Chapter six - melancholy blue
Hello, my gorgeous whores. I am back from my holiday and I have updates in everything waiting for you guys! So, here is the next chapter.
Read on, my skittles. Read on.
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"Frank!" Renée squealed, jumping when she saw me enter her tent. "Jesus fuck, you scared us so much! We thought your mom must have caught you yesterday."
I laughed. "She did. I came anyway. I just got a little distracted." I glanced back at Gerard, who was muttering something to Bob.
"Woah. He's pretty," she whispered, looking over my shoulder.
"I know. But he's black. You know nothing could happen."
"What? I was talking about the white one. Bloody gorgeous."
"You mean Bob?" I frowned.
"Is that his name? Cool." She stepped past me. "Hi Bob," she smiled, and batted her eyelashes.
"Renée!" I hissed.
"What?" Bob mumbled, looking slightly uncomfortable. He glanced at Renée, then at me. "Uh. Hello?"
"I'm Renée," she said. "And you're cute."
"And not exactly straight." He smiled awkwardly. "Nice to meet you, though."
"Fuck," she sighed. "Why is every boy I flirt with gay?" she asked melodramatically.
She was right though. She had tried it on with me when we first met, and then with Pete and Patrick respectively after we met them. I guess the most awesome people in the world are always gay. (Or Gerard. Or Renée, I guess.)
Bob laughed. "Maye it's because we're so epic?" he suggested.
"You wish," Renée joked.
Bob grinned.
I wasn't sure I'd ever seen Bob laughing like that before. I hadn't seen him around at school much, but every time I had seen him, he'd looked awkward, reserved, and keeping to himself.
Then again, I was like that most of the time at school. Everyone there was an idiot, and you didn't want to let down your guard for even a second or everyone had a chance to hurt or humiliate you.
"Your friend Bob's cool," Gerard said, appearing at my side. "And what was the girl's name again?"
I opened my mouth to tell him, but I was interrupted when a hyperactive Renée jumped in front of me. "I'm Renée," she perked up, somehow knowing through some woman sense that we were talking about her.
"Hi," Gerard said, smiling.
"Hey. So, what's your name?"
"Gerard."
"Cool," Renée grinned. "And d'you know what, Frank? I'm going to be mature. I'm not even going to bother flirting with this one."
"Hey. No. you can flirt with me if you w-want," Gerard said, laughing. "You're pretty cool."
Renée's grin got wider and she winked at Gerard. "Do you have a stutter? That's adorable," she said, fawning over him.
I swallowed. Fuck. No.
----
"Ugh, what am I going to do?" I mumbled hopelessly to Patrick.
After a few minutes of Gerard and Renée giggling together, I was starting to feel sick, so I managed to persuade everyone to migrate to Patrick's house. Pete was usually there too, so that was an added bonus.
"Frank..." Patrick said sympathetically. "I'm not really sure there's anything you can do. If he's straight, you can't exactly persuade him to change."
I sighed. It was pretty hopeless.
"Anyway," Pete said quietly. "He's black and you're white. I don't think anyone could maintain a mixed race relationship. You'd both end up dead for sure."
"I guess," I said softly. "I just. I really like him."
"Well, apparently, so does Renée." Pete looked over my shoulder, and grimaced.
I turned around to see what he was looking at. Gerard was sat on the grass near the entrance to Patrick's tent, and Renée was sitting beside him, trying to cuddle up to him, the way I would never be able to.
Black and black, girl and boy, it looked right. Too right. Unoriginal, and standard. Boring. Everything Gerard wasn't.
I clenched my fists tightly and had to bite my tongue to stop myself from screaming at Renée to get the fuck off him.
"Hey." Patrick leaned closer to me, entering my field of vision again. Really, this was as close as he could get to comforting me. If I had been any other black, he would have put an arm around me or ruffled my hair to cheer me up. But that would just make a mess of the both of us. "You're stressing over this, Frank. It's okay."
"Fuck," I muttered. "It's not, though."
"Look... You could get caught up in all of this jealousy and hate, but that wouldn't get you anywhere, would it?"
I waited for him to resume speaking, but he didn't. He just looked at me expectantly, as if awaiting an answer for his rather obvious question. I shook my head. "No," I murmured.
"He's a good person," Patrick continued, "and if you try to interfere with what he wants, what his heart wants, then you're going to hurt him. He likes you. He cares about you, Frank. Just in a different way. Don't let your own hurt spill over and upset him, because you might end up losing him."
"I don't want to lose him," I whispered.
It was unreal how attached I had become to Gerard, despite only knowing him a few days.
We had just made such a connection, formed such a bond, that I knew it would really damage me to break it. It was like we had woven an intricate bracelet together from coloured threads, and we had become so close while making this bracelet that to damage our relationship would be like to pull on one of the delicate threads. Even if it was in an attempt to making something even more perfect, the risk would be too great. One wrong move and the whole bracelet would become a mess of tangled string, and would no longer be beautiful and colourful, but simply a muddy pile of twisted twine.
Patrick was right. It wasn't worth jeopardising the fragile relationship I currently had with Gerard just for something even more delicate and risky.
I exhaled slowly, carefully, regulating my emotions and my breathing. It was a skill I'd learned a while ago, and tended to keep me in check during uncomfortable moments.
"It's okay," Patrick said softly. "It'll get better."
----
"I love her," Gerard sighed, lying back against his bed.
I said nothing, just gritted my teeth and watched as Gerard wrapped his arms around himself and squeezed his eyes shut, fucking obviously pretending that he was holding her.
As if he hadn't done enough of that for the entirety of the past week. Every time we met up, there was Renée, my so called best friend, sitting on Gerard's lap while I tried to talk to him. Even when I went to see Pete and Patrick, Renée would be there too, constantly giggling about how much she loved Gerard. And he was just as bad. Every moment that we had alone was precious, and we were supposed to be talking to each other about things we both liked, because that's what fucking friends do, right?
But he just wouldn't shut up about Renée.
"She's so pretty," he said dreamily.
"Is she?" I asked dryly.
"Have you never noticed? She's pretty sexy."
"No. No, Gerard, I haven't noticed. Do you know why? It's because I don't like girls. Because I'm not looking for a relationship with a girl. Ever. Gerard, you haven't seriously forgotten everything about me in some love-drunk haze, have you?"
"Of course not! I'm just a little distracted. I mean, she can be quite distracting, with her pretty hair, and her pretty voice. Her voice is like... Like a bell. So pretty..."
Fucking hell. I did not want to be here at all if he was going to be like this.
"She kissed me for the third time ever, yesterday, you know."
I forced a smile, and nodded.
Gerard didn't notice at all that I was uncomfortable with this topic. He didn't notice at all that I was on the verge of tears, on the verge of slapping some fucking sense into him at all.
He had no clue that every word that left his mouth about her was like a splinter of glass embedding itself in my heart, and soon, it would bleed dry and the empty shell would shatter.
It was like he had forgotten about me – but I was still right here.
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Disgusting (Frerard)
أدب الهواة"There's a reason we are white and pure, and they are black and dirty. There's a reason they stain our skin. That we are shamed if others see those stains. They're bad people, Frank. They're disgusting."