Stay ; Tradley

T H I R T E E N ; brad

hey guys! i hope you're all keeping safe and well. 

i'm here for anyone who needs to talk during these strange times, but if not, enjoy the chapter! 

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The rain, like it has for the last month, is pouring- I look up from my novel which I'm painstakingly reading for my level and check the time. Half three. Gusts of wind that interrupt at intervals the relatively cool day, making it bitterly cold for a while before going back to the quiet world, erupt the trees and blow leaves across the car park.

I've been in my car at the pine reserve for the last four hours; folded between the pages of my book but not really reading it despite all my attempts because my mind can't stop whirring and it can't stop flashing between Sarah's outraged face and thinking about tristan and why he's not here and that he doesn't actually care and that if he doesn't turn up, i've just broke up with my girlfriend.

This morning went a little like this: i woke up, scrolled through my phone like the millennial i am and, when trying to decide whether to ring him or not i saw it appeared we'd already had a second conversation for i had a call from Tris that i seemingly answered at 12am last night when i was supposed to be asleep.

I think sarah knew what i was going to ask before i rolled over and said it; she had a hundred thousand excuses but i only wanted to know what she had said to him

She wouldn't tell me, insisting she didn't have to and i didn't bother prying it out of her- somehow it only pried my darkest secrets out of me- i didn't tell her how i felt about boys or about Tristan but i certainly fucking told her that she has no right to answer my phone, talk to Tristan in any sense and that she certainly doesn't have the right to get angry at me.

After she called me a prick, I told her I wanted to break up.

She said i'd regret it, and i told her to get out.

I kind of left out the part that she makes me feel nauseous and i'm only using her to repress my homosexuality at this point, even if that wasn't what it was at the start.

But i don't really care about that- i care about the fact i'm here, like i whispered through the phone that i would be yesterday, and that he's not.

He.

Everytime i close my eyes he's there staring back at me- perhaps more romantic than he would in real life and my imagination has hand crafted the stars i see in his eyes and the pale blue backdrop i see behind him and entirely fabricated the sweet nothings i picture him whispering into my ear and the way he would smile at me in the morning when i tuck his blond hair out of his face.

It's got to the point where i don't feel wrong thinking about him in that way even if the world will hate me- i'm at that extension where i just want to be with him so bad it makes me stomach hurt and i would spend the rest of my life- trading up seeing the world, getting married and living any normal life- just to sit with him forever in my car right now.

I wait half an hour more, reading how Jane can no longer trust Mr Rochester and adhering myself faintly to chasing cars playing on the radio, thinking how it's so funny that every song, no matter what it's about, it brings me back to him. Every romantic lyric I imagine myself whispering it into his ear. Every song about youth I imagine it playing in the background with a slideshow of us. Every heartbreak I imagine it being with him over and over and over.

And then I kind of get angry, because there's this song about wasting time and I chuck my book down and put my keys into the engine and I lift the clutch and I'm just about to turn away when I see a movement in the trees.