Every Man I Fall For

I know I’m being creepy when even my friends start noticing that something is weird.

“Oliver, you’re staring at Trisha Carrigan again”

I could not give less of a shit about Trisha Carrigan, but if she would move her fucking fat head then maybe I could catch his eye and force him to actually recognize me as a member of the human race.

Two weeks. Two weeks with barely a word, a glance, a breath in my direction. I want to walk up to him, I want to grab him by the collar and push him against the wall. That’s where my fantasy gets stuck though, because I’m not sure if looking in to his big green eyes that close up would make me want to scream, puke or kiss him until one or both of us bruises.

Across the table, Harriet is staring at me intently. She stands up very fluidly and suddenly I feel as if I can understand how mountains are formed by lava, seven miles down on the ocean floor, too cold and heavy to see.

“Oliver I need some help in the music room for a minute.”

“What?”

She’s trying to get me to come with her but the last place I want to be is alone with Harriet’s owl-eyes.

“I’ve been asked to move the cellos back in to the storage room. You know they’re too heavy for me. I need some help.”

I nearly tell her to ask Jason but I know she’ll bite my head off about it later, so I stand heavily and follow her out of the canteen. I feel like his eyes are on me again, and the feeling is so old and unexpected I wonder if it’s even real. Sure enough, however, when I turn my head a little I can see him watching me with such an intense mixture of hatred and want as to make my stomach churn. I feel my lips part involuntarily, as if I am going to whisper something to him across the crowded room, and then he has turned away and the noise rushes in and he’s laughing about something else and Harriet is at the doors and it’s just been seconds but it feels like years.

“Oliver.”

Her voice is stern, and I follow like an obedient child or a kicked puppy. The music room isn’t far, and when we get inside I slide to the ground, drained.

“Come on, get up, I meant what I said about the cellos.”

True to her word, her stick-like arms are reaching out to a large red case, presumably occupied by a large brown instrument. To the best of my knowledge, Harriet hasn’t eaten in four days and nine hours. Her hands are shaking.

“I’ve got it.”

She sits back on a chair and watches me as I carefully begin to shift the first of the instruments back in to their small storage room in the corner.

“His middle name is Ju-Long, did you know that?”

“What?”

“Thomas Ju-Long Wan Motley”

I come out of the storage room.

“Harriet, I don’t really care.”

“Yes you do, Oliver,” she says, sighing. “The others might be blind but I can see it. I just don’t understand why... he seems very dismissive of you.”

I sit down next to her and look at my knees, then at the wall, and finally settle on her profile.

“It was different, at first.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know. I told him about…”

“Oh,” then, “Is he….?”

“Yes. Well he said so. I can’t imagine why he would lie to me.”

“To get in your pants?”

I give her an odd look.

“I would have thought that that would sort of negate the purpose of lying about it, don’t you?”

She shoots me a sheepish smile, which I know is her way of acknowledging her own mistake. We sit in silence for a minute.

“Well don’t just fucking run again, Oliver.”

And then she’s up and moving and gone, and I am left alone with my thoughts and fifteen cellos.

*

It’s 3:45 and I’m waiting for Thomas to get out of the school building. It has always perplexed me why he would want to stay in it for any longer than necessary, but he has a habit of lingering. In places, on my mind…

He’s walking out of the school now and I can both hear and feel my breathing rate begin to increase. Am I really going to do this? Go through with this? I want to chicken out, I want to pretend I’m not, like I was never going to, but then he looks up and sees me and although he immediately looks away and starts to walk faster, we both know what’s coming. I reach out and grab his arm as he comes past, pulling him in to the shade of a tree with me. Away from other people, from their pre-formed opinions. I can’t handle being this visceral in front of anyone but three people, and one of them is currently staring me right in the eyes and looking very angry.

“What is it, Oliver?”

Olive. Please just call me Olive.

“Don’t spit at me, Thomas. You know what I want. What the fuck happened? I mean, I was there, you were there, and then nothing…”

I sound more confident than I am, because inside I am biting my nails.

“You make it sound like we fucked or something.”

I physically recoil at the phrasing and I know he sees it because his eyes soften and he reaches out to me, just a very little, but his hand drops back very abruptly. He didn’t want me to see it, but I have, and now I’ll be left wondering where he was going to put it.

“Don’t pretend like it didn’t mean anything.”

“Why would it?”

And this time, this time I can feel it burning, like acid, and I actually close my eyes like I am waiting to be slapped. Maybe I’m just letting this verbal one sink in a little more. When I open them again he looks frustrated, and I don’t understand why. I just want him to smile. Why can’t I make him smile?

“Thomas…” I say, but my voice is soft like a lover, and his eyes glaze over with anger when I speak. If only he could understand that I didn’t mean it like that, that I speak how I talk to myself, that if I was in control of this situation I would know not to do that. But I’m pathetic.

Instead, he shifts his bag up higher on his shoulders and scowls at me.

“Don’t fucking call me that, Oliver.”

Don’t call me that, Thom.

Olive.