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So, there we had it. Me, at the door, wondering if it would be Nigel coming back. Hoping it would. Knowing it wouldn't.
Carol at the door
And two tons of fucking pizza arriving.
It was like a huge punishment. I'd been desperate for him to stop talking. I'd needed him to stop talking before it all got spoilt. And I'd shouted at him. Not to hurt him. Just to stop him. To stop him.
And he'd gone.
Sprinted.
In tears.
I was going to lose him. And lose Carol, too.
All this went through my mind in the time it took for carol to walk in, the pizza delivery guy to be paid, and the door to be closed. My mind was screaming ad Grand Prix revs, but my brain was in neutral!
"Hi, Chris." Carol was smiling. "Is that pizza going spare? Were you reading my mind?"
"Er, well, but, oh..... "
"So, articulate as usual, then?"
That was enough to do it. To open the floodgates. No, not floodgates. To destroy the whole dam.
The valley flooded in an instant. The wall of water tore down trees, moved large rocks, threw boulders aside, and drowned me."
Except I was still alive. And sobbing my heart out.
Couldn't breathe. Only sobs. Wails. I heard myself try to speak. "He's......., he's........, he........, I've........" But I couldn't. Not even think, let alone speak.
What really didn't help was the cold water running down my face, and Carol's hand that had just hit me, slap!, on the left cheek.
I was so stunned that I stopped breathing, let alone crying.
"ENOUGH." Carol even spoke in capital letters. "STOP. DON'T SPEAK. WAIT." She didn't shout. But it was obvious that no discussion was possible. But my face hurt. Stung. And I was wringing wet.
I stood there, feeling numb, with my chest heaving. Heaving so much it was still almost mocking the sobs. Borderline, almost starting to cry again. Getting back into control. Feeling all dead inside. Hoping that Nigel didn't feel the same, and knowing that he did.
Finally I managed it. After a glass of water. One inside my mouth. Not thrown this time, but passed top me with care and concern. "He ran away. I shouted at him, and he ran away." It felt so empty, so pointless. "I upset him, and he thinks that I don't love him. But I do. I love him."
"Oh."
"Yes. 'Oh'."
"I, er, sort of wondered." She looked, well, mixed about it. "You really do love him, don't you?"
"Yes. I love him. I know this sounds horrible for you to hear, carol, but I love him."
She was quiet for a while. Then, "Right. If I'm going to lose you, it's going to be to Nigel."
"What?"
"Chris, I love you. I don't think your feelings about me are as strong as your feelings for Nigel."
"But...."
"No 'buts'. I've seen the way you look at him, and it isn't the same as the way you look at me. It isn't the same."
"Carol?"
"No. Before I change my mind...... I feel lousy about it, but I love you. I'm going to make one of us happy."
"But?"
"We're going to see Nigel. Today. Now."
"I can't. He hates me."
"You can. We are. He doesn't."
"I can't. I don't know where he lives." I felt half despair, half the triumph of winning a point.
"Me neither. But I can find out. Phone, please?"
I handed her the phone. Five or so dials later she looked up in triumph. "Right, it's about three miles away. I've got his address and phone number. And I know where it is. How to get there."
"I don't want to phone." Something told me that Nigel wouldn't take my call. "Can we go there. Will you come with me?"
"I intend to. I've told you, Chris. I love you. I know I'm losing you. I'm going to make sure that I lose you to the person you love."
"Why?" I was beginning to get very confused. Motives were a new thing for me. Kindness was. All that stuff.
"One day, Chris, one day I may get you back. If Nigel ever lets you down. I can wait. I will wait. OK?"
"Er?"
"Yeah, well. Now let's go!"
"How?"
"We walk."
I went round the house, shutting and locking up. Realised that I was starving and grabbed one of the boxes of pizza. Then carol and I left the house. Or she left the house with me in tow. Walking, well, where?
She was silent for a while. I guess we walked for about a mile in silence. Well, we were also eating pizza.
I had time to think during that walk. Since going to France I hadn't really made any of my own decisions. I'd \been seduced by the boy I now loved more than life itself, I'd been seduced by Carol. I'd been like a parcel. Now I was being parcelled up yet again.
But it felt good!
"Carol?" This was a hundred yards or so into the second mile.
"Mmm?"
"How come you seem to approve of me and Nigel?"
"I didn't. Not at first.
"I remember! I think that's what I mean, sort of. Why now, I mean?"
"Well, if I didn't love you, Chris, I don't think I would, er, 'approve', as you put it."
"I don't really follow?"
"Nor do I." She thought for a moment. "because I love you, I want you to be happy."
"Yes, but....."
"let me talk for a bit. Ramble, kind of. Think aloud. OK?
"OK."
"I Don't think, Chris, that I'm the one to make you happy. No really happy. Not at the moment at least. Either you and Nigel are an infatuation, or you are 'for ever'. I don't think you are sure of it at the moment either." She paused, but I didn't speak. "It's something you have to find out for yourself. For yourselves." Another pause. She was struggling. I felt awful for her, but in awe of her, too. "When you find out, when you know for sure, the I want to know. I trust you trust you tell me, Chris. Will you promise me you'll tell me?"
"I promise." She was sounding so in control, so 'adult', yet so vulnerable.
"I'll be here as a friend for you, Chris. I'll be a good friend to you. To you both. If you and Nigel are lovers, partners for ever."
"I know." I wanted to hug her, but it wasn't right.
"But if you're just having a fling, Chris. If it's just a new, exciting thing that passes. If it finishes..... I want you back. I'll wait for ever if there's a chance, Chris. For ever."
I saw the tears then. The silent tracks down her face. As I walked beside her I could feel what I was losing. I could feel the love, and yes, the love I had for her, too. "carol, that's...>"
"Don't. Don't be nice to me." She was sharp. "I'm doing this for me as well as you. I have to know, Chris. I have to know. Now don't speak. Walk. Just walk."
We walked in silence.
Residential roads. Neat semi-detached houses behind 1940s walls. Privet hedges. Front lawns. Roadside grass verges. Sometimes a hose watering the lawn. Roses. Parked cars. Uphill, now, the road narrowing. Trees. Hot paving stones. Dry, dusty smell. The noise of a motor mower. The blare of music from an open window. A cat on the wall. A dog barking at a blue iron gate. Downhill. Left into a tree-lined road. Leafy. Cooler. Tired now.
"This one." Carol pointed to a Tudor style house. "Niger's house," she added unnecessarily.
"I'm, er, I don't know if...." Too late.
Up the path she'd gone, and was ringing the doorbell. So I joined her. My heart was pounding.
It opened. It wasn't Nigel. "Can we have a word with Nigel, please?" Carol was in charge all right.
"He's not feeling well. He's in bed. Come in. I'll ask him." She must have been his mother. She showed us into the front room. "Sorry, I don't know who you are?"
"I think we're the reason he's feeling ill. Or I am," Carol said. "Could you just tell him that two rather stupid people are here. That they've come to apologise? Please?"
"Yes, but who are you?"
"I'm Chris. She's Carol," I said. "We were on the French trip together."
"The Chris that Nigel was meant to be with this afternoon?"
"Yes."
I'll go and see if he's awake. Stay there." She went quietly upstairs.
We heard voices. Quite a long muffled conversation. I couldn't make out a word. The a puffy cheeked Nigel came into the room. I hated to see him like that. If his Mum hadn't been there I would have rushed over and kissed him. But his eyes blazed at me and at carol. It wasn't love that I saw there. It was despair. And hate. All hope gone. And he was so wrong. If he would listen.
"Where's the loo?" Carol asked, and Nigel's mother went out with her and must have shown her where it was.
"Nigel?"
"What?" his eyes were downcast.
"I, oh fuck!" I couldn't say what I meant.
"You brought her round to gloat at me."
"No!" He had to listen. This was important. "listen to me! This is important. If you won't listen to me, listen to Carol."
"I don't want to listen." His eyes blazed at me. "I feel horrible. You shouted at me, Chris. You shouted at me...."
"I know I did. I'm sorry."
"Easy to say!"
"No, it wasn't easy to say. Well easy actually to 'say', but I had to find you first. Now listen to me. Please listen to me. If we never speak again, listen now."
"Why?"
"Because I mean the apology."
"That's fine, but....."
"And because it was a Nissan Bluebird. And I'm choosing the forfeit. You have to listen to me. And then you listen to Carol."
"Well...." A hint of a smile was in his eyes. Not much, but a hint. "OK, I'll listen. When carol gets back. I, er, have a kind of den at the end of the garden. It's private."
"I don't want to wait. Can you get your mum to send Carol down when she's stopped being tactful in the loo?"
"I don't know"
But we didn't move. Instead I started to talk to him. Quietly. "Look Nigel, I want to shout it so loud that the whole world knows it. I love you. I want you. Just you. You, Nigel. You. Not Carol. You." I was talking, I was selling, I suppose. But I still wasn't sure. Not one hundred percent. I was talking, but not quite meaning it..
"but you're here with Carol?"
"No. Yes. No, not with carol."
"Er?"
"She's here and I'm here. At the same time. Not 'with'. I'd be sitting at home in tears if she hadn't got me to come and see you."
"You mean you don't love me enough to come by yourself?" Nigel bristled.
"Dammit, why does everything I say have to come out wrong? I didn't know how to find you. I didn't know your address. Still don't. I have no idea where I am! I didn't know your phone number or anything. She found it for me while I was just being useless."
"It's true." Carol's voice. She'd come back in while we were talking. Oh. Had Niger's Mum heard, too? Oh no!
"It is?"
"Look, Nigel, when I got there, Chris was looking like a wet weekend in Wigan. He was hysterical. I had to fling a glass of cold water over him and slap his face top make him stop."
"He was? You did?" Nigel's mouth was open.
"Yes. Now listen. I didn't go to see Chris to say this. Actually I went there to do the exact opposite. But when I saw him I decided something. That he will be happy with you, not with me."
"Oh." Nigel's mouth was even further open.
"If you hurt him, Nigel; if you let him down; if you dump him, or make him unhappy, or cheat on him, I swear I'll kill you. He wants you, Nigel. You. The question is, how much do you want him?"
"Oh."
"Oh?" All you can say is 'Oh'? I give up hope of the boy I love, I just wait on the fucking sidelines to pick up the pieces, I walk three miles here to get you two to kiss and make up when I really want to hold Chris and love him and tell him to forget all about you, and you say 'Oh'!"
I felt like a spectator at a slave auction. And like the slave. But I'd been thinking properly while all this was going on. I'd decided my future. It wasn't being decided for me. It was the hardest decision I had ever made. To give up the most beautiful, sensitive, loving, crazy boy in the world, or to give up a long term gorgeous, generous girl. To choose scary or conventional. To choose to lose a good number of friends, to deny myself children - yes, I thought of that, too - or to choose normality.
Oh, I'd decided. I decided on the walk over, I knew. I knew as clearly as anything. For the first time I was in control. I was. Me. I knew what I wanted. I was listening to them talking. One being generous. The other melting under her onslaught. I needed to be sure. Not of me. Not of my choice, but of whether it was right, was going to be right, for both of us. I wasn't a kid any more, not a man either. But I had free will.
"Can I say something? Please?" It was time, I felt. I was sure. I knew how, with whom, even at fourteen, I wanted to spend my life. I knew it with a startling clarity.
I looked at them both sitting there, on the same sofa, in Nigel's front room. "Nigel, Carol, I think each of you is wonderful. If the other didn't exist.... But you do."
They looked at me. Waiting, I suppose.
I carried on. It was just so right. "I love you both. Each of you differently, but I love you both. But I can only be with one of you. I know that now. If you'll have me. I want to be with you, be your friend, love you, spend my life with you, marry you!"
I was on my knees, in front of the sofa, looking directly into tow clear eyes, doing my best to ignore the other set that were filling with tears. Holding two hands. Praying to hear the word I wanted. Praying.
"Yes, yes, yes, YES!" And we were in each other's arms. "Oh yes. I love you so much. Yes, yes, yes!"
And we held each other as we heard Carol quietly close the door behind her.
Perhaps you were expecting a steamy sex scene. But how? This wasn't the time. So I didn't write one in this chapter. There won't be one in every chapter. This is about people, after all. And even fourteen year old boys aren't always ready for sex!
If you liked this chapter, If you like the story, find more at my website (address at the top of the page), and from there also link to the Teenage Gay Boy love Stories Webring where we have gathered authors who write fact and fiction about teenage male romance. And if you are an author yourself, please don't hesitate to go to the Webring Signup page at http://members.xoom.com/iomfats/ringmaster.htm and submit your own website for consideration for membership.