Stronger Together (bxb) ✔

Chapter 22 - Chase

For those of you who might not know Jar of Heart. Hope you enjoy the chapter! ❤

Chase's POV

"Baby bro! Where's your tent?" Jesse yells from the back of the house. I shake my head. It's already after 10 p.m. he'll wake up the whole neighbourhood if he keeps this up.

"Right here," I say, entering the walk-in closet and wriggling past him to rifle through it.

I really love camping! I used to go once a month with Mason but he slowly decreased how often we went once he started dating Aerial and then stopped all together when they got married.

I miss hanging out with him, especially our camping trips. But I get it, priorities change. Of course we talk a lot on the phone and there is the occasional visit but it's not quite the same.

When Jesse and Bryan get more serious, I wonder if Jesse is going to stop hanging out with me and our relationship will be reduced to phone calls and the occasional visits. I quickly dismiss that thought because I'm way too amped up right now to dwell on that. I really love camping! And even though it's only in our backyard, I'm still really excited!

I pull out the four person tent that we bought ages ago when Mason, Justin, Jesse and I decided that we should all go camping together. We've used it maybe 3 times and it has been collecting dust for the last year.

"Great! And the sleeping bags?" Jesse says as he takes the tent from me.

I rummage through the closet again. "Hmmm I only see two. Can you share with Shawn?" I ask Jesse, tugging on the sleeping bag wedged into the corner of the closet.

"Of course! We'll also need to grab some blank-" Jesse burst out laughing as the sleeping bag I am tugging comes tumbling out of the cramped corner it was shoved into and I go crashing to the floor. "You ok?" He asks between laughs.

I roll my eyes and take his outstretched hand so that he can help me to my feet. I grab the other sleeping bag, which was much easier to pry free, and follow Jesse out of the room. We dump the stuff in the living room next to Shawn, who from the overly cheesy stuff he's saying is talking to his boyfriend Dean.

Jesse heads to the bedroom to get some blankets and I go to the kitchen to get the marshmallows, gram crackers and chocolate. While there I start cutting up some hot dogs, burgers, onions and sweet pepper and shoving them onto skewers.

"Hey, want some help?" Shawn inquires. He doesn't even wait for me to answer and immediately goes to the sink to wash his hands before coming over to help.

"Thanks," I tell him. I bite my bottom lip as I work up the courage to apologize to Shawn. "And I'm sorry for being a terrible friend! I'm sorry for ignoring you. That was an awful thing for me to do. Thank you for coming today with hardly any notice and for being so supportive. It honestly meant so much." I was a complete jerk to Shawn and he's honestly been nothing but an angel. There are no words to express how grateful I am to him and how sorry I feel for blocking him out.

When I told him what happened I was a mess, like I am every time I think about that night. But Shawn was super sweet!

Since Jesse informed him that I still can't deal with people touching me, he brought one of those giant foam fingers and used that to stroke my head, arm or back when I was talking. It was very silly but in a weird way it helped. I started focusing more on the ridiculousness of his antics than on reliving the horrors and that helped calm me.

"Don't be sorry and you don't need to thank me! You had a lot on your plate and besides that's what best friends are for! I'm here for you whenever you need me." Shawn replies cheerily with a wide smile plastered to his face and I can't help but return his smile. How did I get lucky enough to have both Shawn and Jesse in my life!