If I Knew Who You Were

Gerard’s POV

Its funny how it works, isn’t it?

How you beg and plead to know something, but then while you’re listening to the hidden truths unfold in front of you, you want to hit the person telling you and make them shut up, but you’re paralyzed you can’t move or even speak. Then it gets to the point where you know basically the whole thing and you hate yourself for wanting to know what it was so badly. You suddenly prefer the curious feeling as opposed to the feeling that everything you’ve known recently was a lie.

It’s like a tidal wave hit you and you feel washed out and drained. You don’t want to think, because you know you’ll go into in depth thought about that one thing that you wanted to know for so long, but now wished that you’d never heard at all, especially when you hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

It couldn’t believe that it was actually Frank who had taken the money. During that story I imagined that it was actually Matt who had taken it and had lied to me. I guess I could deal with that a little more than knowing that Frank had lied to me again. This was so much worse than before.

I thought that the fact that he had been living in my house for his whole life was bad enough, but to find out that you’ve been...’dating’ his secret brother without even being informed of it is pretty bad.

To then learn that said person isn’t even interested in you, but instead using you to steal your money and take you out on dates with your stolen money hits it below the belt.
It’s a thousand times worse to learn that someone that you were just beginning to let back into your life stole money from you and gave it to the thief who took you out on two dates with it.

Are you following all of this? Because Mikey and Lilly sure weren’t.

“So...Matt took your money?” Lilly asked, flicking her dark hair over her shoulder.

“No! Frank took it,”

“All of it?”

“Most of it,”

“So when did Matt take everything else?”

“I don’t know. He probably had Frank let him in.”

Silence fell over the room as everyone digested what had actually happened. This felt like some bizarre dream finally coming to the climax. The part of a dream that causes everything to finally add up and make sense, but you’ve forgotten that part by the morning which is why we can never make full logical sense of a dream.

Soon enough I’d wake up on the morning after The Misfits remembering the beautiful boy from the night before. The one who made my heart melt as soon as my eyes set themselves upon the small frame trying desperately to peer over the top of the over-tall people who decided to make it difficult for the shorties by standing at the front.

But that would just be a lame and uninventive ending to a dilemma of this scale. I know I’d be disappointed if I was you and that happened. I hate to disappoint you, but how I pray that is the reality of this situation.

Closing my eyes tightly I hoped even more that, that would happen. I hoped I could invert this dream and fall asleep causing me to wake up into reality. No matter how hard I tried though, I just couldn’t drift off. This was real. It had really happened.

That meant there was only one question that really stuck out in my mind and that was why me?!

“I think I can understand why he’d do that,” Mikey suddenly said, a look of epiphany on his face.

“You what?!” I gasped, shocked that my brother was actually attempting to condone Franks actions.

“Well you said that he told you that he didn’t want to feel like a mistake anymore...” Mikey started before finally looking up to my face. “We know how that feels. I mean, sure we don’t feel like mistakes, we know we were planned and whatnot, but don’t we both just try so desperately to get Dad to notice us, to care about us and not constantly leave us to go on those trips to all these exotic places without even thinking to take us?

“You won’t even tell him that you’re gay because you want to feel that acceptance from him in the rare occasions that he is here. Everyone wants to feel loved and wanted by their parents, and for someone like Frank who wasn’t even planned or...or wanted by his father...you have to see it from his point of view that the need for acceptance is so much stronger.

“If the only way he could get is father to look at him the way he probably looked at Matt who was planned, and to feel proud of him, was to take some money from you when you had your back turned, then I’m not surprised in the slightest that he did it. I know I would’ve in his position,”

I just stared at him in shock, digesting everything that he’d just said. I never knew that Mikey of all people could be so wise. I mean, he stuck a fork in a toaster!

“I can’t believe I’m actually saying this,” Lilly started, looking up at me with sympathetic eyes. “But Mikey's right,”

“I know,” I whispered looking down at the floor resting my elbows on my knees and burying my face into my hands. “But this is someone who I’ve let into my life twice and both times he’s had something hidden from me. Heck, the first time we were practically dating and he didn’t tell me something as important and actually life changing as that!”

“It was hardly life changing,”

“He lived under our floor boards Mikey! Of course it’s life changing!”

He rolled his eyes at my over-dramatics, but put yourself in my shoes and then tell me that you wouldn’t be a little over-dramatic.

“I honestly think I could deal with never seeing him again,”

“Doubtful,” Lilly cut in snorting slightly, before her eyes widened and she looked at me with a shocked look on her face. “I mean, you know, he was only gone for eight months and you were driving yourself crazy with worry. You think you don’t want to see him again, but as soon as he’s gone, you’re going to go through every single ‘what if’ out there,”

“What if?”

“Yeah, what if you’d have talked to him about it, what if you’d given him another chance,”

“Another chance to what?! Lie to me again?” I yelled standing up and pulling at my hair. It’s hard to deal with something like this when the two closest people to you in your life are against you and siding with the person responsible for making you feel like utter shit.

“I wouldn’t lie to you again,” I heard a timid voice say from the door way. I looked up to see him standing there, his left shoulder leant against the door frame, his right arm draped across his waist with that hand wrapped around the lower part of his left arm.

His face was cast downwards, his longish black hair falling forwards meaning that his face was completely hidden to me. I could just picture it though;
Those big brown eyes widened and filling with tears a little, the right side of his lip sucked into his mouth as his teeth clamped down on it to keep it in place. His cheeks were probably a red-ish colour. Not from embarrassment but instead the effort of trying to keep his tear ducts in control, refusing to let the salty trails form down his cheeks, refusing to let anyone see him properly cry.

I’d seen this face before. I’d seen it when this whole problem began, the day that Dad caught him out in the hall.