I'm Not Okay (I Promise) • Geetrick

3

---Patrick---

One thought after another passes my mind as soon as I process him.

When I first see him, I expect him to be like Brendon or Ryan or anyone else in this stupid school. A social butterfly with a charm I'll never have. Always grinning, fucking every girl he can find with empty promises. I expect him to turn out to be a popular know-it-all with too many friends to count. I expect him to be talented with everything no matter how complicated it is. I expect him to make ten friends in a heartbeat. He has to be another one of those people. Just another fuckboy to ruin my life and make me jealous. To make me feel even more pathetic than I already am because he's so much better than me. Prettier. He'll always be more popular than me, and there's nothing I can do to change that. I'll always be this... failure. An underdog. Someone nobody will ever care about. A nobody. I expect him to make me feel like that.

But he doesn't.

Right away I can tell he's nervous, not exactly scared but I know he's feeling a little uneasy. He's covering his arms self-consciously. He has a slight smile on his face, but it doesn't reach his eyes. He's just like me in the way he acts. All of his body language points to... Anxiety? No. Not that bad. He is tense, though. My first guess is because of moving schools, he's not used to all the strangers and new people. Finding his place in a new environment. Trying to find new friends, knowing new bullies. I've never been through that situation before, but it's not hard to imagine how nervous or uncomfortable it makes him.

I let my eyes continue to trace him, his body language, his looks, his eyes. As I take him in, he does... something to me. It's hard to describe. My stomach feels weird like I'm going to puke, but I know I'm not. It's more of like someone jabbed a stick in my stomach but a little softer, like it was cushioned. Meanwhile, my throat gets tight like I'm going to cry, but I'm not. It just gets hard to breathe, and my body breaks out into a sweat. It's like he's taking control of my body and making strange things happen. I don't understand. What is this feeling?

I look him over, still trying to comprehend what's happening. He has hair as dark as ebony that reaches to about his jawline. It's wavy and unkempt, shining in the light above but it's... beautiful. No, that can't be the right word. That's not the right word... But somehow it is... His eyes are a bright brown, adorned with millions of shades, but they're hiding something. Fear? Sorrow? More nervousness? Something I can't read. Something kind of foreign but somehow native to me and that scares me. Someone who knows what I'm going through? One of these hundreds of complicated emotions that I can't begin to understand and something about him makes me realize he knows something I don't. Something that I don't understand yet but he does.

My eyes travel down his chest, to his stomach. They linger on his crotch for a moment too long before continuing back up to those foreign native eyes and my eyes widen as it slowly dawns on me what's happening. Him. His appearance. His eyes. His lips. His emotions. There's something about him that's opening new possibilities and a question stirring inside me.

I am straight... Right?

That's disgusting, Patrick. Of course, you're straight. You know what Dad said about gays.

His hair is beautiful, though, his eyes, his lips, his body. He's beautiful.

You're so pathetic! You filthy piece of trash. You are straight. You are straight, and you will always be straight. It doesn't matter what you might think. You're straight, okay?

But what if I'm really not...? What if I am gay?

Then you are even more disgusting than I thought.