My One and Lonely

If I hadn’t heard him laughing, I think it would have been okay. I would have been able to convince myself of something, anything other than the fact that he was playing with my emotions.

The boy’s bathroom that I run into just happened to be the closest one but it works out extremely well for me. This is the bathroom that has the door that connects to the outside. It is the one that has the outdoor track directly on the other side of the wall. I guess the door is there for the track team to have easy access to a restroom. I guess. In either case, I push open the chipped, gray painted door and step onto the concrete on the other side.

I’m at the bottom of the metal staircase when I hear the door open, a long, slow, metallic creak. I know who it is before I turn around. My heart is in my throat. I want so badly for it to be Frank, but at the same time I know that no good can come from him having followed me out here.

The feeling that floods over me as in look into his face is overwhelming. If he didn’t care about me, at least a little bit, he wouldn’t have come looking for me. Would he?

In my mind I know that he doesn’t care. I don’t know why he’s out here right now, but I know that he doesn’t care. My heart screams at me to shut up, that I don’t know why he’s here, but he’ll tell me. My heart says trust him, that he won’t hurt me. My head says that it’s bullshit.

“Gerard.” Frank says loudly as my head wins the argument and I turn, continue walking down the stairs.

“Gerard!” He repeats, more urgently this time. I stop, I feel myself hesitate a little before turning back around to meet his eyes.

“Frank.” I say, hoping it came out as coolly and without emphasis as I wanted it to. He begins to walk down the stairs, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. I feel my eyes focus on the orange stitching around the pockets. Frank finally reaches the point that I’m at on the staircase. He takes a quick look around the area and is certain that we are alone.

“Gerard, why did you run out like that? I wasn’t trying to do anything, you know? I just heard that you liked me and I thought you wouldn’t mind me flirting a little bit. I’m sorry if that was too forward of me, I just didn’t know. I wasn’t sure. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.” His focus begins to waver as his eyes flicker all over the place. His voice goes from steady and smooth to a mild stammer and I watch as his eyes take on a glassy sheen.

Please don’t let him cry, I think to myself. I know that if he cries, it’s all over. Seeing those eyes so shiny and shedding crystal tears would probably kill me. Or at least make me give him whatever it is that he wants. Really. Absolutely anything.

My heart breaks at the way he’s looking up at me. Full bottom lip trembling and his
eyebrows knit close together.

“I don’t know why I left.” I say, which isn’t entirely untrue. I mean, I know that I’m glad I left, especially after the way he started laughing when I got out of there. But what made me leave?

It can’t have been the looks between Frank and my brother. Can it? But I know Mikey was angry about something, the way that look had just flashed across his face like a
thunderstorm approaching on a clear sky.

The more I think about it, the more Frank is staring at me, my silence beginning to make him uneasy.

And then it hits me.

“Why now?”

“What?” Frank asks, looking genuinely confused.

“I just… why now? Why have you been here for like a month and never talked to me at all? You’re over at my house every day with Mikey and you never talk to me there either. What made you do it? What is so different about today?”

Frank pushes his hands deeper into his pockets.

“I heard that you like guys, and I wasn’t sure about it before, but I heard it, and I just thought… You know I do too, right?”

I nod slowly.

Frank pushes his shoe along the bumpy concrete. It makes a sound not unlike a child running with one of those red wagons full of toys.

“So…”

I’m staring at him again as he speaks but this time he doesn’t give me that look.

“I like you, Frank.” Frank smiles.

“I know.”

I don’t even have time to process that comment in my head before he has me pressed up against the solid brick wall, hands on my chest and tongue pushing past my lips. His kisses are heavy and very open mouthed. The harshness of the bricks against the back of my head seems to correlate nicely with the roughness of his hands. He pushes his hips towards mine. Slowly at first, but pretty soon he is keeping in constant contact with my lower body. I can feel how hard he is through his jeans.

I know I’m breathing hard and so is he, breathing through his nose since his tongue and teeth are still launching their attack on my mouth and my neck.

He pulls back, looks up at me with such darkly clouded, heavily lidded eyes and I am made immediately aware of what he’s asking of me.

I take both of my hands off of his shoulders and bring them to his waist, or more accurately his belt buckle. I fumble with it for a minute, but soon enough it is undone and I unzip his jeans. I feel the tremor run though his entire body as I pull him out of his pants. The heat that I now hold in my hand travels directly to my groin.

“Do something.” He whispers and I do. I move my hand, slowly at first but soon picking up
speed. He brings one of his hands from the brick wall and rubs at me through my jeans. I moan loudly and he cuts the sound off with his mouth.

He continues to rub, while I continue pumping my hand, my wrist starting to ache very much from the lack of space in which I have to maneuver. He is leaning against me, his hips rocking back and forth. His mouth is open, lips touching mine, but he is breathing too heavily to only breathe through his nose anymore. I feel like I’m breathing for him the way our mouths are positioned, like I’m breathing my own life directly into his body.

It is with that thought coursing through my veins that I shudder and come. Feeling me finish, he does the same. He pulls my hand out of his pants and brings it to my mouth. I lick everything off that I can and the look that he gives me is one that I can’t even attempt to read.

“I gotta go.” He says and turns to walk up the stairs, pausing only to tuck himself back into his pants and zip them up.

There are so many words bouncing around in my head right now, so many things that I could say. I can’t pick one.

“Frank, wait.” That should work.

He turns back and looks at me, his eyebrows raised yet again, and his lips red and swollen.

Whatever I was about to say is lost.

“Never mind.”

He does. He leaves and suddenly I feel like I’m back in the cafeteria. I feel like I’m back in the cafeteria and he’s still laughing. Only this time, I won’t be around to hear it.