White Teeth and Blue-Blooded Boys

They say there are a million and two ways to tell someone you love them, but sometimes I don't really believe it. Because if there was it would have been easier to say the things I felt; it would have been easier to love Henry.



Usually I liked parties but tonight I couldn't unhinge. Even despite the cheap alcohol provided by an older brother I was still too sober to smile like I meant it. Maybe it was because later tonight I knew the person I loved would be fucking the person I hated(I knew because Henry bragged about it on the way there, poking me in the side without looking over and chiding me about finding someone to hook up with), or maybe it was because not even a room away Theo and Henry were shoulder to shoulder and apparently in deep conversation. This usually wouldn't have made me hide behind a bumbling pair of people trying to dance but since there was alcohol flowing through both their veins - well, let's just say alcohol isn't called the truth serum for nothing. Theo was a classic example of that uncle who gets drunk and becomes way to sappy and personal even if he hasn't seen you since you were in diapers. He was an over-sharer of things you didn't want anyone else to know. So to say I was worried was an understatement.

Henry, on the other hand, was a quite drunk. Instead of embarrassing himself by thinking he could dance, he lingered on the edges of parties and looked in. Sometimes I thought he was in his own little world, having conversations with the things inside his head. He was fidgety, too; played with the ends of his sleeves until they were frayed in the morning, or ran his hands through his hair more than necessary. I found it endearing, actually, and had to pretend I wasn't smiling at him but at the people who tried to talk to me. Which was hard because Henry was adorable to begin with but then with the added pink-flushed cheeks and augmented pupils that made him look like a doe and the childlike amazement that he looked around the room with, it was like my heart was a shitty swimmer in a pool of affection.

Anyway, so I tried to keep half of my focus on Henry and Theo and the other on the people around me. Half were already drunk, stumbling and apologizing to couches and the other half were just slightly tipsy; enough to dance without that background worry of embarrassing yourself. I felt a light tug on my elbow and turned even though I didn't want to, coming eye to top-of-head with Sophia.

"Are you having a good time?" She asked genuinely, sloshing around a cup of beer(Sophia was a beer drinker instead of a wine cooler girl like all of Henry's others).

"Yeah, thanks." I tried to keep the anxiousness out of my voice.

"Oh hey, have you seen Henry by any chance?"

That was the only time I was thankful for Sophia being a clingy girlfriend, so I nodded and pointed her towards the kitchen. She smiled and left with a wave, and I turned my back towards them because I wasn't in the mood to see them suck face in the middle of her kitchen. I didn't want to see Theo's reaction, either, because he was way too honest when he was drunk and he'd give me that stupid apologetic face and the last thing I wanted was for people to be sorry for me. I hated people feeling sorry for me, it was like they didn't think I couldn't grow a pair and deal.

(Maybe I couldn't but no one needed to know that).

People feeling sorry for me was a waste because them feeling sorry for me wasn't going to change anything; even if a million people told Henry what he was putting me through it wouldn't change anything. People feeling sorry for you was a shitty way of them trying to help without doing anything to actually help. It was them trying to tell you they understood without actually understanding.

"You okay?" I looked away from the inside of my cup and saw it was Theo.

I groaned, not wanting pity from him either, so I shook my head and said "yeah, I'm fine."

"Well if you need me, let me know?"

Sometimes I felt bad for being the way we were because Theo was too kind for random hookups, I thought that he deserved more than that; that he deserved to be loved in the same expanse that he was capable of loving people. It just wasn't me and I wondered if I was holding his life back but he always told me no, that he liked being this way with me, so eventually I'd just drop the topic and go back to not thinking about it.

Theo wandered off after I assured him I'd come find him if I needed to and I found an unoccupied chair outside on the deck to sit on. I felt the beat of the music thud into my bones and wondered how long it'd take to die from an irreversibly broken heart.

It must have been the fact that the black inked sky was smiling down at me with twinkling teeth and that the wind smelled like lost inhibitions, drunken mistakes and the things that made boys heartbreakers.



I spent what felt like a few hours outside by myself, sipping at my drink and watching people who wouldn't remember each other's names in the morning wander off into the woods. The itch at the back of my mind about what Henry and Theo talked about was now just a tingle and I could ignore it. I stared at the stars and tried to see some constellations, but all I saw was the big dipper and the others were just lines that didn't form shapes. Kind of how I felt, I thought, that I was just made up of stars that didn't shape into anything significant; just outlines of something you couldn't make out.

I was starting to feel sorry for myself but I got over that back when I was fourteen and came to the decision that Henry was never going to love me back, so I stood up to leave and was halfway through the sliding door when someone called my name from behind. It was Henry, standing at the bottom of the steps leading to the deck, smiling the way I knew meant he was drunk.

"Hey," I said casually, like I wasn't just thinking about him.

"Help me up there," he mumbled, gesturing with shaky hands to the deck and the chair I was just sitting on.

He was still my best friend so I looped my arm around his waist and walked him up the stairs, grabbing his chest when he stumbled twice, and pushing him onto the chair. His head fell backwards and I could see the blue veins straining against his skin and I looked away, trying to not imagine the bruises I'd leave there.

"C'mon, sit with me." He patted the seat by his side without looking at me.

I sat, leaned back and expected the silence to persist until Henry hiccuped and said what I hoped would never leave his mouth.

"So, you and that Theo kid, huh?"

I shook my head in frenzied re-con mode and hoped he was either A) too drunk to remember in the morning or B) so drunk that when I told him it wasn't true he'd believe me. (It turned out to be neither but I didn't know that yet).

"Don't lie, Ansel, I know," he sing-songed, trying to pat my shoulder in that "atta boy" way but accidentally patting me in that "that actually hurt" way.

"You're drunk, you don't know what you heard," I tried, looking back up at the sky because Henry had an impeccable way of knowing I was lying just by looking at my eyes.

"No, shh," he put his finger against my lips and I tried to stop them from trembling, "it's okay, it's cool. He's good looking anyway, I don't blame you."

He laughed in that drunk, giggly way and I wanted to still be mad at him but I couldn't. I just prayed that everything that happened tonight would be a haze and that the conversations he had would sound like the parents in the Peanuts.