BBS one-shots

Vancat - Letter

Evan's POV

I fiddle with the piece of folded binder paper in my sweaty hands, the car AC doing nothing to aid in the overly-stressed-sweat problem. I've been sitting in my car across the street from Tyler's go-to hangout/study/breakfast/lunch/dinner spot at his friends' house. It's been 45 minutes already.

My head falls back against the head rest with a pitiful thud.

"Way to go, dumbass," I mumble to myself, staring at the small pickup truck parked across the street and huff out a half amused half manic laugh. "First you get all emotional and now you look like a stalker. Good lord what is this man doing to you."

The paper in my hands is slowly becoming more and more damp as I fiddle and play with it. Am I really doing this? Do I have to be so dramatic? This could be nicer, or even a simple text. No, he needs to know, even if he never saw it.

I sigh and slowly unfold the note I spent the better half of this morning writing and writing again. Tyler didn't come home last night, duh, he was staying over at his, our, friends' house for game night. This is tradition, I guess. So instead of watching him toss me to the side to go hang out with our mutual friends and playing into his claim that I'm ill only to go and wallow in self pity all night, I packed my half of the apartment.

It didn't take long, I mostly only needed to pack my room, all the furniture and the appliances in the apartment can be his. The rest of my time was spent writing this note.

It scares me a little bit. Telling him my most vulnerable feelings again. Only this time it's parts I don't want him to know about. But I just have to keep telling myself it's for the best, he won't bombard me with messages upon coming back to find my room empty and the house stale if he already knows why.

I readjust my sitting position, sitting in a car for nearly an hour doing nothing sure does fuck up your back, and reread for what has to be the millionth time my note to Tyler:

"The thought of loving you felt like a dream, a gentle breeze on a hot day. The way a warm cider comforts your freezing diaphragm after a late night walk to clear your head. And I embraced that feeling, that faux comfort fabricated by own imagination.  I painted you as if I were a depressed artist trying to find any reason to stay alive and you were my muse that spoke life into me through my art. I relished in the comfort of someone who didn't exist for me.

I should've known better.

I told you because I needed that comfort, we were already so close, like a pair of salt and pepper shakers you see at an antique store, clearly not part of the original set but fit so well together you can't possibly part them.

We were us. The classic duo. The ones people romanticize online wishing they were us. In every other universe our atoms and energies always found each other. It was simple and effortless and perfect.

That's what our relationship, regardless of labels like romantic or platonic, looked like to me. Like watching the most beautiful sunset from the hood of your car or a movie that will promptly change your life and smiling giddily to yourself because WOW, what a time to be alive.

And yet, I should've known better.

I should've known someone that beautiful only existed as an extent of my subconscious.

In reality it seemed you loving me has been the biggest chore, the type of task that you feel the deep guttural urge to cry over because you simply just don't want to do it; can't stomach the thought of giving it the time of day.

Because that's all I was to you, something you couldn't give the time of day. Like an old house plant that's more of a burden, more of a decoration than a living being, more of a waste of oxygen than something that feels.

I was nothing but that old childhood pet you couldn't wait to die so you could get a new one. One that's cute and young and moldable.

We were never romantic because I was a romantic, someone who wanted a reason to smile and be kind to the world. Someone who wanted to look for the beauty in dark things because of my god. Someone who wanted to be a better, happier, a more gracious and forgiving person because I had found love and acceptance and eternity.

We were never romantic because you wanted those romantic edits online to make you look like a better person. If I was happy and in love in those photos and videos then you must be a fucking dreamboat, a picture perfect being capable of making me give away my most precious and intimate heart eyes in front of an audience.

Instead I became callus. I became cautious. I had always wanted to fall head over fucking heels in love with someone recklessly. I wanted to love like my life depended on it, like you were the only thing keeping me from starving.

Instead you sucked me dry of my resources, left me to rot in our apartment. Took my happiness, my care, my love, and greedily kept it like a selfish billionaire refusing to tip their waitress. You wrung me dry of my hope and admiration for a better life, a life filled with reasons to live.

Instead of leaving me broken, left alone to pick up and painstakingly glue my pieces back together, you left me with nothing. There are no pieces left to pick up, not even dust I could desperately hold on to. You left me as a hollowed out children's bedroom, a place that once knew unconditional love and a wonder for the world that now serves as a reminded of what once was or some other pathetic self-deprecating bullshit analogy.

You didn't leave me with something I could fix, pitiful, really. Even with tireless effort to become, even distantly, something that could abstractly be me, I helplessly couldn't become my old self again.

Instead, I became you."

I wipe the tears I didn't know I shed from my chin and look back over at Tyler's truck, parked so neatly in front of their house like it belonged there.

It's almost pathetic, really, we were never officially together, never dated, and yet it feels like my world is still imploding.

I wish to find a word more specific than "situationship", because in reality, it was a relationship. Full of, fake, pining and suggestive jokes and cuddles and kisses and sex and domestic bullshit that I thought constituted a real relationship. Some of those even shining through on camera and in game sessions with our friends. He asked me to move across the country to live with him, dammit, and I fucking did. And he still acts like I'm nothing but his little temporary distraction, like a toy.

I guess I should've known better, too good to be true, right?

I feel like I don't even have the right to be crying right now, he was never violent, not physically or verbally. Everything was just emotional, like he wanted to destroy me from the inside out, kiss me then in the same breath say how he could never date me. I felt shackled.

With one more final sigh I finally scrape my sorry ass off of my car seat and out the car door. With a quick check I sprint across the road, over to Tyler's truck, and with one final mental goodbye I trap the note under his windshield wipers. I don't think I've ever run so fast as I did going back across that residential neighborhood street.

As I settle back into my drivers seat, I take one more fleeting moment to ground myself before pulling out my phone and blocking and deleting Tyler's contact.

To avoid the possible mortifying experience of Tyler seeing me in front of his friends' house, I quickly maneuver back into the road and drive off. Tears threaten to escape once again and I just let them flow, even though it's making my vision a little more blurred by the second, I couldn't care less.

I'm free now, but I still feel trapped.

I guess I should've known better, and that's a bitter pill to choke down.

A/N: Omg, me? Writing and posting something? Cringe. Sorry lol, anyway howdy y'all I died but came back to give you this one short story I made in like one hour. I made the letter portion first, just ranting in my notes app about an imaginary scene I came up with, then attempted to form a half-assed story around it, so don't be too critical, no one ever came to this story looking to be impressed by my impeccable story building worlds and poetic grammar.

Anyways, if you read the whole thing I hope you enjoyed it, and don't expect me to be a new writing fiend again, but I'll try.