THE TEARS DIDN'T come again when Wyatt stumbled into his room, because by the time his head hit the pillow he had already fallen asleep. They didn’t come when he woke up the next morning, as he scrolled through his text thread with Wesley and deleted the entire thing, then his contact too.
They didn’t come as he solved polynomials, and crammed enough of Darwin’s evolutionary theory.
Minutes bled into hours, which bled into days, until about a week later during lunch in the cafeteria, where a student with a buzz cut strode past him with a food tray, and he craned his neck to catch a glimpse of them, knowing fully well that it wasn’t Wesley and yet unable to cram down the feeling of disappointment he felt at seeing it wasn’t him.
The blood rushed to his face as he broke away from the line, ignoring Tobi’s call as he fled to the boy’s bathroom, which was blissfully empty upon his arrival.
He locked himself in the last stall, and slid down it as his head pounded and began to hyperventilate seconds before the waterworks began.
It would be the first time he cried over a boy in the boy’s bathroom, but not the last, and as he stuffed a fist into his mouth to muffle his erratic breathing, he heard the entrance to the bathroom open and held fell silent.
Footsteps interrupted the quiet as whoever they belonged to pushed open the stall doors until they stopped in front of his and made to push it open, meeting with resistance. They pushed again, and something in Wyatt woke up.
“It’s taken,” he snapped.
“I know,” a vaguely familiar voice said. It was low and breathy, and it took Wyatt a moment to pin down who it belonged to: Rashad McCain, who was in the grade below him and happened to be the only freshman on the Mayfield soccer team.
“What do you want, Rashad?”
There was silence at the other end of the door, and then, “Are you alright, Carter?”
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Wesley survived on barely three hours of sleep a day, his dreams now plagued with a masked green-eyed figure who stabbed him repeatedly until he woke up in cold sweat each time.
Weeks passed in this fashion as he survived on cigarettes and coffee, only eating when he had to, until his finals came and went, summer arrived, and he found himself at a loss for what to do.
His moods grew more volatile, one minute composing an apology text to Wyatt which he’d always delete, and the next falling into bed with Rose, a salesgirl at the neighborhood bodega who he was on and off fuck buddies with whenever she wasn’t seeing someone. It was an unspoken but understood fact that theirs was an arrangement of necessity with no feelings involved.
But sex no longer held the same appeal it had before his encounter with Wyatt, and he assumed that maybe his half-Dominican ass had cast some voodoo on him.
He surmised that if he ever got the chance to, he would fuck the other boy till he couldn’t move and leave him in the middle of it all as revenge. His mind clouded with possible scenarios would happen, how he would make Wyatt suffer the way he was suffering.
Emoni didn’t notice his spiral, always heading to bed after her long shifts with not more than a few cursory words. Her mother was sick, and she’d been working overtime to come up with enough cash to bring her over to America.
She did notice the missing notes in her handbag though, and moved to keeping her purse with her wherever she went―bathroom included.
So he was caged in on all angles, and every second spent without a cigarette drove him a step closer to insanity, until one day, without letting himself think things through, he scrolled to Wyatt’s contact and hit the call option. He’d ask him to take him back, or tell him that he’d fuck him up like he had the last time they spoke, but it didn’t matter, he thought, since he was most likely blocked.
But the call went through, and on the third ring someone picked it up. Wesley felt his plans desert him, and remained silent until the person at the other end of the line spoke.
“Hello?”
It wasn’t Wyatt, and somehow this realization had a wave of relief wash over him, and then dread.
“Sorry, I’m looking for Wyatt,” he replied, sounding more confident than he felt.
“Who’s this?”
Wesley’s eyes narrowed suspiciously at how hostile the receiver’s tone had become.
“Who are you, and why are you with his phone?”
The line fell silent, and he pulled his phone away to confirm that he was still on the call, but after a moment the other person spoke.
“I’m Rashad,” they said, and after a long pause they added, “his boyfriend.”
“Oh,” he murmured, feeling the air whoosh out of his lungs. “I’m sorry I must have the wrong Wyatt then.”
“Yeah,” they murmured, “you must.”
And then they hung up, and Wesley was left with his device pressed so forcefully against his ear he was sure it would leave an imprint.
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...
