Between Hello and Goodbye

Chapter 2: And hope to die

Here's chapter two! The above picture should be what Gage looks like.

Dreams were a scary thing.

They held our deepest darkest secrets, and told us things about ourselves and our feelings that we tended to hide from the world. Freud, under my assumption, stated that dreams always had a sexual undertone or in better terms were our inner most desires. My other assumption was that Sigmund Freud just had an unhealthy obsession with sex; something I couldn't relate to. Unlike Sigmund, my dreams were dangerous things, plaguing my mind with anxiety and what ifs. I always believed that my dreams were constantly trying to tell me something or were some sort of self-reflection, a reflection I was too scared to look into. Dreams held the power to mean anything and nothing at the same time, an ability that, in retrospect, also worried me.

Unfortunately, I wasn't in a dream.

The weight on my stomach was very real, so real that I was scared to look down at the soft tendrils of hair my fingers were interlaced in. I ran my hand through the silky locks, my vision being filled with nothing but strawberry blonde hair as I tilted my head down. The sounds of soft breathing filled my ears, my chest moved the head in front of me up and down with each inhale and exhale of my lungs. Nerves got the best of me as my heart started to beat a little faster, anxiety creeping from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. A phrase repeated silently within my head like a mantra, something I wanted to say out loud, but it would have disturbed the boy resting on the lower half of my body.

Gage is my best friend

Gage is my best friend

GAGE. IS. MY. BEST. FRIEND.

The chanting in my head felt all too real, the words silently screamed over and over in my head reminding me that the body on top of mine was very real. The fact, in the back of my mind, that no matter how hard I tried, the scene in front of me was not a dream. I wasn't going to miraculously wake up and pretend it was all a joke between friends.

This was real.

Looking down at the soft locks of hair held gently between my fingers, I watched as my best friend unconsciously snuggled into my stomach releasing a satisfied exhale, my cheeks warming up at the sight. The urge to spring up from the bed settled deeply into my bones, but I knew that if I did it would shed a light on the current situation we were both in. Was I ready to address Gage's changes in his actions towards me? To address that what we were doing were not the actions of two male best friends? Everything in my life, that had included Gage, had become so confusing yet so exhilarating at the same time. For the first time in my entire existence someone had touched me so gently that the feeling of Gage wrapping his arms around me, and telling me that he would never leave me, brought silent tears to my eyes.

His actions over the course of the summer, before our senior year, had thrown me for a loop, warping the image of the boy that had become my first and only friend when we had started our freshman year. Walking through the halls of our high school had been the most anxiety riddled experience of my young life, a smile touched my face at the life changing memory.

Three years ago, I had carried all of my things in my arms to my new locker, so that I could seal the fact that I had finally entered high school, quickly moving into another stage of my life; another chapter of my story. A junior had run by, probably on a dare, and knocked all of my supplies out of my arms, my first time setting foot in Brindlewood High and all of my locker stuff was spread all over the hallway.

All I could do in that moment was just stare in defeat at my things sprawled across the floor, my hands clenching into fist as my eyes threatened to spill tears of frustration and embarrassment. But it was high school and you didn't cry on your first day, so I had fallen to my knees slowly picking up what was left of my dignity from that white tile floor. My face burned brightly at the feeling of the eyes of each student that passed by the supplies sprawled out before me, the feeling of wanting to disappear coming to the forefront of my mind.