In My Hour of Need

Chapter 7

I stepped out of the coffee which was all over the floor, both of my hands still held in front of my mouth. I didn't know what to say. Should I say anything at all? He sure as hell wasn't going to say a lot more, now that he had just revealed his biggest fucking secret to a guy whom he met like... what? One, two, maybe three years ago? God... Junior was still sitting at the table, both eyes full of tears, probably not excited to hear what I was going to say. He was probably not thrilled by the fact that I had just dropped my coffee cup in surprise either. Say something, say something... anything! "Uh...", I started out, not the best thing I could have come up with, "It's cool..." Great, I ruined it. Junior just swallowed, not even looking at me. I sighed, and thought to myself: Alright, so what do you actually think about this? You have got to be honest, Mustaine, nothing else will work. God, I was taking forever to say something. Poor Junior... I sighed, and sat back down. I figured, since he was probably losing it, and I wasn't feeling a lot better, I could at least try making him feel better about the situation. I looked him in the eyes, which was still full of tears. And I had never noticed before how beautiful they were – what the hell? Making your head stop thinking such bullshit was pretty hard while trying to push an intelligent sentence out of your mouth. Once again, I sighed. "You know what?", I said, looking at him, "It's fine, it really isn't such a big deal". Just as I said that, his eyes lightened up. "Really?", he asked, wiping a tear. I nodded. "No, why should it be? It doesn't really change much". Junior nodded, and forced a smile. He was happy, I could tell, but still a little scared and confused. I got up and yawned. "Oh, well", I said, "We should try and get some sleep, don't ya think?" He nodded. I found a napkin to wipe up the coffee that was still all over the floor, and he waited for me, probably just to be nice. I cleaned it up and threw the napkin away. Junior was standing there, waiting right behind me, probably uncomfortable as hell. I turned to him, and opened my arms. "Come here", I said. Slowly, he came closer, until it turned into a warm and comforting hug. Junior rested his head on my shoulder, and put his arms around my waist. But if I must admit so myself, it wasn't like the worst hug I had ever had. We stood like that for about six seconds, then I had to let go before it became awkward. "Well, good night then", I said, turned and went back to the couch. "Good night", he mumbled, and went into the bedroom.

The next morning was a rush. Everybody had over-slept, and we had to hurry and catch our flight to Denmark. We ran between luggage and breakfast and coffee stains on the floor. Luckily, we made our plane by the skin of our teeth. I sat next to Junior on the way to Denmark, and I could see him from the corner of my eye, and he didn't look too well. "You alright?", I asked him, just to be sure. He turned to me and smiled. "Yeah", he said. I smiled back. You know, come to think of it, Junior's got a pretty smile... Wait, no he doesn't. I need to crawl back to the fucking earth. What was I thinking? I rolled my eyes at myself. This was getting ridiculous.