I've missed you [boyxboy]

Chapter 9

I'VE MISSED YOU

• CHAPTER 9 •

Previous chapter:

"Jake, what do you mean? I don't understand."

He looked up from his hands and stared directly at my eyes, I could feel his pain just from making eye contact.

"I-uh... It's just that... You were h-hurt..." His voice cracked at the word hurt and more tears came down from his pained eyes.

"I-I saw your... y-your scars."

• • •

Jake Hunter, the guy who was my best friend, who I fell in love with and pushed away from, the guy who could make me go from pissing angry to syrupy sweet just by making eye contact with me, saw the scars on my body. The scars that were a permanent reminder of the hell I had to endure by the hands of four sons of a bitch, the scars that marked me and made me feel like a disgusting and deformed monster.

Jake saw them... And he wasn't disgusted, instead he cried. He cried out of concern even though I brutally threw his friendship away without giving any explanation. His reaction wasn't what I expected, it was like my Jakey never left.

The emotions inside me were strong and very contradicting. It felt awful to see Jake crying because of me, but it also felt nice to know that he still cared for me. The balancing of those two emotions ended up numbing me. But thinking about my scars added up to the negative side of the equation and I couldn't stop myself from remembering...

Two years ago my life took an unexpected turn, a horrible one.

Since I was a kid my parents got me into swimming lessons, mostly for my safety saying it was important to know how to swim. At first I loathed it, but after a while I started enjoying it more and more; so it went from a simple need, to a hobbie, to a passion.

I kept on swimming since then, I won several competitions and even made it to compete against other states. In Middle School I joined the Swimming Team right away, and became the capitain and the best swimmer we had.

I was fourteen then, months away from turning fifteen. It was in my last year of Middle School and I was about to enter High School. It was a warm April evening when it happened.

Coach asked me to stay a little longer after practice to check some arrangements about an up coming competition against a rival school. Once we finished sorting out who was compiting which event and who had to add more practice hours to his schedule, we left the school. When we reached the parking lot he asked me if someone was picking me up, or if a needed a ride. I told him that I could walk since my house was just 10 minutes away. After saying our goodbyes, he drove off and I started walking.

I looked at my phone and it read 18:38. Coach and I surely lost track of time since practice ended at 5:00 and I was in his office by 5:15. I wasn't that surprised, though. We had to come up with a need strategy because two of our best swimmers couldn't compete, one was injured and the other had some important family event on the competition's date. So Coach and I had to build a new strategy taking in consideration the strengths and weaknesses of everybody; we also studied the strategies of our rivals from past competitions looking for anything we could use against them. It was like playing chess, but after several attempts, we got an arrangement what could give us a high chance to win, even without two of our best swimmers. So I wasn't too surprised that it took us almost an hour and a half.

As I was walking, I remembered that both my parents wouldn't be at home until later at night, so instead of turning left towards my house, I went right in direction to Chris'. I texted telling him that I'd be at his house in 20 minutes. Chris and I were good friends already and neither of us needed an invitation to the other's house, we just showed up.