rivals in the sheets

chapter twenty-three

"Hamilton, I need to talk to you," Ethan said. It was the first thing he did on Monday morning, before he even considered going to his locker or god forbid, going to class.

"I don't have time to talk right now, Emmerson, I need to get to class," Lucas said as he did his everything not to look Ethan in the eyes.

Ethan was not going to just drop things, though. Well, he wasn't going to pressure Lucas into telling him anything, but he wanted to at least have a proper reason for the radio silence.

"I need to get to class, too, but class starts in about ten minutes, so we have time to talk about things."

"What do you even want to talk about?" Lucas muttered, seemingly uninterested by the whole thing.

Ethan knew that Lucas was far from comfortable with what had happened between the two of them, but he didn't want Lucas to treat him like an idiot either. "Stop acting dumb, Hamilton. You know what I want to talk about."

"I don't want to talk about it," Hamilton finally blurted out, looking around as if to make sure that absolutely nobody was listening to their conversation. "There's nothing to say about it anyway, it happened once and it'll never happen again."

Lucas sounded determinated, but there was a part of Ethan that knew that he was saying those words to convince himself more than he was saying them to convince Ethan.

I guess we both have things we need to deal with, Ethan thought to himself, and that only made him feel worse for Hamilton.

He now knew that all of these feelings were difficult to manage, and he didn't know how Lucas was dealing with them.

"But we should probably at least acknowledge that it happened or something to be able to move on from it."

"Look, Ethan, we're not really friends. We haven't been for years, and even though it was nice hanging out with you and stuff, I don't know if we should keep doing that."

"I know we don't have to hang out, but I had fun, so I thought that we could hang out again." Ethan knew that he sounded a lot more desperate than what was healthy, but he had enough of just waiting for things to happen. "We can play sports, we can watch a movie, we can do anything, really."

He just wanted to know whether Lucas still wanted to talk to him and have anything to do with him, or if the kiss ruined all chances of them ever having a normal friendship.

"I think it's for the best that you just stay away from me. It'll be good for both of us, and it just makes things a lot less complicated than they need to be."

A small part of Ethan wanted to complain and tell him that there was no point in avoiding the elephant in the room, but he had a feeling that it wouldn't exactly work.

Lucas seemed determinated to cut all contact after what had happened and, in all honesty, Ethan understood that. He wasn't itching to make things awkward between the two of them, either.

"If that's what you want, then I get it," Ethan finally concluded, a little surprised about his showing of compassion. "Just don't feel guilty about anything, alright?"

Lucas seemed just as shocked at how understanding Ethan was. There was no scene, no fight, no sarcastic comments or angry sneering. Just pure kindness, and the expression on Hamilton's face told Ethan that he was just as shocked as Ethan was.

"Thank you. I have to get going now, though. I'll see you at practice."

With those words Lucas turned around and did all but stormed off, leaving Ethan all alone.