Without The Thought of Him

prelude

The worst feeling is knowing you let something amazing fall right through your fingertips. Maybe it's delusional, maybe I'm holding onto something that I shouldn't. But man, it fucking sucks. I wonder how different things would be if my hands were full with what I wanted. I know things happen for a reason and maybe this is how the story is supposed to end. But I really hope it's not.

Isaac looks away from his phone that was resting on the table underneath him, keeping his head down but averting his eyes toward the unattended water bottles and a single juicebox that was dripping from the straw. He watches the pool of juice grow, each slow drip adding to the overall size of the tiny puddle. Someone sits down at the table not long after the mess reaches an impressive size, causing it to separate and spatter into many different droplets around the juicebox.

Isaac finally looks up from the stupid juicebox, eyes wandering over to Sandra across from him. She was chatting up some guy and it was easy to tell she was interested. Isaac's seen that face many times before, the remotely creepy side smile and the two horizontal lines engrossing her entire forehead from smiling so much. This face was way too familiar to Isaac and the rest of their group of friends, who immersed the whole cafeteria table.

Although Isaac liked and appreciated having such a close group of friends, sometimes eight different personalities and unnecessary yelling across the cafeteria table was too much for him. Seriously, some of these kids were way too rambunctious for what time it actually was. Nonetheless, he was glad he had a sense of security with having these people around him all of the time. Maybe he was just selfish or maybe the high school social norms had finally gotten to him. Having a crew to associate himself with was almost as important as school work itself, even if he didn't relate or have anything in common with these people.

So yeah, maybe Isaac was a little selfish. Maybe he didn't text his 'friends' back as often as he should. Maybe he should actually work on communicating and not push anything remotely stressful to the back of his mind, creating an even bigger stressful problem. He definitely wasn't familiar with the concept of taking care of himself, which was why he ended up in all of these situations. He clearly wasn't being proactive when he was just on the sad love quotes tag on Instagram two minutes ago.

Isaac looks away from the mess of his friends at his table to an even bigger mess across the cafeteria. The shared eye contact between him and Sam definitely wasn't intentional because Isaac knew the blonde kid wanted nothing to do with him anymore. Alright, that was a little harsh, even for Isaac's self-sabotaging mind. But truly, Sam really had no reason to be looking over at him right now. He was occupied with his own.. compelling friends. And his boyfriend was right beside him, peering down at his cell phone that was resting perfectly in his dainty hand. Bet he wasn't reading any sad Instagram posts about being unable to move the fuck on.

Isaac shouldn't be acting like he knew nothing about Brady though. All those sleepless nights on the boy's second cousin's Twitter trying to scout out all of the possible information there was on the internet about the love of his life's boyfriend. His life being sad was a big understatement; Isaac considered himself more pathetic than anything else. He tried to remain confident after lurking for too long by posting slightly scandalous selfies with his collarbones out and his lips pouted out more than usual. But it all sinks in after realizing the amount of time it took for him to photoshop his nose and adjust the warmth of the photos to make himself appear more chiseled and sexy. The fact that he was fucking ugly and that Brady will always be better than him sinks in.

Maybe Isaac would ask Sandra for a face mask or something after this, seeing all over social media that it was considered a form of self-care. Hell, he really did need to start partaking in that shit.

But the reason for all of this lack of self-care and late night Twitter journeys was ultimately because of Sam. Oh Sam. What a captivating and amiable boy. He wasn't very popular, he kept to himself a lot of the time and he was almost always respectful toward everybody. There wasn't a lot of guys like Sam, which fucking sucked because Isaac quickly fell in love with that concept. Having a boyfriend who wasn't profane and disgusting was unheard of nowadays and Isaac thought maybe, just maybe, he could get lucky and have somebody like that. Yeah, well that wasn't the case whatsoever.

Now Isaac was just here, trying his best not to stare at the man of his dreams. The reasons for it not working out were pretty disheartening, fuck Isaac wished he could start all over. He was trying not to let his failed attempt at happiness ruin his entire fucking mood though, like it often did. Sam didn't work out for him and that was okay, Isaac just wanted to know why it hurt so goddamn much. Maybe the answer to that was obvious, but to Isaac, turning to sad tumblr quotes seemed to somewhat ease his sadness. He finally peels his eyes away from the boy he wanted to spend the rest of his life looking at, deciding it was best if he kept his distance from him, including eye contact. He wasn't sure how effective that was going to be because of how ineffective it's already been.

Every little interaction that the two had, like very uncomfortable eye contact, was just like the dripping of the juice from the abandoned juicebox. The liquid kept accumulating and growing larger on the chaotic table, creating this puddle of sentimental and heartbreaking memories that Isaac would eventually think about every single night before falling asleep. Brady of course represented the very inconsiderate and disruptive person who sat down at the table, breaking apart the puddle of hope and happiness into a million different ones. Isaac seriously needed a change. He needed something to change so he could move past this.

"Who the fuck spilled my juice?!" a girl's voice invades his deranged thoughts, which causes him to look up and straighten himself up a bit. He bites down on his bottom lip after realizing what she was yowling about, glancing up at the brunette Sandra was just talking to and back down at the juicebox he'd been analyzing before. How fucking ironic, right? Isaac can't help but to snort, making sure he masked it behind his fist so nobody would suspect a thing. He didn't even have anything to do with the stupid juicebox anyways. Except for the fact that he was making depressing metaphors about it in head, but still.

How come nobody has ever asked about his tragic juicebox story? Nobody ever seemed to care about his somber tweets or his quiet moods. Everybody had their own shit going on, of course he shouldn't expect people to actually care about him and how he was doing. That's how a lot of things went nowadays. It wasn't that people were necessarily selfish, maybe it was just because nobody really even liked juice.