glancing from me, to the phone, and back at me, “But-but how could he know?” Before I can come up with a sufficient answer he continues, “Why would he keep that from me?” And he looks hurt.

But it almost makes me want to scowl. I don’t answer because I can’t as I take the phone from him.
Nate goes to sit on his bed, “What did he say exactly? I mean he had to have found out recently because he would’ve have liked all the more…uh-intimate stuff with and us and hell, I didn’t even tell him about it.”

Reading the text only makes me angry, “I don’t know, but um… I’ll tell you later, okay?” I go into the autopilot mode, pulling off pajama pants, remembering I don’t have on underwear, getting a chill for a second, and putting on my own pants and shirt.

“Where are you going?” Nate asks looking frustrated as watches me ready.

“To pull his fucking balls off, you know, maybe make him eat them- no big deal,” I shrug and grab my keys from his dresser and head for the door. So maybe I am just acting a little tough, a little overconfident, at the most, but this is necessary. I’m not going to be fucked around with, and this Alex kid is definitely not going to add on to my blackmail troubles.

As I start storming out of the room, Nate’s hand grabs my arm. And then I think of something that shocks even me. I love Nate. No, this isn’t the epiphany. It’s that the blackmail is for people to know that we’ve had sex but well, if we got together…would this even matter?

“Connor!” Nate shouts, in front of me now, as I snap out of my vacant-eyed thoughts.
“Huh?” I ask, still thinking all this over in my brain.

He chuckles just a little, “Rip his balls off, eh?”

That kind of makes me rethink that whole plan too. But who wouldn’t! He fucking pounced me this morning! Who does that?

“Where’d he learn his fighting skills- Animal Planet?” I scowl and roll my eyes.

Nate laughs and brings his hand from my arm, which I forgot was there and uses it to run a hand through his hair.

“How are you feeling about what he said?” I ask. To be honest, I’m not sure if I really care. Because Alex still has to pay, cat-like or not, maybe I’ll call up some friends. But that’d be a bit much.

“I-I,” he pauses to sigh, “don’t know. I really don’t know what to say about much of anything lately. I just really want- I want…”

“What?” I ask curiously, almost eagerly, because I think that maybe if I know what he wants, then I can figure out what I really want. I’m kind of at the same position as him, except I do know one thing- the hurt Alex severely, thing. I’m still pretty set on that.

“I want this all to be over with,” he furrows his brow as if he’s thinking. At first I think he’s done and I start to take a step around him to leave him with his thoughts as I go beat the shit out of The Enemy, but he continues, knowing I’ll stop.

“I wish last night hadn’t happened.”

And I do stop, dead in my tracks, with my hand on the door knob. This morning, I was feeling a little regret too, just because it’s constantly pulsing in my mind that Nate is my best friend. It hasn’t seemed like this lately, I notice. He doesn’t seem like my best friend anymore, no matter how much I keep voicing it.

“What?” I turn to say.

“Do you still wish that homecoming night hadn’t happened?” He just asks as a response. I have to pause for a while to think about that, too.

“I…I don’t know. I mean-“

“Because you know that if that night hadn’t happened, then last night wouldn’t have happened. And everything in-between, too- no blackmail, no…no Alex, I don’t think, and no doubting our friendship. We’d be just as we were. We’d be living our senior year as we lived last year and the year before and every year since third grade. It’s just that, the more I think about it, the more I think about all the shit I could deal without. And honestly, I would…I would give having you closer to me than a best friend, to have not had all of this happen…I think.”

It all makes sense. I frown at the thought of it all, fast forwarding in my mind the what-if scenario. What if I hadn’t gotten drunk enough to sleep with my best friend? My personality wouldn’t have changed, I wouldn’t have changed. I wouldn’t have broken up with Kailie…well, so soon, anyways. I wouldn’t have had to look at my confused family when kind-of, sort-of coming out. I wouldn’t have nearly had a heart attack when those first texts from the blackmailer came in because they wouldn’t have anything to black mail me with. There would be no pictures, no awkwardness, just best friends- just an easy, wonderful, no different senior year.

But then there would also be no us. There would be no secret smiles and confused, awkward acts of affection and no kissing and no sex and no finding a new part of me. And I would probably still be just slightly homophobic.

I started thinking, would I give up all of the bad, and sacrifice all of the decent to just have another perfect year.

“What are you saying?” I whisper, not meeting his eyes as I am still in mid-thought.
“I’m saying that at first I thought that this was terrible and I regretted because I didn’t want you angry. And then I regretted because I loved you so much. And then I regretted because of Alex. And then I regretted because you were so sad. And I regretted because you changed. And I regretted because of the dares. And now I’m finally regretting for a good reason.”

“But-“

“I know that there shouldn’t be a good enough reason to regret. But I regret for us. I regret for the us that didn’t fuck each other but still looked each other in the eye with a love that we both knew was just a little bit more than the average best friends...but was okay with that. I regret for the us that held hands and didn’t care because we’d known each other long enough to know that just being there and even saying that we were there for each other sometimes didn’t work, we had to feel it. I regret for the us that was maybe simple, but happy, and always loved.

“I don’t want to regret. With that whole, you can’t live in what if thing, but- but I just miss that so much. It’s a different feeling than you being over me and sucking on my neck while pounding into me, of course, but I just noticed that…that didn’t make me feel loved by you.”

It was a lot. A lot to take in, process, and try to respond to. So, I did what I did best…I didn’t. I walked out the room, still thinking, yes, but on my way to my car. To take out some of this confusion, and frustration, and anger on someone who already had this image of me like this and only like this in their memory.

I tried to figure out which parts of his statement I agreed with. And I noticed that it was all of it.