It Started in a Coffee Shop

Christmas break and I didn't go to Evan's (he begged but I was actually homesick after over a year. I needed my old room and my old books and my old friends and my parents making dinner). I'm in a funk and goddammit, I need to go home.

***

But he was there.

And he was everything I missed about being home.

It all came crashing down around me, like the waves when the water's too rough and your feet can't touch the bottom.

Because he was long nights and dumb high school parties and breaking curfew and an arm wrapped around my shoulder as we walked side by side. He was the fingers knitted between mine as I rode shotgun.

He was my favorite song and my favorite shade of blue and my favorite flannel button-up (that's actually his flannel button-up but it's in the bottom of my drawer in the dresser in my apartment).

He was that time we went skinny dipping at 2am, and that time we got lost in the woods, and that time we almost rolled his jeep, and that time we drank too much and I threw up in the back seat. I cried and he still said I was beautiful.

He was saying goodbye and crying myself to sleep. He was I never knew anything could ever hurt this much.

I see blue eyes and dark hair and it all just takes me like a flood and pulls me under until I can't fucking breathe. He goes down on me in my bedroom as the Christmas party continues down the hall (of course we'll have a little party, you're finally home, everyone's missed you, mom says) and they drink their drinks and eat their snacks and laugh at Jim Carrey as the Grinch. And he kisses me like we're sixteen and it's the first time again.

And I let him. Because I miss him, I miss him, I miss him. I am homesick. And he is home.

Two weeks later and Corey says goodbye with a soft smile teasing at the corners of his mouth and my arms ache to be around him but I don't think I should touch him. So I don't.

***

Going back is hard. It's like going back to a different life (it is a different life, a different me, with a different guy and different friends and a different home). And it's almost like I don't want to. I don't want to sit in my little apartment on my pull out couch and read dumb books and I don't want to make people coffee every fucking day and I don't want to take tests and I don't want to go to dumb clubs and I don't want to go to walk the streets and not recognize anyone. And it's completely obvious, isn't it, that the main thing that I absolutely do not want to do is see Evan's face.

I don't want to see Evan's face beaming at me like I'm the best damn thing in the world and he fucking missed me so much and I don't want to see the snowflakes settle in his dumb copper hair and I don't want to see his fucking dimples when he smiles at me and I don't want to taste his lips when he bends down to kiss me. I can't fucking take it, I can't, I can't.

But I guess I'm a good liar, good at faking body language, because as I'm cringing and screaming and crying and about to fucking throw up on the inside, Evan can't even tell. And that kicks up the self loathing about 20 more notches.

My first night back and we celebrate in my bed with him on top of me and he can't even tell, doesn't even know that another dick was just inside me, so I fake it that night (he can't even tell, really?) and a few hours later, he's snoring softly beside me and a tear drops from my eye and I don't dare make a sound.