What I Left Behind (boyxboy)

Confused

I got up too early to be healthy to the sound of somebody puking in the bathroom. I looked over and saw the door ajar. Nick was standing behind Jess holding her hair back.

I walked into the kitchen and put a pot of coffee on. Nick came out of the bathroom, his hair flying a million different ways, he smiled.

"Morning" I said with a smile.

He grabbed the sides of my shirt and pushed me into the counter in a long kiss. He tasted like a little wintergreen with a hint of cigarette. I'm sure my breath wasn't any better.

"FUCK!" I hear a yell from the bathroom. I peek over at the clock. 4:28 in the morning, the sun wasn't even up.
"I have to pick my mom up at the airport in a half hour!" She feverishly ran around looking for something

"Fuck me!! The guys drove me here last night! My moms going to fucking kill me!" She said as she franticly ran around.

"I'll drive you" I perked in.

"Flynn..." Nick started to interject.

"No c'mon let's go right now"

And off we went.

————

The drive mainly consisted of Jess smoking my cigarettes and groaning due to her massive hangover.

"Nick really likes you" she smiled as smoke billowed out of her nose.

"Go on..." I smiled.

"It's downright annoying! Since he started here and we started hanging out he's been talking about you. Jesus Christ did he ever drone on and on about how 'he's the only thing I miss about home' and 'I really fucked him up' and all that mess." She was waving her hands all animated like.

"He fucked me up?" I asked, throughly confused.

"I don't know man he didn't give me a fuckin play-by-play" she said as smoke came through her nostrils again. "Ask him."

So we got to the little airport and picked up Jess's mom, who was waiting outside the terminal when we pulled in.
She was cool, just an older more refined Jess. She exchanged nice words of thanks and scolded Jess the rest of the way back for smoking again.
I dropped them off about 5 miles from Nicks apartment at a super cool house on top of a hill.

I got back the apartment as the sun broke through the clouds.
When I walked in Nick was just vacuuming up. The apartment was spotless, and there was a single rose on the coffee table.

He shut the vaccume off and gave me a kiss.
"I love you" he whispered.
"I love you too" I replied.

I sat down at the coffee table and took a cigarette from Nicks pack that was there and lit it up.

"So..." I started. "Jess said..."

"Stop." He said firmly as he put the vacuum back in the small closet.
"I know what you are about to say, and I need you to hear me first." His tone was a little shaky but also firm. His green eyes stared at my smoldering cigarette in the ashtray.

"I'm really, truly sorry for what I put you through" his eyes were focused on the ashtray still.

"For what? Moving me up here?"
A tone of confusion in my voice.

"No, Flynn." He took a cigarette himself and lit it.

"About what I put you through in high school. I knew you really, really liked me, and I felt the same way. But I shut you out because I was popular and my friends would have all abandoned me if they found out about us" he took a deep drag off his cigarette and his voice wavered even more.

"I'm sorry for leaving you to figure out what we were all those years ago. I would see the disappointment in your eyes when I stopped saying hi to you in the halls, then I heard about you drinking. I saw it myself. You were hammered in the book room with that girl and..."
He stopped himself. He took a deep breath.
I had been holding my cigarette for so long it went out. My eyes were wide as I heard the pain in his voice.

"I knew it was me. I ruined you. I destroyed you. Don't even try to tell me differently Flynn. I saw you at those parties just fucking drowning yourself, it took everything in my power to not take you home and say all these words I've been feeling. But my ego was too big and I can't say enough about how sorry I am for what I did to you." He tamped his cigarette out in the ashtray.

I was shook. I didn't know what to say. I just looked at his green eyes that were now spidered with red. I put down my extinguished cigarette and hugged him. I felt tears rushing down my face. He hugged me back harder than ever before.