Muggy Feelings

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When Riley had first been offered courses at the highschool he'd refused. No way was he ever going to step foot in one of those horrible places again. Especially with the amount of teasing and work he'd suffered through, highschool was one of the hardest times in his life.

But he had a change of heart. He always did. The offer was too seductive for him to throw it away, so he made the commute to the school right after his last course at the college for the day. Since he lived on campus it was a waste to drive the half a mile to the highschool, even in heavy rain.

Something about the college's city had drawn him there when he was applying. It was completely foreign from his home town, and unbelievable far away, but it felt so familiar. Riley fell in love with the frequent rain and cloudy weather, he'd never been to a place where bridges took place of sidewalks. It was unnerving but amazing at the same time.

His friends who had grown up in the town often asked him about their old teachers. Riley wasn't too comfortable with older people, they felt more like authority than approachable. So he made up encounters, at least until second semester when he was comfortable enough to actually talk with the instructors. Yet by that time he was preoccupied with something else entirely.

He was at Shaun's house, but when he pulled up outside another car was already in the driveway. The most worrying thing was the look on Shaun's face when he noticed. His thin almond eyes filled with water that bubbled on the edge of his eyelashes, but the rest of his face remained vacant. Shaun's eyes were the most expressive thing about him. Riley could see a story in the way they softly closed, his eyelids smooth as he let the tears fall.

Riley didn't want to watch. He Pulled softly on his earrings, unsure of how to convey exactly what he wanted. Then he moved because thinking in circles only left him dizzy and alone. He leaned over to drape his arms around the taller boy's shoulders. Putting soft pressure on his chest and letting his head lay against Shaun's. The only sound being Shaun's small sigh as he leaned back into the embrace, feeling even more that he needed Riley.

In only a few moments the mood had settled with the fog on their motionless car. Riley found that word's never quite quelled the emotion in these moments, but the silence was often filled with enough understanding that it didn't need to be spoken. Shaun squeezed Riley's clasped hands and then slowly removed them from his shoulders. He then wiped a cold hand over his face, opened and shut the car door, and walked up his driveway. He only stopped and glanced back at Riley once, as if to reassure him.

Riley sat, confused, but content to wait. His legs folded under him as he dropped back into his seat trying not to think too hard about Shaun's droopy gait when he walked up to his own house or the lingering look before he went inside alone. It wasn't hard to get lost in thought while looking at the grey world through foggy windows. In a weird way it reminded him of the sunny days back home and his chest began to ache.

**********************************

In a way, Riley had been popular. He was the type of person you could recognize even when you didn't remember him. Because of that he had a lot of people to hang out with, but not so many were his friends.

He spent a lot of time at home alone. All of his siblings had grown up by the time he had reached middle school. Riley never knew what to do with that time. He had never felt strongly about anything. He didn't have any talents he spent time on or shows he loved, he kind of just was.

A lot of the time Riley would find himself outside, with the sun beating down on his sparsely covered shoulders. There weren't many trees in his small city, but sand was everywhere. The dunes outside of his neighborhood stretched for miles and shined like golden hills in the scorching sun. They separated his city's oasis from the next.