These Fading Nights

Well fucking great. Now I have to deal with Jaime’s tool of a boyfriend.

“Wait what are you doing here?” I heard Mike ask someone at the door.

“Mike, He’s here for me.” I answered his question while Tony just kind of looked at me scornfully. I can tell he didn’t want to be here and I didn’t really want him here, but this project is worth a lot and I don’t want to fail this class.

“You guys aren’t –“ Mike tried to ask.

“No!” Tony and I said at the exact same moment. How could Mike even think that we were even-. No. Tony Perry and I would never…. I don’t even know.

I explained to Mike that he was here for our English project and we went up to my room to work on it.

“You can sit down.” I said pointing to a chair in the corner of the room. I went to the other side of my bed and grabbed my laptop.

“Oh shit. I’ll be right back.” He called as he fled from the room. What a fucking freak. He did look kind of cute as he- what the fuck am I thinking? Tony Perry is not ‘cute’.

When he came back he showed me a single black paint marker.

“Marker? For what?” I asked confused as to why he needed a marker.

“For the visual you dumb fuck.” He answered like I was incapable of understanding the English language. I probably still looked confused.

“Okay it looks like I have to explain it to you. This,” He said as he pulled out a thick paint marker from his pocket, “is a paint marker, and I use it to draw and write. I am going to use it to make the family tree look cool. Okay?” He said it really slowly like I was a child. He told me to find the first Greek spelling on my computer so he could see how to write it.

It actually looked really sick, honestly I would have thought that Tony was like really dumb and barely gets through school. I guess people can surprise you.

It was starting to get late when Tony finally said he thought we should call it a night. I offered him food but he refused and walked out to his car.

I walked him to the door and waved him off, I couldn’t tell if he waved back or even saw me wave, whatever. I walked back into the house and sat on the couch next to Mike.

“So?” he asked.

“What?”

“Do you still hate the kid?” He asked honestly curious.

I didn’t know what to say, I couldn’t say no because I was starting to not hate the guy, but I didn’t ‘like’ him. Or did I?

“I don’t know man, it’s just- I don’t know dude.” I couldn’t put my feelings into words, I couldn’t even organize my thoughts.

“C’mon Vic. I know you want to talk about it dude.” He nudged me.

“Well… He’s actually a pretty decent guy, I would be lying if I said that I couldn’t stand him. I just don’t think that we could ever be friends because I don’t know if he feels the same way, plus he probably knows about me and his ‘boyfriend’. So I don’t know man.”

“Stop being a bitch and just ask him! To like hang out or something other than work on that project. Put up the white flag bro.” Mike is a really smart kid, and he actually gave really good advice. Maybe I should talk to Tony and try to be friends, but I wasn’t going to give up on Jaime. EVER.