WESLEY KNEW HE was in trouble when he refused to kiss Wyatt as they parted, settling instead for a platonic hug and maybe inhaling the vanilla scent of his curly hair, which must have come from the shampoo he used.
He may have been difficult to pin down, but Wyatt Carter wore his heart on his sleeve and he could tell from the vaguely masked disappointment on the other boy’s face that he had been gearing up for a kiss too.
Later that evening he received a single text from Wyatt that stopped him in his tracks. A simple and direct: why didn’t you kiss me?
He pondered on the question which had been on his mind through the day, and finally decided to reply with the easiest answer that came to mind.
i guess i didn’t want to fuck shit up. He typed, then: *mess things up, i mean. sorry.
i don’t care about your cussing, Wyatt shot back, phone pinging as his texts rushed in.
but you’re right. maybe we should take things slow, if this is even a thing.
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Here was the thing: to Wesley, intimacy had always been a way to pass the time, or take the edge off whenever he had no money to buy cigarettes, or got randomly horny because as Emoni said, he was a hormonal seventeen year old boy.
And maybe it was a childhood of hearing his mother moan even with his bedroom door closed, and listening to the front door click shut as the men left before breakfast. Maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t remember how many times he’d had to deal with hearing that he shouldn’t have existed. But Wesley didn’t feel like he was capable of the emotion that was love, the way everyone described it: a heavy constant weight on your heart, shoulders, and mind―given freely, but not easily shrugged off.
Here was the thing: he didn’t love Wyatt Carter, but he liked him. Hell, he more than liked him. He thought about him in class, on his job, when he woke up, before he went to sleep.
Hazel-green eyes haunted his dreams, dreams of soft caresses, and rough kisses that had him wake up to meet the front of his sweat pants tented, like a fucking adolescent.
He liked his mind, his face, his voice.
Here was the thing: he felt larger than life around Wyatt, and at the same time, very still, very solid. He very much liked that feeling too.
And this was the truth: he’d refused to kiss him because in the empty space where his heart should’ve been, it felt like that connection would break him down, and maybe transfer some of his brokenness to the other boy.
The fact that his case worker said he suffered from PTSD; that he’d taken up smoking to calm his nerves when he was fifteen, right after the accident, and now he wasn’t sure he could survive without them.
Nobody liked damaged goods, or different, and Wesley was every shade of damaged and different that existed.
He was a chronic, tragedy after tragedy―a father he would never know, waking up from a three day coma to find that he’d lost hearing in one ear, and the only family he knew; the treatments he’d received from all his other foster families.
Wesley deserved good things, and even if he didn’t, he wanted them. And Wyatt was good.
Not perfect, but better.
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He composed and deleted, until he finally settled on words he was somewhat proud of.
this is a thing. a very big thing, if you ask me.
His phone lit up with a reply in seconds.
i want you to want me, the text read, and Wesley smiled as he typed.
you have no idea how much i already do.
If you listened closely you would hear the sound of butterfly wings as they beat furiously, or animals newly freed and left to roam.
YOU ARE READING
Still Point ✓
Short Story'I want you to want me,' the text read, and he smiled as he shot off his reply. 'You have no idea how much I already do.' Wesley Chao doesn't believe in love and Wyatt Carter wishes he wasn't always in it, until they both meet at an art exhibiti...
