Behind A Mask - Shaymien

26: The Start Of Something New

Damien stormed out of the main hall - fortunately not being noticed by the staff supervising - and headed outside. He walked around the majority of the main building to get to the field and strolled along the scorched slopes. Damien didn't notice Shayne catching up to him, so when he looked behind him hearing a call of his name, he stopped instantly.

Damien examined Shayne's features - he had taken off his blazer before catching up to Damien and his face shrivelled up. He could tell Shayne was worried about him but he didn't want to talk to Shayne. Damien turned around and ran from Shayne. He ran to the willow tree that the group ate lunch at to try hide himself away from Shayne.

It obviously didn't work; Shayne had ran after Damien and noticed him running through the leaves of the willow. He went through the leaves about 20 seconds after Damien and couldn't see him. He walked around the tree to see Damien slumped against the opposite side of the tree.

"Damien, are you alright?" Shayne asked. "That's a stupid question, you're clearly not alright, I'm sorry."

"Can you leave me alone, please?" Damien mumbled, looking towards Shayne. The blonde nodded and started to walk away, and waited a while away from Damien. Damien checked his phone - he needed to talk to Mari. He clicked on Mari's contact and pressed the call button. It went to voicemail the first time but when he called a minute later, Mari responded.

"Hey, Damien. What's wrong?" She asked.

"Everything." He responded, his voice cracking.

"What happened? Do you need me to come get you from somewhere? Are you safe?"

"I'm safe, don't worry about that. And you don't need to pick me up, I want to stay at Homecoming."

"Oh, you're at Homecoming. Did you ask Shayne out or something?"

"No. I really want to, I do and I probably would have done so but Jacob came up to us."

"Who's Jacob?" Mari asked, confused.

"My ex-friend from last year."

"Oh that asshole. What did he do?"

"He came up to us and was like 'oh yeah I'm sorry for being a prick I just had a crush on Damien.' " He paused and started to cry slightly.

"Are you sure you're all right Damien, did he do something?" Mari asked.

"He... He tried to kiss me."

"That bitch. Can I kill him?" Mari asked. Damien ignored her question, not knowing how to answer. "Damien? Are you there?"

"Yeah... I'm here. I feel really shitty though. I ran away from the other guys and Shayne went to check if I was okay but I pushed him away. He's gonna hate me."

"He's not going to hate you, Damien. He's understanding. All it means is that he cares about you." Mari responded, reassuringly.

"I don't deserve friends like you and Shayne." Damien put his phone on the ground and put it on speaker.

"Who said we were friends?" Mari said, chuckling. "I'm joking, I'm joking. Oh my god, I'm so sorry. Also, you do deserve friends like Shayne. You're kind, and relatively confident. You stand up for your friends and put others before yourself. You need to see yourself the way Shayne sees you."

"Shayne just sees me as a friend, I'm not friends with myself. He probably doesn't even see that, he probably just hangs out with me because he wants to hang around with Courtney and Olivia. I see myself the way Shayne sees me."

"Are you fucking kidding me, Damien? You don't think Shayne actually likes you! Look, I'm going to hang up because you really need to talk to him." Damien winced at Mari's sudden increase in volume.