Reality And Us

Chapter Thirty Seven

Nick and Stella were walking next to each other, both of them to a table. The boy was for once more than happy to see other students at his school, because they saved him from the conversation he was having.

It wasn't that Stella was annoying him, or talking to her was bad. He simply didn't like what they were talking about.

The girl had told him about an interesting dream she had had that night - there had been a lot of weird stuff going on that he hadn't fully understood. Something about a big blue ball of fur with eyes she had made in a class trying to steal her spaghetti or something. And then she had asked him what he had dreamed about.

He had just told her that he couldn't remember, but that wasn't really the truth. He was just too embarrassed to tell her that the dream he had did involve him kissing a guy. More specifically, a guy he was friends with in real life that he just happened to be crushing on and goodness this was pathetic. This whole thing was pathetic.

Honestly, who even dreamed of something like that? They were friends, and his stupid brain would have to understand that, sooner or later. Preferably sooner than later.

They sat down at the table, and Stella immediately began chatting with some girl. He noticed how similar the two of them looked, not in a related sense, but a very different way. It was how they talked, how they sat there, what they were wearing. It did confuse him, because Stella had usually been someone to poke fun at this type of girls.

On the other hand he wasn't going to claim he had ever understood the girls at his school. Not that he had ever wanted to.

To be fair, a lot of the guys were people he didn't understand either. Mostly because a lot of teens just spent their time so weirdly, had values in life that he thought to be useless and dumb. At least that was how he perceived them.

Did that make them stupid in general? In the past, he would've answered yes, without any hesitation. Now he wasn't so sure anymore, he and his world had been changing quite a bit those past few months.

Sunday, his mother had had her birthday, she was forty-eight now. That sounded old, but his parents were old in general. Even though he was sure that Jamie's were older it still seemed as if his mum and dad had already lived centuries ago.

Which definitely wasn't meant to be a compliment considering wisdom or something - old people were often narrow-minded and to hung up on tradition and cultural values. And Nick disliked those two, maybe because he was young, maybe because he felt they were stopping him from fully growing, developing himself.

Anyway, his mom was now forty-eight, which wasn't as cool of a number as forty-seven or forty-nine are. Forty-seven was prime and forty-nine was a square number. Both pretty cool. And forty-eight? Just a boring, plain multiple of six. Or of eight. Nothing special there, just two to the power of four multiplied with three. How boring could it get?

Okay, he had to admit to himself that he was kind of dodging his memories of the day before by doing this, trying to ignore everything.

It wasn't as if anything bad had happened the day before, it had been a day like any other. Except the very beautiful and tasty cake they had eaten. And that he had kind of been forced to spend time with his family. But that wasn't that bad, usually.

The reason he wasn't exactly keen having a constant reminder in his mind of what had happened on Sunday was the uncomfortable situations, or rather one topic they had talked about.

They hadn't talked about it for the first time, but it had been a while since the last. Still, did parents have to be like this?

Neither his mom nor his dad had noticed how uncomfortable he had been, at least he told that to himself. And if they had noticed then they would've just blamed it on him being an awkward person, him liking his peace when it came to social stuff.

Nick couldn't really remember who even had brought up the topic, but somehow they had ended up talking about love. Honestly, the amount of teenagers who enjoyed those conversation with a parent was probably quite low, and there was simply no reason for the boy to want that conversation, he was sure he hadn't said or done anything that could have made it seem as if he had wanted to talk about that.

He hadn't told them to stop talking about this, too unsure how they could interpret it. Nevertheless he had been almost praying for something to happen to stop this conversation.

There was just something highly unsettling about having your parents try and talk to you about girls, hearing them ask you if you know any cute ones, them trying to tell you what influence falling in love with someone can have, heavily implying you would experience this with a girl. To have them assume when you're struggling with coming to terms with everyone's assumptions being wrong, to have them not dictate to you, but remind you what they and the world want from you.

He had wanted to scream, had wanted to run away. Or just run in general, but he hadn't. Instead, after a while he had gone into his room to throw himself onto his bed and stare at the ceiling.

Too many thoughts had been clouding his mind, a biting fear had been trying to suffocate him. Trying not to overthink would have been useless, he hadn't been able to stop his mind from roaming through all these unwanted possibilities. 

He hated it when his mind did that, when he couldn't concentrate on a single, concrete thought anymore, as there were just too many. And they usually weren't nice when it happened. Nice thoughts were easier for him to control and to lead into a good direction.

He had thought a lot about Jamie that weekend, too. Yeah, he was definitely reading way too much into this, but can you really blame him?

Maybe it was a little ridiculous how worked up, how worried and anxious he had felt before mentioning something so simple, so ridiculously small and insignificant like a boy having a boyfriend. But he had been, he had felt like this, just out of fear for the improbable that there would actually be a negative reaction to that minor detail.

Of course Jamie hadn't cared, hell, he probably hadn't even noticed it. Only really ignorant idiots would have been so bothered to show any negative reaction. Or maybe those really old people, the ones that still hadn't fully grasped the concept of same-sex relationships yet. And it had been ridiculous to think there to be a chance of his best friend actually giving any sign of noticing it.

Nick had wanted the other to notice it so badly, the boy had thought about it all weekend. He had wanted anything, really, anything. And he thought himself to be truly ridiculous for wanting that. Admitting he needed some kind of affirmation.

Yes, he definitely needed some affirmation, but he didn't want to admit that. That would hurt his pride too much, for sure.

Besides, he already got affirmation, just not the kind he really, really wanted to have. Maybe because he wanted someone to tell him that what he was feeling was okay, didn't stop him from being able to be the person he wanted to be. Or maybe because that someone he needed to tell him that was himself.

Not that he had a problem with the positivity he was receiving. No, he wasn't going to complain about Zane thanking him for being there. Sure, Nick wasn't the hugest fan of them being just friends - understatement of the year - but just hearing the other appreciate him made him feel a certain way he wasn't really used to feeling.

He could've written pages about how he felt and how his friend made him feel, but he wasn't weirdly cheesy like that. That was cringe-worthy. That word had surely become one of his favorites lately.

That didn't stop him from thinking back to their hug on Friday, it had been so long and so nice, and Zane had been so lovely and. . .

"Nicklas?", one of the boys sitting there - god knows when they had appeared - asked him, waving one of his hands in front of the boy's face.

Why the hell was there a fucking hand in front of his face?

"Would you mind clarifying what your hand is doing right in front of my face?"

Apparently the boy had already called his name a few times before.