HIS FAVORITE GINGER ✓

FORTY-FIVE.

....i die every night with you...

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Grayson

"A toast to the best team captain, player, my brother and my best friend, Grayson Jackson!"

I internally blushed and rolled my eyes at the same time. I felt at the top of the world and Damien was just being overdramatic. Who cares if I'm gone? I'm just another student who's fed up of this school and wants to chase his own dreams.

I swallowed back my question when glasses and bottles were raised to the air. News surely spread like harmattan fire to everyone because even the staff did the same thing which had me awestruck. I don't mean to be vain or anything but what is so special about me? I broke a record, gave the school a reputation in sports and that art competition and all about that golden boy shit but why do I feel so empty?

Damien bounced off the podium and my teammates gathered around me. Gerard and Sebastian-the hunkiest hunks of the team-lifted me upon their shoulders while the rest hooted like man cheerleaders.

I forged a plastic golden boy smile whereas my mind was far from these merry jocks. I tried hard to be one with them but I wasn't just feeling it. Damien noticed this and called me to order.

"Alejandro problems?"

"Yes, oracle." I snarked, toying with the jade bracelet. Alejandro is really a demon. I should embrace these last precious moments with my friends but he just has to rear his ugly freckled ass into my life and destroy my happiness.

"You should like, talk this out man." Damien coughed. "Scratch 'man', I'm sorry I meant boy."

I raised a brow of amusement and disdain.

"Since you aren't man enough to face your feelings."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." I sipped the punch from the glass, peeking through it like this really shady Michael Jackson meme.

"Like you have no idea how you hurt Monty."

I rolled my eyes, hard. Like, I've never rolled my eyes with so much intensity in my entire life. I don't know where this odd resentment originates from but hearing about Montgomery makes me so sick to the stomach. This guy is just so. . .one minute we are friends, second minute I'm a tree branch and he's a koala. "Ugh, don't even go there."

"And don't even try to change the subject."

"What? You are the one changing the subject here!" I yelled in disbelief. "You're such a mum sometimes."

"Is that how you're going to let go of your feelings?" I took another sip of my punch while watching Damien preach like Ban Carson on a career talkshow.

"Pfft." I scoffed. "Dumbass feelings."

"They are still feelings and can only cause one thing. An happy or heavy heart. I really doubt the latter though. You should've seen your face anytime you talked about him-"

"Yeah, I really doubt either of the two. If anything, they cause chagrin, frustration, and makes me want to kill myself. Alejandro deserves or owes me nothing."

"You owe him your happiness."

I was getting irritated now. "What does that even mean?"

"I have no idea." We burst into hysteria for an accurate amount of fifteen seconds before everything went serious as stone, again.

"I want you to be a man, Gray." He pushed me off the barstool. "Go and face your feelings head-on."

I smiled halfheartedly but decided to follow his advice. Not because he said so, but because deep down, I wanted to. I just needed the right motivation. Now that I thought of it, this is the first time I'm gonna talk to him for two weeks straight. And it's incredible because we are basically living-alone-under the same roof since that dreadful fallout. I don't know if this is going to be awkward, snobbish, mirthful-I highly doubt-but with someone like Alejandro, it can never be happy.