Page 40 of Footlights and Forever

“Well, let’s just say you were getting very well acquainted with him last night.” Oh fuck. Kevin had planned the whole thing. He had kept Dylan out of the party, got me alone, and made his move.

“Listen Dylan, please you have to believe me, I didn’t know that.” I heard a deep sigh down the line.

“It doesn’t even matter Austin,” a feeling of dread began to pool in my gut, “if it wasn’t him, it would have just been someone else.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Austin, it’s not like I wasn’t expecting this. I knew it was just going to be a matter of time.” The dread slowly started to turn to acid, which churned hot in my stomach.

“A matter of time?” My jaw clenched so hard that my mouth began to ache.

“Before you’d find someone else who is… you know.”

“No, I clearly don’t.”This motherfucker.

“Who is more suited for you, someone who is like you.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear, biting my tongue so I didn’t say something that I knew I would regret later. “Why don’t you trust me?”

“Pardon?”

“Have I ever given you a reason not to trust me? Have I ever so much as looked at another guy since we have been going out? Have I not been completely honest and open with you every step of the way?”

“It’s not that simple,” he ground out.

“It kind of is that simple.” I didn’t want to drop this. The fact that he might think, might have been thinking this stuff about me, had me questioning everything. “Do you trust me?”

“I really thought I did.” His voice wavered at the end. The dread now roared to life in the form of a full-blown panic.

“Dylan listen, I don’t think this is the best way to talk about this. Can we please meet for lunch and get this shit sorted out?”

Silence was my answer, but I waited. I heard the cogs turning in his head. This was how my Dylan was. He needed to process rather than answering straight away. He knew, or at very least I hoped he knew how much I loved him.

“Listen Austin,” Okay, not the start of the response I wanted to hear, but I bit my tongue, “I’m really not ready to talk to you right now. Hailey is only here for a few days. I really want tospend this time with her. I think maybe a few days apart would do us good.”

“Are you leaving me?” I almost wanted to put the phone down so I didn’t have to hear the answer.

“Austin…”

“Are you?”

The silence returned. My fist tightened and then unclenched in my lap as I waited for his answer. Finally, he took a deep breath.

“No Austin, I’m not leaving you. I just need some time, okay?” What could I say? No? “Listen, I have to go, okay? Take care of yourself, Austin.”

Chapter 14

“Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing.” – Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

Austin

Knowing that if I’d gone home I’d end up decking Kevin and then have to deck Kyle as well, I contacted my professors to let them know I’d had a family emergency and would need to go home for the week. My parents were more confused as to why I was home without Dylan. It was a conversation I couldn’t face having with them. How did you explain to someone that what they thought was exactly what happened? That you actually didn’t do anything wrong, but that you understood where they were coming from, so you agreed to let them take some time for themselves, all the while probably thinking that I was some cheating scumbag?

It wouldn’t be so bad if I had at least gone into that garden with Kevin knowing that I was doing something wrong. Was it wrong for me to be alone with a guy during a party? Hell no! And yet here I sat, alone in my childhood bedroom While myboyfriend was back in New York, listening to god knows what garbage from his friends about how I didn’t deserve him and how much better he could do.

The problem was, they were right.

Dylan was so much more of a better person than I was. How he could have seen me through all the bullshit of high school, how he’d seen past the façade of my friends, right through the crowd and right into the heart of me, never failed to amaze me. While I knew I was objectively and classically handsome, Dylan was beautiful. It annoyed me how not everyone could see that right away.

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