Ever After

Running Away

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This chapter is in Mark's perspective.

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Apparently, I'd struck a chord with both Jack and his family, for they were all sharing expressions, ones that weren't nearly as friendly as the ones I'd been seeing just seconds ago. I couldn't wrap my head around it – was I being a rude guest? Had I done something wrong? Was it something I said?

There were a few unsettling seconds before anyone decided to speak, and the person who spoke was Jack's father, seeing as Jack couldn't move his lips to form the words himself.

"What... what did he just say?" he questioned.

"He's just jokin'," Jack stifled a laugh.

"No wonder you two have seen each other naked!" his sister exclaimed, slamming her hands down against the hardwood.

"I already told you that that was a change room incident," he snapped.

"Please. It was the same thing with Felix."

"Felix!?" his father roared. "What the hell happened with Felix!?"

"Nothing happened!" Jack reasoned, although even I knew it wasn't true. He turned to face his sister, a cold expression on his face (that'd been calm but seconds ago). "We were just friends."

"Friends," she scoffed again. "Friends like you and Mark, I suppose?"

His mother opened her mouth to interject, her face turning just as red as Jack's, as if they both were biting back tears (to which Jack would say "curse my mother's emotional hormones!"). I didn't know how to identify her expression, couldn't tell whether she was upset, confused, or – possibly and maybe in the slightest bit – happy.

"We've never kissed!" he yelled. "I am not like that – I have a girlfriend!"

"Like hell you have a girlfriend. You never talk about her and get flustered when you do. But," his sister added, pointing at me with her fork, "you bring him up all the time."

I felt myself blush as I was brought back into the conversation – Jack talked about me all the time?

"As friends," Jack grimaced. "We're just friends."

"No, we're not."

A silence rose from the table, one that silenced the argument between him and his sister, the practical steam pouring out of his mother's head, the sound of his father's eyes darting back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball. I knew what everyone was looking at, what'd caught their attention, what'd turned the tables a bit more than one would suspect.

Of course, they were looking at me.

Jack's look was different than theirs, the kind that kind of demanded and begged for me to shut up at the same time – it was a look he gave me often, really, the one beside the look that said "just trust me" and the other that said "God, isn't he beautiful?" (unless that was just how I saw it). In reply to his angry stare, I smiled, trying to go about this calmly and quietly – if there was anything I'd learned from living in Ireland for a handful of months, it was that being the nerdy kid could no longer be a thing – you had to be obnoxious and roll with the punches, just like everybody else.

"I don't really know how to talk about it, to be honest," I said, finding honesty to be a good way to start, "and I think it's pretty obvious that Jack doesn't, either. It's not something that's easy to talk about, really – not at all."

My smile turned to his mother, who was leaning in with all of the others, just as unsure of where this was going as I was.

"Do you remember when your kids were young enough to be scared of monsters?" I asked her. "You know. When they hid in the closet, shut their eyes, and counted to ten kind of thing?"