Relapse (Short Story)

***Hello all! This is a temporary creative detour. Hope you enjoy it! PS- Italicized quotes denote mental conversations.*** ;)

Relapse
Part 1

“Aww, are you sure?”

Red in the face, I smiled at the over-made up girl and nodded. “Yeah, sorry.”

“Well, okay then. Maybe another time.”

I felt my shoulders go limp with relief the moment she walked away. No matter how many people – men and women – asked me out, I wasn’t used to so much attention. My crazy popularity of my junior year at this college was too new. Even though I was a nicely tanned, well-toned, six-foot – okay, almost six foot – blond, in my mind I was still this pale, shaved-head, prefer-a-corner emo. During my freshman year, people used to walk around the tall, scary tower that slumped around the halls with his hands in his pockets. Nothing about me invited social interaction whatsoever, and I never welcomed it.
A bony elbow dug me in the ribcage.

“Ow!” I looked up to see Lyle sitting next to me, a smile on his freckled face and his face in his hand. As usual, I couldn’t clearly see his eyes with those long brown and blond bangs in his face. I think he used his hair in an attempt to cover those hated freckles.

“Would you watch those bony-knobs of yours?” I said to him.

He waggled his eyebrows. “Speaking of knobs….”

I rolled my eyes ceiling-ward. “Here we go.”

“Brenden, come on!” He watched me stuff my textbooks and binders back into my shoulder bag. “Those double D’s were only a fraction of a fraction of an inch away from your eyeballs and you seriously didn’t notice?”

“Move your foot.”

Lyle looked down and noticed his black Nike was on the assignment sheet that had just fallen off my desk. He lifted his shoe long enough for me to retrieve it. “Sorry.”

When I sat back up, I noticed Joe standing behind him with both his hands in the pocket of his black hoodie. He wasn’t pale, but his black hair and dark clothes made him appear that way. People were surprised how normal he looked in “normal” clothes. He reminded me of my old self – except he was much more approachable. He’d put his black Orioles cap on the moment class ended and his head was lowered so I couldn’t see anything but his thin lips. He was smiling.

“You’re not about to start, too, are you?” I asked him.

He was quiet for a long minute, long enough to lull me into a false sense of security. I’d just gotten my stuff packed and was rising from my desk when he spoke.

“She asked me to give you her phone number,” he said.

I sighed and turned my back on the piece of paper he stuck out at me. These guys were my close friends. They knew I’d take two bullets to save their clown asses, but I was ready to wrap my hands around their necks for trying to set me up with all these women. Probably two a day. Every day for the last month. How the hell could I tell them I was gay without making our friendship weird? My rising popularity was too tenuous for any extreme revelations just yet.

“Brenden!”

They caught up to me halfway down the dark, brick corridor. Joe took up a place on my left while Lyle got my right. I kept walking, offering weak smiles to the all passing people I knew. There were more and more every day.

“Guys, I’m busy,” I said. “You know I’m almost working full-time now. I don’t really have time for a girlfriend.”

“There’s always time for that,” Joe said.

“Pri-or-it-eeees!” Lyle snatched the paper from Joe’s hand and shook it in front of my nose. “I’m telling you! I’ve heard things about this girl.” He looked behind us then leaned toward my ear. “Word is she could suck the skin off a SlimJim and leave the meat intact.”

Joe sputtered into reluctant laughter. “What?”

I looked at Lyle, my nose wrinkled with disgust. “I don’t even want to think about what that means.”

He shrugged. “I’m just saying! She’ll give ya relief even if you don’t even want to go out.”

I laughed, but it was partly from frustration. “Lyle, I –!”

My “I” was drawn out when my gaze landed on a familiar face in the crowd outside. I stopped and stared at Aren sitting on a picnic tabletop with three other guys. Even with the dark sunglasses, there was no doubting the long braid hanging down his right shoulder. And he looked a little out of place among those older seniors. I was betting he was a two or three years younger than all of us.

He smiled when he met my eyes and raised his hand to his mouth to take a drag from his cigarette. He was gorgeous and sexy as I’d ever seen him, and it hurt my heart to remember. I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing when I reopened them he’d be gone. And sure enough he’d vanished when I looked back up…as much as I wished otherwise.

Fuck, I thought. I’m relapsing.

“Brenden?”

“Ah.” I started walking again and waved back at Lyle and Joe with a nervous smile. “Sorry, guys! I’ve got to get some lunch before next class. I’ll see you later.”

“What was that?” I heard Lyle ask Joe.

I imagined Joe just shrugged.

I rushed to my silver Jetta in the nearby parking lot and popped two Xanax the moment I was seated and locked in. I did NOT want to go back on anti-psych meds. Not again. I’d just gotten off them!

“You’re not going crazy.”

I expected to see Aren in my rearview mirror when I slowly lifted my head, but I was glad to see he there wasn’t this time. One of the few times I heard him without seeing him.

“Yes, I am,” I muttered. Not that it mattered. I refused to go back to that hospital to be put on all those anti’s –antidepressants, antipsychotics, antiwhatevers – that left me in a worse state than I would have been without them. I’d get through this my own way even if it killed me.

And not only that. These new delusions were what had given me my recent boost in confidence. Having the old, smiling Aren I loved returned to me made me happy. When I was happy, I became more confident and sociable. People were naturally drawn to that quiet confidence – especially after my makeover. Having him back just made me feel more like myself again.

I smiled. These new delusions were much better than the harsh, angry voices that used to blame me for not dying with him. Those voices blamed me for not being faithful enough to join him. Sometimes I even heard Aren call me “unfaithful” for not caring enough about him to commit suicide or for even thinking about moving on to another man to get past my pain. His voice was often the cruelest.

But now…. I was still smiling at the rearview mirror. Unlike those times, Aren was more real in my head now – smiling, teasing me and acting so Aren-like that I could swear he occupied the same space as me. I felt him almost like a physical presence, and while I loved that, sometimes the intensity intimidated me. There was actually a day when I swore I felt him touch me, which was impossible. Unless I was crazy. So how long would it be before I completely lost my mind and believed he was alive again?

Would that be such a bad thing?

I didn’t think how I must have looked just sitting there in my car smiling moronically at my rearview mirror, but I felt two kinds of stupid when a knock on my window jolted me from thought. Brey Alderney was leaning against my car with one arm on the roof while a black helmet was wedged under his other arm. He’d ridden his motorcycle today even as cold as it was. Like everyone else, he was glad for the first day of sun we’d had all week. He smiled down at me but it was a concerned smile.

I rolled down the window and returned a flustered smile even as my stomach made two flip-flops. I kept my lips tightly shut to keep all the saliva in my mouth.

Oh my God, I thought. Brey Alderney is smiling. At me! Now I knew I was certifiable. Last year he never even glanced at me. This year…yeah, he was more polite but he never went out of his way to talk with me one-on-one. I must have looked pretty out of it for him to approach me like this.

As usual, he was looking good in his black and red leather jacket, black boots and red bandana. His sepia and blood-red streaked bangs peeked out from beneath the carmine material. As often as he colored his hair, I figured that brownish color must have been real since he never colored his small goatee. I squinted when the line of piercings in his left ear glinted in the sunlight, some sparkling because of the diamonds, others just shining because of the highly polished silver.

“Hey, Brenden, is anything wrong?” he asked.

“Nah, I’m just fighting a headache. I’ll feel better after I grab something.”

His eyes shifted to the bottle of pills still wedged between my legs.

“Ah.” I cringed and shoved them back in the bag on the passenger seat. “I, uh…these aren’t –”

He laughed. “Yeah, guess I’d be smiling, too, if I took two of those.”

I chuckled weakly. “Heh, yeah. They aren’t Tylenol but whatever.”

“Hmm.” He glanced down at his boots then back up at me. “Well, hey. I guess you wanna leave now.”

“Oh yeah.” I nodded toward the highway running behind the parking lot. “I’m just headed somewhere along that stretch. Thinking…maybe McDonald’s? Um, but it’s cool if you wanna come.”

He grinned. “Oh yeah?”

I just barely managed not to gape at him as he walked around the hood of the car to join me. My heart was already fluttering with elated nervousness, but there was just this…look in his coffee-and-milk eyes that threw me off. The usually light color somehow darkened to a deep chocolate as he moved – eyes steady on my face. Aren’s eyes had been that dark chocolate.

Damn it, I thought. Not now!

I blinked and turned away to throw my bag in the backseat. When Brey joined me in the car, his eyes were back to a polite, normal brown. I knew had to be imaging all of this. He was just being friendly; he wasn’t interested in me sexually. Everyone knew how much the football jock enjoyed sleeping and playing with women of every kind. Hell, he was teased all the time for his weird fetish for “nerdy, plump-and-petites”, as Lyle liked to call some of Brey’s past choices. There was rarely ever a woman he turned down, so I knew there was no chance of him being gay or even remotely bi.

Come on now, I said to myself. It’s just lunch. Juuust lunch. I took a deep, quiet breath to steady my fluttering heart, but it didn’t seem to matter what I told myself. My body still believed Brey was attracted to me. There had to be some reason why he was suddenly talking to me – other than attraction.

Right?