24 Years (MxM)

Chapter 1

"I've been seeing someone else," comes the voice of my fiancé from the speaker on my phone. I feel as if my world had just ended. I lay down on my bed as the room starts to spin. What made this whole thing worse is that today is my 23rd birthday. My world just ended spectacularly.

"I'm sorry Ken," came another set of words that shot out through the speaker and directly through my heart, ripping it into bloody shreds.

I am speechless. My breath is caught in my lungs. Suddenly I'm struck by the memory of all of our history together: best friends growing up, the sleepovers, falling in love with each other in high school, trips to Tokyo, him being practically a part of my family and treated as another son; and now it's over. I feel hot, stinging tears starting to roll down my cheeks, searing my flesh.

"Ken?"

Suddenly my vision turns red in anger as I ask, "How long?"

"About four months."

I quickly think back four months to pinpoint exactly what went wrong. What were we doing four months ago?

"The time I said I was going to Ocean Shores with my friends," he says, knowing me so well that he could guess I was trying to scrape my brain for this information.

"You didn't go?" I ask stupidly as I already know the answer. I feel so betrayed. I let the bitter tears fall as I refuse to wipe them away.

"I stayed with Zack that weekend," says the betrayer.

"Zack!" I scream. "What the fuck! You two have been fucking around this whole time behind my back? You two-faced liars!" Zack and I became friends last year when we were in the same college class. I had no idea he was gay and now he stole my boyfriend.

"Hey, calm down. Zack feels pretty bad about it. It's not his fault. It just happened."

I want to scream out at the top of my lungs, but instead I ask through gritted teeth, "How could you do this Matt?"

"I'm sorry. We just clicked. I love you, and all, but he's so much more mature. You're still just a kid."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I yell.

"All you wanna do is play fucking video games all day long, and screw around at school while sponging off your parents. You're 23 now. Grow the fuck up."

Just as I'm about to yell once more he interrupts by saying, "I'm done with you. And, by the way, happy birthday."