BROKEN GLASS. TOM KAULITZ

xxi . avoid

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I'M AVOIDING TOM AND CHRIS, and Mom and Dad have decided to send me to a real live shrink. Like, they've set up an appointment and everything, even though I still do my homework and I haven't missed one goddamn day of school.

I can't figure it out. It's not like I binged on crystal meth, went crazy and shaved my head. I cut my hair and our dog got hurt.

So I trail Jaden through the halls because I want to know how he does it. I'm not fooled for a second, not even with the haircut. The guy's practically dying in plain sight and everyone leaves him alone. I want that.

It takes three days for him to realize he's being shadowed. It all comes to a spectacular end when he makes a rough left turn and a sudden stop in the middle of the hall and I crash into him and my history books scatter all over the floor. The jig is up.

"Why are you following me?" he asks, bending down to retrieve my books. I rip them out of his hands. "Why have you been following me?"

"I-,"

Wish I had liquid courage. My heart thuds in my chest and I can't even do that neat thing where I make myself get angry instead of anxious. He stares at me, wary and expectant.

"Why are you back?" I finally manage.

"Why do you care?"

The only thing I can think to do is shake my head at him, and he's not interested in letting me waste his time, so he turns and goes the other way and I've got more pride than to chase after him, so I head back the way I came and crash right into someone — second time today my history books go flying.

"Jesus." Not Jesus. Tom. He bends down and grabs my books.

"Great, thanks," I mutter, avoiding his eyes. Figures now all that anxiety would turn straight to rage. "What were you doing, following me? Were you just waiting for the opportunity to-,"

He holds out my books without a word.

I grab them, but he doesn't let go.

"Let go," I say, tugging at them. "Give them to me." His grip on my books tightens. His knuckles go white.

I grit my teeth and make myself look at him because that's what he wants. His eyes are soft and his face is rough. The same clenched jaw look he gave me when I left his house. His eyes saying, 'I love you', and the rest of him saying, 'Fuck you.'

"It's not going to work," I grumble. He releases the books. I clutch them to my chest and let him be the one who moves on.

He passes me, close. I can smell him and for a second I think I'm in his bedroom again and his hand is trailing my cheek, my neck.

In his bedroom where he kisses me and I sort of forget everything that came before it and everything that will have to come after. In his bedroom where I enjoy every single clumsy kiss and it surprises me, how I feel about it. How I feel about him...

By the time we finished, it's not that I'm —

I mean, I don't know what I am, so we do it again and later I realize it wasn't that I was happy, it was that I wasn't heavy, that there were these brief moments where the thing I make sure I live with wasn't in every breath in and out.